Bitrate isn't everything. The efficiency of the codec is equally important. HDV is MPEG-2, which is way more efficient than MJPEG. However it is hard to compare the two, since with MJPEG each frame is a keyframe and so any artifacts which are motion based are completely absent.

Basically I would say that MPEG-2 is like 3-4 times more efficient than MJPEG for scenes with little movement.

However for high motion scenes MPJEG really shines and MPEG-2 struggles.

I think that this cam will wonderful for mouting on helmets and other places where you see lots of shake and movement, since MJPEG would have no marcoblocking at all.

I would LOVE to see video clips from this little camera. Anyone know a place to find one? Lots of Canon sties have images but no video! Not that I can find anyway...

It depends on the data-rate of the MJpeg, their is an example on the wikipedia about it, I think at 6:1 and beyond there is significant macro blocks. By the looks of it, this means that you can get them on complex still images as well :(. Is this camera using 4:2:0, instead of 4:2:2, if so this might go an long way to reliving this by reducing the amount of data to be compressed. If they had done 70mb/s+, then I think it would have been great.


The Elphel camera in our alternative imaging forums uses similar ratios of compression, and blocks are there, and people use filters top get rid of them.

That is a very good question. Which begs the question, what color space do existing Canon digital cameras use for video? I have one. Is there a way to find out from the AVI file?

Color space is not manufacturer specific. It is format / standard specific.

HD-SDI, DVCPRO HD is 4:2:2

HDV and PAL DV is 4:2:0

NTSC DV is 4:1:1

See http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-tech.html#colorSampling for more info.

Yes I know all that Chris. HDCAM is now even 4:4:4!

I meant the Canon Digital STILL Cameras, like the little SD series, etc. They don't have a particular format other just the MJPEG codec wrapped with WAV audio into an AVI container. I wonder if they aren't even YUV at all and RGB???

Aha -- HDCAM SR is 4:4:4, not HDCAM (which is 3:1:1 if I recall correctly).

Sorry I can't answer to the question of color space for the video mode of the little PowerShot digicams.

Jpeg has three different pixel formats, depending on the % level, 4:2:0, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4, but I don't know if that transfers to forms of MJpeg. But going from the bit rate, it is way more than 6:1.

Panasonic is moving to AVC-Intra, and that would be an descent option at 35mb/s. I wish companies like this would offer 35mb/s at all resolutions (including SD).

As an FYI:

I'll be in Vegas at PMA, so if I get a chance to play around with the camera and capture some footage, I'll post it here. Should be a good pocket cam.

Aanarav, while you are there, there might be some other cameras you might like to capture footage on? Their should be an Sanyo HD2, their might be an h264 Ambarella based HD camera, or more, and their might be one of those Samsung H264 based HD cameras. I can't say much more, but also have a look at what the cheap Taiwanese/Chinese manufacturers are doing, if they are there at all.


Thanks

Wayne.

Wayne,

I'll take a look. I may have to purchase some extra SD cards, but it will be interesting to see what these cameras are capable of.

- Aanarav

Thanks for offering. You maybe able to fit it all on one, two second clips of normal light and motion, of dark light, and of dramatic motion, should do it. Long clips take an long time to download anyway, they can wait till cameras turn up.

Yeah, I remember Samsung announcing that Samsung SC-HDX15 camcorder in January 2006 to go on sale in summer of that same year. Well, I'm still waiting.

Looks like this time they announced the Samsung SC-HMX10 for September 2007. I'm sceptical.

Notice that AVCHD raised it's head after the announcement. Now there is a delay of an year or more. Admittedly, this could be an manufacturing delay from the part they used, or to incorporate AVCHD standards etc. But what happened to the previous model?

Very probably you can predict the quality by looking at the video quality from the other Canon still cameras. Almost all of the current cameras can record 640x480 30 fps, some times 1024*768 15 fps. The bitrate of the TX1 is higher in proportion of how much more pixels the 1280x720 format has over the 640x480 format. So probably they use very similar encoding, only with more pixels. You can see a lot of samples on the internet for the VGA sized videos.

I regularly shoot video with a PowerShot A610. I prefer it to my normal video camera because it is not interlaced and on the computer screen it looks much sharper. Part of the sharpness may come from the fact that the camera uses a lot of pixels and the optics is also made for much higher resolutions. The most disturbing artifact is the aliasing at diagonal edges. I wonder maybe this is the result of using not all the pixels when shooting video. With CCD and CMOS imaging devices using not all the pixels of the device is a common way of achieving higher frame rates. Using pixels that have dead area between the pixels can result in aliasing at diagonal edges.

The TX1 uses the same DIGIC III chip as all the other new Canon cameras. So most probably all the other still cameras could have that high definition mode with very little effort. My problem with the TX1 is that its lens starts at 39 mm. I hope Canon will enable this high def video mode on one of its wider lens cameras that can use a wide conversion lens also. I plan to buy a new camera anyway (Canon) and the high def mode would be a very nice bonus.

About the TX1 data rate one interesting thing is that the Varicam uses 50 Mbps effectively for 30 fps which is not that much higher than 40 Mbps for the TX1. True Panasonis choosed a little bit reduced resolution for that rate.

Other Canon Still-cameras with HD?
 

Some of us on another digital camera forum have been pondering the rumor that a soon-to-be announced successor to their S3-IS ultrazoom camera, will have an HD video mode. If this happens and it has a 12X or higher zoom, with the telexes and WA lenses that can be used with it, it could be an interesting second video camera to carry. The S3-IS has the same type of M-JPEG video mode for SD and it is highly-regarded for quality, although it has a hungry CoDec for memory-card space (about 8.5 minutes per gigabyte).

50mb/s for SD, but this is three times the pixels, 150mb/s (if, 4:2:2) should give similar quality in 720p, or around 108mb/s in 4:2:0 720p. How much is DVCPRO HD in 720p, was it 70mb/s? It is just cheap as compression, would be good if it was smoothing better like AVC Intra/Inter, Mpeg4, even Mpeg2.

DVCPRO HD in 720p is 100 Mbps for 60 fps. For 30 fps this is 50 Mbps.

Sorry, I thought it was different. Still, the compression factor is nearly double that of the Canon.

To be exact the Varicam is 1.66 times less compressed if you consider that the Varicam has 1.25 times more data, but 1.33 times fewer pixels for the compression.

Depends where ever it is 35mb/s as reported, or around 40mb/s, and if it is 4:2:0 instead of 4:2:2. I checked on my calculator to verify, though at this time of night, maybe I am feeding it in wrong.

Codecs
 

I agree with Chris. Although the imaging block characteristics, electronics, lens, storage media, etc. are very important it's all about how the data stream is manipulated. That being said, perhaps that's why information about specific codec characterics are so closely gaurded. Digic1, Digic2, Digic3..... real catchy but where's the white paper's supporting all the claims and explaining exactly, and in detail, what each does. Hopefully everyone will finally begin to focus on the most important part of these new cameras, the encoder. If anyone has a link to substitive information regarding the Canon codecs I would be grateful.

From the first Japanese, I have to say that all the dreads of low bit rate Motion-JPEG are clear as mosquito/ fast moving random noise around contrasty edges on all video samples. Also very obvious color aberration issues from the lens. Pretty ugly stuff but one cannot expect miracles for a sub $500 camera that does so much. I'm staying optimistic and hoping these first video samples came from a pre-production model. Motion-JPEG is an extremely good, mature and editing-friendly compression method but only with proper bandwidth and quality settings, or, it looks as bad a compressed still JPEG images as used from the web that are painful to look at. At Canon stated bitrates, Digic-III or not, I cannot see how the results can be good. SD Video requires at least twice the maximum bandwidth spec'ed for the TX1 for near-DV quality... that's not HD where the image area and information size is much better... things are what they are, but Canon is surely not making $500 camera with image quality that can compete with their own other products costing twice to 4x more. As a still 7MP camera that as a novel curiosity also shoots (kind-of) HD video, it will no doubt be great. but for anything else as far as considering the expected video quality of this thing to be anything above barely acceptable to watch on a big screen... hmmmm... we are all probably hoping for something that is still a couple years away...

The industry can make and deliver it, probably around $300 today, but don't choose to. An lot of this pricing stuff is virtually imaginary, an illusion allowed to keep people thinking that they have to pay that much. If you look at the amount of models sold in video cameras and phones, etc etc etc, you realise that this is an inefficient way to manufacture, because of the limited volume runs. There should be, like, three consumer models, even three models for the entire consumer/prosumer range is possible to get away with, this greatly boosts the volume runs. The reason for this is that it convinces people that there is an need to pay more for an 1c/1$ feature, at the exclusion of real/new competitors from the shelf space, etc.

Right. When I say what's available to day or 2 years from now, I don't mean technology-wise. We could have affordable 4K camcorders for all that matters. Technology is cheap... hardware and mass production cost nothing. Manufacturing in enough quantities is almost free. Chips and electronics are basically worth zero. Its all about the politics of what to be made available, and flooding the markets at the pace that is more profitable. Its not people like RED that will never pump enough product to be affordable enough to bend the big guys that can dictate the industry though, they can certainly push the envelope. Its the other guys that move at nail speed and have their labs with innovations ready for production that will not see the light of day for another decade. This is not about revolutionizing with new products... this is actually about moving as slow as possible within the boundaries of what your competitors do. If there was no competition or alternative like what happaned with JVC (and, it was all about price), then there would have been no reason for it to last almost a quater century. DVD was old news when it came out. HD-DHD/Bluray? Those are dead on arrival. 1080p? Pre-historic. Cameras like the TX-1, shooting true Boardcast Quality 1080p video and 12MP stills for $500 could have been available last year... I said two years? And that's optimistic. Still as long as there is progress, its all good... and, thank God for Canon for some of the best stuff out there, that's for sure!

There is new video footage of the TX-1 for download taken at Canon's booth at PMA:

http://curtisjoewalker.com/MVI_0001.AVI

Aanarav,

What did you find at PMA?


Thanks

Wayne.

Wayne,

Here is some info

a) PowerShot TX1:
- Looks good, but it is tiny! The images that you may have seen from press-releases and other sources make the camera look too big. I could easily hold up the camera in my palm.
- Features/functions: The menu navigation is very similar to other powershot cameras.
- Quality: I didn't have a chance to insert my own memory card and play with it, as there were TONS of people surrounding the camera, so I can't really report on the quality. However, take a look at the following links to see if the samples help you out:
http://tinyurl.com/yulp56
http://tinyurl.com/36wax5

b) Canon HV20:
- The HV20 really looks like an old school family camcorder. I think design wise its a step backwards, but it sure is a lot more convenient and traditional in terms of handling and ergonomics.
- HV10 and HV20: Canon was actively promoting the HV10 and HV20 cameras side-by-side. From their promotional material, it doesn't look as if the HV10 is going out anytime soon.

- Aanarav

Thanks Aanarav, did you find any other h264 cameras?

Additional lenses...
 

Is it possible to mount/attach other lenses (e.g. wide angle lens) to Canon TX1 as it is to Sanyo HD2?

has anyone seen this review?
http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/revi...camcorder.html

i think the video is pretty impressive.

It is, I only wish that finally somenone would post some raw footage. Or is the .avi compression actually representative?

just going by my math (which isnt really scientific)

(the 11 second video is about 50mb)
(4000mb is a 4gb card)
44000=50x
x=880 seconds
880sec= 14.666 minutes

which is about the limit that canon/dpreview said it would be.

Yes, the .avi format is what the camera produces, from Motion JPEG compression. There is no "raw" mode for this camera. The various .avi files that have been made available are what's actually coming out of the camera. Hope this helps,

Yeah, quite a lot.

Thanks.

watch impress review
 

Hey wait a minute...i downloaded this 172 gb file

what this is ??? look at the faces of people in this footage . It is grainy ALL OVER THE PLACE !!!!

Are u sure this is High Definition shot with the TX1 ? Because i don't call this HD quality at all

even with my 2 years old SD camcorder Sony M1 , indoor shots are better quality !!!!

i was VERY interested in buying the TX1 but after seeing this video, i think i'll pass

this is a SHAME, and if CANON wants to sell this device, they should avoid the diffusion of such videos online !!!

THIS IS A STOPPER.

arrgh !!

WOW was watching this video again, this is worse than VHS !! and i dont exagerate


on that site all the outdoor scenes are nice : http://www.google.com/translate?u=ht...&hl=hu&ie=UTF8

its funny to see that all outdoor videos shot in perfect condition with a tripod on that japanese site are ideal and all perfect...then when u watch a video shot in real condition, with people moving as in real life (so the 172 gb video in previous post) u see how different the result is !!

instructive

Yeah, these low light shots are really a shocker, but unfortunately the Xacti HD2 doesn't perform much better in low light.