Digital Home Thoughts: Sony's HC1 HDV Camcorder Reviewed

The Back


Figure 5: Back of the beastie.

The rear of the camcorder is where the battery is held. Well done Sony for retaining the FM series of batteries used by previous camcorders – I can now carry on using the versatile separate charger I bought. Slight brickbat, though, for the positioning. I guess that Sony was always going to have a problem with where they put the battery. This really is a sleek camcorder and the rear is probably the best place for the battery. The problem, though, is that if you use the extended runtime batteries, they tend to rest against your cheek if you are using the viewfinder. Still, that's what the fold-out panel is for, isn't it :D.


Figure 6: Tilting the view.

The viewfinder has a tilt adjustment so that you can work above the line of the camcorder. Just to the right of the viewfinder is the LANC socket for remote control of the camcorder, the mode selector (tape, memory or play/edit) and the record start/stop button. The positioning of the LANC socket is a bit strange – I would have preferred it to be on the side of the camcorder – but it isn't too much in the way since you would typically use it when the camcorder is mounted on a tripod, in which case you would probably use the fold-out panel instead of the viewfinder.

The Underneath
Not much to see here, except that this is a bottom-loading camcorder, meaning that you can't change the tape if the camcorder is on a tripod. The use of HDV means that you are getting full high definition footage on the same DV tape that you know and love – and the same duration of recording. There isn't, however, an LP mode as there is with DV recordings.

There is a slight cautionary tale about HDV. Both DV and HDV are compressed video formats. DV has the full image stored in each frame, which means that any dropout or corruption of the recording will only last for that one frame. HDV, which is based on MPEG-2, has a full frame followed by several seconds of recording of changed pixels, followed by another full frame, and so on. That's a bit of an over simplification, but the point is that if you get dropouts in HDV, they can persist for several seconds.

Now, it's important to make it clear that this is not anybody's fault, least of all Sony's. It is just an aspect of how they managed to get high definition footage squeezed into a tape that used to hold a quarter of the resolution. The advice from the various manufacturers is to stick with ONE brand of tape.

Another consequence of the HDV compression method is that in this form, it is quite difficult to edit. Computers like having full frames to work on and HDV means you have to compute the frames that come between those full frames. Most editing packages will read HDV off the tape and then convert it into an intermediate format for working on. Others will edit HDV natively – and you'll need a pretty powerful computer to get good performance then.

Speaking of editing software, this is where I think Sony missed an opportunity. Here they have what is currently an unchallenged market leader in the HC1 – and they don't bundle any editing software. They had an excellent chance to include a copy of Sony Vegas – even if it had some limitations compared to a full version. Sony Style in the US is now selling bundles, and that's a good way to get a copy of Vegas if you don't already have HDV-compatible editing software, but I think you ought to get some software included.

The Top
From front to back, we have the left & right microphones, the pop-up flash, the accessory shoe, the zoom toggle and the photo button. The mics aren't anything much to write home about – they pick up a lot of wind noise, but other than that, they do the job well enough. The flash is used if you are using the camcorder for taking photos. I'm not sure about the value in having a camcorder that can take photos. This model is better than previous Sony camcorders, in that you can dub pictures from a playing tape onto the memory card, but I don't think that photos should be the primary reason for getting this camcorder.


Figure 7: Microphones, flash & accessory shoe.

The accessory shoe is the same as the one used by other 2005 models. Apart from anything else, this means it is compatible with the surround sound microphone that I looked at recently. The good news is that if you are doing DV recordings, the camcorder supports all of the features of the surround sound microphone. If, however, you are doing HDV recordings, you can only use the stereo features of the mic. This is because HDV, unlike DV, doesn't support 4 channel audio.


Figure 8: Zoom toggle & photo button.

The zoom toggle is quite small, and doesn't travel very far. This means that it can be difficult to accurately zoom to the point you want to reach. There has been quite a bit of criticism from other users about this. That said, if accuracy is your primary concern, you can use the front ring for zoom control or an external zoom control through the LANC socket. Personally, I didn't find it a massive problem.