kodak v550

[ankitalmighty]

has anyone seen videos from v550 apart from steves??

how does it compare to a hi8 camcorder??

samsung i5 boasts of a lot of video with a 256 mb card,is it true??

[big_potato]

1. v550 video compares to hi8

Hi-8 & DV quality must be more smooth than ANY DC video which are in the forms of lossy-compression, including the mpeg-4 kodak used (others maybe motion-jpeg). For really fast movements, mpeg-1,2,4 will all show "blocks" of video fragments. But I would say, the convenience (no need to A/D conversion and then compression) outweights the minor loss in information. In fact, the object-oriented nature of mpeg-4 will try to stand out the moving objects from it's background, more sharp and pleasing to the eyes (although not a faithful reproduction). Plus for analog Hi-8, it woudl suffered from analog signal loss in addition to A/D convertion "qunatization loss" e.g. if the color space resolution is not enough.

I feel v550 performs very good in implementing mpeg-4 video.

Also, it's the ONLY card-sized DC capable of "optical zoom during video".

2. Samsung video in 256MB SD card.

For the 3 most popular mpeg-4 card-sized DC which samples I've looked at, their video data rates are:

- Samsung i5 - 230KB/sec, optical zoomable, but temporarily mute audio during zoom.

- Casio Z750 - 500KB/sec, only digital zoom video, but "rainbow ripple" problems when shooting densely black/white stripes (see windmill body in Casio z750 gallery sample video)

- Kodak V550 - 500KB/sec, optical zoomable, no muting but some zoom motor audio noise

I feel their video qualities are about equal I would say.

But taking into account, the Samsung audio muting, and the Casio rainbow-ripple & unable to zoom, I think v550 is the best (among these 3).

[ankitalmighty]

and how does they compare to sanyo xacti c5??? any idea? is v550's video grainy?

[big_potato]

Sorry I don't have experience with Xacti.

But in another forum in Hong Kong, another guy has used both and felt the quality the same. Xacti has 5x zoom and maybe better audio during zoom (mic further away from lens, than in v550). But I don't like its odd shape (I would have used a standard DC for this shape) and that the quality of still pictures is not impressive at all.


Grainy? If you are refering to Steve's sample movie of a running dog, my about 500 minutes of movies (in 2 months) taken so far are much better than his sample, and are quite smooth. I shot running children, padestrian, 100km per hour cars on the highways ...etc. I suspect SD speed may be an issue.

I must emphasize that I don't mean to challenge Steve's test. I am just sharing my own experience.

Maybe you give me your >10MB email address and I'll send you some samples (you may send stevesforums messages to me).

[ankitalmighty]

thanx a million,actually i dont have a 10 mb account,but can u give some kind of a url of website or something from where i can download,have u seen the movie from casio s500 in its review on dcresource.com,i wonder if kodaks movie mode is better than that!!!!

[big_potato]

OK. I've just looked at DC Resource's s500 sample video - CIMG0029.AVI

To be honest, this clip is too short to have fair comments, but my general impressions are:

1. Over exposure - I've taken v550 video under same bright day-light conditions, but seemed the v550 could control the exposure to compensate for it. Over-exposure results in lost of details.

2. Artificially filtered - usual tricks by Casio to make pictures/video more pleasing to eyes by filtering out "noise" which might be mistaken for real pixels, again results in loss of details. In Casio's own sample CIMG0493.AVI, the skins of the models are "unnaturally smooth".
(I read a comparison btwn Sony DSC-W7 vs Casio z750, that z750 was proved to be carrying out sharpening - Sony more blurred, but also more details, whereas Casio was sharper, but loss of details.

Other than these 2, I see no other diff in quality / performance,