Sanyo HD1 footage!

Kurth Bousman · February 8th, 2006, 11:00 PM

thanks-Kurth

Wayne Morellini · February 9th, 2006, 04:37 AM

While I don't suggest that this camera is pro quality, it is certainly better than nothing, or probably many Mini-DV cameras. It has many manual features for a camera of the size/type, but if you want full manual control than just put a slr/film lens adaptor on it, lock everything all the auto's, and off you go. I think the camera is a step in the right direction, h264 higher bit rate is the next step.

I hear people saying the stuff about content versus film quality a fair bit, but the truth is that a good image makes a good film look twice as good, but a great image only makes being bored by bad content, tolerable. So yes, go for the best you can conveniently get for the moment. I am looking forward to seeing what the higher bit-rate h264 cameras have to offer.

Kurth Bousman · February 9th, 2006, 10:24 AM

Wayne - you're right about getting the best quality that's "conveniently" available at the moment, however a high resolution image never , ever helped to make bad content "tolerable". Maybe if it was great cinematography then that would be one element that could help bad content , but just the quality of the image, sorry .
About the Samsung (H.264) coming down the pikes , agreed. It will " probably" be better than the Sanyo. Samsung is taking off. They just released a new dslr. I'm certain they're ready to butt heads with the big guys. I want a smallform camera . I doubt if it will be the Sanyo. However , in a year ( I can wait that long ) if pany and sony come out with their own , and then Sanyo drops to $400 , then , well , who knows, esp. if this camera performs well enough.
I've always been in agreement with Cocteau , when he said filmmaking will be an art when the cost is equal to drawing , i.e. a pencil and paper. The most compelling content I've seen , and I watch alot , in the past 10 years is Bill Viola's " The Passing ". It was made using hi8 and s8 cameras. Robert mentions Brakhage. Another case in point, like Mcclaren, Mekas , Snow , Campus, etc. etc , all of the experimental work in 8 & 16mm and video that occurred before we were so technologically hellbent on reproducing the look of a major motion picture. Of course this site is mainly devoted to the technoloical aspects. So , I can hardly wait to begin to read comparisons and download some more footage from this and other cameras in its' class. Kurth

Robert Jackson · February 9th, 2006, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kurth Bousman

I've always been in agreement with Cocteau , when he said filmmaking will be an art when the cost is equal to drawing , i.e. a pencil and paper.

If you look at the films of the French New Wave there are a lot of technical problems. We watched Breathless in class once and I remember that after the film someone said the synch was so bad it was like watching a Sergio Leone film. I guess it all depends on how you look at it. To me it's always amazing that a bunch of A/V nerd journalists were around at a time when cameras became small and affordable enough for them to make films of their own. The technical aspects of what they did weren't always perfect, but they captured a lot of great moments in time. Little cameras like this will enable a lot of people to grab moments of time in higher quality and at a lower price than ever before.

Wayne Morellini · February 10th, 2006, 06:42 AM

Kurth. I have supreme patience/tolerance sometimes, so yes I can sit through bad garbage just to record it with my eyes, though bad footage with bad content not only bores but annoys when I could be reading instead (and don't do much reading nowadays because of reading problems, that's how annoying it is).

I'm not saying that a great picture will give a bad film as much of a boost as a good film will get. Double next to no appeal is still next to "no" appeal. I'm sure, if most of you guys were compelled to watch feature releases on VHS, you would be wanting to watch it on DVD instead, very very much, and most of us want HD dvd/Bluray one day. For instance, on TV last night, on separate stations, as I was posting, at the same time, was "Arrested Development", and "Curb your Enthusiasm", one looks twice as good as the other (and the content is maybe twice as good too). Even though I don't really like the one with better content either, I can watch it, if it had the picture of the other, I probably wouldn't. The other, if it had a picture at least as good as the first one, I would be able to put up with it, if I didn't have anything better to do. So, if you got something it doesn't usually hurt to make it look twice as good, it's easier on the audience (and that means commercially). But if your beating a dead horse, than beating it further with a good picture, might give you a 0.2% audience penetration than a 0.1% penetration ;). I'm sure the film processing look they use in feature films, would be done deliberately to have the best psychological response from the audience. Just a different way of looking at it.

Kurth, you won't have to wait long for an alternative, in March, h264 cameras are supposed to be announced at around $799, by the looks of it, at faster bit rates. In August (or was that September) or so, Samsung is supposed to release one at higher bit rates too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Jackson

We watched Breathless in class once and I remember that after the film someone said the synch was so bad it was like watching a Sergio Leone film.

That's the problem, I've been to Arts college as well, and you find yourself surrounded by some pretty "interesting" people in class, and giving the classes (well, especially in some parts of Australia) who have some "interesting" ideas that are totally unrepresentative of what the audience wants ;). The problem is, that many of these people perceive what they are looking at, very differently from what the audience perceives, and while we can stretch our imaginations, the bulk of the population doesn't see it, but will notice the low quality footage that we ignore because we are concentrating on other parts of the content. This perception problem is one reason that knuckle brained blockbusters work many times better than the best arts films with the majority of the population, because they are appealing to emotional centres that the audience can perceive and care about. There are two things that can be done, make it easier to watch in comfort (good picture, good cinematography, as Kurth said) and teach them what they are seeing as you go, so they have the clues to perceive what they are watching. Something I learnt from the advances in Psychological research in the 80's and 90's, was that they found that men were many times more receptive to listen to women if the women calmly and politely talked to them rather than if they aggressively confronted the men (which is something men don't normally do to each other unless they want a fight, a major advance for feminism). But this is a clue to what is happening in film, you can aggressively agree with the audience (violent propagandist incitement etc) but the other extreme is to lull the audience into a calm/pleasant/enjoyable/restful/low stress (mellow) and/or exciting/interesting, state, so they can concentrate on the story better. Part of that non distracting look, is good picture and sound. Such a low stress look can be gotten on a better camera (which will even make it easier to post process in). Probably, eventually, an Ultra high definition 16-bit 4:4:4 visually lossless camera with 20 stop latitude, low signal to noise to match, and high light conversion efficiency, good glass, and software programs to do artificial pro-quality auto focusing, lighting, latitude ranging, colour correction and framing etc (totally doable) will probably replace much of the need for lighting, camera adjustment etc one day, allowing the cost and hassle, of low end production to drop.

Quote:

Little cameras like this will enable a lot of people to grab moments of time in higher quality and at a lower price than ever before.

Robert, exactly my sentiments as well.

Jorge Gil · February 10th, 2006, 03:57 PM

Hi, my first post here.

I'm interested on this hd1, so i'm trying to find out every bit of info about this camera. Here is some words i found surfing and i want to share....

------------------------------------------------------------------
from:
http://www.japaninc.net/newsletters/?list=gw&issue=222

So i wonder if you dont consider price, storage will be not a problem.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The optics, from konica - minolta:

http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/1136412541.html

http://www.sanyo.co.jp/koho/hypertex...1/0111-1e.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

A photo of the main chip and the famous "platinum engine" Mpeg4 coder:

http://www.sanyo-dsc.com/products/li...ie_image01.jpg

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm waiting for a review of some of you, guys. There's already some units sold on ebay, com'on nobody from this forums bought it?

Jorge

[Jorge, since you're new here, I'll ask that you not copy/paste text from other websites. Links are fine, but copy/paste violates the other website's copyrights. We try to avoid that here.-moderator]

Jorge Gil · February 11th, 2006, 01:51 AM

Sorry, first and last time i do it.

Anybody tried to burn a Dvd with the Mpeg4 original footage of the hd1 and tried to play it on a Mpg4 compatible Dvd player?

I was thinking on waiting for the H264 cameras, but if it is difficult to edit "old" mpeg4 standard, h264 could be worse.
More, you have to wait for a h264 player to view the film if you dont want to hassle with computers or docking station.

Perhaps i could take a little bit less quality codec for a more confortable editing+viewing.

Wayne Morellini · February 11th, 2006, 09:15 AM

Jorge, thanks for the links. The one of the Mpeg4 chip shows that it is indeed a Sony chip, not an Ambarella chip. I haven't noticed the 60fps VGA mode that uses 6Mb/s, going to be interesting for extreme sports people.

Jorge, the footage posted before tells the story pretty much, all we need to know is low light performance and things like wave/ripple motion etc. Great personal camera or compact. Get your hands on one and test it out.

About the H264 Ambarella camera, I can't remember the in and outs of the details but the chip used to encode the h264 is a mass array of little special purpose processors, probably more powerful combined, than your average PC processor on this job. I don't know for certain, but I remember reading about editing on camera (or was it the Sanyo). Undesirable I know, but at least you won't be totally left up the creek without a paddle if you can find the camera that supports it.

I think there are a number of DVD players etc, with h264 to come out, and if xbox360 or PS3, or Nintendo Revolution decides to support it, you definitely won't be left up the creek as far as playback devices go.

Joseph Aurili · February 13th, 2006, 02:22 PM

Joseph Aurili · February 13th, 2006, 02:25 PM

Right click and the links and save them to your hard drive. If you just click the links directly it will take a very long time to buffer up and you may have playback problems.

Robert Jackson · February 13th, 2006, 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joseph Aurili

The video has a lot more compression artifacts then I would have liked to see and some of the shots look a bit blurred.

Well, you can certainly tell the image is under the squeeze, but I honestly don't have a problem with what I see. It's a teeny, tiny HD camera. I really appreciate you taking the time to get these files up where we could see them. I can hardly wait for mine to show up.

Do you mind me asking what kind of card you're using and if you ever get an interruption in recording due to the speed of the card? Ever since I saw that footnote about short continuous record times with some cards I've been wondering whether or not there would be problems with the media bottlenecking somehow.

The crunchiness of the compression is something I'd kind of expected. It would be cool if it wasn't there, but to me it doesn't seem nearly as bad as it could be. The exteriors show it worst, IMO. Big landscap-y stuff always seems to suffer from edge enhancement-itis and motion chunkiness.

Again, very cool of you to share with us. Thank you!

-Rob

Joseph Aurili · February 13th, 2006, 03:09 PM

Rob,

True, the image is not that bad considering, but after using my Sony Z1.... ;)

I did the test images with a SanDisk UltraII 2.0GB card. I belive it is a 66x card.

I got another card via FedEX right after I was done testing. It is a 4GB 150x Transend. It works!

On both cards there is around a two second delay from when I press the record button to when it starts recording. After the clip there is no delay I from what I can tell. Of course even the slower card is 10x faster then the video bit rate.

Joseph Aurili · February 13th, 2006, 03:38 PM

One thing with the 4GB 150x Transend SD card. It works fine in the camera and shows 58 minutes of available recording time in the best quality 720P mode. It records and plays back video. But, I can't read the card on my laptop's SD slot. It says it is not formated. Perhaps my computers SD slot can not exceed 2GB, or maybe a need new drivers...

Robert Jackson · February 13th, 2006, 03:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joseph Aurili

Rob,

True, the image is not that bad considering, but after using my Sony Z1.... ;)

I did the test images with a SanDisk UltraII 2.0GB card. I belive it is a 66x card.

I got another card via FedEX right after I was done testing. It is a 4GB 150x Transend. It works!

On both cards there is around a two second delay from when I press the record button to when it starts recording. After the clip there is no delay I from what I can tell. Of course even the slower card is 10x faster then the video bit rate.

HA!

Well, sure...but I think it would be easier to take the HD1 on a snowboard. ;-)

Of course, I don't know how to ski or snowboard, but I did climb about 30 feet of ladder with a 16mm camera a few months back and I'd have much rather gone up that shaky ladder with an SD1. I'm sure you'll find a million good uses for it. I wonder how long it will be until someone uses one of them for a crash cam?

Thank you very much for all the information! It's great to get the early word on such an interesting new product!

-Rob

Joseph Aurili · February 13th, 2006, 04:32 PM

I'm sure I will use it 10x more then my Z1, because it will be there! Finally a camera I can always take on vacation or just have with me in my jacket pocket. Now I just look forward to the MP4 H264 cameras... ;) After getting so much good info from this board I am glad I can post something of use.

February 10th, 2006, 03:57 PM	#96
Jorge Gil New Boot Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 6	Hi, my first post here. I'm interested on this hd1, so i'm trying to find out every bit of info about this camera. Here is some words i found surfing and i want to share.... ------------------------------------------------------------------ from: http://www.japaninc.net/newsletters/?list=gw&issue=222 So i wonder if you dont consider price, storage will be not a problem. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The optics, from konica - minolta: http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/1136412541.html http://www.sanyo.co.jp/koho/hypertex...1/0111-1e.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- A photo of the main chip and the famous "platinum engine" Mpeg4 coder: http://www.sanyo-dsc.com/products/li...ie_image01.jpg ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm waiting for a review of some of you, guys. There's already some units sold on ebay, com'on nobody from this forums bought it? Jorge [Jorge, since you're new here, I'll ask that you not copy/paste text from other websites. Links are fine, but copy/paste violates the other website's copyrights. We try to avoid that here.-moderator] Last edited by Jorge Gil; February 11th, 2006 at 02:27 AM. Reason: copy/pasted text

February 11th, 2006, 01:51 AM	#97
Jorge Gil New Boot Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 6	Sorry, first and last time i do it. Anybody tried to burn a Dvd with the Mpeg4 original footage of the hd1 and tried to play it on a Mpg4 compatible Dvd player? I was thinking on waiting for the H264 cameras, but if it is difficult to edit "old" mpeg4 standard, h264 could be worse. More, you have to wait for a h264 player to view the film if you dont want to hassle with computers or docking station. Perhaps i could take a little bit less quality codec for a more confortable editing+viewing. Last edited by Jorge Gil; February 11th, 2006 at 02:36 AM.

February 13th, 2006, 02:22 PM	#99
Joseph Aurili Major Player Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 326	Got One! I have been reading the messages here for a while, but never registered. I got my Sanyo HD1 today, so I registered so I could share sample pictures and video. The video has a lot more compression artifacts then I would have liked to see and some of the shots look a bit blurred. I will leave these clips up for a little while. Let me know what you think: Videos: www.gamersden.com/hd1test/T1.MP4 www.gamersden.com/hd1test/T2.MP4 www.gamersden.com/hd1test/T3.MP4 www.gamersden.com/hd1test/T4.MP4 www.gamersden.com/hd1test/T5.MP4 www.gamersden.com/hd1test/T5.MP4 Stills: www.gamersden.com/hd1test/ST1.JPG www.gamersden.com/hd1test/ST2.JPG www.gamersden.com/hd1test/ST3.JPG --With a tripod-- Videos: www.gamersden.com/hd1test/Cereal.MP4 www.gamersden.com/hd1test/left.MP4 www.gamersden.com/hd1test/right.MP4 www.gamersden.com/hd1test/trash.MP4 Stills: www.gamersden.com/hd1test/Cereal.JPG www.gamersden.com/hd1test/left.JPG www.gamersden.com/hd1test/right.JPG www.gamersden.com/hd1test/trash.JPG

February 13th, 2006, 03:38 PM	#103
Joseph Aurili Major Player Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 326	One thing with the 4GB 150x Transend SD card. It works fine in the camera and shows 58 minutes of available recording time in the best quality 720P mode. It records and plays back video. But, I can't read the card on my laptop's SD slot. It says it is not formated. Perhaps my computers SD slot can not exceed 2GB, or maybe a need new drivers... Last edited by Joseph Aurili; February 13th, 2006 at 10:43 PM.

February 8th, 2006, 11:00 PM	#91
Kurth Bousman Major Player Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: san miguel allende , gto , mexico Posts: 644	thanks-Kurth

February 9th, 2006, 04:37 AM	#92
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	While I don't suggest that this camera is pro quality, it is certainly better than nothing, or probably many Mini-DV cameras. It has many manual features for a camera of the size/type, but if you want full manual control than just put a slr/film lens adaptor on it, lock everything all the auto's, and off you go. I think the camera is a step in the right direction, h264 higher bit rate is the next step. I hear people saying the stuff about content versus film quality a fair bit, but the truth is that a good image makes a good film look twice as good, but a great image only makes being bored by bad content, tolerable. So yes, go for the best you can conveniently get for the moment. I am looking forward to seeing what the higher bit-rate h264 cameras have to offer.

February 9th, 2006, 10:24 AM	#93
Kurth Bousman Major Player Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: san miguel allende , gto , mexico Posts: 644	Wayne - you're right about getting the best quality that's "conveniently" available at the moment, however a high resolution image never , ever helped to make bad content "tolerable". Maybe if it was great cinematography then that would be one element that could help bad content , but just the quality of the image, sorry . About the Samsung (H.264) coming down the pikes , agreed. It will " probably" be better than the Sanyo. Samsung is taking off. They just released a new dslr. I'm certain they're ready to butt heads with the big guys. I want a smallform camera . I doubt if it will be the Sanyo. However , in a year ( I can wait that long ) if pany and sony come out with their own , and then Sanyo drops to $400 , then , well , who knows, esp. if this camera performs well enough. I've always been in agreement with Cocteau , when he said filmmaking will be an art when the cost is equal to drawing , i.e. a pencil and paper. The most compelling content I've seen , and I watch alot , in the past 10 years is Bill Viola's " The Passing ". It was made using hi8 and s8 cameras. Robert mentions Brakhage. Another case in point, like Mcclaren, Mekas , Snow , Campus, etc. etc , all of the experimental work in 8 & 16mm and video that occurred before we were so technologically hellbent on reproducing the look of a major motion picture. Of course this site is mainly devoted to the technoloical aspects. So , I can hardly wait to begin to read comparisons and download some more footage from this and other cameras in its' class. Kurth

February 11th, 2006, 09:15 AM	#98
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	Jorge, thanks for the links. The one of the Mpeg4 chip shows that it is indeed a Sony chip, not an Ambarella chip. I haven't noticed the 60fps VGA mode that uses 6Mb/s, going to be interesting for extreme sports people. Jorge, the footage posted before tells the story pretty much, all we need to know is low light performance and things like wave/ripple motion etc. Great personal camera or compact. Get your hands on one and test it out. About the H264 Ambarella camera, I can't remember the in and outs of the details but the chip used to encode the h264 is a mass array of little special purpose processors, probably more powerful combined, than your average PC processor on this job. I don't know for certain, but I remember reading about editing on camera (or was it the Sanyo). Undesirable I know, but at least you won't be totally left up the creek without a paddle if you can find the camera that supports it. I think there are a number of DVD players etc, with h264 to come out, and if xbox360 or PS3, or Nintendo Revolution decides to support it, you definitely won't be left up the creek as far as playback devices go.

February 13th, 2006, 02:25 PM	#100
Joseph Aurili Major Player Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 326	Right click and the links and save them to your hard drive. If you just click the links directly it will take a very long time to buffer up and you may have playback problems.

February 13th, 2006, 03:09 PM	#102
Joseph Aurili Major Player Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 326	Rob, True, the image is not that bad considering, but after using my Sony Z1.... ;) I did the test images with a SanDisk UltraII 2.0GB card. I belive it is a 66x card. I got another card via FedEX right after I was done testing. It is a 4GB 150x Transend. It works! On both cards there is around a two second delay from when I press the record button to when it starts recording. After the clip there is no delay I from what I can tell. Of course even the slower card is 10x faster then the video bit rate.

February 13th, 2006, 04:32 PM	#105
Joseph Aurili Major Player Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 326	I'm sure I will use it 10x more then my Z1, because it will be there! Finally a camera I can always take on vacation or just have with me in my jacket pocket. Now I just look forward to the MP4 H264 cameras... ;) After getting so much good info from this board I am glad I can post something of use.