Six Years of Evolution of Sony Camcorders

I bought my previous camcorder, Sony DCR TRV50 in 2002. At the time, it was the top model of the Sony consumer camcorders, as is my new Sony HDR SR12. Let us look what has gone better and what worse.


Let us first look at the main features for which the SR12 is marketed.

Feature	TRV50	SR12
Resolution	PAL 720x576	FullHD 1920x1080
Video size	13GB/h	8GBh
Audio	2+2 channels	5.1 channels
Recording Media	MiniDV	HDD
Recording Time	1h(SP) - 1.5h(LP)	15h(FullHD) - 50h(HD/LP)
Price	2050€	1350€

SR12 clearly wins by all of its main features: FullHD (1920x1080) image resolution, 5.1 surround audio, and 120GB hard disk storage capacity. The HDD media also wins for the easiness to browse the media. With MiniDV tapes, you have to fast-forward and rewind the tape to get where you want, and in SR12 the camera simply displays an index of all shots. You can edit the individual shots and delete them freely, which is impossible with MiniDV, at least without scissors and glue.
The real questions are, are the actual image and audio quality actually any better, and what about the other features?

Physical features

Feature	TRV50	SR12
Screen size	3,5" 3:4 LCD	3,5" 9:16 LCD
Viewfinder	Yes, tilting+telescoping, bigger	Yes, tilting
Neck strap	Yes, 2-point	Not included, 1-point
Lens cover	plastic cap	automatic shutter

The screen size is same for both cameras, about 3.5" with equal width, but TRV50 has a 3:4 screen, which makes it higher. The display in TRV50 was more matt and SR12 has a more polished screen surface. Polishing is generally bad, because it reflects light, but modern coatings help with the problem.


The viewfinder in TRV50 was much bigger than in SR12 and it was possible to telescope it further back. This is important if the battery is bigger than normal, as is my case. A good viewfinder is very important in bright daylight.
As you may see, the battery is also somewhat smaller in SR12. Well, the SR12 battery is the standard battery, while in TRV50 I have the biggest battery. The battery life with the SR12 standard battery is about 1,5 hours, while the TRV50 battery has 6,5 hours. The 1,5 hours is ridiculously short, as I have experienced that the 6,5 hours is barely enough for a day of touristing. You definitely need a bigger battery, the biggest one is some 150€. Unfortunately, it will also make the camera bigger and, as it has no telescoping viewfinder as TRV50 has (see the picture), using the viewfinder is more difficult, at least when it is leveled and not tilted as in the picture above.

Performance

The FullHD SR12 has five times as many pixels as the PAL TRV50. But does this mean better actual resolution? The lenses are about the same size, with the lens of SR12 possibly a bit smaller, so the optical resolution may not be any better. On the other hand, in digital cameras, the resolution has grown just fine while keeping the optics about the same size. So the size might not matter.


Comparing the actual performance of the cameras would require careful testing. I may do such tests later, but for now I will just present a rough evaluation.

The actual resolution of video in SR12 is clearly better than in TRV50, but also obviously not the five times as good as the number of pixels would suggest. I estimate that the actual resolution is only about two times better.

One bigger problem is that as you five-fold the number of pixels, you drop the level of light for each pixels to one fifth. It is not probable the the light detection efficiency of CMOS chips has five-folded in six years. However, there is some advance in noise reduction in image processing. My observations support this logic, the SR12 seems to perform much worse in low-light conditions.

SR12 is has an optical Super SteadyShot image stabilizer, while TRV50 has non-optical. While optical stabilizers are generally considered much better than non-optical, I can not see real difference between the cameras. One reason may just be the size: the smaller and lighter SR12 has less momentum to prevent shaking in the hand, and the optical stabilization could merely compensate for the size. I have noticed some difference though. TRV50 apparently stabilizes small vibrations well, and SR12 stabilizer also bigger. But the stabilization in SR12 makes the video very jerky when the camera moves more than the area of stabilization, resulting in sudden jumps in the video.

Extra Features

Feature	TRV50	SR12
Bluetooth	Yes	No
Internet	Yes: Web, Email	No
Face detection	No	Yes
Face index	No	Bad

Yes, TRV50 actually has a web browser and email, and the Bluetooth connection for connecting to Internet via a mobile phone. I've used the web browser a countless times before I had other mobile browsers, and it actually works. Well, it is slow and the touchscreen keypad is rather bad, but it works.

SR12 has an interesting face detection feature. Yes, it actually detects faces on the video. It uses the faces for two purposes: to set focus and exposure parameters, and to make a video index out of the faces. Unfortunately, the video index is only for the particular shot: it doesn't make an overall index of faces in all shots. The face indexing is also very picky and doesn't index most of the faces, therefore making it basicly useless.

Conclusions

There has clearly been progress in six years. While the nominal resolution has grown five-fold, the increase in actual resolution may not be much better. Low-light performance may even have gone much worse. Physical features such as the display, viewfinder, and neck strap have also gone worse, though there are also advances. The biggest progress is actually in software and having a hard disk drive instead of tapes helps a lot in organizing and playing back videos.

That's it for now. I may update this article later and write other reviews about some more specific features of SR12. Especially, I will need to research the video resolution, low-light capability and the image stabilization.

See also:

• Disappointment With Sony Handycam Software

First Look at Sony HDR-SR12 Camcorder

Finally, I got it, my new FullHD digital video recorder, Sony HDR-SR12. This is the most high-end of this spring's consumer series from Sony.



The camera is really small, much smaller than my previous digital camcorder, Sony DCR TRV-50E, which was also very small at the time when I got it. SR12 fits well in the pocket of my winter jacket and really well in my backpack.

The package did not include a real camera bag, just a think cloth pouch, which I think is probably better than a bag. I usually keep my kamera in my backbag, where it's already protected so there's no need for thick bag, but a thin cloth is good to keep scratches out.

The optical Super SteadyShot is better than the non-optical one in TRV50, but not much better. A tripod is still an essential aid for video camera.



I was quite disappointed that the camcorder did not include any kind of shoulder strap. This is really unusual. It can be purchased as an accessory, but the fastening does not look very good. I will try to use the shoulder strap from my TRV50 or some other camera.

The 3,5" display is really crisp and clear. No wonder, as the resolution is 1920x480. The horizontal resolution probably contains separate R, G, and B pixels, so it's not really that high resolution, but very good anyhow. It's a touchscreen, so I'm worried how it will look in a year, but at least so far it has seemed to repel the dirt from my fingers quite well.



Transferring the video files to my Linux computer was easy, just plug the cable in the computer and the camera appears on desktop as an external media device. The problem was that the AVCHD video files are mts files, which are not easily opened. Luckily, I found an excellent article on Transcoding MTS/M2TS AVCHD Video Into AVI Files. Installing the software was not straight-forward, as it required some badly documented manual work. For example, the ldecod had to be downloaded from an obscurely documented location. After that, the program worked on standard definition video files with 1440x1080 resolution. I had to fix the program to work with FullHD 1920x1080 resolution. After that, I got video. I was very pleased at the quality, which really was clear image at the full resolution. Even a still image capture from the video was really crisp, even in indoor light conditions.

(Click on the image for the full-size image.)

Notice that the image above is not a still photograph taken with the camera, but a still capture from the video stream.

Unfortunately the video is 1920x1080i, that is, interlaced, just like in old PAL camcorders such as my old TRV-50. This is the most prominent visual problem that makes the video look cheap if there is basicly any movement at all in the video. Luckily, interlacing can usually be removed quite well without halving the video resolution. Apparently, the conversion software doesn't remove the interlacing, so I'll have to study the problem closer.

Playback is another big issue. No program I have can decode the AVI fast enough. I removed scaling and interlacing from Kaffeine and now it almost works if there is very little movement in the video. If I can't get the playback fixed, I have to reduce the resolution of the videos I save.

The audio is rather badly out of sync. This seems to be a common problem for people using the program, so I will have to inspect it further. It may also be caused by the speed problem, as, for example, kaffeine plays audio just fine at normal speed but the video is slow.

I also got a bluetooth microphone for the camera. The problem is that the bluetooth transceiver is ridiculously big. Well, more about that later.

See also:

• Disappointment With Sony Handycam Software