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/

Sorry, I was implying a few more things than what you were talking about. I implied using the H264 at the same data rate would be preferable (otherwise you would have to increase the mpeg 4 data rate, i.e. 19mb/s). WMV is ahead of Mpeg4, but behind h264. But you cannot compare WMV to Mpeg4 so easily. WMV has the option to use blurring to hide macro blocking etc, I think on as standard, if you want to loss HD resolution that would be a good start. There are codec data rate reduction methods that eliminate detail (and noise as side effect)/make a flatter looking image, but less noise, looks cleaner, but less detailed (as a cartoon also does the same). Turn those features off, and it might appear that it is not that far ahead of the Sanyo (I expect wmv would look similar at 6Mb/s).

Still, there is, reportedly, a few ways to do Mpeg4 including repackaging Mpeg2 in a Mpeg4 data structure. I read of a advanced mpeg2 codec that did SD (720 horizontal pixel variety) at 1Mb/s. So maybe this is what you are seeing, an advanced mpeg2 codec in Mpeg4.

Another thing is latitude problems effecting the codec, and low light noise problem degrading the codec. Shoot the same footage, adjusted for the same range and lighting performance, and run it through wmv, you should see it's performance drop. Comparing this camera's footage with WMV footage converted from other HD cameras with better range and noise (which is every HD camera out there at the moment) in low/very contrasty light, is like comparing Apples and ants. There is just not going to be a match.

It is what it is, it could be a lot better with some minor adjustments, and much better again with better codec lens and sensor. Passing on suggestions for a firmware upgrade is one of the few things you can do to help your present cameras. Pity, I would have bought one if they had done it so (probably with a lot of people around this site).


Thanks

Wayne.

Alas H264 would have very much turned me off :-( I don't like h264

nasty codec. It takes insane power to edit and make it and even insane power just to look at it :-(

Maybe it is superior and it probably is but until we have the hardware and software to more effeciently interact with it I prefer something more standard and forgiving tha H264

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

Cheap h264 codec:
www.ambarella.com

Follow the news history I posted. I think it will answer.

Its not the cost that bothers me so much that nothing can TOUCH h264 effeciently

Not one of my portables will play h264 editing it is a pain and slow as you know what and playback is NEVER assured on my or anyone elses systems (you think codec issues abound with HD1 files ?? :-)

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

I have been saying that the codec has enough power to enable editing on camera. I think other uses for the chip technology should be easy enough. It has been reported it is based on an array of many Sparc RISC Microprocessors. There has been talk in those news article of professional version. If they dropped this chip in a external USB, or a PCI card, it should be able to do it.

Newer systems (and newer graphics cards) enable h264 viewing. AMD is talking with clearspeed, a, probably, similarly powerful, low power consumption, array of processors to the Ambarella, as a co-processors for their processors. It is obvious that Intel might also be working on this. Next gen 3D (To be announced) also have a much improved architecture that might also help in this area (I have been waiting for this architecture from around 2001).

There has been a process of slow change in computer power, and this year we will hopefully seeing results in the consumer end (apart from GPU's that have been using array principles for simplified graphics circuits fro years).

I think the prospect for h264 is not so bad, but remember the JVC HD1/10, one software package and not enough power on many systems, that eventually changed. I forgot to mention, Sony is planing NLE on Playstation 3, plenty of power. Still, in the meantime, before all the cheap options, 5Ghz, and eventually four core CPU's. Here is a place with some nifty MB stuff:

http://www.win-ent.com/
http://www.win-ent.com/MB-06047.htm

If you're on Windows, try the CoreAVC decoder.

http://coreavc.corecodec.org/

It brings AVC decoding down to roughly the same CPU requirements as many mpeg2 and H.263 ("mpeg4") decoders. CoreAVC is very efficient code!

BTW, As an H.264 decoder, CoreAVC will not decode Sanyo HD-1 video.

Do they do encoding or transcoding h264 for editing? I would like to fit the editing on a laptop for h264 camera (if I get one) so very efficient GPU hogging code would help (especially with future GPU chipsets).

I don't think the Core projects do encoding yet, but I believe it's their goal to provide an encoder one day. I'm very impressed with their decoders so we'll just have to see if they ever release a similarly efficient encoder.