I’ve been having a great time testing out my new Canon Vixia HF S100 HD camcorder. The quality of the unit continues to impress me more and more. It’s really amazing to see how far Internet video has come in just a few short years. To give you an idea, I’ve posted a kind of then and now comparison.
The first video was filmed back in March of 2006 and was the third video that I uploaded to YouTube. The filming was done with a JVC camcorder that used MiniDV tapes. I remember it being a pain to work with because the tape transferred to the computer at 1 to 1 speed. if I had an hour of video, it took an hour to transfer. By comparison, the flash memory based HF S100 can do it in a matter of minutes.
The quality of the JVC really wasn’t that bad. It was the quality of YouTube that was bad. Back then, there was no such thing as HD Internet videos and YouTube used a very high compression setting. Looking at the video now, I wonder how we ever put up with that kind of quality?
I recorded the video below using the Canon Vixia HF S100 set to its highest 24bit MXP quality setting. While the video quality blows away the three year old YouTube footage, it’s still doesn’t show off the full quality of the S100 because I had to reduce the video down to 720P for Vimeo. I would imagine in another year or so, we’ll all be enjoying 1080P Internet video.