The Official Panasonic HDC-TM900 Owners Thread - Page 10

@awhitney
Niiice. I think i'll order mine shortly. Still tossing up whether to order from America and get an NTSC one, or get a grey import (pal) with only a dealer warranty

Chris, your approach to people who find absolutely valid faults with their cams, is totally non- productive. Do you have a 900? Have you had extensive experience with it's low light performance, beeps or focusing anomalies? I would never think of replying to owner's complaints in the sarcastic manner you do...especially with equipment I don't own. Steve is correct, this is not a good low light cam. Yes, it's the best good light cam out there, bar none, but to call people 'cry babies' for pointing out a camera's weakness, is truly inane and adds nothing to the discourse.

Please also note this is an OWNERS thread.

Oh, and I have no fever.

Steve, I fully understand your choice.

I'm with you on this one Steve & Ken. I'm not one to gang up on others, and that's not what i'm doing, i'm merely agreeing with everything you have had to say about purplestinger.

Enough said

I don't think this is completely true in all cases either. My comparison between a CX700 and TM900 physically shooting both cameras next to each other (both cams shooting the same footage at the same time) showed the TM900 to be only slightly better outdoors. I thought that this was probably due to my lack of skill (an to some degree it likely still was) but your account of your second TM900 being less impressive in good light then your first would tell me that there is some QC issue with the TM900 that will not allow us to count on the impressive good light performance from one camera to the next.

As far as purplestinger goes, if you all don't like his continual negative treatment of users here with no quality content to his posts... start reporting the posts. That is what the little red and white sign with exclamation point below the name header and avatar in posts is for.

Erich, actually my 2nd unit didn't perform any differently in low light than my first in most respects. What it had more issues with was the focusing in lower light as opposed to a difference in low light noise or sensitivity.

When I compared the 900 to the CX700, I found differences not only in sharpness & resolution, but also in color. I found the 900's color to be consistently better. I've noticed that the new Sonys (700 & 560) seems to have a tendency toward the blue (outdoors) as well as a white balance that tends to shift. I've noticed that bluish white balance not just from clips that I shot, but from other owner's clips. Some may not care or even notice it, but my eye is pretty sensitive to color.

The shifting WB can be remedied by using a preset or MWB, but I don't want to have a cam that, IMO, requires me to do that to ensure that I have no color drifting issues. I want to use presets & MWB when I choose to.

Ah, thought you had indicated at one point that the second TM900 you got did not perform as well as the first in good light conditions. My mistake.

So I started listening closely to my tm900 videos and unfortunately have the beeping. My camera was set for 5.1 recording, but I was listening through headphones with my computer so I was only hearing stereo. I then set my media player to only play the right channel from the mic and then the left. I found two things from this. First, the beeping was present in both channels. Second, the right channel was much louder than the left. Shouldn't both channels be of equal sensitivity and therefore the same audio level? I wondered if it was just the video I was listening, but it was the same in all my videos. The right channel was much louder than the left. Could this be due to the 5.1 recording? Any thoughts?

I received the Sony CX700
Cinematone activated for the color! .... although
further from the truth (like the Panasonic)

Johntomk, have you heard it in all clips or just in recordings made in a quiet environment? I'm receiving my 3rd 900 tomorrow. If I have the beeping in that one too, I'll be coming to the rapid conclusion that virtually all of these cams have it and people have either not recorded in a quiet area, haven't played it through a revealing system (though someone commented that they could hear my beeping on a clip I posted, from their laptop) or are just oblivious to it because they don't what to listen for. It will extremely hard for me to believe that I received 3 beepers and most others don't have them. What would be the odds of that?

I'll know tomorrow, but the bottom line is that I'll live with it since there are no other viable options out there for me at this time. As long as this one focuses properly in less than ideal lighting, I'll be OK for now.

Hi Ken, are you using the onboard mic when hearing the beeps or using an external mic?

I could only hear it in quiet clips. most of mine are outdoors with background noise, so I could not hear it in those even with the volume way up which is a good thing no doubt. The clips I have that are quiet are mostly indoors, and that is where it is quite noticeable. Sounds to me like its a problem with all of them, but that's just a guess. I guess it could be a bad batch, but once again it's just a guess. Idk where anyone else ordered from, but mine came from B&H. I ordered it the second day it was in stock which I think was March 1st. Does anyone know if this is solely a problem with the onboard mic? I'm wondering if this would be an issue using an external mic. Also, has anyone tested to see if any in cam settings, like surround vs. stereo, affect it? I guess I might play around and see if any of the audio settings have an effect on it. Ken, by chance did you notice whether or not you had a noticeable difference in audio level between right and left? I didn't notice it until I played them separately. It was very apparent then.

Dude, you totally had a cricket in your house.

Hi


I have absolutely no beeping, I've checked a recording in silence and ramped up the volume to full, I can clearly hear the fan, and background hiss but nothing else, apart from me breathing that is. (The fan is barely audible at sensible volume levels and isn't that much louder than the background hiss really.)

Mine is a 50p model if that makes a difference.

Are you using the internal memory card or external? With external cards I read of problems with some memory cards, can't remember what camcorder they related to, but they were emitting RF from their circuitry each time they made a write, which of course is injected directly into the camera and resulted in what sounded like beeps. Do the beeps coincide with the red recording indicator freqency of flashing?

Regards

Phil

Question I had a problem with my 560V the menu would sometimes not respond until punched over and over, also many time what came up was not what I asked for. I liked the quality of the videos but just could not get past the menu.
I returned it to Best Buy.
How does your 560 menu work?

No I had problems just getting files deleted with them ending up protected, and then getting them unprotected. Had little luck trying things other then changing the recording mode.

Let us know how you like the Pan. 750. I still want another camcorder but what to get.

I do not remember if the clips were from internal or external memory. I will check tonight when I get home and report back. I use a 16 gb sandisk extreme pro for external. I know exactly what you're saying Phil. I read a thread on dvinfo forums about an older panasonic camcorder with the same problem. Now that you mention it, they attributed the beeping to certain external memory cards. I didn't even think to check if the beeping is only on my memory card. I'll check and compare memory tonight.

I FINALLY received a good 900 this morning! Very nice focusing edge to edge, better overall look in low light with better focusing (or lens)...still not great low light performance, but definitely better than the last unit and so far, no beeps. The only downside is that this unit seems to have a bit more fan noise, but I can easily live with that, no biggie.

The last clip I shot was very interesting. After having done the indoor A/Bs and having been convinced this 3rd unit was a nice one, I took one last clip outdoors, just to ensure no surprises there.

The clips were shot at the same time, same location. In the old camera, the skies had just a bit of the bondi-blue issue but yet the new one showed a perfectly blue sky at exactly the same part of the sky.

So there really can be quite a bit of variation on several fronts between these cams. QC really needs to be tightened up. I'm very happy to exchange a bit of fan noise, for better color, edge to edge sharpness and improved low light focusing.

Now, when was the HF-G10 coming in?

P.S. Phil, I've used the same memory card for all my tests and only the first two Panasonics were plagued with this issue. I don't believe the card had anything to do with it.

Great news.

But Panasonic should take note of these variations.

Could the beeping be from the fan? Some fans make a high pitched chirping sound which can be continuous or intermitent.

I honestly don't think so. If you heard the beep, it sounds exactly like a hospital heart monitor. I can't imagine the fan having any involvement in a sound like that. I would think any noise associated with a fan would be of a continuous nature. Mark had provided a link to what sounds like exactly the same issue with a $15,000 Panasonic camera. I have no idea if that camera even had a fan.

Mark, I agree 100%. Panasonic's QC has always been pretty good with virtually any product I've had with that name on it. This has certainly been a different experience.

Good to see you finally got a 900 that you find satisfactory. Wish the first one I got would have been issue free, but I am not willing to keep exchanging them cross country to try and find one that is on the good end of the QC with these cameras. I'm giving the G10 pre-order another week (I'm guessing they won't be here yet) and then sticking with the CX700 if it doesn't arrive. Though not perfect, it is very nice in low light and for me acceptable in good light.

Depending on your use, not a bad decision Erich.

I received a TM900 (60p model imported to the UK) today - No beeps but a loud servo noise on the zoom almost like a scraping sound (I've got a 50p TM700 and it's silent) - It's going back Monday but should I get a refund or replacement? What I mean is - What are the odds? How many have had a decent one so far?

- Phil R

Onboard.

Well I thought my 3rd unit was free of beeps, but I was wrong. Thus far I've heard it only a couple of times, but it's not very loud at all (the first was the worst). Given that I'm happy with the cam's performance in other respects, I will stay with this one.

But yes, now that this is the 3rd unit that has it (and it does not occur consistently, so I could easily see someone having a unit and missing it), I really do suspect they are all plagued with it in varying degrees and at varying times. For most people this would probably not be a deal-breaker. Truth be told, the fan noise is a lot louder and would probably bother people more in a quiet environment.

Ah yes, it seems I've been the first with all of these issues. If you look back on my posts, you'll see I mentioned precisely that issue...a noise that sounded almost like a scraping sound, but for me it was during autofocus. That was the unit that never focused quite right in low light.

Man oh man, does Panasonic have QC issues with these units. It's just amazing since we didn't have these issues (other than the ongoing fan noise) with the 700.

I'm generally happy with this unit though.

Ken,

Are you still having issues uploading raw files to Vimeo? If so, are you a Vimeo Plus member? The people I've seen successfully upload the videos have all been Plus members. I noticed on their FAQ that if you are a basic member that you can only see your video at 720p. I'm thinking that it's in the resizing that the transcoder is having issues. I was hoping you were a non-Plus member and that would help verify my theory.

Anyone else trying successfully, or unsuccessfully to upload the raw MTS files?

--MDG