The prices are slowly dropping on the Panasonic HC-V720. I believe this is the best camcorder in it's price class. I had mine in hand a few days before any serious effort to test the camera's functions and video quality. My out-of-the-box impression of the camera was that it is the best built of the camcorders in it's class that I have seen and I have been watching these for about six months. Later field use proved this to be a very sturdy, well built camcorder.My first impression of the video quality out-of-the-box in default settings was that it was good but not great. It should be noted that I did not really shoot anything of particular interest and no attempt to better initial settings was done. After a few days, I finally had an opportunity to do some quality testing of the camera features at St. Augustine Zoological Park in St. Augustine Florida. That video can be seen on Youtube.com here; All the video footage is straight from the camera with hardly any post-production adjustment to image quality. The stills used were not from the camcorder but a couple other cameras our group had with us.
I recommend this camera highly. It is feature laden with lots of cool manual settings and adjustments you can make to refine your videos to be what you like. The Basic Owner's Manual will get you started but it doesn't begin to teach you the camera's capabilities. The provided PDF manual is extensive and very will done. It's easy to follow and understand. The touch screen menu is a snap but I am very intuitive with such things. Don't give up if you find it difficult, you can do amazing things if you learn the touch screen and it's necessary to take full advantage of the what the Panasonic HC-V720 Camcorder can do.
If you really want to get your head into your videos, this is one fine camecorder. The microphone is excellent. It records in 5 point surround or stereo modes. It has wind cancelling through the touch screen menu. The 21x optical zoom is outstanding too. If you get into the hybrid zoom (optical + digital), you'll need a pretty steady hand but the 5 point image stabilization does an amazing job up to a point. I think a monopod would resolve most issues up to it's 60x hybrid zoom. Any higher and a tripod is recommended. Colors are realistic and saturated except in low light. Low light performance is very good other than saturation of color which can be changed in post-production. The video I posted on youtube.com was produced using AVS4YOU software. A nice and reasonably priced video and audio editing suite.
Go get one and have a blast.
Note: this unit does NOT record in MP4 format! Only AVCHD. I read the specs carefully at Panasonic site, and thought it did MP4 the way they worded it. You can "convert" the AVCHD to MP4 after you take the video, but it takes it down to a tiny resolution, and of course take a long time. I'm on a Mac, so if I want to just pull the AVCHD videos off the card to share on youtube, without using iMovie or something else, its a bit cryptic getting them due to the file structure. If they were MP4, I think it would be easier. But I'm not certain, as this is my first card based camcorder.
Now, the Wifi of this thing is horrible. The user interface and setup is torture. I've been fooling around with it for the past 4 days and still can't save to youtube. Panasonic has this thing called the Lumixclub. Its interface is completely confusing. I read the entire wifi section of the PDF manual, and it didn't help at all. When you get to the website (even FINDING the website is not easy, no lie) you will think your are in the wrong place. You use this Lumixclub to interface with Ustream and Youtube, and other social sites. In the end, I couldn't get anything but Ustream to work, and that was a struggle. I just can't believe they made this so confusing, and the wifi was the "main feature" of this camera.
What does work well is using iOS device to control the camera. There are 2 ways to do this. You can go directly from the camera to the iOS device, or from the camera, to your home router, then to your iOS device. You then have to download a free app to control the camera. This actually works really well. The app can do the same functions you can from the camcorder screen: start, stop, take snapshot, change recording resolution, zoom, etc. Basically a remote control. This is big to me, as I have this camera mounted stationary on a wall. When you are directly connected to iOS device, the lag is I'd say about 1 or 2 seconds. When you are connected through the home router, the lag is I'd say 5 to 10 seconds.
You can also playback on the iPad what you just recorded, and anything that is on the SD card. That also works pretty well.
However, to get anything OFF the SD card, you still have to have the LumixClub working. Thats where it gets a pain in the azz again, and forget about it.
I read a bunch of reviews on Canon's wifi cameras, and the wifi on them is horrible as well. That's why I went the Panasonic route. Looks like neither company can figure it out.
Editing:If you are doing traditonal editing with iMovie from the SD card, it converts it to the Apple Intermidiate Format. If you are uisng Final Cut Pro X, it uses the native AVCHD format, with no need to convert it.
I have a 3 year old Panasonic Viera tv that takes SD cards. No way could I get any video from the camear to play on the TV using the card slot. That was very disappointing to me.
In summary, the camera itself is very nice. I wish it recored to MP4 as well as AVCHD. The iOS as a remote control and viewing screen works well enough if you directly connect it. (note, this means the iOS device is not connected to the internet, just the camera. I have an old iPad I can dedicate to this task).
But anything beyond that, that uses the LumixClub, you will be pulling your hair out.
Buy Panasonic HC-V720 3D Ready 1MOS HD Digital Camcorder with Wi-fi (black) Now
This camcorder takes great quality video but was released without the availability of optional spare batteries (3 week backorder). The battery lasts about 1 hour and there is no way to charge it without an outlet. I was on the phone with Panasonic technical support for more than an hour to find another charging solution when electrical outlets are not available and there are no options. So if you are planning on recording anything that lasts much more than an hour in April 2013 and you can't keep the camcorder plugged in, then this is probably not the camcorder for you. Disappointing that Panasonic would release a camcorder without the optional batteries being available. Lastly, if you are a Mac user and want to upload into iMovie and still be HD, you will find the process very frustrating and even with 3rd party conversion software, it is a big hassle. We returned our Panasonic and got a camcorder that works seamlessly with Macs and had spare batteries available.Read Best Reviews of Panasonic HC-V720 3D Ready 1MOS HD Digital Camcorder with Wi-fi (black) Here
I have had this camera for about a month and it is awesome, the picture stability feature is great. I use it for hunting vids and got a 2x zoom lens for it and it works phenomenal. The ability to set it to a manual settings or auto video set up with a touch screen is too easy. The picture quality in my opinion cant be beat!Want Panasonic HC-V720 3D Ready 1MOS HD Digital Camcorder with Wi-fi (black) Discount?
Built-in wide angle lens is a big plus with this camera, and appreciate the ease of attaching AC power. The only cons would be the short battery life (remedied by buying an after-market high capacity battery) and the need to drill down a few layers of commands to get to some functions. Overall, very happy with the purchase though.Save 6% Off
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