Official Sanyo FH1/ FH1A/ HD2000 owners thread - Page 9

I was doing a Google translation from Sanyo's HD1010 website and I noticed that it says;
Satoru Hikaru made a bright F1.8 Konica Minolta 10x zoom.

My guess is that Sanyo commissioned Minolta to design and produce the lens for the HD1000 and it has been carried over to the HD1010 and HD2000. Since Sony now owns Minolta, Sanyo may have to look for a new supplier. This could be a reason why there isn't a replacement for the HD2000. It might be the end of Sanyo's higher end camcorders. Of course I'm just wildly speculating over a translation that could be wrong but I find it interesting and logical that Sanyo used Konica Minolta for a high quality lens. In Japan Minolta has always been more prestigious than it has in America and that would explain the mention of the lens manufacturer.

As a collector of Minolta lenses I was pleasantly surprised to see this. Great glass is the single most important component of any camera. You can see my Minolta collection at my flicker site.

A 2050px crop scaled to 550px.



Focus still favors locking on the back darker background green. But I got closer, locked focus, then backed up a bit. Love my shortcuts.

First post in the forum.

I just became a proud owner of an HD2000 last week. Considering this is the first digital camcorder I ever have (my previous camcorder is a V8), the video looks absolutely stunning!

However, there is a problem with the built-in flash. Specifically, after shooting stills with flash on for about 5 to 6 shots, the shutter button would stop functioning. Recording button still works, though. It's just that pressing the shutter button has absolutely no effect. The screen does not change into photo mode. The AF is not seeking. Nothing. When the unit is in this (overheat?) mode, to get it working again I have to either turn flash off in photo mode, or to turn off the unit, wait for a couple minutes (for it to cool down?), and then turn it back on. It will then allow me to take a few more shots with flash, and then the symptom reappears.

Has anyone seen this with their HD2000? Is this a defective unit? Should I contact N*g.com for a replacement?

By shutter I guess you mean the photo button?

Is flash on AUTO, or ALWAYS setting?

You can set a shortcut to toggle photo and video mode on the LCD. Leaving it photo mode if you're only taking pictures should help. Although I've never had an issue like this. But I rarely use flash myself. The low light abilities are mostly good enough in available light. That and flash isn't enough time for the camcorder to figure focus out if lighting is bad enough that you need flash. You might check for the same issue sans flash (you can turn it off) and see if it persists. If it does, I'd say bad unit.

It could just be your flash card. You get a sort of buffer before you have to wait for one thing to finish writing before you can move on to the next. Using a faster SDHC card should help. Unless it's locked up windows style. iirc, something blinks until it's ready for the next shot. I'm not sure if it's the red light by the zoom toggle or the SDHC icon on the LCD. If it's blinking, you're waiting on I/O, not heat or battery charge.

Yes, I was referring to the dedicated button used to take still shots on the HD2000.


Flash is on AUTO. But I was shooting indoor under low light condition, so essentially the same as FORCED.


It (i.e., the photo button) works all the time if I set flash to OFF, or if I close the flash unit. It only failed to work when so many stills have been shot with flash AND the flash unit is opened AND flash is set to AUTO (under low light condition)/FORCED.


It's probably not the memory card, since when this happens, I can still press the record button and the HD2000 will start recording. It just wouldn't shoot any photos, that's it.

The weird thing is that on the day I got the HD2000, I could only take about 4 still shots with flash and then the symptom appeared. Yesterday I could take about 8 still shots in a row with flash before it started to act up. I just tried again and the flash worked for about 25 shots before it gave in. Does something need to be broken in?

Just curious, has anyone tried setting flash to FORCED and see how many shots the HD2000 can take consecutively? Until the battery runs down, or, in my case, after a dozen shots or so?

I tried it on my HD2000. Open the flash and took photos continuously; since it was inside my library that is dark, the flash was forced as it came on for every shot. After 50+ shots, the camcorder did not give up but I gave up since it seems to be able to go on and on.

So your camcorder could be a faulty unit or the battery is running in. A new battery will need several charging cycles before it reaches its full capacity. I suppose if you try again and the number of flash photos it can take increases before it stops, your battery is getting seasoned. Otherwise, get a replacement.

So I was taking some still shots w/my FH1A the other day, and then I was comparing the photos it took to the ones I took on my wife's Nikon Coolpix camera. Both are 8MegaPixel cameras, but the pictures taken by the FH1A look much grainier...

So I started looking @ the properties for the pics it took, and noticed that the pictures taken by the FH1A are at 72dpi, whereas the Coolpix is taking them at 300dpi!!

Why is the FH1A so low in the dpi setting? And is there a way I can change this? I'm using the 8M-H setting to take photos, which I thought was the highest quality available... 72dpi is pretty shabby, it's a little disappointing since I liked the idea to be able to use this camera as a video and still shooter... but if that's the best it can do that's pretty ... well, disappointing as I said

72 dpi or 300 dpi is irrelevant here, and one can simply be changed into the other with a simple photo editing program. What matters in this discussion is the total number of Megapixels in the image.

Imagine an image taken by an 8 Megapixel camera. Make an identical copy of it. Bring the two images into a photo editing program, and set one to be at 72 dpi and one at 300 dpi, but keep the files size the same. Both images have the same information in them. The 72 dpi or 300 dpi may have an effect on how they look on the computer monitor, or what size they print at, but one image could be changed into the other, with no loss.

For example, I imported a FH1A image into Photoshop elements, then chose to resize the image. It reported the image was 3264X2448, or 45.33"X34" at 72 pixels/inch. Then I unchecked Resample Image and entered 300 pixels/inch. The image remained at 3264X2448, but the size was now 10.88"X8.16". I really hadn't modified the pixels of the image at all.

Having said all of this, a dedicated still camera generally does a better job of taking still photos than a video camera does. Also, off the top of my head, I seem to remember that if you take a still photo with the FH1A while shooting video, the still image will be something like 2 Mpixel or less. Also, you can set the default still photo mode to be less than 8 Mpixel, so those are all things to check.

Sound like your battery isn't at full charge and the flash is playing it safe. Try it with the plug tethered to an active wall socket. If that solves the issue. You know what is more likely the problem. i.e. the battery.

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Still images while shooting video are 2MP aka frame grabs 1920x1080. Which makes them a bit useless (just take a frame grab). The FH1 favors adding more ISO than you need (before adjusting shutter or aperture) so if you can, and you remember to, set the ISO manually to as low as you can get away with. In a dark bar that might be 800, outside in daylight, almost always 50.

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I like my camcorder for photos, but mainly because it allows for locking focus, actually achieves focus, and lets you adjust shutter and aperture settings. Plus a lot of optical zoom. Most of my $100 digital cameras lack at least one of those options (if not all of them).

Hmm, yeah I was shooting stills only. Not while recording video, I'm aware of that limitation... so not the problem there. I had it set to 8m-H, which I believe is the highest setting.

So really it just looks more grainy and there's not much I can do about it seems to be the bottom line I guess I'll have to play w/lowering the ISO setting manually when I take still photos and see if that makes a difference.

Hmmm. It looks like the FH1's codec is variable bitrate. I had a few clips in the 26 minute realm before the pause / break. There is a 30 second countdown to the break. Seconds in red right below the record time elapsed. Perhaps it's time for a new battery too, started recording with 45 minutes showing. 7 minutes in, it read 18 minutes. 26 minutes in and the battery was hollow with no number. got another 8 or so minutes past that with intentional pause to ensure it wrote out. Got a few more seconds before a big red banner "battery depleted" showed and recording just stopped. Still had LCD and was able to power down normally. It was just odd that the time left guess was that off IMO. Normally it's pretty good and guessing remaining life and sticking to it till the bitter end. Although this is the first time that I've run the battery to depletion.

Indoor photos seem to favor 1/30 shutter priority. AWB to cloudy and ISO on auto. I've still got to check out the results, but that seemed the best compromise between speaker in the shadows on stage and the well lit projection screen with the slide show. For stills anyway. I was conserving battery life, 8 hour day, A single 2 hour battery. Full audio though, I figured that you don't really need video to hear a guy talk for 45 minutes. The slide changes once every five minutes, and the only video action is a guy talking and pushing a button. I suppose that if it was windowsfest, there's be a bit more action with frustrated users breaking laptops over podiums and the likes. No such luck at a linuxfest.

Ug... I let the camcorder do it's auto break. Turns out to be more than 9 seconds of gap between clips. I was able to get less than 6 seconds doing the gap manually at about 16 minutes last christmas. This gap happening at 26 minutes and 25 seconds and some change, for a pause of about 9.4 seconds. The other one somewhere near 24 minutes and some, but I haven't gotten to editing that one yet.

I'm making first video clip from FH1A tonight & goin to process it on a friend's pc with Sony vegas pro 9. I've never used it before so not fimilar with software, Do I have to import it and then encode it with editing to create final product? Not sure how it's goin to work with sony pro. Any one used this software with this cam file format?

What is your destination format?

It looks like the second auto break is in excess of 10 seconds. Are verbatim cards that slow? Or is something else going on. It looks like I need to manually break < 20 minutes to stay under 7 seconds. For class 6 SDHC cards anyway.

I have several destination formats myself. DVD, p60 in the same codecs as DVD, h264 for upload to the internet. Mpeg4 for best quality / fastest conversion and least CPU on the local boxes. And other options... But I'm not exactly typical in that linux is my primary OS.

I guess i'm going to have multiple format too- I need one for High Qual playback on HDTV (via media server or Bluray (when I get the B.R Burner), Another one wouuld be to create standard DVD (not sure what format should I use) & occasionally H264 to share via Internet.

I tend towards:

- mpeg2video 5Kbps (720x480 @ 16:9 @ 30fps) with LPCM audio (2 channels 48kHz WAV big endian)
(I also do a higher bitrate video with mp2 audio for the few times I use the camcorder audio)

- x264 3Mbps or less (1280x720 @ 16:9 @ 30fps) with mp3 audio
(youtube, sometimes much lower bitrates depending on the content / lecture or concert)

- mpeg4 at max (qscale 1 or sameq with ffmpeg) (1920x1080 @ 16:9 @ 30fps) with pcm audio (2 channel 48kHz WAV little endian)

My reasons:
mpeg2video / .mpeg - DVD with the best audio
x264 / .mp4 - highest compression and smallest file size
mpeg4 / .avi - quickest turn around when editing. And not that cpu needy on playback.

If I had a decent editor, I'd probably venture into WMV land. i.e. plays in most DEFAULT windows installations. But I don't and I don't run windows much either. I do venture into msmpeg4v2 (ffmpeg syntax) land on occasion if I want a windows playable variant.

Thanks for format & their corresponding b.r info- I'll have some footage by sat & try to play with it over weekend on Sony V.Pro- Lets see how it goes.

I'm working on a Mac with iMovie09. If I take movies with my FH1 at highest setting - 1920x1080 60fps-- will I get the best HD on a dvd or does it matter what setting I use. In other words will the movie be in HD?

No, the movie will not be in HD on the DVD. Do you have the FH1 or the FH1A? If you have the FH1A, I would suggest using the iFrame recording mode (960X540). It ingests into iMovie09 with no transcoding needed, and edits very responsively. It has higher resolution than a DVD you will produce.

I have FH1-- so what setting should I use for best results. Thank you

On DVD:

NTFS - 720x480 @ 30fps (16:9 or 4:3)
PAL - 720x576 @ 25fps (16:9 or 4:3)

That's the highest resolution of the playable video DVD format. Said format does support other LOWER resolutions and various rather LOW bitrates. You could burn the raw files to a DATA DVD and SOME bluray players can play them at 1080p60. And others will just TRY to play them.

As far as making a DVD of the video kind. It really depends on how good is good enough. And how much time/effort you want to invest in the process.

At 1080p60, you drop every other frame for all intents. But you scale several pixels down to that one glorious pixel that'll happen in the DVD variant. 1920x1080 to 720x480, so slightly more than 4 source pixels (dots) for each destination pixel. This can rub out / blur a lot of the noise visible in the original at full resolution. Which makes a nice clean destination image that looks sharper unscaled. And then you compress the dickens out of it to a low bitrate codec that is DVD.

Where the A cams with iFrame (whatever it's called) records at 960x540. It might do a higher bitrate so less fuzz in the source, but you no longer have several pixels per destination pixel when you scale. I'm not sure which would yield the better end product. But the 960x540 version would likely take the least time and space to process. And is probably better supported in editing software.

Point being that a cleaner input generally gets better compression in the end. And DVD video is highly compressed. Basically 10MB of picture information as in mega bytes is being compressed to 6-ish mpbs as in mega BITS including those bits used by the audio track. You can get away with a higher bitrate (up to 10mbps), but a lot of players don't support that, and on the older ones 6mbps might be pushing your luck as it is. I tend towards a 7.5mbps destination, and don't have many issues doing that on my players. But I haven't gotten much feedback from others that I gave dvds to. So who knows?

Thank you shadow_7.
Well I am very disappointed. I bought this HD FH1 thinking I would be getting HD dvds. So if you're only going make DVDs with your camera what is the purpose of buying HD Camcorder? I should have asked a few questions before buying!
Thank you

Creating DVD's is just one of many ways to share video. If you want wide compatibility at the current time, DVD's are the way to go. But there are other options for sharing. You could shoot and edit video in HD, and put you videos on Vimeo or YouTube or your own site. Or you could use a device such as an AppleTV and encode your videos to it.

Thank you David Sholle. What is the highest setting on my FH1 that I should use when making DVDs ?

That is really up to you. Anything from 1280X720 30p or higher should work fine. I guess it depends on whether you are going to save the original footage (which I would recommend), and later create something with higher definition than a DVD. Then, you might want to work in 1920X1080 30p or 60i or 60p. In my opinion, working at 1920X1080 60i would be fine for most things.

I shoot at 1080p60 FullHR. It's the setting with the highest bitrate. Although the newer versions (A) with iFrame might have a higher bitrate per pixel. Not sure though.

You can make HD DVDs. The issue arises in that you need a format that's playable on YOUR devices (and those whom you share it with). Up until recently there really hasn't been any good stand alone players to play the native 1080p60 files, except for the camcorder itself. However 1080i60 or 1080p30 should play on most bluray players that support HD DVDs. Bearing in mind that you are kind of limited to 20 minute clips per 4.3GB DVD

A DVD is a DVD is a DVD. At least for video DVDs. There's no reason that you can't produce a DVD equal to those commercial DVDs. You might even be able to do that with FREE software these days. But the DVD format is a compressed format. As is ATSC TV, which is why a lot of times, your camcorder looks better than commercial television via rabbit ears.

The advantage of making a DVD with an HD source is oversampling. Using many pixels to generate a single pixel. This is common in CGI to smooth edges that would otherwise look like a screen on Q-bert.

I think that the only difference between the "A" and the original models is that that the "A" models have added an additional (default) recording format in which the video is recorded at 960X540 but at a very high bitrate with intra-frame but not inter-frame compression. Inter-frame compression is more efficient in size, but intra-frame recording does not require transcoding upon transfer to the computer, and is easy to edit with very little computer horsepower.

My ideal camcorder format would be to record at the highest resolution and frame rate, using inter-frame compression, and also simultaneously record at a lower resolution using intra-frame compression. That way you would have footage that would be easy to edit now, and higher-res footage that will be easy to edit in the future when run-of-the-mill computer horsepower catches up.

Amazon has the FH1A listed for $329.99. Unfortunately, it's out of stock right now. I've been thinking about waiting until it's back in stock getting one for summer vacation time. Has anyone seen a better price than this?

Andy

I recently bought an FH1A and I'm still trying to get the best results I can considering the image stabilzation..
1. turned on photo and video stabilization, seems somewhat better than just video when shooting video, is this true or am I dreaming ?

2. Holding camera with my left hand instead of using the right hand in the strap seems to be more steady for me. Makes me think that the HD2000a might be easier for me to hold still, anyone used both think one is better than the other ?

3. FH1A record button and particularly the photo button are hard to reach with my thumb when using the right hand grip.