Sony HDR-HC7 First Impressions Review

by Matt Culler
Published on Jan 8, 2007 11:00 PM

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


Compression
Consumers interested in high definition video will find themseves faced with two format choices from Sony this year, HDV and AVCHD. HDV camcorders compress data using a MPEG-2 variant, in contrast to the newer AVCHD standard, that employs MPEG-4/H.264. Video is recorded in 1080i, and like DV encoding, HDV shares a fixed data rate of 25Mbps, at a 5:1 compression.  In our tests, AVCHD video shared the exceptional resolution of HDV video but suffered from noise to a much greater degree.  This contrast is analogous to the performance difference seen in standard definition DVD camcorders as compared to their MiniDV counterparts.  In both cases, the non-tape format relies on more aggressive compression, trading off the increased noise and artifacts for smaller file sizes that fit onto DVDs and HDDs.  Given this, we expect the HDR-HC7 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $1128.56) to be Sony’s top-performing consumer HD camcorder of the year. HDV is a higher quality compression with several years of third-party support.

Media
The HDR-HC7 records to standard MiniDV tapes, along with premium grade tapes marketed specifically for HDV recording. Tapes are cheaper than DVD discs, widely available, and familiar to most consumer camcorder users.

Editing
Editing HDR-HC7 footage will involve a typical HDV workflow. In recent years,  nearly all major NLE applications have integrated support for HDV video. Using the i.LINK (IEEE 1394) terminal, footage can be transferred in real time to a PC for editing. If editing is not a major concern, you might want to think about DVD or HDD-based AVCHD camcorders, because they are designed with an emphasis on convenience. While several companies have been licensed to create AVCHD-compatible software, a widely available NLE has yet to materialize.




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