Sanyo $800 High Definition SD Camera and CCinfo 2006 CES Previews.

[Wayne Morellini]

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sanyo-Announces-$800-First-High-Definition-SD-Recording-Camcorder.htm

Hmm, interesting, 5.36Mp, manual controls and 9.3Mb/s 720p Mpeg4 compression codec. I expect maybe it will suffer in latitude, noise and low light pickup, though I can't find an sensor size to estimate it. I think codec quality might be similar to the JVC 19Mb/s 720p HDV codec, but may suffer more in motion artifacts.

If it had a hard disk it would probably be an good alternative home camera to the HDV models, but we will have to wait to see the footage.

They also have the announcement schedules up for the various companies in their CES 2006 preview section.

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...06-Preview.htm

[Jesse Bekas]

I hope the proliferation of HD technology trickling (or soon to be flooding!) down the consumer cam market will also soon bring us some cheaper solutions for HD displays and monitors.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Jesse Bekas

I hope the proliferation of HD technology trickling (or soon to be flooding!) down the consumer cam market will also soon bring us some cheaper solutions for HD displays and monitors.

A more interesting possibility is that the rapid spread of low-cost MPEG4 encoders in consumer products could lead to affordable hardware-based H.264 encoders for video editing, which would be a very useful thing. HD displays and monitors is a different technical problem, and they're already dropping rapidly in price.

I saw another announcement about the Sanyo camera which said it could record 21 minutes of HD video on a 1 GB storage card, which implies a data rate of ~6.3 Mbps, not 9.3 Mbps. That's a fairly significant difference, so it will be interesting to see which turns out to be correct. Either way that's just barely enough to produce credible quality video at the stated resolution of 720p, but it could work.

I argued recently that this technology won't be relevant for professional purposes any time soon, but now that we have more details the potential is at least mildly interesting. Given maybe twice the recording bandwidth and a more professional camera to put it in, this could be useful for something beyond the consumer level.

P.S. This should pretty well clinch the need for professional videographers to start offering HD video options. Customer: "My $799 digital camera shoots HD video, why are you still shooting SD?"

[Wayne Morellini]

Yes, just saw that too, this does change things, 6.3Mb/s I don't like the chances for it even being upto HDV consumer grade. Maybe they have a max quality mode, or ccinfo got the wrong figure.

According to the following spec it is 1/2.5inch CCD, so I don't like the chances of it have fantastic latitude etc.

http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/came...1073/show.html

http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives...xacti_hd1.html
http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/news...tory_5663.html

Well there still the other manufacturers to come, JVC, and the H264 devices ( I think I put a post about a chip for cameras like these that could do it a month or two ago).

[Dan Euritt]

there is mpeg4, and then there is mpeg4 part 10(aka h.264)... the fact that they did not specify h.264 is a strong indication that this camera uses the inferior mpeg4 codec, rather than the h.264 version of mpeg4.

wayne, is this the chip you referenced earlier:
"...Mobilygen, a privately held fabless semiconductor company backed by a who’s who in venture capital, issued a modified press release for a low-power H.264 encoding chipset it released back in September. The new press release, dated December 29, 2005, notes that the already-low-powered MG1264–which has received rave reviews for its ability to encode D1-compliant H.264 standard definition content in real time at only 185 milliwatts (mW)–can encode H.264 QVGA (“quarter-screen” or the size that the iPod Video uses) at only 125mW. Such low-power encoding is crucial for battery-powered devices like the iPod."
http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=9216

[Wayne Morellini]

No it turns out to be this other HD one that you beat me to posting in my previous Sanyo thread (doesn't time fly):

http://www.ambarella.com/news/press_...r_12052005.htm

Notice this company is saying HD and a number of manufacturers.

[Wayne Morellini]

I have found out there are two 720p modes, that explains the 9 and 6Mb/s difference. Here is the spec sheet from Steve's:

http://www.steves-digicams.com/pr/sa...pc-hd1_pr.html

I still would not expect better quality than HDV out of them, if it had 18 or 25Mb/s then you could start contemplating tossing the JVC HD1. Even at 9+Mb/s, it would be interesting to see a shootout between them, but I don't think it would bet a match, sensor performance wise, for other HD cameras. I expect that at 9+Mb/s, even with superior Mpeg4, or even H264, motion compensation (had a look at the specs recently and found a number of things I had wanted to work on myself) that it will not be able to cope as well as HDV with all situations.

Now, there is also an h264 HD compliant chip out there, with cameras to follow, so let's see what happens (please for an full spec 25Mb/s mode (or 4:2:2/4:4:4 12bit 50Mb/s for pro cameras with component recording). I think H264 under these bit rates is the way of the future for consumer/pro-sumer cameras, versus the solid state cameras. Most recent micro-drive is 8-12GB for something like 4cm by 2 or 3cm. As an 1.8inch will do for most consumer cameras, much greater capacities will be available to them.

[Hse Kha]

The JVC HD1's bit rate is not the 25Mps of the 1080i HDV. I think it is 18-20Mbps.

This Sanyo is 9Mbps in MPEG-4 (non AVC or H264), which is like 15Mbps in MPEG-2. So it is promising, especially considering the price and size. And solid state storage too!

[Wayne Morellini]

One other thing I noticed, no 25fps Pal mode mentioned, which is needed for down conversion to PAL market TV's until HD becomes more mainstream (you buy to hold the footage you can show on your, and your friends, HDTV in the future, not now, but at the moment down converted 9Mb/s footage is going to look better than 3Mb/s footage of the 640*480 mode).

I don't want to get every bodies hopes up needlessly, but if this is variable compression (maybe not) the they can use extremely long GOPS on the SD card resulting in much better compression and more bandwidth for motion handling. But it is unlikely they will compress more than 9Mb/s at any time.

Variable compression upto 50Mb/s h264 would be the best option, but even upto 25Mb/s would be great. Feasible, because the new motion data that tends to come in is stored in data where it can be compressed at longer than real time timing, and the subsequent frames can be compressed 3-9Mb/s, at faster than real time, to catch up.

Somebody please, a hard drive 25Mb/s version.

[Wayne Morellini]

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=58228

[Ron Evans]

The Sanyo is also 30P only in HD which might explain the difference in data rate with the Samsung which can also do 1080i. Looking at the chip specs( if they use the ambarella devices) the Sanyo may use the low power device and the Samsung the top of the line device. IF MPEG4 is about 2 to 2.5 times the compression of MPEG2 then about 9 mbs would be correct to match the JVC 720p 19Mbs HDV. The Sanyo will be available in Canada the end of March and the Samsung in AUgust. I am going to wait and see the Samsung which would be a better match for my FX1. The price differences may also be taken up by the fact that the Sanyo does not come with any memory wereas the Samsung has 4G built in and a slot for other cards as well as HDMI ouput and mic input . Looks like altogether a better camera.

Ron Evans

[Dan Euritt]

Originally Posted by Ron Evans

IF MPEG4 is about 2 to 2.5 times the compression of MPEG2 then about 9 mbs would be correct to match the JVC 720p 19Mbs HDV.

mpeg4 is not 2 to 2.5 times better than mpeg2, but mpeg4 part 10(aka h.264) is indeed 2 to 2.5 times better than mpeg2... lets not get our codecs confused.

if you are looking at that camera, make sure you know what codec it's recording with.

[Jemore Santos]

one factor has not been raised which is I think is as important as the codec itself, It's the glass, only then can you tell if the quality is as good as other HD cameras around, Also the chip size will also be an important factor.

[Ron Evans]

Dan two points. I was specific about saying IF they use the Amberalla devices and two I was refering to the difference in compression which is I believe true for MPEG4. The quality may not be acceptable under all circustances and would certainly be dependent on a lot of other factors. These are interesting camcorders and worth a look later in the year as something to carry around just to capture that interesting "shot".

Ron Evans

[Jemore Santos]

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/c6.html

Its a review, sounds like Steve really likes it