October 16, 2006, 4:26 PM PDT
Pure Digital makes the first Web 2.0 camcorder
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

Pure Digital has upgraded the el cheapo flash memory camcorder it's been selling since May through retail stores, such as Target. See our previous blog post and review. The new version, which sells for the same price ($129 for a unit that will record 30 minutes; a 60-minute version is also available), has improved audio and video quality and longer battery life, company reps told me. The external hardware is the same: a generic-looking white case with one very interesting feature: a USB port that swings out to transfer data.

The real news is the improved software. Once you plug the device into your PC, it will automatically launch software that's stored on the camcorder to upload your videos directly to Grouper. Here's my first video made with the product.

There is no easier way to shoot and post a video. You can also take the device into a store (such as Target) and have a DVD of your videos pressed in about an hour.

There are downsides, though. The product is supposed to make it easy to upload to Google Video as well as Grouper, but for Google, all it does is put your videos on your desktop and open the upload page on the Google Video site. And it doesn't do anything at all for YouTube, although given the Google acquisition of YouTube, that may change. The software does make it easy to get videos off the device so that you can upload them wherever your want, but the lack of interactivity with other services is bothersome.

More snags: The software crashes if the unit powers down while it's plugged in, which it does automatically after a few minutes, and you will probably need to buy a USB extender cable, since when the device is connected, it is likely to interfere with cables or the table your computer is sitting on. And despite the cult-of-Mac glossy white case, its software doesn't automatically launch when you plug it into a Macintosh. Finally, the camcorder will not recharge when plugged in; even the lowliest $79 iPod Shuffle recharges when docked.

Power users and those who are bothered by products that seem to be not quite done will be better off shooting video with a real camcorder or with any modern point-and-shoot digital camera. But Pure Digital's device is still about the simplest tapeless video camcorder you can get by a wide margin, and it gets big points in my book for that. I also really like that the device contains its own software and can run it automatically when it's plugged in.

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September 19, 2006, 6:50 AM PDT
Sony announces pro HD camcorder, HVR-V1U
Posted by: Lori Grunin

As has become Sony tradition, the company follows up a consumer camcorder announcement with a pro version of the same model. In this case, the Sony HVR-V1U builds on the $3,500 HDR-FX7. It uses the same trio of 1/4-inch, 1-megapixel ClearVid CMOS sensors and 20X zoom lens, housed in a similar chassis about the size of the VX2100.

The biggest feature you pay for with the extra $1,300--the V1U will run $4,800 when it ships in December--is progressive-scan support. That's for 1080 24p recording, however, not 720p or 1080p; like the FX7, the V1U records HDV 1080i footage.

The V1U also offers far more extensive audio controls, plus two XLR inputs and a bundled shotgun microphone. It also allows you to save custom settings to a Memory Stick for transfer to another camcorder; the FX7 can save them only to internal memory.

At its price, the V1U faces some interesting competition: the forthcoming, less expensive Canon XH A1 and the slightly more expensive but 1080p-capable Panasonic Panasonic AG-HVX200 . Sony also plans to ship the HVR-DR60, an optional, $1,800 60GB add-on for recording directly to a hard disk.

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August 21, 2006, 7:39 AM PDT
Panasonic announces U.S. version of SD camcorder
Posted by: Lori Grunin

Although the company announced its new SDR-S150 flash-based, 3CCD camcorder in June for overseas markets, Panasonic today revealed availability for the United States: next month. It will come with a 2GB SD card and have a retail price of just less than $1,000.

That is all.

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August 02, 2006, 7:31 AM PDT
Canon freshens camcorder line
Posted by: Lori Grunin

This morning, Canon awoke early to take its DC20 and DC30 DVD camcorders off the shelf and replace them with a single model, the DC22. The DC22's main claim to fame is the ability to use dual-layer DVD-R/W discs to double your fun--and the recording time as well. Canon also added a wide-screen LCD and viewfinder and an electronic lens cover. Otherwise, all specs are identical to the DC20's. The DC22 will be available later this month for $699.

Oh yeah, the company also announced what promises to be a hot new HDV camcorder, the HV10. Or perhaps I should say "cool" new camcorder, given the tape-melting heat here in NYC.

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July 26, 2006, 4:48 AM PDT
Canon unveils prosumer HD cams
Posted by: Lori Grunin

Update July 27: Mea culpa. In my original post I mistakenly had said that these models would be replacing the GL2. In fact, they are new siblings.

Finally giving independent videographers something to choose from besides its popular but long-in-the-tooth GL2, Canon announced two HDV models designed to appeal to the prosumer and entry-level pro markets. Derived from the same technology that the pro-level XL H1 uses, the XH A1 and XH G1 HDV models share the same design but differ in a few critical input/output capabilities necessary for professionals.

Both models use three wide-aspect 1/3-inch CCDs with a native 1080i (1,440x1,080) resolution; like the XL H1, they can record in 30F or 24F frame rates (Canon's nomenclature for 30fps and 24fps), but not in 720p. In fact, their feature sets share many of the capabilities of the XL H1, including the Digic DV II processor, Super-Range Optical Image Stabilization, and customization architecture. The XH series have fixed 20X zoom lenses rather than the interchangeable lenses on the XL but offer more of a wide-angle view: 32.5mm in 35mm-equivalent terms.

The XH G1's added attraction for pros is the equivalent of the XL H1's Jack Pack: HD-SDI output with embedded audio and time code, Genlock synchronization, and Timecode In/Out.

The XH A1 is slated to ship in October for $3,999 and the XH G1 in November for $6,999.

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July 18, 2006, 4:21 PM PDT
Sony's fall camcorders
Posted by: Lori Grunin

Sony's going all out with its hard drive camcorder, um, drive, if today's announcements are any indication. The company announced a disk-based version of its HDR-HC1 model, as well as lower-end line mates for its currently shipping Handycam DCR-SR100. There's also an HD-DVD model that records in the AVCHD format.

The HDR-SR1 1080i uses Sony's ClearVid sensor and records on a 30GB hard drive, outputs HDMI to an HDTV for best quality, and includes built-in Dolby 5.1 recording. It's slated to ship in October for $1,500. Based on what I've seen with the SR100, I expect the SR1 to be a killer model.

On the flip side, the HDR-UX1 is the same camcorder, but DVD-based. As I've mentioned before, I'm not really fond of the idea of AVCHD recording on mini DVDs--it just seems like too many transition technologies piled into one product. At least the $1,400 camcoder will support dual-layer discs, for a total of about 60 minutes of recording time, when it ships in September.

Two of the low-end HDD camcorders, the DCR-SR80 and -SR60, will use a 1-megapixel sensor, which may be a bit too low resolution for decent MPEG-2 recording; I'm almost sure the 680K sensor in the SR40 is. The first two have 12X zoom lenses, while the third tries to compensate with a 20X zoom. They all have 30GB hard drives. All three ship next month, for $800 (SR80), $700 (SR60), and $600 (SR40).

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June 08, 2006, 12:53 PM PDT
Panasonic intros next-gen SD camcorder, new card
Posted by: Lori Grunin

Although the company hasn't indicated U.S. availability, Panasonic Japan has announced the SDR-S150, the follow-on to its SD-S100 SD-based camcorder. The SDR-S150 has almost identical specs to its predecessor--three 800,000-pixel CCDs, optical image stabilization, and a 2.8-inch LCD, for starters--but supports SD cards larger than 2GB. This announcement coincides with--you guessed it--Panasonic's 4GB SD card news. Both are slated to be available elsewhere in August.

The 4GB card is the first to bear the SDHC logo: SD High Capacity. In reality, the logo is more important for the read/write hardware, such as digital cameras; basically, it says, "FAT32 spoken here." The other aspect of the latest iteration of the SD spec also clarifies--and I use the term loosely--card performance by clumping them into groups by minimum sustained data transfer rate (MSDTR): Class 2 equals 2MB per second, Class 4 equals 4MB per second, and Class 6 equals 6MB per second.

The only possible rationale I can see for this system is to allow marketers to snow consumers with ambiguous performance claims. To wit: a card with a 3.5MB-per-second MSDTR and one with a 2MB-per-second MSDTR both become Class 2 cards, despite the fact that the former's performance is closer to that of a Class 4 card than of Class 2. Why can't they just report the actual MSDTR or translate the performance to some sort of normalized scale (along the lines of the older x ratings) if people are scared of the real rates?

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May 11, 2006, 8:19 AM PDT
HD camcorders take one step forward, two steps back
Posted by: Lori Grunin

Panasonic and Sony announced today that they're working on technology to record HD video on Secure Digital (SD) cards. That makes sense, given that Panasonic has a huge investment in SD manufacturing, but thankfully, it also makes sense from a technological standpoint for camcorders. The write speed for HD-DVD (PDF) and Blu-ray, mini versions of which are the current contenders for HD camcorders, are currently limited to about 4.5MB per second; even the theoretical maximum transfer rate for Blu-ray is only about 55MB per second. That's fine for playback, but real-time DVCPro HD-quality recording requires 12.5MB per second, and uncompressed 720p or 1080i takes 45MB per second or more. They could probably handle HDV, but IMHO, that's a stopgap format to allow everyone to continue using MiniDV tapes.

In contrast, SD cards today can handle 22MB per second, and the current controller interface can handle 66MB per second. And manufacturers can ramp up capacities far faster than with optical formats. In addition, obtaining the higher transfer rate with an optical drive requires spinning the disc faster, which results in a noisier mechanism. I bet a camcorder microphone is bound to pick that up. Plus, SD is more durable and easier to work with, especially in the field, and I believe it's cheaper to implement an SD solution than an optical-based one.

But...alas, there's always a but. In conjunction with the SD work, the two companies are also plowing ahead with promoting a recording format that can fit HD on mini DVD discs. AVCHD, which stands for the marriage of the MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (a.k.a. H.264) and HD, has a maximum transfer rate of 2.3MB per second. That's not bad. But even though AVC is a high-quality MPEG-4 codec, it's designed to produce a high-quality playback stream from high-quality source material that's passed through complex, iterated, variable-bit-rate compression--not real-time compression from iffy source video.

Furthermore, they're imposing this suboptimal encoding solution on SD-based recording, rather than aiming higher and taking advantage of the format's available bandwidth.

I dunno. Maybe they have some magic algorithms up their sleeves that can produce silk playback out of a sow's video. Or maybe I'm just seen too much bad MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 video come out of camcorders, despite the occasional exception in a higher-end model.

Guess I'll just have to wait and see.

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May 09, 2006, 8:45 AM PDT
JVC updates its three-CCD Everio
Posted by: Lori Grunin

JVC brings its top Everio in line with the rest of this year's models. Based around the same trio of 1/4.5-inch, 1.33-megapixel CCDs as last year's GZ-MG500, this year's GZ-MG505 incorporates a 30GB hard drive rather than a removable microdrive, which allows it to store as much as seven hours of best-quality MPEG-2 video.

Though it lacks the long zoom lens of the lower-end Everios, the GZ-MG505's 10X zoom offers a relatively wide-angle view--for a camcorder--of 41.2mm in 16:9 aspect-ratio mode (35mm equivalent). As with many of its camcorders, JVC uses its Megabrid engine to capture 5-megapixel (interpolated) still photos.

It looks as if JVC is attempting to address some of the problems we had with the last model--it now has a microphone jack and accessory shoe, plus a larger, low-res, 2.7-inch wide-screen LCD--but it still lacks manual controls. And with the same sensor and noise-reduction algorithms, the GZ-MG505's low-light performance most likely won't see much improvement. The addition of variable-bit-rate encoding may help general video quality, however.

At least when it ships, slated for July, it will be cheaper than its predecessor at $1,399.

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May 02, 2006, 9:10 AM PDT
Camcorders go point-and-shoot
Posted by: Philip Ryan

Remember those single-use camcorders that CVS started selling last year? Now, Pure Digital Technologies, the company that made them, has added a USB connector that swings out of the side of the unit and stuffed viewer software inside it to make a simple plug-and-play model that it calls the world's first point-and-shoot camcorder. It goes on sale at Target today for $129.99.

The camera stores as much as 30 minutes of VGA-quality video on internal flash memory, so capacity and quality are limited. But it has a 1.4-inch LCD screen on back for instant review, so you can delete any clips right away that you decide you don't want, and it has a video output, so you can view clips on any TV with a composite-video input. It seems a bit pricey for video that you could probably capture with most of the still cameras being sold today, but it may come in handy for situations where you're afraid you might break your fancy little point-and-shoot. Plus, if the plug-and-play interface turns out to be as simple as claimed, it might be useful for the technologically illiterate. If you're really lazy, you can bring the Pure Digital to any CVS, Rite-Aid, or Ritz/Wolf Camera store that processes the single-use version; for a $10 fee and a 1-hour wait, they'll make a DVD of any footage stored on the camera.

Interestingly, Pure Digital has licensed the camera to RCA, which will market them for the same price under the name RCA Small Wonder camcorders. We expect a working sample to arrive today and will report back here tomorrow to let you know what we think of it.

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