First Canon SX220 HS Video Test 1080p

This is the first test performed with the Canon Powershot SX220 HS, shot recently at dawn in the South West of England. This clip is the original .Mov file, split down to the first seven and a half minutes (resulting in a 795 MB file) with no transcoding (granted, it will be rencoded by YouTube, and the footage has reduced quality as a result). The camera was in 1920x1080 24p mode, taking advantage of the manual control option on this model. The supplied battery was used and the SDHC card was a Bytestor 16GB Class 10.

Main settings for this test were as follows:

Shutter speed: 1/50th of a second
Aperture: F8.0
ISO: 100
Lens: 28mm
White balance: Auto
Wind cut option not used for the sound
Custom Colors: Contrast, Saturation, and Sharpness set to minimum. No further changes were made to this setting.

I think the camera did well, below is information on the file the camera produced.

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Baseline@L5.0
Format settings, CABAC : No
Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 29mn 59s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 13.4 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.269
Stream size : 2.80 GiB (90%)
Language : English
Color primaries : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4, SMPTE RP177
Transfer characteristics : BT.709-5, BT.1361
Matrix coefficients : BT.601-6 525, BT.1358 525, BT.1700 NTSC, SMPTE 170M

Audio
ID : 2
Format : PCM
Format settings, Endianness : Little
Format settings, Sign : Signed
Codec ID : sowt
Duration : 29mn 59s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 329 MiB (10%)
Language : English

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Canon
• SX220 HS
• HD
• Test
• Video

[idiosyncrazy1980]

I thought the bitrate in 1980p mode was 35Mb/s (which is supposed to limit the length of an individual movie to a little more than 14 minutes, because of the 4GB limit in FAT32). Isn't that the case ? Is there any way to set the bitrate ? I'm looking for a camera capable of recording long movies, if this one can record 60 minutes in 640x480 mode I think I'll go for it (Fuji F550 has poor video quality, Sony HX9V has poor photo quality and is way more expensive).

[coastaltype]

@idiosyncrazy1980

Hi! This camera has a variable video bitrate, and it will run up to 38 Mbps. You are right to say that at that bitrate, you will hit the 4GB limit in about 12-14 minutes. Although this camera does have a lot of manual control (I'm really enjoying using it) there is no way to manually set the bitrate. In this first test I did, if you look at the full text above, you will see that the average bitrate is 13.4 Mbps. That's how I was able to capture a 29 minute 59 second clip

[coastaltype]

It really depends on what you are filming and the conditions at the time. In this example, the clouds rolling along didn't tax the camera, so we end up with a longer record time. I have shot more tests in a more dynamic context (which I will post soon!) and indeed, in 1080p mode you often hit the 12-14 minute limit. I haven't tested the lower resolutions yet, but as you are interested in 640x480, I'll test that out for you when poss, British weather permitting! Hope this helps.

[idiosyncrazy1980]

@coastaltype I finally bought a used Panasonic ZS3 (american version, known in Europe as TZ7) for 180 euros : it lacks manual controls (ZS7 for that), but otherwise it's exactly what I wanted, pictures are very good and it can record AVCHD videos seamlessly until the card is full or the battery empty, so with one battery it's supposed to take 90 minutes in a row in 1280x720 (I don't really need 1080). No recent camera comes close. (Pana. TZ20 has a limit of 29'59 worldwide, as the Sony HX9V.)