Canon Vixia HF S10

Pros: Feels solid, good video, very convenient.

Cons: Basically the less-than-ideal sound quality. Absence of an electronic viewfinder (EVF). Instead of a remote control, I would have preferred an HDMI cable...

Summary: I bought this camcorder as a replacement for an aging mini-DVD Hitachi DZMV380A, and because I had been longing for a decent flash-based cam for years: and now with HD and 16:9, the time had come to upgrade. First impressions were quite good, this cam does seem to be of good build quality.

I use my cam almost exclusively to film piano concerts of our son, and other musical events.

My main complaint: I find the sound *significantly* worse than on the Hitachi. I believe one of the main reasons is the automatic volume control, it seems to flatten the dynamics, everything is always loud, even within notes. So I now record with manual volume control, and normalize volume during post-processing. The results are certainly better (altho I think they are still worse than the Hitachi was, with latter on automatic volume control -- not sure I could go manual on it). See samples below.

The second major problem I noticed in some recordings is a ringing effect heard at times: see sample below. At this point (analysis on-going), I don't know if it's:
- the room acoustics (I doubt it, as I've heard it in a few rooms),
- the mics, or maybe their position on the side,
- the analog-to-digital converter,
- the Dolby AC-3 encoder, or
- the decoding on PC, or my post-processing (not at all impossible).
But it's almost as annoying as the other problem. No workaround for now.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find much on the web about the audio quality of any camcorder (a suggestion to editorial reviewers: get the audio folks into the picture). And I wish I could better understand how these automatic volume controls work, and why my old Hitachi seemed so much better in this regard (perhaps it had less sensitivity and the automatic volume control hardly kicked in -- I tried mic attenuation on the Canon, but that went too far to be useful).

Wrt video, I notice that there seems to be a bit more video noise compared to my old Hitachi (comparing stage recordings done in the same room). But obviously, the video looks much better, no question there.

I did have one incident which intrigued me somewhat. With the cam on a tripod, and very little movement on the stage, the image went out of focus for a few seconds then back in focus: see sample below. Not too sure why. I only noticed this once, but perhaps it has happened more than once (my eyesight isn't what it used to be, if I'm not paying attention, I might not notice). So maybe I'll switch to manual focus too :-).

Four short (~15 sec) samples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU2KhfSlh6E
- Automatic volume control --> not good
- Manual volume control, with post normalization of the audio --> better
- Ringing effect in the sound --> not good
- Focus glitch for no apparent reason
(earphones make the first three problems easier to hear)

AVCHD processing is indeed taxing on the PC (even with a decent PC, it still takes four times elapsed to process the video into DVD-compatible video). But the end result on a DVD is much better (for the video) than the old Hitachi.

Finally a few comments on the documentation. It does not describe what "cine" mode does. Sure, I can just try it out, but maybe I won't see all it does, and so not know just when I'd want to use it. What I see is reduced contrast and color saturation (I can see some use for that, stages are very contrasty). And the manual doesn't tell me how much the mic attenuation is (is it -20dB, or more as it seems). But in general, it is very good, with cross-references all over, and enough icons for a lifetime.