Panasonic HDC-SD9: 1080/24p AVCHD camcorder

I wonder if it is native, I assume it is with pulldown.
But I'm pretty sure it does 60 frame over 24p in that 3 seconds limited slomo mode.
 
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It has 0.3mil pixel LCD display, how is that calculate to the pixel ratio? I guess it is regular SD display?
 
correct me if im wrong, but isnt this camera without headphone and mic jacks? i would love to have this camera, but the lack of audio control makes it useless to me
 
pwr2thepenguins said:
correct me if im wrong, but isnt this camera without headphone and mic jacks? i would love to have this camera, but the lack of audio control makes it useless to me
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Yeah its a pain but a mini disc recorder and clapper board go a long way remeber film is still shot this way
 
AuditoryVisuals said:
Hmm... Like the HVX200, but with sensors only a quarter the size. Doesn't sound very good at all.
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For Professionals, you're right, it doesn't sound good at all.
But the camera is clearly intended for the consumer market, where most consumers probably won't care about the quality of the chip set.
However, it doesn't require much effort for a consumer to research the variables in image quality between competing cameras and discover that small chip AVCHD cameras may not be their best choice,
so Panasonic should be taking appropriate measures and begin developing AVCHD cameras that produce higher image quality, set at a higher price of course, to accomodate that part of the market.
Many consumers may not put image quality too high on their priority list compared to cost and ease of use, which is where the SD9 really seems to be seizing high ground.
 
Digigenic said:
so Panasonic should be taking appropriate measures and begin developing AVCHD cameras that produce higher image quality, set at a higher price of course, to accomodate that part of the market.
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I suspect it has more to do with size than cost, and that is true for all manufacturers. If you want a very small camera, it will have small chips, and it will therefore be compromised with respect to resolution and/or sensitivity. To say nothing of diffraction problems severely limiting usable aperture range. As has been said before - this is fundamentally a consumer camera, nothing wrong with that, but don't expect it be other than it is.

My suspicion is it will produce good pictures for a consumer - as long as the light levels are fairly high.

No doubt newer Panasonic cameras will come along with bigger chips, but at a certain point doesn't it make sense for them to be AVC-Intra, rather than AVC-HD? At a certain (mid) point in the market, being switchable to either format may make a lot of sense.
 
harddrive said:
No doubt newer Panasonic cameras will come along with bigger chips, but at a certain point doesn't it make sense for them to be AVC-Intra, rather than AVC-HD? At a certain (mid) point in the market, being switchable to either format may make a lot of sense.
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Camera manufacturers are already making consumer cameras with larger chips -- dSLRs and dSLR-like cameras. Most models in the former category use chips that are close to to the size of a 35-mm motion picture aperture, whereas the latter category uses chips about a half inch. At least two companies are basing models on Sony's IMX017CQE CMOS chip: Casio's Exilim Pro EX-F1 is a still camera that does video, while Samsung's SC-HMX20C is a video camera that also does stills! In other words, the line between digicam and camcorder is becoming increasingly blurred, particularly with the elimination of tape drives. Nothing is preventing the development of a dSLR-sized chip with similar (or better) specs. True the ergonomics differ between still and video cam, but that would seem relatively easy to sort out.

While AVC-Intra would be a better choice for professionals, the added cost of the technology -- for the camera circuitry (which Jan Crittenden, I believe, has said would be prohibitive even for an HVX-level camera) and the necessarily more robust editing systems (which possibly could be obviated with cheap coprocessors like the Cell) -- would seem to make it unlikely for an HVX-level camcorder. But I guess "midpoint" is a moving target. If Panasonic were to release a $75,000 to $100,000 Varicam successor, it may consider the $30,000 or so for the HPX2000 with the optional AVC-Intra card (but sans lens) to be the midpoint of the HD market.

There are, however, other emerging options worth keeping an eye on, including Cineform's 1,920 x 1,080 (or 1,280 x 720), 4:2:2, 10-bit direct-to-disk recorder, which could cost less than $2,000 and measure about 5 x 3 x 1.5 inches.
 
Tzedekh said:
While AVC-Intra would be a better choice for professionals, the added cost of the technology -- for the camera circuitry .......... and the necessarily more robust editing systems (which possibly could be obviated with cheap coprocessors like the Cell) -- would seem to make it unlikely for an HVX-level camcorder.
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If that is true, I can only say I'm surprised.

My understanding was that AVC-Intra and AVC-HD were fundamentally the same technology, with AVC-Intra effectively "I-frame only AVC", AVC-HD having the added complexity of interframe coding. In which case, AVC-Intra should be inherently EASIER to encode and certainly need much less processing power to edit - for all the same reasons DV and DVCProHD need less grunt than MPEG2. The DISADVANTAGE is that it comes at the price of bigger file sizes for comparable quality, but obviously that's less of a problem the higher up the professional ladder you go.

What I can see happening for an HVX-level camcorder is AVC-Intra, but only the 50Mbs version - partly for fair technical reasons, partly for marketing. That's fair enough, but AVC-HD AS WELL may make sense.
 
harddrive said:
What I can see happening for an HVX-level camcorder is AVC-Intra, but only the 50Mbs version - partly for fair technical reasons, partly for marketing. That's fair enough, but AVC-HD AS WELL may make sense.
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Gee, I hope that Panasonic doesn't implement 50-Mbps-only AVC-Intra on an HVX-level camcorder. Maybe I'm mistaken, but it's 4:2:0 and 8-bit, which doesn't offer any advantage except twice the recording time -- and with greater P2 capacities (32 GB is a reality, and 64 GB is probably less than a year away), that should be less of an issue than it was. No, if it's going to go through the trouble of implementing AVC-Intra, Panasonic should do 100-Mbps. Hell, I'd like to see 200-Mbps for 4:4:4 encoding.
 
I saw this thing at CES, it was pretty cool. The Canon was pretty sweet too. The panny has the 3CCD 1/6 chips and uses pixel-shift like the HVX and the Canon has a 1920X1080 cmos chip. They both looked great. Canon is like $400 more which makes me think it's a little better. Seemed a little sharper.
 
I had HV10 and have HV20, but the rolling shutter issue gives me problems too often (because I do onboard shooting on my bike), so I'm hoping SD9 would be good for that.
I'm keeping HV20 anyway to play back all of my HDV tapes.
 
JesterJJZ said:
I saw this thing at CES, it was pretty cool. The Canon was pretty sweet too.........They both looked great.
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But did you see either of them in other than good lighting? That's one of the main things that distinguishes consumer cameras and their small chips from more pro cameras.
 
Tzedekh said:
Maybe I'm mistaken, but it's 4:2:0 and 8-bit
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Partly mistaken. It is 4:2:0, but it's still 10-bit.

AVC-Intra 100mbps: 4:2:2, 1920x1080 or 1280x720, 10-bit, intraframe
AVC-Intra 50mbps: 4:2:0, 1440x1080 or 960x720, 10-bit, intraframe
AVC-HD: 6 to 24mbps, 4:2:0, 1920x1080 or 1440x1080 or 1280x720, 8-bit, long-GOP
 
Barry_Green said:
Partly mistaken. It is 4:2:0, but it's still 10-bit.
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Thanks, Barry, for the correction. Better than 8-bit, but still only 4:2:0, and not full 1,920 x 1,080. At 100 Mbps, however, it would have the same data rate as DVCProHD, but a greater color space and a 50% greater horizontal spatial resolution (yeah, I know, pixel count, not necessarily significantly better real-world resolved detail).
 
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And also better clarity and noise performance (i.e., less mosquito noise).

50-megabit is basically for low-bandwidth applications like news and whatnot. The 100-megabit version is what everyone's amped about.
 
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