Canon's New VIXIA line of consumer HD camcorders

[Duane Steiner]

Canon has them up on their site: http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...categoryid=173

[Ocean Zen]

Originally Posted by Daymon Hoffman

Was just wondering... if 30p and black is what they get in NTSC land... what do we get in PAL land. A Black body that has a "3" instead of a '2' on it? Hardly worth releasing IMO.

Now if it had of had 50p to mem card or something like that instead. Now that would have been cool. Or even normal record modes to a mem card and a modified/better focus setup. Sorry to be the only one that has a bit of a "WTF" view on this. Just can't see why everyone is so excited about this classic "None RED" typical mentality "update" we have here.

I've found the hv30 pretty underwhelming too(I'm in Pal land)
We also get an improved lcd screen but nothing in extra features

I plan on getting an hv20 in the next couple of days as this is not worth waiting for.

[Wes Vasher]

I'm still so stoked about my HV20. I can't believe Canon sold this to me!

Having said that I think if they had just put a little more effort into this revision and added a few things that many people want they'd be selling a ton of HV30s to current HV20 owners. Instead most of us will just keep our HV20's I'd guess.

[Bill Koehler]

To see how flash based recording is being rolled out in consumer camcorders, it makes me impatient to see what will be rolled out at NAB April, 2008 in professional camcorders.

A great time to be shopping!

[Mel Enriquez]

Originally Posted by Bill Koehler

To see how flash based recording is being rolled out in consumer camcorders, it makes me impatient to see what will be rolled out at NAB April, 2008 in professional camcorders.

Yes, so am I.

I think we should all hold our opinions with respect to video quality till we see the results. They are not 25mbps but maybe 17mbps may be good enough for most application save the most demanding shoots, which require the more expensive cameras anyway. I think AVCHD, if implemented well, even if not to the max of 25mbps may still deliver very good results. I think the encoder has a big bearing on this and should not be taken lightly.

What is important is we are slowly moving to a tapeless solution and let's just hope that these cameras perform well or very close to the tape versions.

I am eager to see how Sony and Canon match up with each other. I also wonder how Panasonic stacks up as well!

Good times are back again!

[Mike Brown]

Originally Posted by Mel Enriquez

I think we should all hold our opinions with respect to video quality till we see the results. They are not 25mbps but maybe 17mbps may be good enough for most application save the most demanding shoots, which require the more expensive cameras anyway. I think AVCHD, if implemented well, even if not to the max of 25mbps may still deliver very good results.

Some technical references suggest that AVC/H.264 encoding is usually 1.5 to 2.0 times more efficient than MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 simple profile compression. If that's true, then a 17mbps AVCHD stream may not represent any degradation in image quality compared to a 25mbps HDV stream recorded to tape.

But in the real world, one naturally fears that higher compression will introduce unwanted artifacts, even if it is more efficient. Given the constant "specsmanship" competition among manufacturers to maximize sensor pixel count, it's strange that they aren't striving to expand the AVCHD bitrate to the limit allowed by the format. I hope this subject will be explored in more depth here, because obviously the reduced bitrate of current AVC implementations is bothering some people.

The latest product announcements certainly seem to indicate a major industry commitment to the AVC standard for flash-memory camcorders.

[Bill Koehler]

Originally Posted by Mike Brown

Some technical references suggest that AVC/H.264 encoding is usually 1.5 to 2.0 times more efficient than MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 simple profile compression. If that's true, then a 17mbps AVCHD stream may not represent any degradation in image quality compared to a 25mbps HDV stream recorded to tape.

And that could be a problem for the manufacturers as they try to keep some distance between the consumer & professional products. Why buy the high-end when the el-cheapo will do the job? As one current example: How many sales has Canon lost from the XH-A1 to people using the HV20 as a B camera?

Extending on the example above, AVC/H.264 25Mbs should be equivalent quality to ~35Mbps MPEG-2. Would that step on some toes? Ouch!

Indeed, this could be one reason why they are going crazy adding features like 5 - 10 MegaPixel still picture capture. It is a feature that will appeal only to the consumer, the pro will never touch it. And it results in teeny-tiny pixel-sites with high noise and poor low light sensitivity.

[Cole McDonald]

Are there any clips out there from this series of camera to look at on the board anywhere?

[Bill Koehler]

Originally Posted by Cole McDonald

Are there any clips out there from this series of camera to look at on the board anywhere?

You have considered looking here, I hope:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=139

[Cole McDonald]

I had looked, but was looking in the wrong place, thank you for pointing out my folly ;)