Sanyo - Black 8MP HD 10820p Dual Digital Video Camera with 3.0" LCD Reviews
Rating Summary
“Good Value for money but read on”
- Every day computer user, tech savvy, a gadget geek
- Pros
- Full HD at 60fps
- Cons
- Powerful PC required to run the Full HD
Sanyo - Black 8MP HD 10820p Dual Digital Video Camera with 3.0" LCD —
I am going to touch upon things that have not been already discussed by other reviewers. Before you buy this camera, things you need to consider. 1) Will you be shooting in the full HD mode at the maximum frame rate or at 30 fps. 2) Will you be shooting in the 720 p mode OR the regular SD mode. 3) Will you be editing the videos or just saving the files as is ? 4) Where will you playback the videos. Computer, DVD player, Blueray Player etc. ? The camera outputs the video in h.264 MPEG4 format. Now if you are playing directly from camera to TV, you are good to go. But if you want to download and play on the computer, you will need to install video lan (Vlan)player. I found this player to be really good. Or you can used the Nero which comes in the CD. The performance of the computer is supreme in playing/editing HD feed. At minimum a dual core processor, a good fast video card and at-least 2 GB of RAM will be required to play back even the 720p format without freezing or being choppy. I am speaking of PC's. I have no experience with MACS. So if you don't have a good fast PC, avoid this camera for the time being. Editing the h.264 files is another story in itself. The supplied nero will be able to do basic editing but if you are looking at a movie maker like functionality, then it will not work. There is a work around though.... to import the h.264 into windows moviemaker. To do so, first install the k-lite basic codec pack. Now you will be able to import into windows movie maker and edit. Again you will need a high end computer to edit or you will experience freezing and lagging. After you import the files into the movie maker and see horizontal lines in the video, click on the ffdshow video decoder icon(blue icon) on your task-bar and check the "De-interlace" option. Now the files can be editing in a regular fashion and published as WMV HD files. Or use a HD movie maker like the Sony Vegas Platinum. Costs about $80. Storage media : Make sure you get a class 6 SD card for optimal read/write speeds. One important thing to note. The file system on the SD card is FAT. The maximum permissible file size is 4GB. Once you hit the 4GB mark while recording, the camera will start recording a new file. But the issue is between finishing up the writing in the old file and starting the new file, there will be a lag, about 6 to 8 seconds on a class 4 SD and 3 to 4 sec on a class 6. So get a class six. At any rate you are bound to lose about few seconds after the recording reaches the 4GB mark..Just FYI if you are shooting a game or a play or something continuous. Auto focus: For indoor shooting try using the manual focus. In the auto focus mode, in low light conditions, the camera, sometimes will not distinguish between the foreground and the background, and the focus will sometimes, keep going in and out resulting in soft or blurry pictures on occasion. While using the manual focus, using the pan or zoom feature will throw the focus off... To the human eye, what might look like perfectly good lighting may be low light conditions for the camera sensor. Cant think of anything else but the summary is; this is a good camera for under 500, if you have a good fast computer for editing and playback and you know the shortcomings, which are few but definitely worth remembering.
Sanyo - Black 8MP HD 10820p Dual Digital Video Camera with 3.0" LCD
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