New: Canon PowerShot TX1 -- hybrid HD
 

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/21/c...-and-hd-video/

It does uncompressed video though (bad!). But the price is lower than the Sanyo HD2.

I hope competition will drive down the price of the HD2.

The future is bright!

But it's sooooo ugly...


Nice price tag though.

Hmm, might need its own dedicated forum here... maybe.

Just to point out this is NOT an uncompressed camera. 720p 30p would only fit 72 seconds on a 4GB card. I think the compression used is jpeg which may or may not be like the Blackmagic jpeg codec. We do not know what bitrate is going to be used for this Canon jpeg format. It is very very far from uncompressed however. To me based on the 13 minutes of reported record time for a 4 GB card it seems as though the bitrate is somewhere just over 5MB/S which could be a little low for a intraframe based codec.

Traditionally they've always used Motion JPEG, writing .AVI files. I doubt this one is any different.

Is this saying that 720p mode is around 40Mb/s. What codec is it using?

http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl...006-17,GGGL:en

Re-edit:
Whoops, an bit late.

Argh - US only
 

Ther goes my plan for an vacation cam(cord)era. Corresponding to Camcorderinfo it is a US/Japan product only.

I am somewhat annoyed that most of these hybrid cams are 30 fps only, as this makes my life more difficult here in PAL-world.

This is also a 30 fps model, but since it uses MJPEG it is far easier to convert to 25 fps than any of the long GOP codecs.

Seems that Canon do not like us europeans ;^( and I have to find another hybrid camera for my vacation. Sanyo Xacti C5 are selling well here, so it can not be a market issue.

Clearly this has to be superior to the Sanyo. Same 1280x720/30p BUT with a higher pixel count sensor AND much better codec. MJPEG is awesome. Yes sure the record times are lower but SD cards are so cheap. Each 4GB Card will hold 13mins or 26mins for a 8GB card.

I am looking forward to the some sample clips from it.

This site has some more information. The Link was posted on the engadget website as well.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0702/07022203canontx1.asp

I gotta say 13 mins. on a 4 Gb card seems a bit low. Certainly, 4 Gb cards aren't that expensive anymore and for those 200 bucks you'll save compared to the HD2 you can invest that in storage, BUT who wants to swap cards every ten minutes?

I mean lets face it. These cameras are for the casual filmers on occasions like weddings and holiday trips. I would reckon the average wedding takes more than ten minutes.

52 minutes of video equals 16 gigs for this camera
60 minutes of HDV video equals 13 gigs

That’s a much higher bit rate than HDV

AM I MISSING SOMETHING?

The whole point of the HDV format is to use the same recording media and same bandwidth as the DV format that came before it. Therefore, HDV had to be 25mbps and 13GB per hour. This little camera doesn't have that restriction. That's all you're missing. Neither does it have a variety of HDV format-specific features, such as stereo sound, or timecode, or an instant archival medium, or backward compatibility with DV cassettes.

So I guess this 500 dollar camera will give you much more detailed videos than the JVC HD110 which uses 19MBPS.

It would be amazing if the bit rate is indeed this high but for a 500 camera, it seams unbelievable.

Frankly I don't think bit rate has anything to do with quality or detail in an image. I've seen some very high bit rate stuff that looks like garbage, and some low bit rate stuff that looks amazing. As far as I'm concerned, it's all in the encoder. This thing is *no* replacement for an HD110 or any other HDV camcorder. It's just a digicam that has an interesting video mode if you ask me. Definitely in the Sanyo HD1/HD2 league... not that there's anything wrong with that...

I have had many Canon digital cameras and their know that the MJPEG codec is VERY good. It has none of the horrible bulky macroblocks found in MPEG-4 and other compressors in digicams, the Sanyo HD1 included.

Yes record times are low but well worth the super image quality IMO. Of course the the image quality won't be higher than HDV! But compared to other digital cameras and the Sanyo HD1/HD2, it will be a lot higher! Hopefully...

I totally agree with Chris. Bit rate by itself has little to do with quality or detail. There is much more that goes into play than just bit rate as the primary factor in determining/evaluating picture quality. Canon will be using some variant of MotionJPEG, a very good and well established compression scheme. MJPEG codec can be VERY, VERY good. Plus, added to the Digic-III circuitry and the legacy that Canon usually knows very well what they are doing while watching carefully the competition (let's not forget Canon is known for NEVER the first one to jump on any new-tech bandwagon and always waits for new stuff to mature a bit), I think the TX1 can far surpass the quality of the Sanyo HD2 and open the window of a lot of things to come. Canon has waited a long time to come out with a product like this, with over one year of carefully studying the pros and cons of the Sanyo HD series, and getting everything right to make a better design. The TX1 is a glimpse of the future. The Hybrid Cameras both capable of shooting both high quality stills and HD Video directly to RAM cards is, the shape of things to come. Also, if this camera uses the full raster of the CCD to downsample the full 16:9 image area of the CCD to a 1280x720 recording for Video capture, that can bring A LOT of detail to the image (the exact opposite of most cameras today using 3CCDs that have low-res imagers and then use pixel-shift and upsampling). I think this will be a great product... and if it shoots progressive @ 30fps... even better! :)

I think this camera deserve its new Section/Thread under something like Solid State Recording or Hybrid Cameras...

Kudos again for Canon!

If those specs are accurate than I do hope Canon will make enough because this thing will fly off the selves. Like Lorry, I believe the bit rate being this high will produce wonderful videos, I mean why wouldn’t it? MJPEG is an intra frame codec and the potential is huge if used properly. Sanyo will obviously have to sell the HD2 at 500 dollars to compete although the HD2 will kill it if you’re inside a house with very little lighting.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/do...222/canon1.htm

English version.
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babel...2%2Fcanon1.htm

yes mjpeg can be very good and is far superior to mpeg2 but it needs bits to look good.

mpeg-2 works well because it doesn't need to encode redundant information. That is why the size can be so much smaller. With mjpeg it encodes every single frame as a jpeg image so each frame needs lots of bits.

I work with a lot of I frame only HD mpeg2 video (which is pretty much the same as mjpeg) and the lowest I would ever go for 24p 720p is 53mbits/s or maybe even 50 to make it a nice round number. 30p of course needs a little bit more bandwidth to make it look good. 40mbit/s mjpeg is going to be a little on the low side. We will not see the usual macroblock type artifacts but what we will see is more noise and dancing artifacts on high contrast edges.

The compression ratio of this format is about 11:1. Try encoding a jpeg still image at that level and you will see how compressed it is. With motion it gets even worse because as things move slightly each frame gets jpeg compressed in a different way with translates to dancing noise in the image.

jpeg compress a 1280x720 still image that only takes up 0.166 MB and see how it turns out. You could also try to use quicktime photojpeg on a video and figure out what compression level will give you the same datarate and see how that looks.

I'd say we're gonna need a sample before we know how good or bad it is. It's a great move on canon's part and I hope this will be a developing model line.

Assuming the information is accurate, the memory cards would have to be able to write at a speed of around 35 to 40MBPS. So how much money is a memory card of that speed? Anyway, cheep memory cards are definitely out of the question if you want to shoot in HD mode.

I thought the reason that you aren’t able to put the highest bit rate of the JVC HD7 into the memory card was because standard memory cards aren’t fast enough.

First Still Samples Out!
 

From the Japanese Canon site:
Stills:
http://cweb.canon.jp/camera/powersho...ata/TX1_l0.jpg
http://cweb.canon.jp/camera/powersho...ata/TX1_l1.jpg

Flash presentation (unfortunately all in Japanese)...
http://cweb.canon.jp/camera/powersho...p/index_f.html

Also, Canon's specs state the use of wave compression (which stands for Wavelet that is by far the best compression/ less artifacts MJPEG compression type) plus 1080i video output playback capability. I think this camera has all the ingredients to become a landmark product.

I like the retro styling. And I agree if Canon can hit that price point these things will be popular.

I just saw that it says on the Canon site "Available in April 2007"
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...&modelid=14903

I guess I'll have to consider this as a rival to the HD2 I wanted buy.

I wonder on the impossibility of using a wide-angle adapter or filters. If the lens totally retracts in on Power-Off (plus there is an auto cover that goes in front of it), anything you put in front of the lens will hit and get stuck around outer casing of the camera's lens ring as it retracts in and breaks the mechanism... hmmm... troubling design... horrifying thought...

At least I didn’t use what I originally wanted to say, the HD250, but I figured there would have been too many negative responses.

Realistically, like everybody else I would like to see how this thing holds up against the Sanyo HD2 and dare I say it, the JVC HD1. It won’t give you the colors or the contrast levels of the HD1 but the detail may come close. Its funny but if this thing is good enough then some people may want to use it as a B camera for the HD1 if you have a good editing program.

Besides the price of the Sanyo HD2 going down, this Panasonic camcorder needs to be no more than 250 to 300 dollars http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=86627. Yes you can thank Canon for that. So far they caused the V1u to be a lot cheaper, then the Sony HC5, HC7 and the JVC HD7 to be a lot cheaper and now the Sanyo and the Panasonic digicams will have to fallow suit.

I hope its much better than the JVC HD1 because I had one for a day before I returned it... color /luminance noise plus ridiculous shadow detail reminded me of of a really sharp good-old VHS camcorder... mortifyingly bad...

this rox! viva la HD!

alittle more info here - still no video samples , but this is probably where they'll appear first .

http://www.canon.co.jp/Imaging/pstx1/index-rtn-e.html

I think Canon should do a promo video for this camera like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIZc1XkaUpk

According to Camcorderinfo, the bit rate is confirmed to be around 35MBPS.

That's incorrect; you're confusing megabits and megabytes. It's around 40 mbps, so about 5 MBps. In fact, even lower. To quote the article you cited on Camcorderinfo:

"According to Canon, this equates to approximately 4.375MB/sec (megabytes), or approximately 35Mbps (megabits)"

The point is, this is a pretty pitiful data rate for so-called HD. Then again, so far nothing being peddled to the consumer as "HD" is worthy of the moniker.

I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. HDV at 1080i is around 3.6MB/sec in MPEG2. This camera uses 4.375MB/sec in MJPEG. The picture quality may not be as good as the JVC HD1 but it should be better then the Sanyo HD1 and for a 500 dollar camera, that is not pitiful at all.

Besides, I’m sure most people know what I meant when I used 35MBPS. I also use the words 25MBPS when I talk about HDV2.

actually capitalizing MB means megabyte, but the lowercase on the second b means megabit: Mb. there is a convention somewhere. google it.

I can take an guess on that. Let's say that HDV 720p and DVCPROHD 720p are roughly equivalent (less some resolution in DVCPROHD at 30p), when not moving, or much noise etc. 35mb/s is around half that of DVCPRO (probably a bit worse). That is 9mb/s in mpeg2 terms, Sanyo uses Mpeg 4, that will give about 50% better quality (if we are lucky) which is around 13.5mb/s in Mpeg2 terms, or over 50mb/s in Mjpeg quality with still picture and no noise.

Guess what it is for Mpeg2 and Mpeg4 with plenty of noise and/or movement. 9mb/s Mpeg4 should probably be basically equivalent to 13.5mb/s MJpeg, and Mpeg2 at 9mb/s, probably equivalent to 9mb/s of MJpeg. I don't know if I am totally right, but I think this maybe the case.

They really needed to double the data-rate, or (more practically) use Mpeg4, VC1, On2's VP7/8, H264, even intra compression. Isn't this what we expect from MJPEG compression video formats on still cameras.

How to Output from Computer to HDTV?
 

How can you manage the HD-video you get from this camera, in a practical and economical way? Buying 100GB of camera cards doesn't sound very appealing. That's why tape is still so popular------lots of cheap space. Continually shuttling the footage in and out of the computer with camera cards, so you can play past clips out of the camera, would be a real bother.

If you don't have a new Vista computer with DVI/HDMI or HD component, what do you do, besides watch it on your computer monitor? Any non-nVidia graphics cards you'd recommend that have any or all of these outputs? I've tried to install an nVidia GEForce 5200 and it is not compatible with my nVidia programs that were bundled with the computer. Maybe that's why it's only $500., because they'd get you to spend so much on cards and all the other things you'd need for playback from storage. Do you suppose they supply you with a software program that provides some solutions to these problems?

But that's exactly what this camera is: it's a Canon PowerShot, which is first and foremost a still photo camera; and that product line has always used Motion JPEG for its video clips. I'm not sure how you could have expected anything else.

Sorry, how I wrote it wasn't quiet clear. That is what I meant, this is the quality we expect from still cameras, we usually have to buy the manufacturers video cameras for better. More could be done though, sanyo was only an minor step in this direction.

J

There are mobile hard drive enclosures that have card readers to backup cards on the spot to the hard drive. There was an cheap company that I found that did these things years ago. I have one of their re-badged combination 5 button trackball+mouse, but they are the only ones I know of that do an 8 button, wireless trackball+mouse. So they might be googable that way.

Recently camera companies have gotten onto this scheme as well, even through wireless digital still camera networking protocols.

This could be a great crash cam IMHO
 

This could turn out to be a great crash cam where you don't need audio and don't want to risk your more expensive gear, not just an excellent vacation/baby cam. Footage from a model airplane, fastened to a motocross cycle while jumping, POV shots like from a helmet ( though my skydiving days are long over and you'd never catch me jumping my Harley ). Used to shoot super8 flim a couple years ago and this will likely be better quality than Kodachrome reversal was before they stopped making that for S8. I've had a Canon SD500 point and shoot for a few years and though it isn't Canon's best still camera for movies, the 640X480 30FPS isn't bad. CurrentTV used some footage I shot with it on their website back when they started out of the first Bay Area user meetup they had. Josh Wolf was in that footage who now holds the world record, doing federal time as a journalist protecting his sources, so maybe I should hunt that edit up. I'd rather have a 24fps mode too, but it is what it is, should be great. The TX1 uses AVI (Image data: Motion JPEG; Audio data: WAVE (Stereo)) and looks like it has a wind reduction mode on the audio and well as maybe a manual level, so might do better on audio than my SD500. Am getting an HV20 from B&H, so don't have money now for the TX1, but in the future I'm there if I come into some extra cash.
Regards, Alan

My apologies for misreading your post, Wayne. And I certainly agree with you that more can be done.

Is This Bit-rate Really Correct?
 

When you consider that the HDV mbps rate of 25 is to encode a 1,440 X 1,080 picture, the 35 mbps of the TX1 is extremely high for its smaller pixel-size. The TX1 produces a picture of just 921K pixels, compared to the 1,555K pixels of HDV. That's 68% more pixels for HDV, for just 71% of the TX1 mbps rate. That's 2.36 times as many pixels per mbps. Maybe, they'll tell us there was a misprint in the specs??