Panasonic HDC-TM300

Manual Focus (7.00)

Miscellaneous Controls (12.50)

Digital Cinema Color

Panasonic’s version of an x.v.Color mode, which expands the available color gamut for x.v.Color-compatible televisions

Tele Macro

Allows you to focus on items close to the camcorder (focal distance is approximately 1cm to 1m)

Guide Lines

Onscreen lines that help you frame your shot (can be set to three horizontal lines, a 9-sector grid, or a 60-sector grid)

Zebra

A common professional feature that assists with manual exposure adjustment: black and white stripes appear in overexposed areas (not on your final footage); unlike on the Canons, there is no option to set zebra stripe sensitivity

Luminance

A small target at the center of the screen, give you a luminance value from 0% – 100% (can be set to always on, on adjust, or off)

Histogram

Helps you determine how much of your shot is currently in brightness, shadows, and mid-tones (can be set to always on, on adjust, or off)

Audio Controls (5.75)

Editing (7.00)

If you prefer Macs and Mac operating systems, you’re probably just going to use iMovie for importing and editing video—especially since this little gem only works on Windows. We’re talking about HD Writer AE 1.0, the simple editing software that ships with the HDC-TM300. (Panasonic’s latest camcorders, including the TM10, ship with version 1.5, but the Panasonic site indicates that the TM300 still ships with 1.0.) Of course, so matter which version of HD Writer you get, there isn’t much the software can do.

The most important function is the easy importing of files. Since AVCHD files will evade your attempts to drag and drop them to your computer, you’ll need HD Writer—or a similar program—to get your files easily transferred.

With the program’s ‘Simple Menu,’ you can let yourself be carried through some of the more common tasks. The menu itself is simple to use, but HD Writer makes individual tasks more complicated than they need to be. The screen shot below is the clutter of information that appears when you’re trying to import files onto your PC. Considering this is one of the most vital functions of the software, we wish it were a lot less intimidating.

There’s also a question of the numerous error messages we received when trying to do just about anything. Was our computer to blame? Or buggy software? Either way, HD Writer AE 1.0 won’t shed a tear if you leave it in the box. And neither should you. For an overview of the software that ships with this and other camcorders, see our article: Video Editing Software For Your Camcorder.