Sanyo HD2 footages

[Robert Batta]

first in youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPCLB...related&search

[Wayne Morellini]

Thanks Roberta, great effort, how do you get the camera? The Youtube thing makes it look like an old mobile phone footage, it even stuffed around with the colour. Any chance we might see the Mpeg4 footage native, or any other native clips. I see enough there to suspect that it might have better colour, latitude (unless you were using an ND filter) and picture then the HD1a, but high S?N (low noise) is what this cameras needs fro 9mb/s.

The biggest question is, does the thing display live camera footage through HDMI, and is it uncompressed? Film something big blue and featureless that produces blocking on playback, but no blocking on an true 720p HDMI monitor input. The other quest is, does it do 30fps, or does it do 60fps through the HDMI, like some other 30fps cameras do?

Thanks

Wayne.

[Wayne Morellini]

Yep, contrast of the shadows, and color, looks like it might be right on the original footage. The picture quality of the HD1 in still mode was what they needed in movie mode, and this looks an lot closer to other cameras, but an improvement.

The Canon HV20, is out there, and other competitors cameras get closer (like AVCHD models) so I hope this camera is good. What I would like is an 10bit 18-36mb/s Mpeg4 25-50fps DSLR version (with 2/4/5 channel sound) with HDMI, and standardised electronic/manual changeable lens with room for an hard drive. High Signal to Noise with an latitude extension scheme, and large sensor (at least 4/3rds). Come on Sanyo, you know what I am saying.

[Wayne Morellini]

Ahhh, it's been in Australia, see here, time to check to see if they put footage up on that site again :).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3mEe3rIp04&NR

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=fortify7

[Robert Batta]

Originally Posted by Wayne Morellini

Thanks Roberta, great effort, how do you get the camera? The Youtube thing makes it look like an old mobile phone footage, it even stuffed around with the colour. Any chance we might see the Mpeg4 footage native, or any other native clips. I see enough there to suspect that it might have better colour, latitude (unless you were using an ND filter) and picture then the HD1a, but high S?N (low noise) is what this cameras needs fro 9mb/s.

The biggest question is, does the thing display live camera footage through HDMI, and is it uncompressed? Film something big blue and featureless that produces blocking on playback, but no blocking on an true 720p HDMI monitor input. The other quest is, does it do 30fps, or does it do 60fps through the HDMI, like some other 30fps cameras do?

Thanks

Wayne.

Wayne,
i simple find HD2 videos on youtube...not get the cam

[Robert Batta]

[QUOTE= What I would like is an 10bit 18-36mb/s Mpeg4 25-50fps DSLR version (with 2/4/5 channel sound) with HDMI, and standardised electronic/manual changeable lens with room for an hard drive. High Signal to Noise with an latitude extension scheme, and large sensor (at least 4/3rds). Come on Sanyo, you know what I am saying.[/QUOTE]

YES YES YES !!! :)

[Wayne Morellini]

Sorry, I thought you might be an mystery user :). The add is interesting, it is corrupted, but you can tell something about camera characteristics.

Extreme thanks for posting them.

[Wayne Morellini]

Here is an interview about products including the Sanyo HD2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPcXqy119g0

[Peter Solmssen]

Let's set the record straight. The person who posted HD2 footage on YouTube is John Lamb, the sales manager for Sanyo USA. In the other clip, he is being interviewed at CES.

The maximum size allowed by YouTube is 320 x 240, so you won't see much about IQ there. I asked John if he would post full resolution clips elsewhere, and he seemed willing, but I haven't seen it up yet.

With PMA starting next week, he may be too busy to bother with it now. Also, at PMA I hope others will get their hands on the camera and post something.

[Wayne Morellini]

Yes, I found that out after I posted. I sent him an message too. I wonder if he is "Sanyo" at steves-digicams forums.

You can tell some things about an camera from youtube footage, like suspected color accuracy and latitude, unfortunately you can not tell noise or codec performance very well, as the youtube codec just wipes things out. But for the Sanyo, the suspected extra latitude, and the extra low light, is an must (preferably 12-16 stops+ with range extension technology would be good). Noise and codec performance are the two other musts.

[Robert Batta]

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babel...0207_1330.html

[Felipe Del Villar]

Originally Posted by Robert Batta

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babel...0207_1330.html

Whoa....we are FAAAR from perfect in translation software.

Look a the amount of doublespeak and gibbersih...

He talks about three "cute" points of the HD2

1) more resolution
2) better low light performance

They DO have a video sample....and it looks very good for an interior shot...too bad it is at 640. I can not see jaggies, but I dont remember if those are visible at that resolution

btw: video=animated picture

3) HDMI output?

[Wayne Morellini]

It is almost as if the translations are getting worse over time, a few years back I remember them being good. Maybe Chris could put an translate link function in pointing to an better free translation service?

[Wayne Morellini]

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babel...2fmov0027.html

Had an look at the clip, high color saturation but it looks descent. SD is not what you want to test out for an interior shot, as pixel binning, at the lower resolution, can lead to better low light performance than HD, which looks decently acceptable, given the price and resolution.

The footage still has problems related to the codec and bit rate. We see that much blockiness and lost resolution in movement (good on him for the movement shot, a more subtle shot in contrast would also be good). We see that plain/flat areas crawl with low resolution blockiness (this is likely an defect in the way Mpeg4 does encoding choices, that makes the choices look too obvious, but something that should be adjustable in the codec, to make them disappear). The balls show how they loss resolution down the bottom also.

At high speed movement it still looks obvious that something is missing. My scheme for prioritising to keep the outline of broader details/shapes of blurred/high speed objects in priority to the smallest, with the ramping flow inside the shape, would look better for little extra data space, than the present scheme. For example, the outline of the arm, and the liens on the sleeves would be retained much better. The up and down rise of the reflection of the different fingers would be retained better. The balls would remain roundish and there varying reflection preserved (though I don't know if MPEG4 has the necessary functions to efficiently encode radial reflection). Even through you don't see detail in movement, you see general shape. The bigger the TV, and closer the sitting distance, the more obvious it becomes. With 40 inch becomes more common, and 65 inch shortly, with 100inch+ past that (possibly within an year, if laser projected TV is possible) these cameras will be used on these things, before people buy next model.

The 640*480/720*480 mode could do a lot of this if there was an mode with an lot extra bandwidth, and 60fps mode. HD mode has 9mb/s, but that 9mb/s could be used on any mode (unless it is not supported as standard in Mpeg4, but then custom modes are often made for cameras and then supported, and it would still be useful to be converted to another good SD codec for delivery). This would be very easy, and would be good for 60fps, and good for 4:2:2, or preferably 4:4:4 color. Although 720*480 would be preferable for 9mb/s SD mode, and 640*360 could be emulated through the 720p mode, by not storing resolution lower than 2*2 group of pixels. These are the sorts of SD features that would really make video people look at it.

This does not indicate to me that HD 720p mode doesn't need more than 9mb/s. I think 18Mb/s would be good, even if only for 60fps 720p (which I think 35mb.s would be good for). I am sorry this camera has not got these modes, for extreme sports users it is one area it is very desirable, apart from hobbyist and semi-professionals.

We have had a look at footage from the Canon, it is making the same mistake we have seen before, low signal to noise ratio, but color looks good, but contrast is in question. Even though it has high enough noise, the 35mb/s data rate is helping much better, and also helping with movement movement much better. Somebody did an interesting experiment, they sent the MJPEG frame through the de-grainer in After Effects, and it cleaned up quiet nicely, something like this done before MPeg4 processing would substantially improve picture quality, and I believe that Sanyo has tried to achieve this with there latest noise removal schemes, but we will see when more footage becomes available. Even though I suspect that the HD2 is much better in noise level this year, I think noise at 0 gain might still be there. The object with low bit rate cameras is zero noise at any reasonable gain level (down to below 5 lux) as this allows the most efficient encoding to be done and better picture. The other object for picture quality, is range of latitude, and I think there might have been good improvement in this model. Modern sensor technology can deliver latitude as good as the human eye. There is color, but once you turn the color down on the HD1a, it looks subtly good, thought the still mode seems to be more crisp.

I suspect that Canon will still provide much strong competition to the HD2, because of their brand name, the ability to handle noise and movement through higher data rate (that is still smoothing like half of what it needs to be) among various crowds, like extreme sports people. The 35mb/s data-rate looks excessive flash fro flash, but is less than what you need for an really good picture, something like H264 intra frame compression would have done that, or AVCHD (h264 interframe compression) at 24mb/s. But I think, the increase in flash capacity and reducing costs (and the capacity of Blu-ray etc) should be able to cover that eventually. At the moment I think flash costs, and dual layered DVD (with more capacity to come I think) are good enough for 18mb/s data-rates.

[Wayne Morellini]

The translation of the Japanese review is also difficult to read, but seems to indicate that HDMI on the camera does not carry the sound track, which is interesting.