Panasonic HS700/TM700 1080 60p camcorders

[Paulo Teixeira]

B&H has the price of the TM700 set to $1,000.

[Robert M Wright]

The have the HS700 there now too, for $1399. That strikes me as a fairly pricey 240GB HDD. Funny thing is, the TM300 is a tad more expensive than the HS300 at B&H. Maybe the prices on the 700 will change before they actually start accepting orders.

[Floris van Eck]

I would always opt for the Flash version. Solid State media is much more reliable.

[Andrew Clark]

Nice cams; but how does one edit the 1080/60p footage?

[Graham Hickling]

Premiere with Cineform intermediate should work fine. Premiere CS4 may work natively - don't quote me on that though.

Media tanks like this can play back raw or edited 1080P60 H.264 and MP4: EGreat EG-M34A High-definition Network Media Tank (NMT)

[Paulo Teixeira]

I've tested a clip from an HD2000 on Premiere CS4 natively and it works.

[Serge Victorovich]

Originally Posted by Graham Hickling

Media tanks like this can play back raw or edited 1080P60 H.264 and MP4: EGreat EG-M34A High-definition Network Media Tank (NMT)

This one is based on SIGMA DESIGNS SMP8635 which do not support 1080P60 H264 from Sanyo HD2000/FH1.

1080P60 H264 is Level 4.2 to decode you need at least SIGMA DESIGNS SMP8655.
WD TV gen2 ok for 1080P60 H264 is Level 4.2.

[Paulo Teixeira]

You'll find 9 native 1920x1080 60p files in this thread.
Panasonic HDC-HS700 & HDC-TM700 1080p60 cams - Page 5 - AVS Forum

For playback on a decent Windows computer, you'll need Nero ShowTime. The Sony PS3 will also playback the files.

The files are a little bit different than what's in Sanyo's camcorders. The PS3 plays them better. The bit rate is also a little higher. Still, just like the files from Sanyo's camcorders, Premiere Pro will also edit them naively.

[Jack Zhang]

It's wrapped in m2t instead of mp4. I can confirm Sony Vegas 9 injests the footage absolutely fine.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Watch.Impress review of the TM700:
http://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/s...24_356414.html

English Translated:
Google Translate

It took a while but better late than never.

[Dave Haynie]

Originally Posted by David Heath

There is at least one bit in the original release that catches my eye:

Now those specifications seem roughly comparable to a 4 to 5 megapixel Bayer sensor at best, so how on earth they manage to generate a 14.2 megapixel still from that sensor is completely beyond me. It may well output a 14.2 megapixel file, but it's likely to only be effectively an upresolve.

Agreed. Ok, you have three 14-bit samples per real pixel. This is absolutely perfect for video, and despite all the talk of "dual mode" cameras, I still want my video camera to be optimized for video.

There's some argument that in-camera interpolation will yield a better result. That wouldn't be the case if you wrote out a 48-bit 3.1Mpixel TIFF or whatever, but given the limitations of the JPEG you're using, I'll bet there's an improvement. But all the way to 14.2Mpixel? Pretty dubious.

There are certainly "marketing pixels" in there. All the single-sensor cameras have the advantage that, in still mode, they're basically using the same high resolution Bayer-style sensors used in the digital still cameras. Those sensors are a disadvantage for video, but an advantage for stills, where the extra spatial resolution is useful and the lower color information not so much. So Panasonic's thinking very consumery here and trying to keep that comparable on spec sheets.

Of course, Sigma's been pulling off much the same story with their Foveon-sensor based cameras (single CMOS chips with three photo sensitive layers). I suspect anyone doing much still photography with any video camera isn't concerned with the best quality of still photos anyway.. they're printing 4x6 prints, and they'll be happy with the result from any modern video camera.

[Dave Haynie]

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark

Nice cams; but how does one edit the 1080/60p footage?

It drops right into Sony Vegas Pro 9. Editing is not fast, but it works.

For multi-layered editing, I transcode to Cineform Neo, which produces 120GB/hr files with virtually no loss or additionaly compression artifacts.

The real question isn't editing, but what to do with the final video. It's has uses even so. You can decide after you shoot whether you want to deliver a Blu-Ray at 720/60p or 1080/60i. You can put 1080/60i on Blu-Ray and DVD, but still have nice, mice-teeth-free progressive video for online playback.

[Jack Zhang]

The PS3 can playback 1080p60, but only in XviD at 19mbps with all video noise reducers off. Even the best hardware H.264 decoders only do 45fps trying to decode 60p.

I can see XviD as the only deliverable to PS3s that can still play back the 1080p60 video smoothly. All you do is mux the AC3 rendered audio in VirtualDubMod after rendering an audioless XviD AVI and you get a deliverable AVI playable on the PS3.

[Dave Haynie]

Originally Posted by Jack Zhang

The PS3 can playback 1080p60, but only in XviD at 19mbps with all video noise reducers off. Even the best hardware H.264 decoders only do 45fps trying to decode 60p.

I don't think the PS3 is using hardware to decode AVC... not with all those SPEs around. They can do a full Blu-Ray 1080/60i H.264 decode, rates up to 50Mb/s, on just three SPEs, so it's not unreasonable to expect 1080/60p to be possible on the PS3. The only question is support, and no, I didn't expect it, but tried it anyway.

Originally Posted by Jack Zhang

I can see XviD as the only deliverable to PS3s that can still play back the 1080p60 video smoothly. All you do is mux the AC3 rendered audio in VirtualDubMod after rendering an audioless XviD AVI and you get a deliverable AVI playable on the PS3.

Of course I know how to gen an XviD, DivX, or other H.263/MPEG-4 Part 2 -ish video stream. But dropping from AVC to that, then cutting it to 19Mb/s... what's the point? You video is going to look pretty bad... well, relatively speaking. Yeah, I know the original DivX-HD spec was for 720p at 3Mb/s or so (before Blu-Ray, I had a red-laser DVD player that did DivX-HD and WMV/HD from DVD, the IOData AVeL Linkplayer 2), but that was also full of artifacts, relative to today's video.

[Andrew Clark]

Originally Posted by Dave Haynie

It drops right into Sony Vegas Pro 9. Editing is not fast, but it works.

For multi-layered editing, I transcode to Cineform Neo, which produces 120GB/hr files with virtually no loss or additionaly compression artifacts.

The real question isn't editing, but what to do with the final video. It's has uses even so. You can decide after you shoot whether you want to deliver a Blu-Ray at 720/60p or 1080/60i. You can put 1080/60i on Blu-Ray and DVD, but still have nice, mice-teeth-free progressive video for online playback.

Hi Dave -

Do you own this cam? Reason I ask, is that I would like to get some feedback/impressions of the cam's ergonomics, footage and overall usability of it.

Also with Cineform Neo, does it make for a smoother editing experience with these files?