Sanyo HD1 - New Samples
 

A few months ago there were a big rush to see samples of the HD1, for good reason, we all wanted to make sure it would be a somewhat sensible investment. If nothing else a sensible toy.. (smile)

I for one have discovered everything I kind of already did know, light control, a steady camera, low ISO etc. leads to pretty nice results from the HD1. (particuarly considered its petite size)

Maybe its time to do a second round of samples, now when a bunch of very capable people, most much more so that I am, have had the camera for about a month or so... what fantastic video have you guys managed to produce with it..?

Personally I captured several nice shots Saturday in Caliente California, one of them uploaded to my site. Captured at iso 50 on tripod..

http://www.bophoto.com/HDV/video/index.html

As I said, most people in this forum really know what they are doing.. so lets see some great shots. (smile) Not the first day "I just unpacked my HD1" stuff.


Bo

37 shots file.
 

Hi! This is my first post in this forum.
I´ve been reading here for a couple of months and finally i got my HD1 some weeks ago.
I´ve uploaded a file with 37 selected shots. This file is 163sec/183Mb long, converted to avi in MP4Cam2AVI_v2.29, so there is no quality loss.
I´m trying to upload a new file with 124 shots, 10 minutes/650 Mb, but I´m having some problems to upload this ammount of data.
Nice shots, Bo. This landscape seems to be a very beatiful place.
Thaks to all, and sorry about my english, I´m from Madrid (Spain).

The file:
http://files.filefront.com/HD1Footag.../fileinfo.html

I hope you enjoy this!
Bye!

Carlos,

WOW, now thats a serious sample. and nice looking also. I would say that for anyone wanting to see what the Sanyo can make this is a worthwhile download.

Bo

www.bophoto.com/HDV

124 shots.
 

Thanks Bo.

The 124 shots file:
http://files.filefront.com/HD1Footag.../fileinfo.html
Enjoy!

Carlos,
Fantastic footage indeed! Is the sun in Madrid doing the magic here? ;)

Can you share the general information of your setup? ISO, focus, exposure, stablization...

Thanks

Hi Carlos,

Congratulations! Please see my next post....wrong manipulation...sorry

Hi Carlos,

I do really hope that I am not dreaming.... I 've got my camera since only a few days but unfortunately, without having the time yet to experiment but, really, I wasn't expecting so much...such a quality!

What I have learned from your footage is that I urgently need a tripod and consequently and according to Sanyo, I will have to desactivate the stabilization. Am I correct?

Erick

Don't you love when such a little camera turns out to be a good thing. ;-) But for what its worth, Carlos really is doing things very carefully and mostly by the book, clearly this camera will perform when treated nicely.


Technically speaking you can leave the stabilization on... but why...? on the other hand you will find that the camera seems to produce slightly sharper images with the stabilization turned off, so this is actually a benefit in the pursuit of quality. Besides, the tripod does the stabilisation, so there is no reason in the first place to leave it on.

Bo

www.bophoto.com/HDV

Oh sure Bo, I am so excited by these results. Now, I will have to learn using it in ideal conditions. A new challenge is born..;>)

Hi, Thanks for your comments.
The clips were shooted with different settings, I´m still learning to use it, but most of them was:

Tripod and Remote Control (to eliminate vibrations when zooming or pressing buttons).
Image Stabilizer: OFF
Exposition Measure: MULTI
Iso: Auto and 50
White balance: AUTO
Filter: NO
Manual Exposure: S (F AUTO, Shutter 1/60)
Scene Select: FULL AUTO.

No Noise Reduction, No Flicker reduction, no Digital Zoom.

I´ve noticed that sometimes the footage looks sharper when zoomed.

It´s a shame the diagonal "\" bug of the codec/scaler, if Sanyo corrects it with a firmware update, the quality could be amazing in good light conditions for a camcorder of this price.
I´m e-mailing Sanyo reporting the bug. If many users e-mail them, maybe they will correct it soon. I´m telling them too to keep the video out when shooting, and a higher bitrate option. This would be great.

Thanks again.
Bye!

Carlos Serrano.
CG Animator.
www.i-real3d.com

Carlos, thank you for the great footage. You opened my eyes. The HD1 has much better movie mode than any still digital camera. Thanks again.

Carlos,

Those are great videos....I wish I had the artistic skill.

How do you do it with the focus....my camera seems to be constantly "fishing" for focus....did you lock it?

How about those ones where you change the focus...are you doing it it by hand? can you use the remote? or maybe your HD1 knows how to do cool focus changes?


Thanks,
Felipe

Stephen, I´m happy if the information has been usefull for you.:)

Felipe, about the changing focus question, the answer is... casuality. I´ve selected the best looking part of each shot.
For the constant focus, manual or locked. I think in this camera we cannot change the focus manually when recording. I´m trying to make a 35mm adapter for the HD1, this will solve the problem (and will give a film look to the footage).

Thanks again!
Bye!

:)
.......

Carlos,
What you are saying here, I don't understand. Would you be so kind to clarify your view?

Btw, I've shown your footage to some colleagues at my work. Sanyo will get a new client very soon...maybe two...(smile).

Your film looks terrific for this camera. What kind of tripod would you recommend?

I think he meant to say that he wants to put a lens with manual focus on it. but I dont know if the 35mm is the focal lenght of the lens or the thread he would like the camera to have.

Erick, two new users...good, more people to investigate:)
I´m using an old Sony little tripod (VCT-350) (25 cm. folded/40 cm extended). I think a tripod must be robust and smooth when rotating. For this kind of camera, the logical choice is a light and small one, that you can carry everywhere (according to the camera size). My tripod:

http://www.i-real3d.com/Archivos/TripodLow.jpg

The 35mm adapter question.
It consist in an adapter attached to your camera lenses that projects the images from a 35mm photography lenses into a ground glass. The camera captures the image projected in the ground glass in a very short distance. There are some methods to do it. You have a lot of information on the web, have a look in this forun, in "Alternative Imaging Methods" section, http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=70
There are a lot of forums with this topic on the web.
It´s an easy concept, you can go to http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/dof/index.htm to get an idea of how it works.
There are some 35mm adapters in the market ( Mini35, MPIC, Guerrilla35, Micro35, Letus35, Brevis35, G35...) in some price ranges.

Bye!

I've made the media chance 35mm adaptor...works like a champ, and it's easy to make as well.

Carlos,
Thank you for your comments related to the tripod. I am getting more and more excited when thinking about my future one week holidays at the Côte d'Azur. This trip will be partly dedicated to HD1 footage. (big smile).
I really hope that I will be able to manage the cam as good as you did so far.
Concerning the 35mm adapter, I have learned something this time and I will closely study this matter. It seems like very interesting and not so difficult to make.

I've tried tons of times, I can't get this footage to come down...most recently I tried from work where we have a wide open DS3 at our disposal, and it would come down then either. I gave it overnight at home on a 5Mbps Cable internet pipe. It hadn't made progress. I'd love to see this as the shorter piece is fantabulous!

Hi Cole, I´m sharing it with emule. Try this elink:

ed2k://|file|HD1Footage_124Shots_by_cralos.avi|672249856|E7C087FAE4239B0B030D8BB696932970|h=S7T5QAH22EU7YNP WDGELTL5VX7WLILHX|/|sources,85.49.132.143:4662|/

Erick, enjoy your holidays, I hope to see beautiful shots from your HD1.

Bye!

I'll have to try that at home, we don't allow any P2P clients at work. Too much administrative overhead and liability potential.

Carlos,
Start a new post when you start on / finish 35mm adaptor for HD1. I'd be greatly interested how it works for HD1.

I would like to see it too.

Have you sent your firmware upgrade request it? I would like to see how this works with the compressor, focus and exposure bugs fixed up, and better binning options for low light sensitivity and extended latitude (all firmwarable) and upto 19Mb/s HD and 9-19Mb/s SD (in light of the new 18mb/s h264 AVCHD camera format). 19mb/s would fit fine on the new double layer DVDs.

How to make a DVD from MP4 avi file?
 

Carlos,
I would like to make a DVD from your avi file in order to view it through a 50" plasma display.
What is the best recommended way to convert your file in a DVD format. May I expect a quality loss?
Can I use Ulead DVD MovieFactory 4.0 SE included in HD1 package?

About simple edit
 

Hi! Carlos
Could you tell me what program you use to do simple edit?

Hi!

Euisung, sure, I´ll do it.

Wayne, I e-mailed Sanyo Spain about the diagonal question. They sent my mail to Sanyo Japan and we are waiting for their answer. If the answer is that a firmware is in progress, I´ll suggest them other questions like 25 FPS (29,97 FPS is a little problem for Europeans; 25 FPS is close to 24 FPS cinema look, and better quality at the same data rate), higher data rates (I think 15 Mb/s would be a great update, 19 Mb/s superb!), video out while recording (focussing in HD with this small lowres screen is simply impossible, and with video out would be possible to capture the uncompressed footage with an external recorder),...

We could do a user wishlist for future updates and send it to Sanyo.

Erick, I´ve recoded the same file to a 720x400 29,97 FPS AVI and looks great.
The downscaling reduces the noise and corrects the diagonal bug.
The original footage was converted from MP4 to AVI in MP4Cam2AVI_v2.29. This software does not recompress, mantains quality and makes a MP4 AVI that most edition softwares can read. I´ve used VirtualDub to edit, It´s free, it´s easy, and works well. It has a "direct stream copy" mode wich joins the data without recompressing, so there is no quality loss. Once you have the edited AVI, you can resize the video. There are some methods for rescaling, I recommend you the Lanczos3 algorithm. My VirtualDub does not compress MPEG2, so you will have to convert it to an uncompressed AVI or a very high data rate file (Xvid at 16 Mb/sec works well) to minimize quality loss. Then go to the MPEG2 encoder (Tmpeg, Mainconcept for Premiere, Nero Vision or Recode...) and select the best quality for DVD (8Mb/sec max. for home DVDs compatibility).

Victor, for SIMPLE edit, VirtualDub, in "Direct Stream Copy" mode, but you´ll have to convert your MP4s to AVIs with MP4Cam2AVI_v2.29 before.

Bye!

got it, looks very impressive for a < $1000 camera. There's a little bit of fluttering around contrast edges, could that be edge enhancement gone awry or is that just how it gets captured?

Erick,

The short file (37 Shots) in DVD format:

http://files.filefront.com/HD1Footag.../fileinfo.html

Resized in VirtualDub and encoded in TMPGEnc.

Bye!

That is why I am suggesting it ;). Really, we want as much extra as they can give us at whatever increased bit rate, format, or increased pixel depth they can give us

I just remembered, there was an adapter for the DS that hooked a hard drive to the memory card slot.

If they are receptive, you could, look for my previous post last month or so, that listed lots of possible improvements. Pity it is not re-programmable for non Mpeg4 formats, I wouldn't mind doing a nifty codec for it.


here is a news thread I posted on new HD Disk formats, some come in DVD players:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=67173

New macro footage shot and my experience with the sanyo HD1
 

First off, thanks to everyone on the is forum for sharing their time and footage. I read through almost all of it, finally deciding to take the plunge and bought it from www.plemix.com for us$600! (the only downside form buying it here is that there's no store warrantee, only manufacturer's warantee)
I also got the ADATA 4GB SD card for about $99 online and it works great! I can now shoot exactly 56 min 23 sec on a empty card.

Anyways I am very very glad i did. The footage from this camera, although not "perfect" by professional standards is to my eye surprising good. I'm in the film business myself and I have no doubt that me or someone else will use this cam to make something great. The compact convenience of this cam allows you to shoot whenever and whatever....a really important factor in making a good film is to have lots of footage to cut together.

Speaking of editing, I've found that using Quicktime Pro with the .MP4 directly from the camera works very well and its extremely fast. You can trim, add unlimited sound tracks etc. I havent gotten around to purchasing Vegas 6 yet as others here have suggested but i did try the Ulead MovieFactory that came with the camera and for simple editing and burnign to DVD, it seems to be more than sufficient.

Anyways, I've uploaded a macro shot i took outside of my house on the day the camera arrived. You can download it from the link below. The file was trimmed in Quicktime Pro then reexported as .mp4 using "pass through" option so no recompression i assume. The "music track" you hear was not me being artsy but the song from a portable radio about 3 feet to the right of the spider. I used macro manual focus and put the lens about 2 inches from the spider - all hand held, no tripod. I turned image stabilization off and I'm using 3.5 aperture and auto shutter.

enjoy!

http://www.mysharefile.com/v/2981399...ceSml.mp4.html

First of all, I wanted to thank everyone who contributed to this new thread and the original HD1 thread. Thanks to you folks, I was well informed about all the issues with the HD1 before I bought it, and it was all the great samples that pushed me over the edge to buy it.

Since I'm not a "pro" I can live with almost all the faults mentioned here, but the one thing I didn't think would really bother me has become the biggest issue of all: the diagonal problem. I know in a lot of footage it doesn't really matter, but the more I shoot the more I see it, especially since I shoot a lot with a uniform sky as a background.

I know there's been mention here about a possible firmware upgrade, but in my experience doing service, nothing really will get done unless there are enough people actually complaining about it. Can anyone suggest the correct way to contact the right people at Sanyo (as a US customer) so that I can at least put in my two cents? Think there's any way to start a grass-roots effort to get Sanyo to take notice?

The reason I bring this up in this thread is because I'd seen Carlos' post about contacting service on his side, and it got me thinking that one or two complaints probably isn't going to get any action. Unlike some companies, Sanyo seems to be pretty conservative about releasing firmware.

Thanks again for all the great info!

This is my first post, as i am doing research into getting this cam.

Im no vid-buff and dont ever intend to be. Im more of a showoff and want an HD cam that can take good vid i can use on my 32" Samsung HDTV at an affordable price.
I got a child on the way at the end of the year and want to buy one for the summer in preparation (before having to fork out on cots, prams, nappies etc etc).

Can i ask though, what is this diagonal problem you speak of ??
Is it really a big issue, or do the positives outway the negatives ??
Coz im probably going to get one from PlayAsia.com for £380.

"bought it from www.plemix.com for us$600! (the only downside form buying it here is that there's no store warrantee, only manufacturer's warantee)"

I bought mine from Plemix also, scanned that manufacturer warranty card into the computer and then e-mailed it to local Sanyo who said they would guarantee it for a year. I just said a friend bought it in HK which is not far from the truth.

Thats cheap (£320 +-), though doesnt come with an SD Card.
But thinking of it, if i do buy from overseas i could be stung for import tax which could be over £100 to the UK.

Just so I don't start something here, let me say that the "diagonal problem" I mentioned may not be a big deal in many situations, as has been pointed out by others here. (though it's going to drive me crazy for what I'm trying to do)
Check out all the great demo footage everyone has posted, and see how you feel. There's some in this thread, as well as the original long thread at http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=58228

Here's a little info on the issue, for reference:
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.ph...068#post459068
http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news...+to+a+bug.html

Well, they definitely need to be unconservative with this camera.

Here is an article on increasing compression performance by reducing noise in images. Doubly for this camera:

http://www.digitalcontentproducer.co...306/index.html

37 Shots
 

Wow, Bravo !

I'm simply amazed, how did you manage to do that with such a compressed format and small camera?

A few questions:

(1) What was your workflow? after your recorded, what format did you edit on and then any Colour Correction applied, finally what Encoder did you use for DVD Mpeg2?

(2) Did you use any "Macro" function on the close up shot.

(3) I understand that this camera is great for outdoor "bright" situations, howwever any clips of indoor low light situations,.

Thanks In advanced.

Anhar

"Unlike some companies, Sanyo seems to be pretty conservative about releasing firmware."

Have a look at this:

http://www.sanyo.de/produkte_eng/dig...&P_ID=1&ptyp=2

:)