Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: hd, camcorder | Themes: Digital Entertainment, Digital Cameras
5. Hitachi Blu-ray: Warning! Keep Back
Though it’s one of the first camcorders with real support for high-definition recording, the Hitachi’s own display isn’t of exceptional quality. The same terms that describe the camcorder’s design and finish could apply here: the display is grainy and lacks contrast, and above all, it’s noisy. Despite their plastic-y look and feel, the direct access buttons on the side of the unit are a very good feature. They give you access to all the main controls: white balance, focusing, modes, and so on.
The Good News Stops There
Unfortunately the good news stops there. The menu reminded us of what you’d find on a pre-release model. The user interface is too complicated to get the hang of easily, and what few options are available aren’t logically located in the menus. You need to navigate around a lot to find what you want.
And to top it all off, the disk access times are extremely slow: there was a 15-second wait before we could play back a three-second video recording. And while we don’t want to dwell on the bad points, startup was also very slow.
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Caveat emptor...
Be aware that there are some poorly-advertised issues with at least some of these cameras.
It is common practice for cameras with full 1920x1080 sensors to scale the images to 1440x1080 before compression.
Also, camcorders that record progressive frames at 24pf tend to store their data as if it were 60i (60 fields/sec, interlaced) by duplicating and reordering parts of the video data. Most applications (Ulead Video Studio, Sony Vegas, etc.) believe the video files when they say they're 60i, so they try to interpolate between shifted and reordered fields in a process called deinterlacing. This results in smoother images that are not as sharp as they could be and ghosting of fast-moving objects. Camcorders that record to 30pf or 30p should not have this problem.
Also, as mentioned in the article, it currently takes some special applications (like Video Studio or Vegas) and/or a bit of technical know-how to even be able to read the M2TS files many of these camcorders produce.
You need to update your info. SDHC costs about $70 for 16GB not 4
You talk as if greater depth of field is a good thing. Actually, most camcorders have too much depth of field, causing the desire object to be in focus, and the undesired object to also be in focus. Pro lenses have a much shorter depth of field allowing the subject to be in focus and the background to be less distracting and out of focus. I would give canon more points for the shallow depth of field.
HD Camcorders are in their infancy at the consumer level. Expect lots of changes quickly right now. Even Pro HD cameras are changing quickly right now.
When viewing image19canonhr10 I see the famous Chroma Sampling Bug in the reds of the car contrasting against the black. Is this a bug native to the Canon camcorder, or a bug caused by the screenshot/editing software?
The Tomshardware image with the Bug:
http://media.bestofmicro.com/0/P/9 [...] nglish.jpg
More about Chroma Sampling Bug:
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/vol [...] -2001.html