Thursday, February 04, 2010

SANYO XACTI REVIEW



$150 - sanyo vpc-cg10 1600847
PROS
-easily grab still frames from MP4 video for photos (only use photo option if you need flash)
-has most options/functionality compared to others (image stabilization is good for handhelds - Zi8 does not have this)

CONS
-does not include SD CARD (most dont) (i bought an 8GB for $30 at a local store)
-slow/no response on snapping photos (2 options - simply record video and grab still frames from the video, or hit the button and countdown outloud - 3,2,1... and it snaps within 3 secs)
-short battery life (really short, i suggest buying a backup battery)
-UI could be simplified (other similar camcorders are much easier to use)
-cant manage files/SD card easily
-no light when doing video (use an external source - from cellphone or better)
-no mic jack (for pro recording of audio (Zi8 has this))
OTHER OPTIONS TO CONSIDER WHEN PURCHASING A CAMCORDER
-return policy, recording time, format of video, under water, carry case, HD camcorder, flash for night photos, night vision, battery life, memory, image stabilization

Why isnt there a cellphone/camcorder that will do all this? (video on iphone looks pretty good)
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KODAK Zi8 REVIEW




(Gathered info for someone else on this product - I bought the Sanyo Xacti (see next post))
>> this site talks about issues with Zi8

the ZI8 records in H.264 MOV and the audio is AAC LC format.


Just to let you know AnyVideoConverterPro works nicely converting MOV to MP4 with the setting of x264 (video codec), and 1000 (video bitrate) when converting a 1080p video. I then move this MP4 into Vegas 9 with none of the audio/video sync issues. Final video quality appears good. I suppose there are many converter apps out there but since I already owned this one and tried it with success, just wanted to let you know.

This just rewrites the mov wrapper so that Sony Vegas can see the video. It doesn't change the original video and is very fast. 

One approach that I found did work when using .MOV files (albeit not 100%) was to rename the .MOV file to an .MP4 extension and then import that file into Project Media. From there I could then bring the .MP4 file into the Vegas editor and the audio track did indeed show and play. However, one drawback was the video and audio were out of sync by about 5 seconds. I can ungroup the video and audio and manually adjust video and audio to be in sync. Not ideal. 

>> x264vfw codec
x264vfw is the VfW (Video for Windows) version of well known x264 encoder + ffh264 decoder (from FFmpeg project)

Sony published a quicktime update that fixed the problem of no audio importing, but it's now out of sync

SOURCES
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