Just got a Samsung HMX20C

[shawnf]

As I haven't seen anyone else posting about it, I thought I would give my first thoughts on my new Samsung HMX20C.

It is a good size and weight and I think well made.

The shiny black back to the LCD view screen is finger print magnet of course...

It supports full 1920x1080 25p and I am using a 16GB SHDC, although it has 8GB built in.

I'm not a fan of touch screens in general, but it seems quite easy to use and the manual focus by touching the item on the screen you want to focus on is a good idea.

Stills seem good for a camcorder and the flash works well. Shame there is no optical image stabilisation and the EIS only seems to work for video.

The cradle is a bit of a pain, as the camera sits at an angle, which is why I tend to use the SD HC card in a card reader. Plugging in the cradle USB to the PC shows up as two drives (if you have an SDHC in the camera).

The HD video is really good, but plan on getting a new PC to edit it I upgraded my HTPC to a Athlon X2 4850e and Asus M3N78 HDMI motherboard. Using Pinnacle Studio 11 Plus to edit HD video, the preview is a bit stuttery but playback in PowerDVD Ultra 8 is fine, as it uses the Nvidia PureHD video acceleration.

The last feature, which convinced me I needed to get it was the gimmick - 250 fps slow motion for a 10s clip. It needs quite good light and is just below SD resolution, but still quite impressive never the less.
Think of a Casio EX F1, but cheaper and better for video, but without the 60fps stills.

Don't make the mistake I did and get a BP85ST clone battery - you need the IA-BP85ST (which works in the HMX10)...

Overall very happy

[herbs]

I was looking at this model the low light samples on vimeo look amazing.
I'll have to wait to the new year before I make a purchase maybe it will a little cheaper than the lowest £516 (although I did see it for £465 at one stage) i've seen it at the moment. Maybe you can post some samples of the video and photos.

[jaxim]

Have you had any experience with the Canon HF10/HF100? If so, how do both camcorders compare with each other?

[shawnf]

I don't know about posting video samples, as the smallest I have is 10MB for a clip. Not that I actually have access to anything which allows you to post video anyway... and aren't we somewhat limited in the size of what we can post for stills here?

I got it from Dabs for the £465 price with free delivery, as I hit one of their free weekends. Then I find there is a £20 back voucher in the box, if you fill in Samsung's survey (all about the camera, not me, so it was OK), at least I think it was £ not Euros

To answer Jaxim. No I haven't seen the Canons, well apart from reviews.

I was just going on the back of positive reviews from the US, so clips I had seen, and the 250fps gimmick

Luckily it has proved a worthwile gamble so far.

[herbs]

You can post samples on www.vimeo.com (i bit like youtube but does 1280x720 res), its easy to use and upload.

[busterdan]

Hi I am really interested in this camcorder as well.... it's about £465 at the moment at BEDirect and BTShop.

After a month or so of using how are you finding it, would you ming posting a full resolution still image from the camera, I wondered what the quality of those were like.... I'm sure the 1080p footage is amazing... judging by these http://www.vimeo.com/videos/search:HMX20C

[busterdan]

Found a good review here... http://www.dv.com/columns/columns_it...leId=196604125

[shawnf]

You beat me to it
I use the camcorder for friends and family, so those shots aren't going on the web... As I said before, I don't have access to any HD hosting of stills/video.
Downscaling seems pretty pointless to me (Vimio, free Flickr etc...) - it might be fine if you are interested in the content, but not for reviewing image quality

The reviews I used were Engadget HD and BCC - both of which had HD stills and some video on Engadget.

I will say that one month on, the cradle being at an angle is a minor annoyance, as it always requires fiddling to connect the camera.
I only managed to get a working spare battery through Currys Partsmaster - forget all clones (and I mean all - I tried three clones) as the battery must have a chip in it which means it won't be recognised without one...
The stills in stills mode are good, but you are limited to 1920x1080 in video mode. Although you can take stills from the video playback on the camera, which is a useful feature
I would have liked optical image stabilisation, as the EIS only works in video mode, but seems acceptable.
Oh and I got £30 back for filling in their online feedback, as I just payed in the cheque
Overall I really like the camera, as it has great features for the price and the slow motion gimmick is fun when water is involved (not on the camera of course).

[busterdan]

Thanks for the reply Shawn and useful review links.

The quality looks stunning, however just downloading the 1080P clips and my laptop (a fairly new and powerful XP machine) couldn't cope, so that is something I need to consider as well (how do you manage with PC editing?)

[shawnf]

Originally Posted by busterdan

Thanks for the reply Shawn and useful review links.

The quality looks stunning, however just downloading the 1080P clips and my laptop (a fairly new and powerful XP machine) couldn't cope, so that is something I need to consider as well (how do you manage with PC editing?)

h264 is a problem as unless you have hardware acceleration. I built a new HTPC with an AMD 4850e and hardware h264 acceleration through the 8200 chipset. This can cope with the video playback fine, but editing is a bit of a struggle in Pinnacle as Pinnacle doesn't use the hardware acceleration in its preview window.
Of course when transcoding you need the fastest CPU you can get
It looks like you really need a fast quad core AMD or dual core Intel to edit h264 without any problems.

There are some other faster software h264 codecs available which might do the trick on your laptop, but they are paid for...

[busterdan]

Thats a big consideration then, because I don't want to have to fork out for loads of PC hardware, I need to research some graphics card in that case.

The alternative is to shoot everything in say 720p, my machines are able to cope with 720P playback OK (WMV-HD etc.). How many minutes at 720P would you expect to get?

Assuming I was videoing in 720p, would a still camera shoot still be taken at the higher resolution/can you choose? However when grabbing at still image from the video I assume this would just match the video resolution?

How are you storing all your video? are you generally converting down to DVD or storing it locally/network attached storage for playback on your PC.

Have you tried any form of streaming to PC or other device such as a PS3 (if you have one). Again if you have a PS3 have you tried playback via the PS3 (by attaching an external hard drive with the video).

Sorry for all the questions, just trying to judge if the high resolutions are going to be unmanageable without spending loads more cash, but I'm happy to compromise to 720P

[shawnf]

The Samsung only records in 1080/25p, 1080/50i, 576/50p and the slow motion mode (something like 480x320).
So you can only downscale to 720p by transcoding the video - even more CPU power required
I am keeping all video on hard disk, backed up to a NAS drive. I think 8GB is about 150mins of video at 1080p, so a 500GB disk is quite a lot of video.
I can archive onto DVD R, but haven't felt the need to do so yet.

Try and see if you can use a demo of CoreAVC as this claims to be the fastest software codec...
I do have a PS3, but as it is connected to the same TV as the HTPC which I am using to edit the video, I haven't tried using it to play the video.
In theory you can burn the h264 onto DVD and the PS3 will play it, but I haven't tried this myself.
Basically anything that can play BluRays should be good enough to play back the camera clips - so PS3, HTPC and the new Centrino 2 laptops with integrated Intel graphics (which have only just been announced). The spec for the PC would be anything with NVidia PureVideoHD or the equivalent ATI.
I am using PowerDVD Ultra 8 to do the accelerated playback.

[senu]

Originally Posted by shawnf

The Samsung only records in 1080/25p, 1080/50i, 576/50p and the slow motion mode (something like 480x320).
So you can only downscale to 720p by transcoding the video - even more CPU power required

True it won make any difference: it realy is th e codec HDV is 1080i and much kinder on PC hardware
.

Try and see if you can use a demo of CoreAVC as this claims to be the fastest software codec...

I have it doesnt work for all ,
Its supposed to give WMP H.264 functionality.. Still you can try it as a trial download
Oxygen works ( was a free bee but its host site is no longer ( intellectual property issues PM if you want to try it)

In theory you can burn the h264 onto DVD and the PS3 will play it, but I haven't tried this myself.

It works: you can certainly ( temorarily copy the files to its HDD

I am using PowerDVD Ultra 8 to do the accelerated playback.

Decent software

[busterdan]

Guys, thanks again for your advice and feedback....

I'm in two minds to be honest.... I'm just concerned that I'll have all this lovely video but no means to play it back other than the camera.

At the moment I think I'd stick with 720p or at a stretch 1080i - do the quality modes make much difference to the overall video quality..... fine, extra-fine etc?

Some of those codecs seem like worth a try.

[busterdan]

By the way the Core codec did work.... slightly choppy at time and the audio was out of sync but it is much better that when I tried to play the clips earlier - the quality does look amazing.

I could only play the clips in WMP - VLC or GOM Player didn't seem to work.