AG-HMC81, the new professional shoulder AVCCAM from Panasonic

Panasonic introduces the new AG-HMC81 professional shoulder AVCCAM camera with DV recording. This versatile camcorder, the first to record in HD and DV in solid state memory, will be available in September of this year, thus responding to users who need to work in both formats.

After Panasonic presented the new AG-HMC81 camcorder in Las Vegas, the multinational expects it to be on the market next September. It is an AVCCAM shoulder camcorder with the capacity to record in both DV and HD solid state, making it ideal for those professionals who wish to record in both formats. The camera using a three-chip sensor also offers 10.6 megapixel photos and stores them as JPEG files on the solid-state card. Both video and photos can be played directly from the SD card itself or from Blu-ray players, laptops or advanced game consoles that support this type of card.

This camcorder thus offers image quality similar to the popular HMC40 model, although in this case adding professional features such as manual focus that increases its attractiveness for use in more advanced applications.
Its three-megapixel 3MOS sensor offers high resolution and low-light sensitivity at resolutions of 1920x1080 or 1280x720 AVCHD. Thanks to the use of the format based on MPEG-4 AVC / H.264 encoding, it is possible to double the bandwidth and performance efficiency with respect to the old MPEG-2 encoding as used, for example, by HDV. In this way, sharp and clean recordings are obtained even in fast movements or pans without any image degradation.

The HMC81 records video in four professional AVCCAM HD recording modes, including higher quality PH (average 21/24 Mbps max), HA (about 17 Mbps), HG (about 13 Mbps) and HE mode (about 6 Mbps).

At 60Hz the camcorder is compatible with the following HD formats (in PH mode) 1080/60i, 1080/30p, 1080/24pn, 720/60p, 720/30p, 720/24pn. In HA, HG and HE quality it records in 1080/60i, while in DV standard it records at 480/60i, 480/30p, 480/24p.

Solid state

The new HMC81 will record standard definition DV directly to SD cards in Type 2 AVI files offering squeeze, letter box and side crop options.

With a single 32GB SDHC memory card, for example, the user will be able to record three hours of full resolution video and audio at 1920x1080 in PH mode, four hours in HA mode and 5.3 hours in HG quality. In HE mode, the camera could record up to 12 hours at 1440 x 1080 HD and up to two hours of DV on a 32GB card.

For the first time in an AVCCAM shoulder camcorder, the HMC81 includes high-end professional features such as user-assignable functions, manual focus, iris and zoom ring, UB/timecode recording, time and date, and two terminals with remote control cable connection (to control zoom, focus, iris, and recording/STOP. Its lens captures super-sharp images up to 12x optical zoom and has a wide angle of 40.8 mm (equivalent to a 35mm). It also offers users with useful features such as optical image stabilizer (OIS) for stable and smooth shooting, dynamic range extension (DRS), which helps compensate for sudden variations in lighting, and Cine-Like Gamma mode for recording with 'cinema look'.

It will have HDMI output (AVCHD only), USB 2.0 (Mini B), composite output (BNC x 1), analog components (BNC x 3), IEEE 1394 (DV only), a stereo microphone and external microphone input jack. 3.5mm. You'll also have two XLR inputs with mic/line locking switches, capable of +48V Phantom power.

The camera offers useful solid-state recording functions, including pre-record, interval recording, shot marker and metadata capture. Additional features include waveform monitor, focus assist, face detection autofocus, white balance, on-screen mode and zebra, color bars, tally light, slow zoom, slow shutter and other functions like slow shutter and synchro-scan. The camera will include three user-programmable buttons and will come with a remote control included.

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