11 out of 11 people found this review helpful.
Great camera, mediocre software
Date of Review: Dec 2, 2007
The Bottom Line: A very good camera, somewhat blemished by a weak software bundle. A very good choice if you use a third-party video editing package.
Quick Summary
Very high quality video; small, lightweight camera body; nice feature set; good low-light options; funky, piecemeal software bundle. Overall, a very nice camera.
What's in the Box
Camera, battery, AC adapter/charger, wireless remote, USB cable, component video cable, A/V cable, software bundle, manual (some software manuals on disk as PDFs). There is no shoulder/neck strap included, so I bought one separately. There's a single metal loop on the existing hand strap that you can use to attach both ends of a neck strap, provided it has narrow (3/8" or less) strap ends. Still photos require a MiniSD card, also not included.
First Impressions
The camera is very small and light, but not hard to control, even with big hands. The flip-out screen is smallish but bright and clear. Video and audio quality are excellent.
Shooting Video
The controls for stop/rec and zoom are where you'd expect them. Zoom and autofocus are smooth and responsive, and there's not much startup lag when you press Rec (maybe a second or so). Each time you start/stop, that chunk of video is saved as its own file on the internal hard disk, and shows up as a separate scene in the playlist.
Battery Life
Battery life with the included battery is mediocre. My guess is that you can shoot for between 60-90 minutes on a full charge. I'll probably go buy the extended battery now that I've had a chance to test the included battery.
Video/Audio Quality Options and Format
This camera has four video quality settings: 5, 7, 9, and 15Mbps (LP, SP, XP, and HXP, respectively). Video is recorded in AVCHD format. Canon's sensor is 1920x1080, but the video produced is 1440x1080 H.264 16:9 29.97 fps. The difference between SP (the default) and HXP (the highest-quality setting) are not great, but they are noticeable -- SP is a bit "softer" and less crisp.
Depending on what quality level you choose, the internal hard disk will hold anywhere from 5.5 hours to 15 hours. I'm using the highest-quality setting, and the video does look very nice, but it burns up hard disk space at a fierce rate – 1GB every 7.5 minutes or so. If you're transferring the video to a PC and storing it there, expect to chew up disk space quickly.
The video quality is excellent, in my opinion, and is a huge improvement from my old Hi-8 camera. This is the primary reason I upgraded, and I have not been disappointed.
The audio quality is good (2-channel Dolby Digital) and fairly sensitive, and doesn't generally pick up the sound of the camera or its controls/buttons. A boom mic can be attached to the Advanced Accessory Shoe, and you can also use the 3.5mm mic jack on the front to attach an external mic.
There are a number of 'canned' recording options (low light, sunset, fireworks, sports, etc.) for different types of recording situations.
One major omission is the ability to date stamp the video. My old camera had a feature that would add a date stamp in the corner for 10 seconds the first time you shot for the day, and it was very handy. There is no way to embed date/time in the video (although you can display it if you're watching via the camera). The filenames are named based on the date/time, so that's a workaround.
The Flip-Out Screen
You'll probably shoot using the flip-out screen, but there is a color eyepiece as well. The eyepiece can be pulled out a bit for comfort. The screen can be flipped around so the subject can see themselves being filmed, and can also be folded back flush against the camera with the screen out. This would be convenient for playback, except that the playback controls are then upside down, which is a little goofy (although it does reverse the operation of the 4-way control, which is nice).
The screen has two sets of controls on it: a row of buttons on the bottom for play/pause/FF/rew, and a combination 4-way arrow key + OK + jog wheel combo. This combo is a little unwieldy and takes some getting used to – I find myself not knowing whether to use the up/down arrows or rotate the jog wheel during certain operations.
Menus and Options
The menus can be accessed through the screen and controls, but some of the menu items are either disabled or not present in "AUTO" mode. If you switch the camera to "P" mode, you have more flexibility to configure things. (I find myself shooting in Auto mode most of the time.)
Some of the options (such as low-light mode) are quite challenging to find. The menu system is inconsistent and has several different paradigms to access all of the items, which makes it more confusing than it needs to be. It's not horrible, but it could be better. You can normally find what you need reasonably fast with some groping around.
"Quickstart" Mode
There's a cool feature called "quickstart" that I really like. If you're shooting lots of short scenes throughout the day, you can push the quickstart button to put the camera into a "sleep" mode rather than turn it off. Then, when you want to shoot again, you just push quickstart again and the camera's ready to shoot within a second or two. This is very handy and addresses a very common problem with video cameras.
Low Light Recording
This camera performs similarly to other video cameras I've used in low light situations – typically, the colors are grainy and the video quality suffers a bit, but it does OK. This camera also has two other options: a "night mode," which slows down the shutter speed (and resultant frame rate, making the video streaky and jerky when shooting in an almost-dark room), and a small light on the front. The little light is bluish and creates somewhat of a blue tinted video, but it works remarkably well for filming in very low light and is my preferred option. The light is also easy to turn on from the controls while filming. There is also a flash for still photos.
Canon also offers a supplemental light that can be mounted on the Advanced Accessory Shoe, and it's not too expensive (like $40), so that may be a useful option down the road.
For backlit subjects, there's a backlight correction button (the rightmost button at the bottom of the flip-out screen, marked 'BLC' that helps a little bit, but not that much.
Still Photos
The camera also has a still-photo mode, which takes 2.76 or 2.07 megapixel images (depending on 4:3 or 16:9 mode) and saves them to a MiniSD card (not included). Still photos may not be written to the hard disk. The few images I have taken so far used the flash, and were a bit harsh and overblown, likely due to the blue tint of the flash, although they still looked pretty good. I have not taken any still outside yet where there's decent lighting, so the jury's still out on the still quality.
You may also take stills of video you're playing back, although they're lower quality.
The manual claims that you can take up to 60 continuous stills in 'drive' mode (either 3 or 5 stills per second without flash), but in my experience, the camera stops after 7 whether the flash is enabled or not.
Software Disappointments
The software that's included with the camera is a piecemeal collection of several utilities from several companies. Here's what you get:
- ZoomBrowser EX, which allows you to manage the still photos on your camera – acquire, edit, print, post to internet, etc. (I find it easier just to remove the MiniSD card from the camera and stick it in my card reader, but if you don't currently have any way to manage your digital still photos, this might be useful to you. I don't use it.)
- HG Backup, which provides a way to back up the contents of the camera's hard disk to your PC. The included Corel software also provides this, and I use it instead.
- A Corel application disc, which includes Corel GuideMenu, Ulead DVD Movie Factory SE, and Intervideo WinDVD SE. GuideMenu is simply a little launcher app that will allow you to copy videos off and on the camera (which I use), and launch the authoring app (Movie Factory). Be sure to follow the installation instructions carefully in the manual, as there's an activation step required, which also requires an internet connection. It's a bit of a pain but not too bad. WinDVD is a player that'll allow you to play back all of the videos from your camera on your PC, and DVDs as well.
I believe the only Macintosh-compatible application included is the image browser.
Ulead Movie Factory
Ulead Movie Factory is the application you'll probably use most often. It allows you to edit your video clips and burn them to DVD, either standard DVD format that can be played in a DVD player, or AVCHD format, which can be played on your Windows PC using the included WinDVD application.
I found this application barely acceptable for video editing. It has two enormous drawbacks that have made me actively pursue other third-party applications for video editing. The first drawback is that the audio and video get out of sync when editing the clips, so it's almost impossible to edit with any kind of accuracy. They're synced properly when burned; it's just when editing that they're out of sync. The problem is especially bad if you have lots of clips added to your project.
The second drawback is the rendering time. If you have a number of 'titles' added to your project, each takes over an hour to render. The actual A/V alignment and burn doesn't seem to take that long, but the up-front processing of each title takes forever. One DVD I tried to produce had 33 titles; after the first one took 82 minutes, I figured I didn't want to wait 45 hours to burn the disc. Instead, I went back and used the 'join' feature of the software to join all 33 chapters into a single clip; then complete burn took 89 minutes (for 34 minutes of video on the DVD), which I thought was acceptable. (My machine is a mid-range dual-core AMD 4400+ with a high-end graphics card and 2GB of RAM running XP, so my machine should be above average for most rendering activities).
The quality of the resultant (standard) DVD is excellent, and really looks great when played through a DVD player – no stutter, jerkiness, or audio problems. Both single-layer and dual-layer standard DVDs (no HD or Blu-Ray) are supported. So, from that perspective, I'm happy – however, I think Movie Factory has enough shortcomings that you will quickly look for a better editing application.
Note also that Ulead leaves large temp files in its working directory (the "Ulead DVD Movie Factory" directory under My Documents) in the DMF_TEMP directory. I found several GB of old files in here that the software hadn't cleaned up after a DVD burn.
Third-Party Video Editing Applications
In doing research on this camera, I found several discussions about video editing applications that support AVCHD but don't work properly with Canon's AVCHD. Supposedly Pinnacle 11 does work properly, so I will probably buy it ($100 for the Ultimate version), but I can't currently confirm that it works. [Update 12/26/07: I now have it, it works, and it's great. You'll need a fast PC, though.]
Other Software Annoyances and Details
The software included was not designed to work together. For example, the Corel application that allows you to unload video will save each set of clips into separate folders by date (e.g. '20071201'). However, Movie Factory doesn't support recursing into directories, so if you're unloading several days worth of video and trying to edit it, you have to manually add the files from each directory. This would be really annoying after a 10-day vacation, I suspect.
When importing clips into Movie Factory, they're often listed out of time order, so you need to click the filename header twice to re-sort the list by date/time to make sure they're in chronological order before adding them.
Movie Factory does allow you to export individual clips as standard .MPG files (at lower-quality 720x480). It does not have an easy way to create videos for the web, however. I suppose you could edit and create a DVD, then RIP the DVD with another application and transcode the resultant .MPG into a .WMA or .MOV. I'm hoping that third-party video editing apps will make this easier.
PC Connection Idiosyncrasies and Details
When connecting the camera to the PC to offload your video (which is why you bought a hard-drive based camera in the first place, right?), there's a couple things you should know. First, the flip-out screen must be open, since the USB cable plugs in there. You must install the software first before plugging the camera into the PC the first time. The AC adapter must be plugged in to the camera; the camera will not work in PC Connect mode on battery.
Here's one of my big frustrations: when you plug in the camera (both USB and power), then turn on its power and switch it to 'Play' mode, the camera recognizes that it's in PC Connect mode and you get the following message on the screen: "while the camcorder is connected to a PC, do not disconnect the cable or power source. Cannot turn off power or change modes." Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any way to end this "PC Connect" mode, either through the software or from the camera (I defy you to find an answer for this one), so eventually you just have to pull the USB cable anyway. This has not caused any problems so far, but there should be an obvious way to 'eject' the camera via the included software and I can't find one after much searching. I have also tried the 'Safely Remove Hardware' feature of XP to no avail.
When in PC Connect mode, the camera does show up as a hard disk on your PC, and you can poke around on its filesystem, although the manual specifically says not to manipulate any files on there. When using the Corel software to transfer files to the PC, it renames them and apparently does some other manipulation, so I get the sense that it's not a good idea just to go onto the camera hard disk and copy off the .M2TS files.
Transferring video from camera to PC using the included utility was very fast – about 1.43 GB/min on my machine, which is about 10 minutes of video at the highest quality level. Note that if you offload the same clips twice, you get two copies on your PC with different names.
Deleting Video from the Camera
It looks to me like the only way to delete scenes from the camera is from the camera itself – the included software does not appear to support this. The camera allows you to delete a single scene or all scenes for that scene's date. You can also initialize the hard disk to wipe them all out. The camera does have a menu item to allow you to see how much hard disk space you have left, and it also shows the remaining recording time on the screen while you're in Camera mode.
TV Connection
If you'd rather connect your camera directly to a TV, you have a couple options. First, you can use the included A/V and component video cables, which work fine. There's also a HDMI connection that uses a Mini (Type C) connector; if you want to use HDMI, you'll have to buy a Type C to Type A HDMI cable such as the Canon HTC-100 (which is quite expensive). Playback is in 1080/60i or 1080/24p, according to Canon's specifications.
There's an included wireless remote, which is useful when the camera's connected to a TV; however, I found the sensor a little finicky and I had to be pretty close to the camera to get the remote to work. If you're careful about positioning the camera, you can probably get around this problem.
Summary
Overall, I've been very happy with the camera, and not very satisfied with the included software. However, I'm giving the camera a good rating overall because I figure many people will probably go for a more full-featured editing package anyway, which is the one big shortcoming of the package.
[Minor corrections/additions 12/26/07]
