Thursday
Oct182007
SD-5 Video
Thursday, October 18, 2007 at 10:39AM 
OK, finally, an example of an HD movie from the Panasonic HDC-SD5 video camera. It's a 3-CCD camera that records 1920x1080 HD video to SD card in AVCHD.
This isn't a perfect example because it's been edited in iMovie and exported as a 960x540 H.264 Quicktime movie. The original is higher resolution, but the size is too big to post. I suspect most people will end up using this size anyway.
Views of Vancouver 60 seconds: Download Quicktime - 27.9MB
As I've said before, I love this camera. It's compact and takes excellent video. The optical image stabilization works very well. For example, in the video above, the sequence with the photographer and woman on the Vancouver bridge was shot handheld zoomed all the way out.
The camera doesn't have a dedicated audio connector - so you're stuck with the on camera audio, but it's just right as a family camera. A really, really, high-quality family camera.
Reader Comments (18)
Thanks for the clip.
Does anyone know when this camera is available in Canada? Friend of mine is looking to pick it up.
I told to get it from amazon.com
That's some great video. If you look really closely you can see Leo in the reflection of the window. Why is he in his underwear? Just kidding...
What's the price on this?
The video is great - especially because I've just been taking my video with a 7.1MP digital.
Leo -- FWIW, Safari beta 3.03 blows chunks on the download of your Vancouver movie.
Clicking the link opens the file in the same window filled with data, no video. Ctrl-click to force download to a file locks up Safari on the Preparing to Download in the Downloads window.
I moved all Safari prefs to desktop to start with clean downloads.plist, cache etc. and it made no difference.
Firefox took about 12 seconds to download.
Anyone have similar issues with Safari Beta 3?
Oh...nice camera! Almost a good reason to have another rounds of kids. On second thought I don't think so -- I will wait for the grandchildren.
That video looks fantastic. I gots to get me one of those.
wow.
i got the sanyo xacti cg56 the day before yesterday, because i looked at the budget hi-def ones (sanyo xacti hd2 and another one i can't remember) and i didn't think they were worth the extra money (i didn't get the panasonic sdr-s10 andy mentioned on the show because it had very bad reviews in low light, whereas the sanyo was passable).
now i know what my next camcorder will be (and it should have 1080p by the time i get the money :)
Leo you read my mind. I was actually looking at one of these to shoot a new Video podcast I'm going to be doing soon (don't worry, it doesn't comepete with any TWiT shows) :) - anywho, I was thinking of recording Audio seperate, and putting this on a tripod. 30gb version right?
Anyway, here it's about $600 (£259). I'll give it a try... beats the Samsung MiniDV Cam I have now, and it's drag and drop files, who could complain.
The video quality on this is simply amazing - unbelievable how far we've come! Too bad it doesn't take external microphones, though.
Oh, and Leo - I hope that chimney doesn't blow out anything toxic, looks mighty suspicious, mind You...
wow! the detail is fabulous. would love to have one of these. (how much?)
Looks fantastic Leo - thanks for sharing - I just might want to get one of those too
Leo,
Huge fan of your work, keep it up!
I played with an SD1 a few weeks ago and loved the picture quality but hated the fact that transferring video to iMovie '08 took longer than HDV even on my Mac Pro!
How are you importing the video? Is Final Cut and its new Pro Res codec a faster route?
Leo,
Strangely, when I use Safari (Tiger ed.), the file downloads as VancouverBC.m4v.txt , and a a result, downloads as a text file. Nothing a little extension adjustment can't fix on my end, but nevertheless something you may be interested in correcting.
Thanks!
I wonder how the SD5 compares to the Sanyo Xacti HD1000. I figure since Leo just bought this one, I am going to wait a few weeks for something much better to come out.
;)
The Clip is awesome, watching the detail of the guys on the dome is incredible.
I am very interested in this camera, went to BestBuys in California, they have it for $999, but on doing research, it seems hard to edit H.264,(in windows) I just bought Elements 6.0 & 4.o (just released) it doesn't support AVC-HD. Also my Vista machine doesn't like mp4 yet, I played your clip in Itunes (windows version) it played razor sharp, I had to look at it 3-4 times, it looked so great on my 24" Dell monitor. If you get time, Please show us some Edited clips in iMovie 07, or 08. I want to see how effects & Transitions renders out of this highly compressed footage. Looking forward to a 1 minute clip from EGYPT. I have 2 Vista machines & 2 Mac machines.
Your my 2007 Broadcaster of the year.
As linked to by leo:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000TVSYMQ/leoville0f-20/
$800 isn't bad at all for such great quality. I paid around $1000 for a miniDV camera when they first game out in the late 90s, and it was money well spent.
Thanks Ice and of course Mr Laporte.
That is some nice looking video. Of course, the lack of external mic can always be fixed by recording audio to another device and then syncing in post. Just be sure to slate each take, and you probably will need something more robust than iMovie.