Amazon.com: Sanyo VPC-TH1 HD Compact Flash Memory Camcorder w/ 30x Optical Zoom (Silver): Camera & Photo

32 Reviews

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3.2 out of 5 stars (32 customer reviews)

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45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It is HD - not bad for under $300, April 13, 2009

A. Chan (Cerritos, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Sanyo VPC-TH1 HD Compact Flash Memory Camcorder w/ 30x Optical Zoom (Blue) (Electronics)

I also bought this camera without doing much research. I was looking for a camcorder that was HD "quality", uses SDHC memory card and for a price around $300. The Sanyo met all the criteria so I purchased it from Amazon.

I also picked up a 16 gb Transcend memory card.

Let's go over the PROS first --
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++ It is really easy to use. Just point and shoot. Just like using a digital camera, except it's a digital video camera.
++ Having the memory card is so much better than using mini-DV tapes. There is no longer a need to plug the camcorder into your computer fireport or USB port. After I am done shooting, I just pop out the memory card, put it in my memory card reader and copy it onto the hard driver. Doesn't get much better than that!
++ Transferring files are a lot faster than mini-DV tapes. Before, you had to play/record in real time. Due to fact that everything is digital, the transfer is quite fast!
++ Battery life is very good. You can get around 200 minutes of video time. I also like the fact that the battery indicator tells you the approximate MINUTES left. I hate it when they just show a battery symbol and start deducting "spaces/icons" from the battery. I need to know the numerical time value, which this camera provides
++ YouTube uploads are amazingly easy. Just click on the file you want to use, and upload. Make sure you watch in HQ quality on YouTUbe
++ Size is perfect. It's a lot smaller than my mini-DV camcorder, but not too small where it feels like a toy.
++ Build/Construction. I bought the blue version and the blue looks very good. It feels solid in your hands and appear that it could take some abuse. It's not too light and not too heavy. It just feels good in your hands.
++ Quality - overall, quality of the video is good for a $300 video camera. You cannot expect true HD quality from this. However, I do have a problem with the focus (see the CONS below)
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OK - here's the CONS
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- Focus ---- the although the camera has face recogition, there is no way to "lock" onto one person. In other words, if there are 3 or 4 people in the same shot, the camera tends to jump around with the focus between the different faces and it gets annoying during playback. It seems like the camera keeps searching for the right focus. If there is a way to "lock" onto a face, please let me know so I can use that feature.
- Indoor quality not good. There seems to be more noise than usual while shooting indoors. Of course, I should have turned on more lights indoors but I am still working on improving my indoor shots.
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Would I buy this camera knowing what I know? Absolutely!! The price is right. If they could fix the focus issue, this camera would have met all my expectations

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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not all HD is equal: good camcorder for beginners, but don't expect too much from the "HD" imagery, June 13, 2009

Nathan Andersen "film lover, philosophy profe... (Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE) (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Sanyo VPC-TH1 HD Compact Flash Memory Camcorder w/ 30x Optical Zoom (Silver) (Electronics)

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Length:: 1:19 Mins

The specs for this camcorder are exciting; the images, sadly, are not really much better than standard definition images. If you want something to capture video for the web, and that allows you to do more tweaking than you can with simpler camcorders like the Flip Mino, then this would not be a bad choice. Just don't expect it to give you truly high quality images. Also, the onboard memory holds next to nothing, so when buying this camcorder you should factor in the price of at least an 8GB SDHC card to store the video you shoot. Overall, I think this would be a very good camcorder for beginners, since it is easier to work with flash memory than to mess around with tapes, and since practicing with the functions here will prepare one for using a more advanced camcorder when the time comes (and the budget allows). It does look good, and is fairly well designed. For many purposes this would be just the thing.

I shot some footage with this in its "SD" 30fps mode and its "HD" 30fps mode (which uses a lot more memory per minute of video), and played it all back on my 42" SANYO LCD HD television using an HDMI cable. What surprised me was that I could distinguish very little overall difference in quality. There was more contrast in the HD picture, which is important, but otherwise I couldn't tell a difference - at least, I couldn't say for sure which video images I preferred. In a situation where my aim was just to capture what's going on, I'd be as happy with a Flip as with this (of course with the Flip there is next to no zooming, so it wouldn't work in every situation). But if the idea was to create a certain "look" or adapt to the needs of a unique situation (e.g. bright lights against darkness, very bright sun or snow, etc.) then it would be nice to have the flexibility of the controls on this one.

Some people think that what really matters in a camcorder is the resolution. 720 pixels or even 1080 pixels sounds a lot better than 480p - this one can be set to shoot at 720p, which is, technically, "HD" - but, as it turns out, that's just one factor in a much more complex equation. The quality and size of the lens, the quality of the processor, the size of the sensor, are all factors that contribute to the overall character of the picture you can get from a camcorder. What that means is that just because a camcorder is "HD" doesn't mean it will give you the best in quality.

I shot this video comparison you see here at a local nature park, using both the HD and the SD mode of the Sanyo TH1 and also shooting for comparison roughly the same images with my Flip Mino. It's hard to really see all the differences here on the small screen (especially given that I had to compress the video for playback on the web), but I find that even when I play it at best quality on my big screen TV it is hard to say which images I prefer. They all have a fair amount of grain to them, and none even come close to the quality of the images I can get on my Canon VIXIA HF10, but they all look okay and for some uses just fine. The critical point for me is that between the three, even though there were some detectable differences, I couldn't decide which I liked best. (You will note in this video the obvious difference in aspect ratios, since the HD footage is widescreen and is here letterboxed so it will fit in the same size screen as the SD footage; another feature is that in bright sunlight the Flip images are pretty washed out, but they are about equivalent in normal light conditions and even relatively low light conditions).

For the purposes of this test I had all the settings on automatic, and only changed the video capture setting from HD to SD between shots, but it's worth noting that unlike simpler camcorders the TH1 does give you some flexibility with the images, allowing for all the standard adjustments (white balance, exposure, etc.) and the usual settings (sports, snow, fireworks, etc.) and effects (transitions, sepia, b/w, etc.). It has an impressive 30x optical zoom - though it's not wise to zoom that far unless you've got it on a tripod because at that focal distance the image stabilization can do nothing for the shakes.

This is advertised as a dual purpose camcorder, meaning it shoots both video and photos, but it is worth noting that the photos are very poor quality - not even as good as you get with most cellphones these days (technically, they are shot on a 1.1 MP sensor and blown up to 2.0 MP photos, and while the number of pixels is not the most important thing it is not unimportant and that is pretty low). One other secondary purpose is served by the fact that you can set the camcorder to record only audio, which uses much less memory than shooting video and audio at the same time. So this could also serve as a "dictaphone" or recorder. For that purpose it does well enough - and the onboard mike seems to be comparable to other camcorders in its price range. But apart from a possible use as a dictaphone, for all intents and purposes this is a camcorder that ostensibly shoots in HD but is probably best suited for video intended only to be screened on the web or personal computer or where the overall quality of the images is not of utmost importance.

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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars You Get What You Pay For . . ., April 11, 2009

CoronaLite (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sanyo VPC-TH1 HD Compact Flash Memory Camcorder w/ 30x Optical Zoom (Blue) (Electronics)

I bought this camcorder for a "cheap" way to enter the HD world of video capturing. I will wait to get a much better camcorder once I figure out how to get around editing AVCHD (and when I buy a new computer that can handle HD video editing with ease). My main use for this camcorder is capturing orchestral performances, editing it, and uploading the video to YouTube in HD quality. I also like taking video that requires no editing. In summary, this camcorder isn't the best in the world, but isn't the worst in the world.

Things you should be aware of before buying this camcorder:
1) The zoom button seems flimsy. It feels like it'll break any moment.

2) The image stabilizer is not that useful (especially from 15x-30x zoom if shooting with hands). However, the image stability is greatly improved with a tripod (the video is still shaky nonetheless).

3) Not that great in low lighting conditions.

4) In a complete silence environment, you can hear noise when you zoom in or out. Not only that, you can hear other noises made from the camcorder in the audio recording in general. There's no mic input to work around this flaw. But if the environment is NOT in complete silence (like an orchestra playing), you probably won't hear the extraneous noises coming from the camcorder.

Other Observations/Thoughts:
1) I use a Transcend 16GB SDHC that comes with a card reader, and it seems to work out.

2) All videos captured are saved as file type mp4.

3) It uses SDHC, which means it uses the FAT32 filing system, which means the biggest file you can create is 4GB. At the highest video setting, that would be about 1 hour of non-stop recording. I decided to test what would happen if I try to go over 4GB. So I left the camcorder on for about one hour and one minute. Then in the LCD screen, there's a countdown timer in red font indicating that it is running out of time to record. When it reached zero seconds, it auto-saves the recording, and then it starts a new recording. The file (in the SDHC) indicates that it is 3.99GB. However when I try to copy and paste this file to my computer, it won't let me. The file is now useless. So the moral of the story is, if you are using the highest video setting, don't go over 55 minutes of non-stop recording, and you'll be fine.

4) I don't really care about taking pictures on this, so I didn't test that.

5) Regarding the battery: [UPDATE: 4/14/2009] Out of the box the battery says it has 72 minutes left on it. So I started to recharge it. According to the manual, the LED will turn red if it's recharging and turn off if it's finished. Three hours pass and the LED is still red. I was wondering how can this thing charge for so long. So I unplugged it and checked the battery life. It says 207 minutes. I plugged it back in to recharge it again. The LED is off. In summary, it seems that the recharging indicator isn't reliable.

Video Editing/AVCHD section ------------------------------------------
Of course editing video in AVCHD is a different beast altogether. So my review rating is not affected by this.

My Computer Specs:
OS: Windows XP
CPU: AMD Athlon XP +1800
Memory: 2 x 512MB
Video Card: ATI Radeon 8500 LE 128MB

First, here is what I WANT done in the video editing process:
1) If the video doesn't need to be edited, I should be able to upload to YouTube in HD quality

2) If a video DOES need to be edited, there should be a way to "uncompress it" with a lossless technique (like huffYUV), or a way to edit the mp4 file directly with advanced editing techniques, compress it, and output to YouTube, DVD, or Blu-Ray.

Now I will tell you if steps 1) and 2) can be done based on my experience.

Step 1) can be done. Just upload the mp4 file to YouTube (it's in HD quality), and that's it.

Step 2) is rather interesting. Here's what I've done so far.
a) install lame mp3 and ffdshow codecs
b) install and load "pazera free mp4 to avi converter"
c) uncompress the mp4 file to HuffYUV lossless (this will be the intermediate file for editing). This may cause the frame rate to lag (but I'm using a slow computer). Also take note that HuffYUV will produce a big file (about 31 MB/s for me). We do step c) because VirtualDub can't load mp4 files.
d) install and load VirtualDub (or whatever video editor you use that can let you edit HuffYUV), and do your video editing.
e) compress video to ffdshow mpeg4 (fourcc = MP4V) 4000kbit/s: audio to lame mp3 128kbit/s
f) Done (the compressed file doesn't lag for me anymore).

I am still searching for software that can do advanced video editing for AVCHD (or an uncompressed format) since VirtualDub can only do simple editing.

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