Panasonic SDR-S10 First Impressions Camcorder Review

by John Neely
Published on Mar 9, 2007 6:47 PM

Intro Performance
Format
 Tour
Auto / Manual Controls Still Features
Handling and Use Audio / Playback / Connectivity
Comparisons / Conclusion Specs and Ratings
   


Compression
Like the company's other standard definition SD/SDHC and DVD camcorders, the SDR-S10 uses MPEG-2 video compression. This is the algorithm in which DVDs are encoded and should allow for relatively easy archiving of footage to disc. This model supports three quality settings that correspond to different video bit rates.

The highest quality setting is called XP with a bit rate of 10Mbps, followed by SP at 5 Mbps, and LP records at 2.5 Mbps. Higher bit rates produce better-looking video but will eat up more of the precious space on your SD or SDHC cards. Actual recording time will depend on the size of your memory card, and SDHC cards are currently available in capacities up to 8GB, though larger capacity cards are in development.

Media
The SDR-S10 ships with a High Speed 2GB SD, but larger SDHC cards are available in 4GB and 8GB capacities, while the format supports up to 32GB. The main appeal of memory cards over other media is transfer speed, size, and the fact that they are solid-state media. They can move video clips to your computer faster than DVDs and are only constrained by the speed at which the camcorder's mechanism can spin. They have the same random access benefits of both DVD and HDD media. Memory cards are also much smaller than any other media format used in camcorders today, allowing engineers to make SD/SDHC camcorders smaller and lighter than their DVD or HDD counterparts.

Finally, flash memory is a solid-state format that eliminates the need for motors and drives in the camcorder body. This has the potential to reduce the wear and tear of daily use on a camcorder and eliminates the sound of media transport motors. In other words, unlike non-flash memory camcorders, the SDR-S10 operates virtually silently. If the annoying and ever-present sound of a camcorder's motor is a thorn in your side, the SDR-S10 may be for you.

Editing
The SDR-S150 (Review, Specs, $699.95) includes a rudimentary editing program, MotionSD Studio 1.2 that will allow you to work with MPEG-2 footage. We were not able to give this software a test run for this First Impressions Review, but I did transfer footage to my Mac Powerbook via the included USB cable.

That process was relatively painless: I simply set the camcorder to playback mode, and the camcorder appeared on my PC as a browsable disc. I was then able to drag and drop the footage to my hard drive. I was able to play back the clips immediately using MPEG Streamclip, an excellent shareware program for Macs that can be used to convert MPEG-2 clips to formats that are editable in popular NLEs like Adobe Premiere and iMovie.

Potential buyers who do plan on editing their footage should keep in mind that MPEG-2 video is supported by many consumer-level NLEs (non-linear editors) but not by professional applications, including Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut Pro, and Avid DV Express. If you do plan on editing your footage using a pro-level application, you will need to convert your clips to DV or another supported format.






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