 Great camcorder, more features than I ever expected |
| Review Date: March 3, 2010 |
| Reviewer: john boy, glen burnie |
Sold by Amazon and received it overnight shipping. I figured products shipped overnight would be handled more carefully. It arrived next day.
I am Very Pleased, fantastic camcorder... I had read many reviews and was not sure if I wanted to purchase this because I did not see mostly 5 stars in all the reviews. But the problems I heard about were not serious when compared to the video quality that is second to none!
The features are many, the options are many, the problems are few...mind made up, bought it and I am very pleased I did, it is NICE!!!
Thanks Amazon for making it easy to purchase this camcorder the only other model was available in the local camera store, but did not have the microphone jack I needed |
Superb Camera but I may still use my HD2
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| Review Date: February 25, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Timothy Takemoto, Yamaguchi-shi, Japan |
I love Xacti cameras. The gun form is easy to hold. The buttons aren't perfect but the camera is easy enough to point and shoot. Memory card video cameras (rather than tape, dvd or hard disk) are great. Top range Xacti cameras are pocketable and produce superb video quality. This one even produces reasonable quality stills. This and other top of the range Xacti's have an external mike input, sadly lacking in many competitors, and for me, for vlogging and documentary type stuff, *essential*.
But the trendy new compact H.264 video format and the sheer quality of the video is a problem. Unless you have a very powerful computer (mine a 3.5GHZ Dual Pentium with 2GB RAM, is insufficient) then the video files produced will not play back in with video/sound in sync using Windows Media player. I have heard that some people are getting okay playback using Quicktime but my Quicktime, the lastest at the time of writing (7.5), is jumpy and in slow motion by turns. I get best results with a free player called zplayer but the video is smooth and the audio is synched only when the display is the size of a large matchbox.
The preview in your editor will be very choppy too, and you will not be able to "scrub through" the video to find appropriate places to cut and splice etc.
Clever people here and on Vimeo are recommending that we transcode the H.264 files before editing or playback using appropriate software. But if you have to do that, then you are almost back in days of tape capture. The beauty of memory card video is that you can drag and drop video files to your editor time line, and use them on the fly without having to go through a capture/transcoding process. What a pain in the butt.
If you do not edit your video and upload files from the card to Youtube then fine. Youtube will do the work and the videos look great. But I want to edit, and therefore preview, my videos.
My old HD2 from about three years ago on the other hand has many drawbacks. It is not nearly so good in low light. The video definition is not half as good. It looks clunky and has no curves. And above all the frame rate is lower, low, so action shots and even panning often produce nasty jumps and zigzags. But since it uses old, standard Mpeg-4 video files, which play back and edit easily even on 1.x GHz computers, for YouTube vloggy, documentary stuff, faces talking, or children playing if seated, the quality of the HD2 is ample and the video format is easy to view and edit on any computer less than 10 years old (in my experience, though there are others that have problems). For non-arty, non-action, documentary-type Youtube vlogging, the old HD2 is difficult to beat. It is smaller too. See my youtube account, timtak1, for videos taken by both cameras.
The HD2000 has an acceptable battery life. You need to buy a couple of extra batteries with the HD2. But then I will be buying another battery or two for this camera
Finally about stabilisation...I think the people complaining about stabilisation are dreaming. Is there any video camera this small that is stabilised effectively? I doubt it. If a camera weighs only a few ounces then stabilisation is going to be a problem. A television cameraman told me that he doubted that pro TV cameras were ever going to get much lighter - or less heavy than a human head - because pro cameramen want the weight to produce stable shots. I use two hands, put my elbows into my body, or just take care, and get acceptable results. If you want more stability then add weight. Use a monopod (recommended) or a tripod. Or buy a bigger camera. This one fits in your pocket and can take video worthy of Hollywood at only $500. Maybe there are cameras this size with software stabilisation that really works, and perhaps a few years there will be many. But right now, I guess that those that are are complaining about stabilization are used to use much bigger heavier cameras and are overlooking the basic facts of physics: intertia or whatever. Perhaps Sanyo should sell a metal weight that can be attached to the tripod screw.
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Beware Amazons "FREE" 2 Day Shipping
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| Review Date: February 18, 2010 |
| Reviewer: A. Piotrowski, |
Camera Works Good, The Software that comes with it leaves A Lot to be desired and you Have to Pay Nero an Extra $50 to get the Full Capabilities of it.
Amazon SUCKS!! The Free 2 Day Shipping Deal they had Plastered All Over the Product Page,, Cost me $85. The Credit Card I used had Only Been Used Online 1 time in the Past couple years, (Here at Amazon to Buy This Product) and Less than 30 Days Later that Card # was Jacked and Someone Was Buying $700 worth of Computer Parts in Germany with It. |
Excellent
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| Review Date: February 12, 2010 |
| Reviewer: D. Lamarche, |
I am a new owner of the Sanyo VPC-HD2000. I think it's an excellent camcorder. Here's my remarks:
The low light performance of this camcorder is "Wow". I did research before buying and according to camcorderinfo, this is the best value of 2009. I have no regrets by far. The image quality is high definition.
The battery life is about 200 minutes and the time remaining before you have to recharge appears on the screen for your convenience.
Either you buy it from Hong Kong or North America doesn't matter. There's plenty of languages you can set from menu: English, Francais, Deutsch, Español, Italiano, Nederlands, Russian, Portuguès, Türkçe, and what appears to be Hebrew and 3 asian languages, probably Japanese, Chinese and Traditional chinese (but I am no expert of these last 4)
There's a TV OUTPUT menu where you choose either PAL or NTSC; 4:3 or 16:9; 1080p 720p 1080i or 480p.
A surprise for me is that you can edit your video directly from the camcorder menu, you can join or cut parts of what you recorded.
There's a very little remote to access the docking station from distance. Everything works well. I think this camcorder looks good. It is not heavy.
So this is it for now, I don't think this can be beat at this price. Bigger and more costly camcorders requires more light to provide quality image in low light condition. So the HD2000 is probably the best for everyday use: travel, party, youtube, ect... |
You get your moneys worth!
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| Review Date: February 12, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Kevin Pawlitschek, Montrose, MN |
| I bought an HD camcorder a few days before I saw the Sanyo VPC-HD2000A. The other camcorder cost more than twice as much as the Sanyo VPC-HD2000A, didn't have as many features and wasn't as easy to opperate! The Sanyo VPC-HD2000A is comfortable to hold in your hands boots in less than 2 seconds, has a 12MP option in the menu, several video options including two modes of slow motion!! How cool is that?! You must use an SDHC chip for it to work but I don't view that as a negative. It has a docking bay which is easy to use. If you prefer not to use the docking bay you can take the SDHC chip out and use Almost any SD chip reader! Did I say I returned the other camcorder?... Awesome it was like getting paid for buying a better product! I love the Sanyo VPC-HD2000A and I think you will too! |
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