Panasonic's HDC-SD1 and HDC-DX1 AVCHD 1080i camcorders loosed

Say good morning to the first production run of Panasonic's AVCHD 1080i 3CCD camcorders. That's right, Panny took the drab yet so, so sexy CEATEC prototype and turned her out with some shiny new paint as the HDC-SD1. Fortunately, it's still packing that 12x optical zoom Leica DICOMAR lens in addition to a 3-inch LCD, 1.5-hour battery, and HDMI (1.2a) for output and control with Panasonic's VIERA Link universal remote. The camera utilizes those three 1/4-inch CCDs to record video to SD/SDHC cards for up to 90/60/40-minutes with 13/9/6-Mbps compression, respectively, when toting the bundled 4GB SDHC card. It'll even grab a 1.5 megapixel snap while simultaneously recording if you have the urge. On sale in Japan for ¥180,000 or about $1,531 starting December 1st. Oh, and Panny also announced their HDC-DX1 model which shares the same specs but records to 8-cm DVDs instead for ¥160,000 (about $1,361) starting December 15th. More pics of both 3CCD cams after the break.

[Via Impress]

[Jacques Leclerc @ Nov 8th 2006 7:30AM]

Great look,I hope the image quality will be there. I have been waiting for a 3 ccd hd camcorder for a while and it is finally out. I am sure that this machine will put some pressure on Sony and Canon to come out with their own 3 ccd's.I hope that someone could post a review soon and that it will be available in Canada rapidly.

[Rob @ Nov 8th 2006 8:50AM]

Sony seems to be committed to CMOS chips, but they do have 3-chip (CMOS) HDV cameras, which seem to work pretty well. And the AVCHD format of doesn't seem to be implemented well in these early cameras, compared to HDV. AVCHD has lots of compression artifact when anything moves fast in front of the lens, and also seems to intensify any image noise. This may be due the current AVCHD cameras using only 15Mbps of the possible 24Mbps maximum AVCHD bitrate. From everything I've read, I'd go with an HDV camera over any current AVCHD camera, regardless of sensor chip and manufacturer (Sony's HDV cameras produce better images than their AVCHD cameras).

[Gil @ Nov 8th 2006 10:01AM]

Too bad about the format. Who really wants to record 10 minutes then swap.

[Michael Knieriemen @ Nov 8th 2006 10:04AM]

10 minutes? Sony's HDAVC HDR-SR1 which has a 30 GB HHD can record up to 4 hours on the highest quality setting and that's with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.

[pwfletcher @ Nov 8th 2006 10:19AM]

Hmmm ... I just ordered the Canon HV10 yesterday. I like the 3CCD chips in the Panny, but don't think that AVCHD is quite ready for prime time yet. Plus, it is relatively unsupported by editing software as of yet.

[Richard Kaufmann @ Nov 8th 2006 12:11PM]

I own the Sony SR1. Love the quality. Yeah, AVCHD was a pain until folks figured out a combination of TMPGEnc Express 4 and the decoder pack from PowerDVD can be used to transcode it to a more readily editable format.

[Rick Lyon @ Nov 8th 2006 12:16PM]

Not only that, but how does one expect to share the video with someone not standing in their livingroom watching as the camera is connected to your HDTV? Please. Sony and their proprietary crap. We need a HD cam that can record HD up to at least 60 minutes and then if we don't have a HD-DVD/BRD burner, that can down rez widescreen to SD to burn to a normal DVD.

[Omar @ Nov 8th 2006 3:34PM]

Rick, it's Sony's "proprietary crap" is it? Hav you forgotten you're posting on a Panasonic press release?

You want HD recordings that can down-res and playback in normal DVD player without the need for PC? How do you propose to have a DVD disc that can do that on the fly? Perhaps build a 3ghz CPU into the disc itself?! If you're going to rip something at least understand it first.

[Blink @ Nov 8th 2006 5:22PM]

Sony has that all figured out already, didn't you hear. They decided to put 6 "Cell" processors on a single 8cm disk. The only problem is that it will explode when you try to charge the built in battery. They are calling it UMD-Extreme!!! The other downside is that the player costs $47,000. The player is code named PS4. Microsoft said they are going to do the same thing, but using wireless processing technology that will some how be the 1TB iPod killer.

Sorry, it was just way to easy.

[Andrew @ Nov 8th 2006 9:07PM]

You'd think it'd be far more compact, given the recording format. It looks big in the model's hand:

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20061108/pana1_07.jpg

Then again, Japanese hands run small.

Being in the market for an HD camcorder for some very long trips to all sorts of places, I'm still waiting for that perfect HD + Hard drive combination to pack with my Mac and Final Cut Pro. Gonna skip this one.

[beansac @ Dec 10th 2006 12:33PM]

I'm not quite understanding the compression vs time available. "Up to 90/60/40-minutes with 13/9/6-Mbps compression, respectively," indicates that the higher quality means you can record longer. I understand what they mean I think, but theres a little ambiguity in the wording.

[peterb @ Nov 9th 2006 5:45AM]

I like very much! Note it's also got proper optical stabilisation -this is important!

Am I the only one here who finds recording to DVD faintly quaint and old fashoined these days? Surely the advantages of the SDHD cards must be obvious? Using DVD must kill battery life and make the thing I whole lot less reliable. And if anyone is worrying about record time the maximum card capacity of the format is 32GB. This will give about 3 1/2 hourse of record time. The current biggest is 16GB and it's expensive but who is to bet these cards will be mainstream to coincide with when this camera and technology is mainstream?

Saying that, I won't be buying one until late next year. Never buy version 1.0.

[theddy @ Nov 9th 2006 12:30PM]

i got a sony hdr-sr1 the pictures are great the only thing that sucks is that you cannot edit yet the avchd format. i'm hoping that this panny avchd camcorder will come with a video editing tool for avchd.

[JR @ Jan 1st 2007 3:56PM]

I agree with Andrew. I'm also waiting for the quality High Def + High Capacity (i.e. hard drive) iMovie compatibile (no AVCHD artifacts, thank you). For now, I'll stick with the lower quality digital camera movies that record onto SD (stores as AVI and can be imported and viewed in iPhoto with a quicktime plugin --> then into iMovie. I think that is still better than my old VHS-C Panny and a bit more portable.

Come on vendors, pick up the pace and quality please...

[Artcomm @ Feb 27th 2007 7:37PM]

Just the other day I left a comment about a Sanyo H.264 compression system that I felt produced an outstanding quality in the picture as long as not a leaf moved. Then the artifacts would come up in a way that the movie is simply not worth anything.

I understood that the whole problem was a cpu in the camera with not enough power to compress properly. I have used the DIVX compressor getting "Home Theater Quality" with an image quality (at 7 hours per 4.7 GB DVD)that was simply better than any commercial DVD I have seen.

If this is what the Panasonic CPU will make possible, I am crazy about putting my hands on one of these. But somebody already mentioned the "artifacts" when things move in fron of the camera. That is an indication that there is still a long way to go...

Those artifacts are simply unbearable. The DivX compressor achieves its quality with TIME time and more time. We are talking 3 minutes per minute of movie on 2.9 Ghz CPU (2 years old or more). But within a camera and in real time? This would have to be a compressor with the power of an 8 Ghz Pentium and those are not yet available anywhere... at least not that I know of.

Doew what I have written make any sense? Please, correct me if I am wrong in the way I see this.

[Richard Stuart @ May 23rd 2007 5:30PM]

Well, I looked at the Sony, the Canon and the Pany. I bought the Pany SD1. I have the Pinnacle Studio 11 Plus software. It all works great! I don't see any problems so far. Just plug the card into the PC (using the 4G adapter ($15)and drag a copy in. Easy to edit with PIN 11. The output is great on my wide screen and on the std screen TV. I am recording in the top quality mode, mostly, so 40mins. per 4G card. I have an 8G card on order, but doing OK with the 3 4G cards I have. I don't use the Pany SW so I can't really comment. It seems to be pretty basic. It didn't seem as complete as PIN 11. If I had it to do again, I would make the same choice. The control set up is very intuitive. I haven't read the manual yet and I am doing fine. I wish I could find a spare/additional battery, but I am sure this will be available soon.
Richard

[simon Tyrrell @ Oct 3rd 2007 7:03PM]

Bought Apple macBook pro at the same time. HDC SD1 won't import into iMovie. Works fine on my MacBook Core2duo. Been on the phone to Apple, they are stumped, been so see a video solution expert, they are stumped. Several other people are having the same problem.

[Craig Todd @ Nov 15th 2007 2:25PM]

I wish these units would support recording in 720P 60fps. Quality would be much better without trying to code interlace artifacts, motion would be much better, and the content would hold up much better with editing, etc. I'd buy one of these now except for lack of 720P60 support.
Does anyone make a camcorder that supports 720P60? I have seen some that do 720P30.

[RUSSIAN88 @ Jan 20th 2008 7:17AM]

Have you seen cameras that can record both 1080i and 720p? i've been searching for one of those. Cuz i don't now how well it work to deinterlase when editing.