Samsung SMX-F50 camcorder test

Samsung SMX-F50 digital camcorder
SD/SDHC card slot
1/6" CCD image sensor, 680k gross pixels
52X optical zoom (65X "Intellizoom" enabled)
16:9 widescreen mode
Auto white balance, backlight compensation off
Digital image stabilization on
720x480 resolution at 29.97 fps Interlaced
H.264 video compression at "TV Super Fine" setting
128 kbps stereo AAC 24 kHz audio

Note: the "yt:stretch=16:9" tag is necessary for YouTube to display proper widescreen aspect ratio with this camera.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• yt:stretch=16:9
• samsung
• smx-f50
• smxf50
• f50
• digital
• flash
• memory
• sd
• sdhc
• video
• camera
• camcorder
• test
• demo
• demonstration

[CarnelProd666]

Only real thing I hate about the F50 are the noisy zoom motor and the Auto "C.Nite" setting, which LOVES to change the shutter speed halfway through a recording in broad daylight.

The weird aspect ratio crap Samsung has bugged their camcorders with is easily fixable in Vegas HD Platinum, so that's not really a problem, although is the interlacing upper or lower field first? I can't Vegas to deinterlace the thing no matter what method I try.

[vwest7ife]

@CarnelProd666 It is upper (odd) field first.

[uxwbill]

Anything good on the clearance shelf? ;-)

Are there any flash-memory based camcorders out there that don't have odd firmware behaviors?

[vwest7ife]

@uxwbill There are some Panasonic standard-def camcorders, such as the SDR-S50, which give you the option of recording in either MPEG2 .MOD or H.264 .MP4. Obviously the .MP4 format would be ideal for Mac users, and it does work in iMovie '06. But the quality is only mediocre at best, as Panasonic provides it as a "long recording" mode at a rather low bitrate, so you get noticeable smearing and blockiness, especially in low light.

[daewooparts]

best buy = to WORST BUY !

[vwest7ife]

@daewooparts Yes, and Samsung continues to use a broken video format. The .MP4 video files this camcorder creates are identified in the metadata as 3:2 aspect ratio and progressive, when in fact they're actually 16:9 aspect ratio and interlaced (top field first), so you'll have to manually correct those settings every time you play or edit your videos! Samsung has never fixed this problem ever since they started making standard-def flash memory camcorders in 2009.

[parkerp1000]

I hate .MP4 why can't every thing be .MOV for my Mac and .flv for my unbuntu machine