This is a video testing the 720p HD quality captured by the (tiny) Kodak V1253 digital camera. Unfortunately, there is no exposure control on that camera, so a lot of the scenes came out over-exposed. The same subjects are shown on my "Autumn flowers" and "Around my home" videos, so you can compare the quality of the V1253 to the HV20 and ZR800 camcorders respectively. Review here: osnews.com/story.php?news_id=19052

The video is color graded and was edited using proxy files because Kodak's mpeg4 .mov source files are incredibly slow on Sony Vegas 8. Finally, music and video are licensed separately under the Creative Commons "BY" 3.0 license.

lil test on an jvc hd-7

When I was but a young boy searching for an HD video camera to purchase, I kept coming back to the Sony AVCHD brand. I had good luck with using one of their still cameras before and had decided it was time for an upgrade. I spent several months researching the different types of cameras that I could use. The one difficulty that I had when doing this research though, was the need to know what video quality a Sony AVCHD video camera would offer. After scouring the internet I ended up with nothing. But I took a leap of faith and purchased a HDR-UX1 model from their AVCHD lineup. It ended up being a very good camera. =)
In my desire to fix what has gone wrong before I have decided to create several (18 to be precise), test videos with my new camera. By doing this, you will hopefully be able to see the quality that an HD camera can offer. All of the video links and descriptions will be available at whoismatt.com.
Also, I will upload two streaming 720p versions to Vimeo here. It is what I would have wanted when I was buying an HD camera.

This video was shot using a Sony HDR-UX1 recording at 9 megabits per second.

This video was shot with a Sony HDR-UX1 camcorder.
Quality settings: AVCHD HDHQ - 9 Megabytes Per Second.

Visit whoismatt.com for full downloads of the quality test.