After nearly six years, Panasonic is finally releasing a true HD successor to the popular but aging AG-DVX100. The US$6000 AG-HMC150 shares triple CCDs, optical image stabilisation, and audio capability with the DVX100, but adds a variety of HD formats including 1080/60i, 1080/30p, and 1080/24p. Panasonic has confirmed a basic 13Mbps recording mode but hasn’t given a firm number for the “enhanced mode” for “higher-level use.” Hopefully it will be closer to the AVCHD maximum 24Mbps and show what the format is really capable of. It’ll use the same SDHC cards you’d use in a basic point-and-shoot. Jump for the press release.
Steve Jobs announced an updated version of the video editing application iMovie to go along with iLife ’08. Calling it “a completely new way of editing video,” the Apple CEO called it “startlingly better.” Jobs says it’s designed to be able to put together a movie in 30 minutes. It has a completely new user interface, too.
It first shows up with a new star icon. It holds all of your video applications in one library, working very much like iPhoto. It now supports the newest HD camcorders that use the AVCHD codec, as well as HDV and DV cams. It offers easier scrubbing of clips, as well as as one-click sharing to YouTube. iMovie is included as part of the iLife ’08 package, selling for $79 or included free with each new Mac.
Canon jumped into the hard disk camcorder market today with its HG10, the company’s first high-definition hard drive camcorder and the world’s smallest, weighing 19.92 ounces with the battery inside. That 40GB hard disk gives you 5.5 hours of AVCHD recording at its highest quality setting, compressing the video at 15Mbps. If our sneak preview of this camcorder is any indication, that’s going to result in some sweet-looking high definition footage. Here are our impressions. galleryPost('canonhg10', 8, 'Canon HG10 HDD Camcorder');
The Canon iVIS HG10 3CCD can record five-and-a-half hours of top banana quality video action on its 40GB hard drive. Unfortunately, the format is limited to a sad 1,440 x 1,080, (1080i) according to Canon’s own specifications page, and the included battery will only give you one hour of actual recording time without using the LCD screen. And there is even more bad news.
AU: ‘Sad’ is a bit harsh, there. 1440×1080 is standard HDV spec and AVCHD also has this ratio as most typical, with wide pixels for a 1920×1080 finish. Not perfect, but it is in common use right now, so it isn’t all that sad… unless all such cameras are sad… which they may well be… pining for Full HD. -SB
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Don’t be fooled by its thoroughly Eighties body (if this was a clutch bag, it would have been in Melanie Griffith’s paws as she trundled over to Manhattan on the Staten Island ferry in Working Girl) – Canon’s new iVIS HR10, out over here this summer, is utterly Noughties by nature, as it records everything in either MP4 or H.264 format.
Quiet as you like, Sony have snuck out a couple more HD-compatible camcorders, the SR8 and the SR5C without even a whisper. The SR8 looks like an upgraded version of the SR7 which is barely two months old, and the SR5 is now the SR5C. You want prices, shipping dates, more pics and just what these lovers are saying to each other? Of course you do.
AU: Sony has flagged an upcoming camera event for next week here, so we can expect local details on these Handycam updates then. -SB
Canon today rolled out its HR10 HD camcorder, which lays down 1080i images on a DVD. Using its 10x optical zoom lens, it acquires its footage using a full HD 1920×1080 CMOS image sensor, and records in the AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition) video format onto an ordinary DVD. Except for that DVD recording, it’s just about the same camera as Canon’s tape-based HV20 HD camcorder, with image stabilisation, 3.1-megapixel still image capture and a 2.7-inch LCD widescreen viewfinder. Get lots more info, including our hands-on impressions, future plans from Canon, availability and pricing, after the jump.
We’ve heard a lot of complaining about the paucity of editing tools for the nascent AVCHD video format, and now Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus comes along with that capability and a lot more. With AVCHD originator Panasonic’s latest solid-state camcorders using the format, and Sony rocking more cameras using it just the other day, the ability to edit that footage is long overdue.
Hey, that format’s fo’ reals, and is here to stay, right? Yep. Well, what else can Ulead VideoStudio 11 do?
I’ve liked the idea of AVCHD video, but the fact that nothing to date has been able to edit the footage — even Sony’s own Vegas 7 — has been plain ridiculous. Sony has promised “coming soon” since their cameras launched back in November, but now, six months later, we finally get the news we’ve been waiting for.
Vegas 7 Professional will have a free update, downloadable from May 1. Huzzah! Users of the consumer Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8 will get their update in July. Ouch, but at least you’ve finally got a date.
It is native editing too, not transcoded to an intermediate codec, so you won’t be getting any generational loss. No decision yet on recommended spec, but it will have to be more than general Vegas use because real-time editing AVCHD is going to cane your CPU. We’ve been told:
It does not do too bad on a Duo CPU! Sony CS have come up with a faster way of editing naively that’s all I can tell you…
Let’s assume that’s ‘natively’… I don’t want to call them naive about this just yet. Zing!! -Seamus Byrne
Sony announced three HDTV camcorders that are smaller, lighter and more efficient than their predecessors. Top of the heap is Sony’s first flash-based HD camcorder, the HDR-CX7 (pictured above) that Sony calls “the smallest and lightest AVCHD HD camcorder” on the market. It’s so small because it’s all solid-state, recording 30 minutes of its best quality 1080i video onto a 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo. Its $1200 price is slightly better than Panasonic’s SDHC camcorders, which were the originators of this AVCHD format. Cool—Sony beating up on Panny at its own game.
Sony also rolled out its SR5 ($1294) and SR7 ($1696) 1080i camcorders, and both have a 2.7″ widescreen LCD and a 10x optical zoom. The SR5 can record five hours of 1080i HD AVCHD video on its 40GB internal hard disk. The SR7 takes it up a notch with image stabilization, a slightly larger 1/2.9″CMOS sensor that can snag 6.1 megapixel stills and a 60GB disk that can store 14 hours of 1080i goodness. Sony says all these cameras will be shipping in June, 2007. – Charlie White
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