Panasonic SDR-H40

Summary: Ok, to start with I'm a Novice camcorder user! Here's my experience. I got it home, charged the battery (1.5 hrs), read the manual while it was ...

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Summary: Ok, to start with I'm a Novice camcorder user! Here's my experience. I got it home, charged the battery (1.5 hrs), read the manual while it was charging. I shot some indoor video (well lit room, incandescent lighting.) From reading the user's manual I noticed that it defaults to 16:9 aspect ratio so I changed that to 4:3 before shooting. It also defaults to the medium quality setting (forget what they called it, LP is low) so I changed it to High quality. The menu system in intuitive and easy to use!

Then I decided I'd like to see how the video looked on my computer (WinXP pro sp2). (You need to install the bundled software before you connect the camera to your computer) I was disappointed to see that it wouldn't let me connect to the computer without removing the battery and using the ac power adapter they supply, (guess they don't want the batt to discharge while you're reading from the hard drive!) I also didn't like that they won't let you delete files on the camera's hd from the computer.

The next disappointment was that the bundled software only supports the dvd- format. Some how I ended up with a bunch of dvd+ media and a drive in my computer that supports DVDR+, DVDRW+ and dual layer dvd+ burning, but NOT DVD- anything!

When you connect the camera to the computer it is necessary to make some menu selections from the camera to choose the hdd or the sd card, then the bundled software will recognize the camera's hd as an hd on your computer. You don't have to use the bundled software for transferring/editing your video files at that point, you can use windows explorer to drag and drop them into whatever folder you select. The files will be in a .mod format. A quick look at wikipedia suggested that I could play them with windows media player if I renamed them to .mpg, (yes, this works just fine).

I need to find some 3rd party software to edit the clips so I can burn DVD+ videos for myself!

Some other observations:

What I like about the camera is the zoom!!! it is Loooooong, and the image stabilization really does work! If you were gonna use it at full zoom a lot you'd need a tripod. You can use the full zoom when hand-holding but you have to pay attention to what you're doing.

I found the buttons to be a little hard to reach but my wife (smaller hands) thinks they're perfect.

We bought this camera to replace an old hi-8 camcorder and were expecting a much higher quality video when viewed on the TV, (35" crt, flat glass). It's really about the same as the hi-8 video from several years ago shot in the same type of light. Again, I'm NOT a camera expert, so maybe this expectation was off base. I guess they're both shooting standard definition... (maybe another more knowledgeable reviewer can address this)

The camera seems to be well made.

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Summary: I had the JVC Everio HDD camera and exchanged it for the Panasonic SDR-H40. Of the two, the Panasonic is clearly a better buy. Picture quality was consistent between the ...

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Summary: I had the JVC Everio HDD camera and exchanged it for the Panasonic SDR-H40. Of the two, the Panasonic is clearly a better buy. Picture quality was consistent between the two models, which overall is very good. The Panasonic, however, has much easier controls and is easier to handle.

The interface is a bit more user-friendly than the Everio as well. The big difference was that the Panasonic's intruction manual is much easier to consume than JVC, which reeks of bad translation from a foreign manufacturer. I was using the SDR-H40 pretty much out of the box.

A joystick control near the mode wheel gives you easy access to the LCD menus-- as opposed to some other models (JVC, Sony) which place the joystick on the LCD. That means rather than switching through menus on the fly with your thumb, with competing models you have to use another hand to use the LCD's joystick.

Two disappointments, one major and one minor, is uploading to PC. As with the JVC Everio, and I assume every other HDD camera, the file format that video is saved in is .MOD. As a Mac user, this isn't easily readable by iMovie or even more pro apps such as Final Cut Express. And of course, the provided software isn't Mac compatible. So, to convert the files to .MOV or Quicktime, you need a 3rd party app. Conversion of every scene can be a pain.

Another minor inconvenience is that this camcorder will not connect to your PC unless the clunky AC adapter is plugged into the camera. Even a little more bothersome than it sounds-- you need to insert an AC battery insert into the camera's battery port, then connect that to the actual AC adapter, then plug it in. Panasonic would have saved everyone much more trouble to trust us to not connect the camera to a PC unless the battery was charged. A simple onscreen warning would do rather than forcing us to have a power source in effect. This means that transfering video on the fly- or to someone else's computer, would mean you need to carry the AC adapter with you at all times.

Overall, of the two low-end HDD cameras I've got to sample, I love the Panasonic and look forward to many great videos. I just hope all the camcorder makers catch up to the world of Apple OS, et al, and make their file formats a little easier to transfer.

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Summary: My parents, both in their 60's, recently purchased a Panasonic SDR-H40 video camera. I did my "son" duties, showing them how to use it while ensuring them there was ...

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Summary: My parents, both in their 60's, recently purchased a Panasonic SDR-H40 video camera. I did my "son" duties, showing them how to use it while ensuring them there was no way to break it by playing with it. Mom was making short videos in no time. I would say this video camera is perfect for non-tech savvy parents and young children. While the provided software is lacking, and only work with Windows computers, this camera itself will work fine with Apple computers - in fact, Apple users will be able to make better movies due the software Apple computers are provided with (iMovie and iDVD). This is a great video camera for the masses.

This small, light video camera must be plugged into the wall before you can transfer video to your computer. There is also an accessory DVD drive which will let you save video to DVD disks without the use of a computer.

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