Panasonic Introduces AG-HSC1U, World’s Smallest Professional 3-CCD HD Camcorder

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Nik Manning

Well-known member
Panasonic introduced today the world’s smallest professional 3-CCD high definition camcorder – the AG-HSC1U. Weighing 1.1 pounds, this hand-held camcorder delivers stunning 1080i recordings with the accuracy and natural 3-CCD color reproduction that professionals require for capturing events in HD.
This highly-affordable HD camcorder is ideal for widescreen, high-resolution event documentation, presentation, training, coaching, and video production applications. Compatible with the rapidly growing number of large HD flat screen displays as well as front and rear-screen projectors, the AG-HSC1U offers much sharper images than can be obtained by standard definition (SD) camcorders.

Highly reliable and flexible because it’s solid state with no moving parts like tape or disc-based systems, the noiseless AG-HSC1U camcorder records up to 88 minutes (41 minutes in the highest quality mode) of video on a high-speed 4GB SDHC memory card. A highly-portable 40GB hard drive, capable of receiving and storing the contents of 10 4GB SDHC cards in the field, is packaged with the camcorder. SD video can be output in the widescreen 16:9 format.

MORE AT http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news/7684.html
 
I wish they would include P2 on other cameras, it's like they're throwing us HVX owners to the wolves by not including that storage investment on other machines - I would be really unhappy if the price of P2 never comes down because no one else ever makes them, and there'd be no incentive to make 16, 32, 64 or 128 gig P2s, which is the whole point I invested in the camera!

Come on, Panasonic.
 
mrWr0ng said:
I wish they would include P2 on other cameras, it's like they're throwing us HVX owners to the wolves by not including that storage investment on other machines - I would be really unhappy if the price of P2 never comes down because no one else ever makes them, and there'd be no incentive to make 16, 32, 64 or 128 gig P2s, which is the whole point I invested in the camera!

Come on, Panasonic.
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Yeah that sucks Mr Wrong. P2 seems to me like a good idea but a little to early. Try not to compare your hvx200 to the hdv cameras but to the DVCPROHD cameras and you will feel better about it. This was the only way that they could make shooting DVCPROHD affordable.

Back to the thread. Anyone know where I can find a picture of this little gadget! Panasonic PM me!:Drogar-Evil(DBG):
 
I wish they would include P2 on other cameras, it's like they're throwing us HVX owners to the wolves by not including that storage investment on other machines
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Er, you guys are a bit off base here with this. First, if you want more P2, look no further than the three big shoulder-mount P2 cameras they're introducing. If you want more people to adopt P2, look at Fox, Australian Broadcasting Corp, NDTV, Raycom, NY1, etc. Thinking the HVX is the only P2 camera out there is not in any way accurate.

Look at it this way -- instead of being responsible to some individual customers, they now have the national broadcaster of Australia, the largest broadcaster in India, and one of the "big 4" US networks all exclusively using P2. Those are massive customers who will be able to exert enormous pressure on Panasonic. They're in it for life now. They're committed to P2, there's no possible way they could ever abandon it or "throw you out to the wolves"!

Now, back to this little thing -- it's AVC-HD! The first camera from the professional division of one of these companies that's AVC-HD. And it records to SD cards. And it even includes a little "SD Store" device that holds 10 4GB cards worth. And each card holds 41 minutes of highest-capacity footage, so that means the package you buy is capable of 410 minutes, or about 7 hours. Nice.

Even though this isn't P2, it should help people understand the whole recording-to-solid-state concept and introduce them into that workflow.

But where's the mention of 24p?
 
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Holy Harry said:
I think there may be issues with the ability to edit footage from this camera...
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I'm sure there will be, to start. Vegas is supposed to announce an AVC-HD update "in the spring" (so, presumably, by NAB?) Adobe and Ulead and Canopus and Sonic Solutions are all in the AVC-HD consortium too. No mention of Avid or FCP yet though. I believe CineForm is planning on having a file conversion utility soon too.
 
A more reasonably sized picture:

1170716640.jpg
 
Anyone know why they called it the first smallest pro model? THE AVCHD is not the pro recording format is it?
 
so will this be going up against the HV20 or the Sony HC7?

Is it considered a pro camera?

The main problem I see is how to edit.

lets hear more about. Is Jan going to be in charge of this camera?
 
I'm pretty sure I read, that Canopus' (Grass Valley) upcoming ProCoder 3 (currently available v2 as well, I think) has support for AVC HD. It will convert to an NLE friendly format for editing. It's a start, anyways. Don't remember where I saw that now...

A little google search revealed:
2nd paragraph -
http://www.videomaker.com/blog/2007/01/218-grass-valleycanopus-updates-edius-41-and-announces-procoder-30-in-us

And an exerpt from wiki on AVC-HD:
The recently released Canopus AVCHD Converter allows you to convert the AVCHD clips into an editable format as long as you use Canopus' Edius 3/4. You can also apparently use Canopus ProCoder 2 to convert it to an output that other Video Editing Suites can utilize. So while the convenience is welcome, AVCHD's random access offers limited practical utility to the advanced operator
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from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD

So, support is out there. Sort of.

Jason
 
anyone found info on what the focal length/optical zoom is suppossed to be?

Also, I am guessing this will require similiar computer horsepower as editing HDV footage? (ie, more then working with DVCpro?)
 
filmguy123 said:
anyone found info on what the focal length/optical zoom is suppossed to be?

Also, I am guessing this will require similiar computer horsepower as editing HDV footage? (ie, more then working with DVCpro?)
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if you go to the large pic, you can zoom in on it.
it's 12X optical zoom
 
It’s very impressive that it has 1/4” CCDs and a F1.6 compared to F1.8 of their other two AVCHD camcorders but why is the highest setting only 13MBPS? Maybe Panasonic is keeping the higher spec secret.

I guess the JVC HD7 doesn’t have any true competition yet as far as manual features is concerned but at least this new Panasonic camcorder should have the best lowlight capabilities out of any of this years camcorders including the HC7, HV20 and the HD7.
 
Uh, well, I was kind of wondering what this had to offer compared to the Canon HV20 which has the big incentive towards filmmakers with the 24p option. I like the idea of recording to SD cards instead of tape and that the image quality is going to be angled towards the HVX200 in quality(?), but where's the 24p?

Just curious though, when did the AVC-HD format get popular? I thought the biggest complaint was even more compression with MPEG-4 versus MPEG-2?

Don't get me wrong, if this does indeed shoot 24p, I'd be very interested, very much the same way that I've always liked the Sanyo HD1 cameras (30p only though =P), downloading to cards is much better than tape.
 
Nik Manning said:
THE AVCHD is not the pro recording format is it?
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Of course it is. I mean, if HDV can be thought of as a professional recording format, AVC-HD is substantially better in so many ways. There are certain people who have tried to pigeonhole AVC-HD as a "consumer" format. Sooner or later someone's going to produce a killer AVC-HD camera head, and that nonsense will disappear as it should.

Now, it's not AVC-Intra (10-bit, 4:2:2, full-raster, frame-discrete) but for those who have been happy with HDV, AVC-HD should kick it to the curb once they pair it with a great camera head. I don't think this minicam is the one we've been waiting for, but for a 1080 network who wants a little crash cam or spy cam or tornado cam or whatever, maybe it serves a great purpose for that.
 
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