Sanyo HD2 footages
 

first in youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPCLB...related&search

Thanks Roberta, great effort, how do you get the camera? The Youtube thing makes it look like an old mobile phone footage, it even stuffed around with the colour. Any chance we might see the Mpeg4 footage native, or any other native clips. I see enough there to suspect that it might have better colour, latitude (unless you were using an ND filter) and picture then the HD1a, but high S?N (low noise) is what this cameras needs fro 9mb/s.

The biggest question is, does the thing display live camera footage through HDMI, and is it uncompressed? Film something big blue and featureless that produces blocking on playback, but no blocking on an true 720p HDMI monitor input. The other quest is, does it do 30fps, or does it do 60fps through the HDMI, like some other 30fps cameras do?

Thanks

Wayne.

Yep, contrast of the shadows, and color, looks like it might be right on the original footage. The picture quality of the HD1 in still mode was what they needed in movie mode, and this looks an lot closer to other cameras, but an improvement.

The Canon HV20, is out there, and other competitors cameras get closer (like AVCHD models) so I hope this camera is good. What I would like is an 10bit 18-36mb/s Mpeg4 25-50fps DSLR version (with 2/4/5 channel sound) with HDMI, and standardised electronic/manual changeable lens with room for an hard drive. High Signal to Noise with an latitude extension scheme, and large sensor (at least 4/3rds). Come on Sanyo, you know what I am saying.

The commercial
 

Ahhh, it's been in Australia, see here, time to check to see if they put footage up on that site again :).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3mEe3rIp04&NR

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=fortify7

Wayne,
i simple find HD2 videos on youtube...not get the cam

[QUOTE= What I would like is an 10bit 18-36mb/s Mpeg4 25-50fps DSLR version (with 2/4/5 channel sound) with HDMI, and standardised electronic/manual changeable lens with room for an hard drive. High Signal to Noise with an latitude extension scheme, and large sensor (at least 4/3rds). Come on Sanyo, you know what I am saying.[/QUOTE]

YES YES YES !!! :)

Sorry, I thought you might be an mystery user :). The add is interesting, it is corrupted, but you can tell something about camera characteristics.

Extreme thanks for posting them.

Here is an interview about products including the Sanyo HD2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPcXqy119g0

Let's set the record straight. The person who posted HD2 footage on YouTube is John Lamb, the sales manager for Sanyo USA. In the other clip, he is being interviewed at CES.

The maximum size allowed by YouTube is 320 x 240, so you won't see much about IQ there. I asked John if he would post full resolution clips elsewhere, and he seemed willing, but I haven't seen it up yet.

With PMA starting next week, he may be too busy to bother with it now. Also, at PMA I hope others will get their hands on the camera and post something.

Yes, I found that out after I posted. I sent him an message too. I wonder if he is "Sanyo" at steves-digicams forums.

You can tell some things about an camera from youtube footage, like suspected color accuracy and latitude, unfortunately you can not tell noise or codec performance very well, as the youtube codec just wipes things out. But for the Sanyo, the suspected extra latitude, and the extra low light, is an must (preferably 12-16 stops+ with range extension technology would be good). Noise and codec performance are the two other musts.

hd2 review
 

Whoa....we are FAAAR from perfect in translation software.

Look a the amount of doublespeak and gibbersih...

He talks about three "cute" points of the HD2

1) more resolution
2) better low light performance

They DO have a video sample....and it looks very good for an interior shot...too bad it is at 640. I can not see jaggies, but I dont remember if those are visible at that resolution

btw: video=animated picture

3) HDMI output?

It is almost as if the translations are getting worse over time, a few years back I remember them being good. Maybe Chris could put an translate link function in pointing to an better free translation service?

Sanyo HD2 SD footage review:
 

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babel...2fmov0027.html

Had an look at the clip, high color saturation but it looks descent. SD is not what you want to test out for an interior shot, as pixel binning, at the lower resolution, can lead to better low light performance than HD, which looks decently acceptable, given the price and resolution.

The footage still has problems related to the codec and bit rate. We see that much blockiness and lost resolution in movement (good on him for the movement shot, a more subtle shot in contrast would also be good). We see that plain/flat areas crawl with low resolution blockiness (this is likely an defect in the way Mpeg4 does encoding choices, that makes the choices look too obvious, but something that should be adjustable in the codec, to make them disappear). The balls show how they loss resolution down the bottom also.

At high speed movement it still looks obvious that something is missing. My scheme for prioritising to keep the outline of broader details/shapes of blurred/high speed objects in priority to the smallest, with the ramping flow inside the shape, would look better for little extra data space, than the present scheme. For example, the outline of the arm, and the liens on the sleeves would be retained much better. The up and down rise of the reflection of the different fingers would be retained better. The balls would remain roundish and there varying reflection preserved (though I don't know if MPEG4 has the necessary functions to efficiently encode radial reflection). Even through you don't see detail in movement, you see general shape. The bigger the TV, and closer the sitting distance, the more obvious it becomes. With 40 inch becomes more common, and 65 inch shortly, with 100inch+ past that (possibly within an year, if laser projected TV is possible) these cameras will be used on these things, before people buy next model.

The 640*480/720*480 mode could do a lot of this if there was an mode with an lot extra bandwidth, and 60fps mode. HD mode has 9mb/s, but that 9mb/s could be used on any mode (unless it is not supported as standard in Mpeg4, but then custom modes are often made for cameras and then supported, and it would still be useful to be converted to another good SD codec for delivery). This would be very easy, and would be good for 60fps, and good for 4:2:2, or preferably 4:4:4 color. Although 720*480 would be preferable for 9mb/s SD mode, and 640*360 could be emulated through the 720p mode, by not storing resolution lower than 2*2 group of pixels. These are the sorts of SD features that would really make video people look at it.

This does not indicate to me that HD 720p mode doesn't need more than 9mb/s. I think 18Mb/s would be good, even if only for 60fps 720p (which I think 35mb.s would be good for). I am sorry this camera has not got these modes, for extreme sports users it is one area it is very desirable, apart from hobbyist and semi-professionals.

We have had a look at footage from the Canon, it is making the same mistake we have seen before, low signal to noise ratio, but color looks good, but contrast is in question. Even though it has high enough noise, the 35mb/s data rate is helping much better, and also helping with movement movement much better. Somebody did an interesting experiment, they sent the MJPEG frame through the de-grainer in After Effects, and it cleaned up quiet nicely, something like this done before MPeg4 processing would substantially improve picture quality, and I believe that Sanyo has tried to achieve this with there latest noise removal schemes, but we will see when more footage becomes available. Even though I suspect that the HD2 is much better in noise level this year, I think noise at 0 gain might still be there. The object with low bit rate cameras is zero noise at any reasonable gain level (down to below 5 lux) as this allows the most efficient encoding to be done and better picture. The other object for picture quality, is range of latitude, and I think there might have been good improvement in this model. Modern sensor technology can deliver latitude as good as the human eye. There is color, but once you turn the color down on the HD1a, it looks subtly good, thought the still mode seems to be more crisp.

I suspect that Canon will still provide much strong competition to the HD2, because of their brand name, the ability to handle noise and movement through higher data rate (that is still smoothing like half of what it needs to be) among various crowds, like extreme sports people. The 35mb/s data-rate looks excessive flash fro flash, but is less than what you need for an really good picture, something like H264 intra frame compression would have done that, or AVCHD (h264 interframe compression) at 24mb/s. But I think, the increase in flash capacity and reducing costs (and the capacity of Blu-ray etc) should be able to cover that eventually. At the moment I think flash costs, and dual layered DVD (with more capacity to come I think) are good enough for 18mb/s data-rates.

The translation of the Japanese review is also difficult to read, but seems to indicate that HDMI on the camera does not carry the sound track, which is interesting.

More Footage!!
 

Don't bother translating this site, just take a look at the samlpe movies to get an idea of how this camcorder will perform.

First the review site (page 1):

http://arena.nikkeibp.co.jp/rev/2007...1105/?from=RSS

Sample clips (page2) compares HD1 to HD2:

http://arena.nikkeibp.co.jp/rev/2007...5/index2.shtml



John,

BTW, I'll be posting another link soon that has a ton of HD2 clips taken in dark locations inside and out..... you won't be happy.

Even MORE Footage!!
 

As promosied, here is a bunch of dark HD2 footage, both video and stills.

http://fujiiphoto.com/2ch/HD2/

I have to say that I was really pulling for the HD2 to be a big leap above the HD1 but as you can see from both sites (other site posted before) the quality of the video is marginally better. Now I understand why Sanyo Marketing is not posting any real samples here in North America (That post on Youtube is pathetic), there's no way Sanyo will be able to compete with the Canon TX1 (Lots of samples available now on the net) at it's current MSRP price point.

Take a look at the Panasonic HDC-SD1, it's MSPR has already dropped before introduction in the States as well as Canada (It's not even widely avail in Canada yet). The Hybrid market is heating up. Yes, I know that Panasonic is way more expensive, but take a look at it's IQ, you'll be a convert as well ( I wish there was editing software available for AVCHD).

Please post your impressions of the samples.

John

Thanks to John for the samples. The direct comparison of the HD1a and the HD2 is informative; there is clearly some improvement.
The dark samples don't tell us much (even after auto translation of the captions) except that none of the little cameras are much good in low light.
You can't compare them to the Panasonic, which is a different animal -- larger, more expensive and using the more troublesome AVCHD format. If Apple brings out models with hardware rendering of H.264 (as rumored) that might make a difference.
As between the Sanyo and the Canon, we haven't seen enough to be really decisive. The Canon sample from the PMA ballroom is lousy (pity the poor Canon rep who is depicted in it and seen around the world) whereas the Akihabara sample in daylight looks pretty good.
Since I am pretty much commited to the pocketable HD concept that also includes good quality stills, I am leaving both the Sanyo and the Canon on pre-order for the moment.
I have about a dozen quite satisfying videos for viewing on my HDTV that I shot with the Sanyo HD1 (video and stills combined in Quicktime HD), I'm glad that I didn't wait for something better.

Thanks John. Just downloading pages now, did they try that hypersensitivity button?

I have been informed that the Panasonics HDMI output is compressed.

From the images, these cameras are set up differently, different colourisation and saturation, and different edge enhancement. We cannot tell much, unless the cameras are setup manually to reflect their best performance.

The HD1a picture is wider (in girl at desk shot) and possibly has more latitude, which would be very disappointing if it is true, but then again could have something to do with how the camera is responding to handling at the moment.

The closeups show a lot of difference between the two cameras in fine detail and all that compression artifacting. It definitely needs an faster bitrate.

An lot more investigation of these images needs to be done before we can say for certain what is happening.

Good news gentlemen, in the review, snapshot and blowup the seagulls down the bottom for each camera. By the looks of it we have got rid of the dreaded jaggies encoding error. The seagulls now look normal, not like they are from the x-files. Unfortunately, it is hard to tell, because the HD2 footage lacks a lot of resolution, maybe because it is in an soft detail mode. If you look at the ladder in the blowup you will notice the vertical feature to the right of it is virtually missing in the HD2 footage, and if you look at the diagonal beams on the bridge there is hardly any detail there in the HD2 shots. Also, an train is goign through the HD1a clip (which would suck up some data bandwidth) and not in the HD2 footage. Water (and train) still looks blocky, still need better data rate.

The night lamp shots don't tell me much, and I can't download 126-14? MByte monster files from the reviews easily. But the lamp shots (which I assume is an paper lamp with an candle inside, don't prove much, street y street lighting, or room by baked 60/40/15 watt bulb light does (preferably without bulb in the frame, to allow optimal iris and gain). And none of the lamp shots were purple as happened previously, which is good news.

I am currently downloading night alley footage. It mentions hd1 down the bottom, does anybody know which of those is HD1 and HD2?

Altogether, I might have to wait for 18mb/s H264 camera unfortunately. 18mb/s 60fps 720 should be better than this, let alone 30fps 720p. But as with Sanyo, the other shots we have seen show better latitude and color, so maybe a few surprises in the handling and setup are waiting for us.

Have found out Sanyo has just announced an new H264 camera:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=88841


Have looked at picture and read translation of review. Found my monitor set to 9300K. changed to other settings which helped with the bluish ting through the image.

Noise is less, and the article seems to indicate compression noise is less (as would be expected without noise) but hard to verify, as it to notes the lack of detail. It seems to indicate that this is an pre-production camera, and the situation may improve. I would imagine that the lack of detail is merely too a soft an setting, or the 9 pixel binning been done is such a way to average out neighbouring pixels. Some handling of the camera should prove wherever this can be adjusted.


Definitely not the high data rate (modern storage can handle it) high latitude, low noise, 50fps h264 camera we would prefer, but it is a good little camera anyway. Hopefully it handles well fro the consumer too.

http://translate.google.com/translat...language_tools

HD2 footage evaluation review.
 

At least one of the clip sources indicates that this is an pre-production camera, so some of the apparent problems might be related to this, and be resolved in the finale product. This is everything the HD1 should have been (less higher bitrate and 25/50fps (50fps being something desirable in sports television recording)). This is based on the existing clips I have downloaded, and as much as I have been able to downloaded, it is representative of those clips, but may not be of other clips on production cameras.

Jaggies, and horizontal details
Yippee the diagonal jaggies block issue appears to be gone, but there seems to be less detail in the horizontal direction which makes it seem to have another problem on the diagonal, and details submerging in the horizontal direction, examine the angular supports, and the ladder, on the clip with the bridge.

Pixel flashing/Interpolation
HD2 still has extreme pixel flashing when it comes to areas with high contrast, white on black areas, moving (the girls black and white stripes, the bright bush branch at the end of the flower scene clip. But it is less in the horizontal direction, where there seems to be some sort of detail loss in the clips.

Color
Not too saturated, but maybe a little under, with an blueish tint (the aim is for optimal saturation and color balance because I don't think color adjustment in post is the best option for this).

Noise/Codec artifacts
Primary colours still show noise, and even in the well lit in store shot, much noise was evident (the enemy of coding efficiency) but noise in general much less, especially in good lighting (see outside store stationary clip). Could this lack of noise be caused by the apparent lack in horizontal detail?

Extensive codec/noise in an border around edges, but better than HD1a examples (see the girls faces in the in house shot, and the edge of the wall).

The in camera noise removal/noise improvement, is important to get the most out of the codec in the data to start with.

There is extensive analogue noise in some of the images, analogue patterns and mioring (see the clip with the girls).

Plain area crawling blocking
That blocking/crawling blocking, on plain surfaces seem to be largely gone, some little stuff is viewable on the beige/pink bottom panel of the fridge, seen briefly at the start of the interior of shop clip). But I would like to see static dark bitumen road surface, and deep blue sky shoots, where this is much more evident on the HD1a clips I have seen.

The mystery of the white sky (clouds or overexposure?)
Blue skies seem white in places (clouds or overexposure?) unless near dark intervening objects on some shots, the static still of the street exterior, it can be seen around the overhead cables, one corner of the sky also gets blue.

Latitude
The latitude may not be improved, the snow skying shot, from Youtube, seems to show much better handling, but this might be from Neutral Density filter and internal camera processing. I am suspect that internal camera processing is causing the white skies, maybe the noise removal, it gets blue around the cables, even charge spilling over in the CCD pixels to surrounding pixels. There is another possibility, as slim as it maybe, that the dark feature is blocking some light entering the lens, bringing it just under over-saturation, not something I strongly regard, but I should mention it.

Motion handling
Motion still stuffs this camera around, looking at many clips on the Fuji site, the motion just trashes a good image, it is desperate need of more data rate, and higher frame rate would help. Movement seems to make it block more (but need to verify with more footage). As can be seen in the clips from Fuji site, the camera can suffer from an lot of handling shake. I think that the lower noise helps, but it works best on an tripod, stationary.

Waves
On the water/bridge/train video, waves, might, look better on the HD2, but the HD1a footage has an train moving through it sucking data up.

TV is moving to Cinema angle of view (100-200 inch TV's)

Used as an cinema camera, viewed at the distance of an good cinema seat, picture looks bland, resolution is not enough, even video like. Sitting further back in the theatre it should look better. 1080p would look better, with four times the data-rate, from an good seat 1/2 to 2/3rd way down to the front. This is an bottom end HD camera for Indie (I mean bottom end). I prefer it's picture to the compression in HD broadcasts I get here. I think the problem is resolution and detail, requiring extra data-rate, but with processing might give you an particular "look". Motion is the problem as far as restoration of detail and processing is concerned, which would require an certain handling.

Good news, is that all this should be able to be adjusted out in camera or post processed out, to attain a suitable professional, though flat, quality.

I will go quickly through the options, because I am not too familiar with them myself:

De-blocking, de-noise/grain, resolution upscaling, image restoration:

Color correction and de-noising using after effects de-grain, neatvideo, and noiseNinja in photoshop:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost....09&postcount=3
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost....96&postcount=6
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost....14&postcount=7

Some threads on picture enhancement and de-artifacting/de-noising:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=73983
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=74760

Somethings we discussed in the Elphel camera thread to treat MJpeg footage (convert to whatever high quality format that can take the enhancements and apply similar techniques):
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...t=63677&page=4
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...t=63677&page=5
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...ock#post532176

http://avisynth.org/

Image restoration, I have had an theory about restoring images from details in adjacent images and calculation, and resolution upscaling for years, there are now firms that do these things with massive computers (and Intel apparently has software). Image upscaling software is also available. Transfer to film companies have their own procedures.

Another image enhancement product is scaling software, on consumer equipment they use it to upscale DVD video to HD screens. The only free one I remember is:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/deinterlace/

There is probably much better alternatives now days, as many HD TV's and an number of DVD's use these techniques (some are much better than others, apparently). Can you get resolution and detail where it wasn't, Intel (and whoever else) had some software a few years back, but be prepared to use an nice GPU acceleration (if available) or run it on an PS3. Why, to make it smoother at an good distance.


In another forum, an user talks about using MPEG Streamclip with Vegas to convert VGA Mpeg4 to DV compatible file.
http://www.stevesforums.com/forums/v...25&forum_id=27


It would be tempting to do an short film with this to see how well it can be done. An h264 version would be interesting, I know there are other h264 cameras coming, so we will have to see. But 18mb/s Mpeg4 may have some advantages over 9mb/s H264.

I thought I would add this frame posted to the Elphel security camera thread for comparison. It was shot at 2000*850 pixel frame, at 85% Jpeg quality.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost....&postcount=544
http://www.buysmartpc.com/333/333framecc.jpg

Amazing what can be achieved with even an cheap sensor.

Shooting movies
 

Shooting Movies
 

So far, Sanyo is giving photography lessons rather than posting full resolution samples. Also, the reviewers who have been given Canon TX1's to test (e.g. "Small Temple Trust", Akihabara) have not been given Sanyo HD2's. However, some individuals do have them somehow and have posted clips here and there.

4/3rds? I'm no mathmetician, but.... ;)

Bill

Bill, it is an camera format, and if you think that is confusing, you see the actual size of an 1/2inch chip, at least 4/3rds makes some sense compared to 2/3rds. 4/3rds is an desirable solution I think (not as good as 35mm, but better than 2/3rds). The present HD1 sensor is around the size of some super 8mm formats. These Mpixel CCD's, just don't have the technology (range extension=latitude) or pixel pad size (latitude and low noise).

Thanks Wayne. I'll take your word for it I guess. I'm no photo guy by any stretch of the imagination. But to satisfy my curiosity I Googled 4/3 format & came up with some thread from a Olympus forum that basically is just talking about a 4:3 (4x3 as well as several others) format camera. So it seems they're just talking about aspect ratio &/or dimensions.

I still don't get it though. If you're talking about CCD's, or a CMOS or whatever else kind of image sensor... Let's say there's a given length, no matter how small or large & it's divided into 3. How can it be measured 4/3rds? 3/3rds would be the max. Where does the other 3rd come from.

Arghh! Sorry... It's late & I'm losing it. :) I don't like late night edit sessions :-\

Bill

I'm no mathematician either but afterall 4/3 is just year 8 maths. It's simply what it reads. 4 times one third. Therefore 4/3 is the mathematically correct result even though you could put it simpler by writing "1 1/3".

But either way I'm not quite sure if that is what Wayne meant. He definitly wasn't speaking of aspect ratios (Then 4:3 would have made perfect sense). He was talking of dimensions. There he was saying "... it's better than 2/3". But that statement applies to 3/4 as well as to 4/3.

Well 3/3 is better than 2/3 also. So on that note... where's our damned 1" chips? :D

Bill

I think they killed it together with the electric car...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Wno1KotxT7k

It is an telecentric mountable lens system specially for digital camera sensors. It is meant to be an alternative standard to DSLR. 4/3rds actually refers to ratio. Would be great to have standard options of 4/3rds, or bigger, for still cameras with HD video.

4/3rds should allow an sufficient depth of field.

http://www.four-thirds.org/

Here it shows that size is also double:
http://www.four-thirds.org/en/contact/faq.html#q2
http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/oly-e/sensor-size.html

Wayne, thanks for the explanation & the links.

Now it's more clear to me that it's ratio oriented rather than size.

Bill

Yep, more footage....
 

Even though I'm no longer in the running to get an Xacti HD2, I'm still keeping an eye out for future models, I do love there design and form factor. Anyways, here's a few more sites that have samples you can download:

http://c-kom.homeip.net/review/blog/...hd2_vs_hd.html


http://xacticlips.cocolog-nifty.com/...xhd2_ef28.html

Enjoy!!

John

Holly noise Batman!

hopefully there is an issue with the ISO in those shots...otherwise is going to be bad.

Here is a sample I have. I love this camera even though I am very particular about the quality of cameras I buy.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=N54OQ8AE