1080 Video from SONY HX5V Camera

The SONY Cybershot HX5V compact digital camera is one of the few in this category that does full 1920 X 1080 60i video, in addition to being a 10MP digital still camera.

So here's a short test video showing some characteristics of the 1080 video. Although it's advertised as featuring 1920X1080 60i video, you can't really see that on Youtube, since all their highest HD videos are converted to 30 frame progressive. To make it all the more confusing I processed this video through an edit program (SONY Vegas 7) and rendered to a 1440X1080 30P WMV9 file, to simpfly the upload to Youtube. It's still within the definition of HD, but you can't really see full 1920 X 1080 60i video on Youtube.

There is the big argument about interlace vs. progressive. It's the "film look" vs. the "video look" thing. For my money, the film look (24/30P) has its place, but for the best subjective representation of "reality" I prefer 60 fields per second video. 60 frame progressive would be the best, but that's tough to come by. I think 24P/30P has too much of an odd "strobe" like look for clearly representing reality, though we've all gotten comfortable with film's 24/30P "look" used for "story telling" purposes. If Edison had jacked film speeds up to 60fps on his invention our subjective brains would today accept that as the appropriate "story telling" frame rate, and there wouldn't be this crazy argument about "film vs. video" But I digress.

So the HX5V claim of doing 60i HD is interesting to me. Most current digital still cameras now come with 720/30p, which is fine. But obviously 1080 is better. Not by a lot though. In fact the HX5V can be switched to 720/30P if you like for what they say is "web compatability". The 720 mode eats less storage capacity than the 1080 mode. I have a suspicion that they are pulling 30P off the CMOS censor and synthisizing 60i for the HDMI output. But that's just an educated guess. I'm guessing based on having watched the 1080 output on a monitor and it had more of a "strobe" like look than the genuine 60i output from my HVRA1U HDV camcorder.

But this little HX5V bugger is so convenient for vacationing. Excellent HD video and stills with a camera that pops in a shirt pocket. It's a freakin technical miracle for those of us who cut our vacation film teeth with 8mm film cameras.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• SONY
• SONY HX5V
• HX5V
• Sony Cybershot
• 1080
• 1080 video
• HX5V review

[mralan1969uk]

The video quality on this camera IS good, even in near dark conditions it blows most camcorders away. Unfortunately you don't mention how bad the mic/sound capture quality actually is ...

[calvertthedad]

@mralan1969uk Hi....I might have mentioned the microphone quality somewhere here, but maybe I didn't. In the interest of full disclosure, the mike quality is less than thrilling. I have older generation snap cameras with tiny hole mikes, and they sound much better. As for the video, it has the same issues as all small imager cameras do. In low light, the video noise goes up, the compression has a battle, and they apply a filter that makes it all look soft. It's the territory.

[Sukhoirc]

What coverter did you use? It seems as though it did a good job... why not use the 30fps mode though? Then you wouldn't need to convert.

[calvertthedad]

@Sukhoirc I might have run the thing through Sony Vegas 7. Why I don't know. I thought maybe Youtube wouldn't work with AVC files. It does. You can upload the camera files with no issues, and Youtube does the rest. It was my first time dealing with these files, so I had some odd ideas about stuff.

[Sukhoirc]

@calvertthedad Oh OK, that's really good then.

[calvertthedad]

@Sukhoirc Oh I remember why I ran it through Sony Vegas 7 (video editing software). So that I could put the comments on the video regarding the performance of the camera. Plus changing it to WMV9 files.

[lalo272]

Exelent test!!

[adoromotoviagens]

Beautiful house.

[Sukhoirc]

@Sukhoirc I see you have the answers to my questions above! Good video and description - very helpful, I think I may buy one now.

[calvertthedad]

@X41N3 I can't argue about the microphones. They don't sound very good. I have an older Canon, and it produces much better sound. Both cameras however seem to place the mic openings right where fingers end up. The 30 min record time limit is probably on a single clip. You can probably fit much more on a single mem chip with multiple clips. That's a file size limitation inherent to the camera OS. I think everybody has that issue. But hey, if you don't like it...take it back !