Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic HDC-SD20 High Definition Flash Memory Camcorder with Intelligent Auto Mode & 16x Optical Zoom - Black
Panasonic HDC-SD20 High Definition Flash Memory Camcorder with Intelligent Auto Mode & 16x Optical Zoom - Black
See it at Amazon.co.uk for £415.99Average Customer Rating
(3.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First | + Share14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
Cannot find a design fault with this camera
(4 out of 5) by Newkidintown on Jun 19, 2009 (Staffordshire England)I am unable to find the design fault described by one reviewer of this camera.I have tested twice using two different SD cards to battery levels below one minute. Each time the battery indicator flashed in red at 3 minutes. I continued to record until after I got the final warning to replace the battery - stopping and starting several times. I then viewed my files still using the same battery without any loss of data.
I can only assume that the reviewer has a faulty card or camera, or perhaps I'm just lucky. ;-)
Panasonic HDC-SD20 High Definition Flash Memory Camcorder with Intelligent Auto Mode & 16x Optical Zoom - Black
I can only assume that the reviewer has a faulty card or camera, or perhaps I'm just lucky. ;-)
Panasonic HDC-SD20 High Definition Flash Memory Camcorder with Intelligent Auto Mode & 16x Optical Zoom - Black
58 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
Would have been nice, if it was reliable
(2 out of 5) by Mr. I. R. Goralski on Apr 27, 2009 (Cardiff, UK)It is not a bad camera overall. It is small, intuitive, looks nice, and records in a pretty good quality. The touch screen works good too and enables some nice functions: you can point an object to track, focus on and set exposition for, and in playback you can easily pick a clip to play from the thumbnails table. No hard drive or tape means better reliability... in theory.
In practice unfortunately the camera has a serious design flaw. It tends to corrupt files if you record at low battery. The information provided by the camera says about approx. 4 minutes left, you shoot a clip, and then you see that there is a data error, which cannot be fixed due to low battery level. You recharge the battery, start the camera, it fixes the files, and... all your files taken on that date are gone!
The thing is that in AVCHD format raw video files are accompanied by a lot of other meta files. It seems that at low battery the camera cannot create proper meta files for the last clip. But that would be forgiveable. The real trouble is that the camera seems to be attempting to recreate all meta files for all clips taken on that day, and then you end up losing all your work.
Good thing is you ain't really loosing it, as the raw .mts files are still there. But you will not be able to play them on the camera, or use the included software to burn them on a BD or DVD. You'll need something like Corel VideoStudio x2 to manually edit each clip from the raw file. And that's slow and inconvenient, and requires a lot of research to learn about such possibility, in the first place.
The funny thing is that the problem could be easily fixed/remedied/eased in at least three ways:
1. The camera should not modify the meta files for previously saved clips. No matter what, these should be left alone (and safe) when a new one is being taken
2. The battery indicator should show a shorter time left, and shut off the cam when it has not enough juice to create all the accompanying files
3. A software to analyse the raw file, and recreate all the rest of AVCHD files to accompany it (sort of a recovery utility) should be provided
None is available though. And for that reason I would not buy this camera again, or recommend it to anybody else. It is really pointless to spend time and effort taking videos, depending on the results, and suddenly lose them all.
I mean, this camera just cannot be trusted, as it happens again and again. Overall I am very, very disappointed...
In practice unfortunately the camera has a serious design flaw. It tends to corrupt files if you record at low battery. The information provided by the camera says about approx. 4 minutes left, you shoot a clip, and then you see that there is a data error, which cannot be fixed due to low battery level. You recharge the battery, start the camera, it fixes the files, and... all your files taken on that date are gone!
The thing is that in AVCHD format raw video files are accompanied by a lot of other meta files. It seems that at low battery the camera cannot create proper meta files for the last clip. But that would be forgiveable. The real trouble is that the camera seems to be attempting to recreate all meta files for all clips taken on that day, and then you end up losing all your work.
Good thing is you ain't really loosing it, as the raw .mts files are still there. But you will not be able to play them on the camera, or use the included software to burn them on a BD or DVD. You'll need something like Corel VideoStudio x2 to manually edit each clip from the raw file. And that's slow and inconvenient, and requires a lot of research to learn about such possibility, in the first place.
The funny thing is that the problem could be easily fixed/remedied/eased in at least three ways:
1. The camera should not modify the meta files for previously saved clips. No matter what, these should be left alone (and safe) when a new one is being taken
2. The battery indicator should show a shorter time left, and shut off the cam when it has not enough juice to create all the accompanying files
3. A software to analyse the raw file, and recreate all the rest of AVCHD files to accompany it (sort of a recovery utility) should be provided
None is available though. And for that reason I would not buy this camera again, or recommend it to anybody else. It is really pointless to spend time and effort taking videos, depending on the results, and suddenly lose them all.
I mean, this camera just cannot be trusted, as it happens again and again. Overall I am very, very disappointed...
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
Panasonic HDC-SD20
(4 out of 5) by 4tech on May 24, 2009I don't now what the last reviewer is rambling on about. This is a very desent camera for the price. The picture quality is great and is very easy to upload your videos to the web, youtube etc. Playback on HDTV is also great. The camera has a touch screen LCD display which is simple and easy to use and allows you to view and playback your videos. At the price you'd be hard pressed to find better.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Great bit of kit
(5 out of 5) by Wrinkly on Jun 2, 2009 (GB)Just upgraded from 10 yr old Canon camcorder and cannot fault the Panasonic SD20, the touch screen is ideal and the 50 frames per second motordrive facility is superb for ensuring that the best stills image is obtained.
It's very easy to operate even by a technophobes standards and is ideal for those people who simply want to store memorable occassions for future reference. This is probably doing the unit a dis-service as it's no doubt capable of lots more besides but I'm still getting into it so can't comment.
It's very easy to operate even by a technophobes standards and is ideal for those people who simply want to store memorable occassions for future reference. This is probably doing the unit a dis-service as it's no doubt capable of lots more besides but I'm still getting into it so can't comment.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Quality piece of kit at a good price.
(4 out of 5) by M. J. clarke on Jul 26, 2009I bought mine for £298 from qvc.I took it away to Las Vegas and Memphis,with a 16gb card,which gave me just over 2 hours of the best quality video.The camera is really light and easy to use.Battery life was very good,easily lasting the whole day,with the camera on and off.Picture quality is very good indeed,particularly of outside shots.The only disappointing film I took was indoors with low lighting.I think I should have changed the settings to compensate for this.It's nice to film in widescreen HD,perfect for viewing on my 46 inch Sony Bravia.The only problem I have now is that I have to get a new memory card to carry on using the camcorder,as I can only watch the footage I've taken in HD by connecting the camcorder directly to the tv.Oh well,it looks as though a Panasonic Blu ray dvd recorder is next on my shopping list.