Get the kodak Zi8 instead of this bulky camcorder. This one only shots in 720 30 fps and the Zi8 shots 720 60 fps and in 1080p. Plus it is smaller than this outdated camcorder.

Although this is a good deal I'd prefer one with a higher optical zoom (i.e. 60+)

We bought one of these last time Woot had one. The ISO on this ranges from 50 to 1600 or so, and the video is very grainy at all but the lowest ISOs. If you are shooting indoors or at night, the video is no better in quality than what you'd get from the video mode on a cheap digital still camera. If you are shooting in daylight it's great, though. The zoom is great for getting shots of wildlife or of kids playing on the other side of the park, and when you hook the camera up to a HD TV with the included HDMI cable, it looks as good as Blu-Ray.

So, don't expect much of this if you do most of your shooting indoors, but if you do lots of outdoors shooting it's a good camera for the money.

packsofwolves wrote:30fps = 60i = standard for a handheld camcorder.

What's the alternative?

There's not really an alternative, there are special cameras with ultra high frame-rate to capture very fast things but not any consumer level ones. Good cameras this size though offer 24fps for cinema capturing. 24fps is the standard for analog cameras and is still used today by the industry. It looks smooth an natural and that's why they use it.

Yeah but it's the shutter speed you need to worry about for high-speed shots, not the framerate...this thing goes to 1/10000 second, which is pretty good...

radi0j0hn wrote:"I do have questions about the quality of the video specifically motion. I shoot a lot of car races, offroad trips and so on. I wonder if it will be blurry at times...""

YES!!!!! Not to dump on you specifically, but I am amazed at the number of people who hope to take high action stills or videos with consumer grade gear. 30 FPS is standard, it is like shooting at 1/30th of a second.

You need to spend a few thousand dollars if you want to take shots like a pro sports video production company. Same with still cameras. There ain't no free lunch.

The mighty wootster wrote:I'm a Mac guy and don't know a lot about video formats.

The video format on the description page reads: "Video: Conforms to ISO-standard MPEG-4 AVC/H.264." The specs also indicate that the camera is compatible with Win XP, Vista and 7. Perhaps the Mac won't recognize the camera if it is USB connected, but it should be able to recognize the SD card. So my question is... can a Mac read, edit, or write video files in this video format? Or do we need special software? (Commercial or open source would be fine...)

Any advice to a guy who can make RAW, TIFF and JPG jump through hoops but doesn't know a thing about video would be much appreciated.

Yes h.264 is a mac-compatible compression format as long as you have the correct codec. If you have a recent version of final cut you should be fine.

Thanks for all the feedback and links everyone! Most of the complaints here and at other review sites seem to be pretty common issues people have with cameras, low light = low quality, super zoomed in with no tripod = shaky... unless you spend closer to $1000 on one... so I've decided to bite the bullet on this one, we want a half way decent video cam for our wedding and honeymoon (both of which will be spent mostly out doors anyways) I love woot, and wooters, thanks again!

jpstrings wrote:Get the kodak Zi8 instead of this bulky camcorder. This one only shots in 720 30 fps and the Zi8 shots 720 60 fps and in 1080p. Plus it is smaller than this outdated camcorder.

Actually, that's what I just did after considering this Sanyo this morning.. came back to read more posts and saw this..

Tempted to get one, but I just picked up the Pentax they were selling yesterday. I think I'll save up for a higher end camcorder.

piercedgeek wrote:Thanks for all the feedback and links everyone! Most of the complaints here and at other review sites seem to be pretty common issues people have with cameras, low light = low quality, super zoomed in with no tripod = shaky... unless you spend closer to $1000 on one... so I've decided to bite the bullet on this one, we want a half way decent video cam for our wedding and honeymoon (both of which will be spent mostly out doors anyways) I love woot, and wooters, thanks again!

This was my thinking...was kind of kicking myself the last time i didnt get it. And now we just booked a cruise in Sept, so i couldnt pass on it this time. Price is right, and for my use primarily outside should be fine.

xtalviper wrote:Yeah but it's the shutter speed you need to worry about for high-speed shots, not the framerate...this thing goes to 1/10000 second, which is pretty good...

So, each of the 30 frames that are shot in each second are exposed for (up to) 1/1000th of a second? I'm not a big video user, as you can tell.

I purchased one of these the last time they were posted and I think it is great little video camera. However I think I paid $10 more than the price today...grrrrrr.

Nosuke wrote:One thing people don't realize about that is, under almost ANY artificial light, the picture recorded is going to be off, no matter the camera. It's because of the light itself. Fluorescent light especially, casts a more yellow light, which is why people look paler, or jaundice even, when recorded under it. Plus, they flicker constantly, whether you're aware of it or not. The fact that it works fine outdoors enforces that.

For YEARS, video cameras have had auto white balance. However, in mixed light sources, you may want to switch to manual white balance and try another setting.

bisp wrote:I just bought one, didn't want to wait for it to sell out. The model is labeled with a 'R' (Sanyo VPC-ZH1R), all the you tube vids and all the reviews I found are just for the Sanyo VPC-ZH1, is the 'R' a different/newer/older model or does it just mean that its Red [(R) for red].

Also, 4gig gets you almost 1 hour? Thats not bad at all really. 4 gig cards are all over for less than 10/15$. If you got your laptop with you you can always dump the video back on the laptop, erase everything and have another hour. I like how the battery last longer than the video, better than my 800$ 2 year old sony.

I see lots of questions here about quality in different lights or motion. That, though important, does it take a back seat to the price?

I do have questions about the quality of the video specifically motion. I shoot a lot of car races, offroad trips and so on. I wonder if it will be blurry at times...

If anyone can comment, I know I already bought it but still good to know and if it's not that good I'll gift it lol. Here is a video I made about a year ago with my Sony Handycam HDR-CX12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE7fmVQ_b24
The picture is a little blurry when things start moving too much, I notice this a lot with this cam even when its set to 1080. Will the sanyo take better video than this? We really only shoot during the day time never at night- Thanks!

It will be blurry in low light situations. I bright light or outdoors it should be fine. Look at this skateboarding video shot outside on an overcast day, looks fine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvEsFFq_tJU In low light the shutter speed gets longer and the ISO goes up which will make fast motion videos shot with this somewhat blurry and grainy respectively.

janetcsides wrote:I bought this one last time it came up and have regretted it. Husband and I agreed: though it seemed a good buy, it's simply not a good camera. Blurry picture in video or still mode. Not just action shots, not just poor-lighting situations, but even shooting a TREE in full daylight, not good. I wish I'd waited for a flip. The ability to zoom isn't that amazing when the picture is so sad.

At 30x zoom, it would be best to attach a tripod to stablize the picture. Smooth stable handling is important for great video.

I got this same one last month when WOOT offered it. I wanted to go HD and convert from taped recording to SD card for convenience. Now videos dont sit on the tape in a drawer. I can pull to my PC, push to a flash drive and plug straight into my HDTV and watch good video. For the price, I couldnt beat this.

Here are two soccer videos I shot with it. I am NO expert at converting fomats or whatever. One ended up in AVI but the other one has "HD" on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lB5eoS0hU0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mUonpl-_VI <-- I pulled the sound off of this one.

Bought this a few weeks ago on woot. All in all...just ok. Still photos are almost worthless, very blury and far from a crisp image you would even be willing to post on facebook. The video seems great if the lighting is ok, works wonderful outside and not bad inside if the room is well lit. Menu's are very easy to navagate through and the zoom works very well, no issues with auto focus either. Worth the money to me, I look foward to taking it on vacations and beach trips with out fear of breaking a $1000 cam.

I bought one the last time it was on Woot. I love this thing. I took it to the Masters and got some really good footage of Tiger and Phil on Wednesday's practice round. The 30x zoom is a little tricky - you'd really need a tripod to use it successfully..

Does anyone know if this has a microphone input jack?

This camera blows. I bought it and 2 weeks later they had a Samsung because I was so unhappy with this one. I bought the refurb 1080i Samsung they just had on here a week or two ago and it's SOOOO much better, the color is amazing. This little camera is a waste of money, does fine if the lighting is perfect, otherwise it's grainy as hell. The new Samsung I got is beautiful in comparison, the colors are more realistic than the Zacti, I did identical testing on each camera side by side, this would be great for a 4 year old interested in making crappy films... I wouldn't buy this pile of do do, if I had the chance to take it back I would.

carmispicer wrote:30fps = blurry if it is an action seen (soccer, horse racing, track)

what if it is an action not seen?

if a tree falls in the forest...

The mighty wootster wrote:I'm a Mac guy and don't know a lot about video formats.

The video format on the description page reads: "Video: Conforms to ISO-standard MPEG-4 AVC/H.264." The specs also indicate that the camera is compatible with Win XP, Vista and 7. Perhaps the Mac won't recognize the camera if it is USB connected, but it should be able to recognize the SD card. So my question is... can a Mac read, edit, or write video files in this video format? Or do we need special software? (Commercial or open source would be fine...)

Any advice to a guy who can make RAW, TIFF and JPG jump through hoops but doesn't know a thing about video would be much appreciated.

It should work just fine with Quicktime, iMovie, and VLC. I don't have this camera--I have the Kodak HD cam, but it also does this format and it worked fine on the Mac.

radi0j0hn wrote:Am I not mistaken that 30 FPS is standard for the movie industry?

the movie industry standard is 24fps and higher end camcorders have the 24fps as an option. There is a different "feel" (I know it's visual, not touch) to 24fps and replicating that speed ads to the "art" of an amateur video. For the vast majority of uses, 30fps is great.

austin5454 wrote:Does anyone know if this has a microphone input jack?

That would be negative.

Damn i just bought the Pentax from yesterday. I bought it for the 720p video hoping it would be halfway decent video for the price, I wish I would have waited.

Any clue if the screen swivels?

The mighty wootster wrote:I'm a Mac guy and don't know a lot about video formats.

The video format on the description page reads: "Video: Conforms to ISO-standard MPEG-4 AVC/H.264." The specs also indicate that the camera is compatible with Win XP, Vista and 7. Perhaps the Mac won't recognize the camera if it is USB connected, but it should be able to recognize the SD card. So my question is... can a Mac read, edit, or write video files in this video format? Or do we need special software? (Commercial or open source would be fine...)

Any advice to a guy who can make RAW, TIFF and JPG jump through hoops but doesn't know a thing about video would be much appreciated.

We bought this cam on the last round, and use Macs. The format works fantastic in iMovie, the camera is perfectly recognized over USB. There is no reason that this is not a "Mac compatible" camera. The reason most companies don't list Mac as being compatible is because the crappy software that they bundle with the cameras doesn't work on a Mac...but we don't that software anyway!

davfoong wrote:Any clue if the screen swivels?

Yes it does, though I did not notice it until I had it over a week.

i was not a fan of this camera. the inside lighting was so bad that it wasn't even worth using. i bought it, and sold it the next day and got a canon hf-20

I have had a couple xacti's from sanyo...they have problems indoors, in any dark condition, the autofocus is pretty slow, and the overall quality is just not that good. Don't be fooled by high def figures...the lenses, autofocus, and ability of thing to digitize the picture all sit in front of 720anything.

radi0j0hn wrote:Am I not mistaken that 30 FPS is standard for the movie industry?

24 fps is standard for film. 30 fps (there abouts) is standard for television. The only reason you'd want more or less fps is to be able to slow down or speed up what you are capturing. The person who said that 30 fps would be blurry is an spoon. Sure, you want 60+ fps when you're playing video games, but not when you are shooting video.

prandlesc wrote:the movie industry standard is 24fps and higher end camcorders have the 24fps as an option. There is a different "feel" (I know it's visual, not touch) to 24fps and replicating that speed ads to the "art" of an amateur video. For the vast majority of uses, 30fps is great.

I am amazed at this. We have a great new, High Quality tool, so let's retrofit it to the older, lower quality standard. If you want 24fps, get a MOVIE camera and film

I bought this a month ago when it was up. Definitely worth the price. Best Buy sells this same package deal for $250. I used it to record on the beach a lot and in high light like outside or a well lit room the footage quality is really good HD. In low light however, it struggles a little bit. The darker the situation, the more grainy it gets. HOWEVER, the audio quality is amazing. This was used to record a band playing right by the stage pushing over 95 db and it picks up every instrument and voice.

Buy it.

forthill wrote:Although this is a good deal I'd prefer one with a higher optical zoom (i.e. 60+)

anything higher than 30x optical zoom is going to be worthless without a tripod. at 60x zoom, even the slightest motion in your hand will result in a large wobble in your video. So get a tripod unless you like making your audience nauseous.

I like the fact that it's 720p. SDHC cards large enough to capture extended 1080p video are still prohibitively expensive (because you need a high write rate, like class 10, and a huge capacity, like 16 to 32GB).

This is a good holdover while the memory card technology catches up with our camcorder technology.

I picked one up last time it was on woot i dropped a 16GB SDHC in it and it will record 3 hours and 45 min, so its more than enough to run through 2 batteries.

here is night some video i took with it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Qu68x2d6w/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jR314IHSg0/

30fps - seems a lil slow for action sports ie tennis; anyone confirm or correct?

sdc100 wrote:The Kodak Zi6 HD Pocket Video Camera (similar to a Flip), which I bought here on Woot for $69, has HD at 60 fps. Incredibly smooth video. Also has 30 fps HD mode, as well as VGA.

And if you want a point-and-shoot, the Casio Exilim EX-FS10 offers an astonishing 1,000 fps burst video mode (imagine how much memory it uses) at reduced resolution. Great for science experiements. It can also do the standard 30 fps/60 fps in HD. Amazingly, I found it recently for about $109 NEW.

Thanks!

Does this camera have the ability to use an external wireless mic?