Sanyo's Impact
 

Considering how fast the "Sanyo HD1 Footage!" thread is growing, it makes me think that the new Sanyo HD camcorder might possibly help spark a significant acceleration of interest in, and understanding of, HD video among the general public. That is good for all of us. I hope they sell tons of those cameras.

Yes. And this lille cam deserves a forum of its own, no ?

It definetly does...

I can think of many pros uses for the cam: keyhole, faking a cheap security cam, placing in harms way so as not sacrifice a more expensive unit... Using in situations where you would want to draw attention to yourself, etc. Using as an aide to locate good scenes for shoots and framing setups, etc. The list goes on.

Have you guys voted in our "how should we handle HD cameras" poll?

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=59318

I'm looking for suggestions in that thread as to how to best organize the forum structure. Thanks,

I'm sure dedicated forums for this camera will pop on the net (and they should) if they haven't already, but I don't think a separate area on DV Info Net would really be a great fit for this community. This camera is just not a tool that is likely to ever be used much at all by DV Info Net members for professional work (sure, it might be used for profit in some special circumstances).

I'm glad Sanyo decided to manufacture this camera. I hope they sell many of them and support grows for being able to edit the MPEG-4 streams the camera produces. I hope JVC, Sony, Panasonic and Canon will start seriously considering that capturing MPEG-4 streams to widely used, low cost, flash-type memory cards is a potentially viable, here-and-now, cost effective way to record HD onto tapeless media for a number of professional acquisition purposes (and a Cineform-like intermediate codec could work very well for professional editing purposes).

the problem is that at some point there are going to be too many of these cameras to give each one of 'em their own forum.

this iso mpeg4 stuff is just the beginning... wait 'till you see what the new h.264 cameras will do.

Review of the Sanyo HD1 by a Japanese Tester
 

There seems to be a lot of cheerleading on this group of Sanyo HD1 threads, for a camcorder that hasn't yet been released or been tested by any of the posters. I just read a very negative review of it by a hands-on tester. Scroll down below the pictures on this website and read his remarks about the "disastrous" video picture quality, before planning on buying this model. However, he says that the still digital picture quality the HD1 produces is good.

http://www.akihabaranews.com/review-62-X.html

Stephen i told you it's not a japanese site (or poster) it's a french !!!

the name of the internet site (akihabara) is named after this famous geek district in tokyo but the site is not japanese...

now about the HD1 i can see where they come from with the negative review...that's true that the HD1 promised a lot but give little once you buy it....

Stephen, there are multiple people with the camera posting on this forum, with plenty of footage. I haven't been through the latest review on the French site, but from our own experience the camera does not give nice footage unless you set it up properly. It looks like a professional really can make the best out of a camera. But in the end the footage is still second-rate (third rate compared to high end pro formats) but suitable at the reduced bit-rates of DVD, consumer and special purpose. At first, we were skeptical it could be as good as it turned out though. It is not a camera that doesn't have an potential existence in our use, but for the size in the price range, it has no HD competition (yet). It is sort of the early adopters JVC HD1 syndrome, now most HD competition is better.


Thanks

Wayne.

Although I am not a pro I am experienced I think. Besides setting the ISO to 50 or 400 for outdoors or indoors I dont really have to mess with settings much and I am exstatic over the results

www.nerys.com/sanyo

there is a bunch of imprompto clips just for the heck of it. I have not even tried "hard" yet to get something "good"

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

Thank you
 

for posting these clips.
As you say they are very preliminary but it seems to me that the first reviews are more or less confirmed:
-very shaky as soon as you are not a the shortest focal
- low perf in low light
- reasonnably good colors
It seems also that the encoding is done a very high rates ( 1sec = 1MegB)
which is indeed around the 8/9 announced.

The MP4 encoder seems therefore very weak, definitely because of its "real-time" requirement. I would say that quality is somewhere around WMV 1280*720 at a bit rate of 2.5 or 3...

I had that cam in hand in Japan, and made a small test ( that i dumped, sorry) It is a nice toy, but HD, nope. ANd the size is not THAT small that i would opt out from my HC1.

May be most of this can be circumveted by using tripods, and short focal, and bright scenes.

And/or a new version of the encoding chip...

Yes, H264, or 19Mb/s Mpeg4 would have been nice. Double layer disc could get reasonable length at 19mb/s. Most other problems could be solved with firmware upgrade to improve exposure, focus and picture encoding bug etc. New sensor/lens would get rid of most other performance issues.

I wonder if encoder is turned down to 9Mb/s because that is most practical for Flash card and DVD disc, but it could do 19Mb/s?

Maybe you guys could write to Sanyo and summarise your experience and improvement suggestions for firmware upgrade, and next model?


Thanks

Wayne.

i think i was misunterstood...
 

wayne,
my point was NOT that they should use a higher bandwith, but ,ON THE CONTRARY, that they were using TWICE as much bandwith which would be needed if the compression was OK. given that is performs real time, OK for some overhead..But NOT for this result in terms of quality. I think that on the early days of Sanyo's announcement i posted some remark saying that i"it was to be hoped that their MPEG4 encoder would be better than their (current SD Xacti) MPEG2? which is terrible. It is NOT the case...

It is a nice toy, but HD, nope

???

1280x720p

that is by definition 720p HD - why is this even up for negotiation or discussion ?

there is no question if its HD or not (IT IS by definition HD)

it might not be good enough for your needs (its certaintly good enough for mine)

Thats like saying an apple is not an apple because its a yellow one instead of the red you expected :-)

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/