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Flash Memory Camcorder... With Pro Features

Techstination feature for Monday, September 5, 2005

A flash memory camcorder….with professional features. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. There are lots of little camcorders on the market these days…that record video onto flash memory cards….some of them pretty inexpensive. Brand new, at the high end, is the SDR-S100 from Panasonic. It's the SD camcorder with a 3 CCD sensor. That's the same technology that has been used in professional broadcast cameras for years. National camcorder marketing manager Rudy Vitti…says while Panasonic has been selling its D-Snap line of SD camcorders…and others have introduced similar models….

"The quality of those types of devices haven't been up to par. But this is a true camcorder. It records high quality, MPEG-2, which is the same format that records on DVD, DVD recorders and DVD camcorders. With this device, we've actually improved the MPEG-2 encoding so that it's more efficient and it gives you a higher image quality. So we're able actually to fit over an hour of high quality video on a 2 gigabyte SD card."

The inclusion of a 2 gigabyte memory card is one reason why the small, palm sized camera carries a pretty big price tag. About 12 hundred dollars. It should arrive in stores next month. The advantages to recording to SD memory instead of tape…

"Obviously there's the size. Because the media itself is so small we're able to make the devices that record to it small. Secondly, it's more rugged."

And video files can simply be dragged and dropped onto a PC for editing. Panasonic has competition. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.