bonnie & jason

Canon HV10 review: New thoughts

I had previously put down some initial thoughts about this camcorder and now that I’ve had some “time behind the wheel,” I have a new perspective about the battery, the size, and finally, usability.

I had mentioned that the battery life isn’t so good.  I didn’t expect it to be given that it is so small.  So I bought a generic oversized battery that sticks out a fair amount to see if that would work better.  I’ve bought generic batteries for my cameras in the past and some have been fine and some have been horrible.  Well, the first one I got was promising.  I put it in the camera and it lasted much much longer than the stock battery.  But I couldn’t get it to recharge.  After talking with the ebay seller, he agreed to replace it for me.  So after going through the return procedure, I got a new one which again, refused to charge.  The funny thing was that the ebay guy had no problems recharging his.  Anyway, I ended up buying an external charger so I could charge one battery while using the camera at the same time. It turns out that the external charger was able to charge the generic battery and I haven’t had any problems since!  Weird.

Even though the generic battery was quite a bit bigger than the stock battery, the camera still handles the same and stays true to it’s pocketable form factor.  That said, I had a bit of buyer’s remorse when Canon announced the new HV20.  It has a number of features the HV10 doesn’t have and isn’t much more expensive.  However, I’m such an amateur videographer that the extra features probably wouldn’t really make a difference to me, whereas the size and form factor of the HV10 certainly make it easier to bring along on video worthy trips… especially since I’ll also be carrying my big ole’ still camera.

Finally, on the subject of usability, again, I’ll have to admit to my clear beginner status in videography and say that it works pretty well as a point and shoot camcorder.  On those occasions when I’ve had to adjust for white balance, exposure, etc. I haven’t had a problem.  The controls fit pretty well in my hand and even the zoom control, which is still a bit touchy, is easier to finesse now that I have some practice under my belt.  The real problem usability-wise isn’t the camera itself, but how to share the footage with folks.  As a blogger, I’m naturally inclined to share, so I’m struggling with a few items in this regard.

First, it’s pretty time intensive to get the footage from the camera to the computer.  Second, editing in HD is extremely hardware intensive and my poor desktop is barely up to the task.  Third, it’s practically impossible to share anything in HD since the files are so large.  Even HD DVD/blu ray aren’t really feasible at their high costs for not only writing but also playing the discs.  Finally, even though Youtube works, I’m not really a huge fan since it takes forever for it to process your video and the end result is pretty crappy as it has to be compressed to stream over today’s limited bandwidth. 

So remind me why I bought an HD camcorder?  (To tell you the truth, I probably have three times as much video from my crappy Canon S400 digital camera actually shared than from the HV10.)

What’s a guy to do?  Well, first of all, I probably need to get better at editing video.  The quick solution is to buy a Mac and use iMovie HD (or final cut express) as it seems to be much more user friendly that the crappy free software (Pinnacle) that came with the camera.  (Unfortunately, funding for this solution has not yet been identified.)  Second, eventually, HD DVD/blu ray drives will become standard in computers and in living rooms so I’ll at least be able to share full HD content via disc.  I’ll just have to be patient on this one.  Third, I’ll just have to live with the realities of low-res, high-noise, high-compression Youtube for the time being.

It’s not all doom and gloom though.  I’m saving all the raw footage tapes so when the technology catches up, I’ll still have everything in HD.  Who knows… maybe by that time, camcorders will be in hyper-HD and I’ll be in the same predicament again!  Oh well, the price you pay for being on the bleeding-edge.

So to sum up, the HV10 has been a great camera for me.  The battery problem was solved with the addition of an external charger.  The size is still right for me despite the lure of the HV20.  The only real issue is the post-processing work which isn’t really the camera’s fault to begin with.  *sigh*  More to come when the Mac fund takes priority over the Alissa college fund.  =)