Panasonic HDC-SD60

Compression

Panasonic didn't really change anything with the compression system on its 2010 camcorders. These new HD models still use AVCHD compression, which is built on the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec. Panasonic also didn't increase the maximum bitrate for recording video with these new HD camcorders. They all still top out with a bitrate of 17Mbps—which is significantly lower than the 24Mbps ceiling offered by AVCHD. Both Canon and JVC have 24Mbps settings on their consumer camcorders.

Media

The HDC-SD60 is a card-only camcorder, which means it contains no internal memory. The model is, however, compatible with SDXC memory cards as well as SD/SDHC cards. SDXC cards offer higher capacity than SDHC and there are a few 64GB cards in the works from various manufacturers—including Panasonic itself. All of Panasonic's 2010 models are compatible with SDXC memory cards (as well as SD and SDHC cards).

The HDC-SD60 has no internal memory, so all video is recorded to SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards that are inserted in this slot.

The three HD camcorders announced by Panasonic at CES each have different media options. As we mentioned, the HDC-SD60 is card-only, while the HDC-HS60 has a 120GB internal hard drive (in addition to its memory card slot). If you want to stick with flash memory, Panasonic has the twin memory HDC-TM55. The TM55 has 8GB of internal flash memory along with its card slot.

Editing

Panasonic doesn't include a brand new software package with the HDC-SD60. Instead, the camcorder ships with an updated version of HD Writer AE (this year its version 2.0). The 1.5 version of the software was decent enough for importing your footage, but we won't know what kind of updates have been made to the program until we get a copy of the new version to try out.

Since the HDC-SD60 records AVCHD video, the camcorder must come with the caveat that you'll need a very powerful computer to work with the footage. AVCHD files can take forever to import if you have a slow computer—and they can take a long time on decent computers as well. If you plan on doing extensive editing with AVCHD footage, make sure you have a computer (and enough hard drive space) that is up to the challenge.