Like the Sony HC3, the Canon HV10 lacks a microphone jack. As our regular readers surely know, lack of a mic jack really upsets us, especially on a camcorder priced above $1,200. It’s just if you’re investing this much in a high definition camcorder, you obviously care a lot about quality. While pretty pictures in 1080i resolution are all good, if you can’t hear anything very well, the videos are going to be pretty boring. We hit the Sony HC3 pretty hard for not having a mic jack and all our complaints are repeated here it’s just a stupid engineering move both on Canon and Sony’s parts.
But it gets even better. The Sony HC3, while it didn’t have a mic jack, it has Sony’s proprietary “intelligent” accessory shoe. That’s their shrunk down hot shoe that can only take Sony brand accessories. Along with no mic jack, we put the “intelligent” accessory shoe up there with one of the top things we hate about today’s camcorders. We didn’t think it could be done, but Canon outdid them on the HV10 in category of stupid audio . It has no shoe! Nothing, so, you can’t even take a Canon branded accessory external microphone. This is probably the only time you’re ever going to hear this from this publication, but we actually prefer the “intelligent” accessory shoe over no shoe at all.
The only audio option which the Canon HV10 has is a wind cut feature. The other option we could find is an audio output channel selection, where you can pick which of the channels is output through the audio jacks. You can also adjust the mix between the left and right channels which is output. Finally, like most camcorders you can select whether you want to record your audio in 12 bit or 16 bit. But honestly, with a built in on camera stereo microphone, there isn’t going to be much difference between your left and right channels anyways.
The bottom line for the user picking between the HC3
and the HV10 on an audio front is that they are both total disasters. It’s
too bad because Canon could have drawn a really good distinguishing characteristic
between themselves and the competition here, but they chose not to. We
wonder if the reason they did this was to encourage people to buy the Canon
XH A1, which not only has mic jacks but has XLR jacks and many levels of
control. It might have been an effort to push people upwards, but honestly,
the A1 is $3,000 more and about 3.5x the price, so it seems unlikely that
anyone in the market for the HV10 going to even remotely consider the A1.
Instead, it seems Canon is just preventing people from shooting videos
with good audio.
Sony HDR-HC3 - Audio (4.0)
Audio is very limited with the Sony HDR-HC3, as there
is no micophone input jack. This is the biggest downgrade, in our opinion,
from the HC1, and narrowly limits the consumer base. The HC3 instead features
an "Active Interface" Sony proprietary hot-shoe that only accepts a handful
of Sony brand microphones, which can only be purchased through Sony's online
store. Furthemore, the only options available are a high-fidelity stereo
microphone for $99.99 and a shotgun mic for $69.99. If there was a mic-in
port that accepted XLR or mini-stereo, users would have a world of audio
recording options available to them. As it stands these two microphones
aren’t going to satisfy the true audiophile, and it's disappointing that,
at $1500, Sony won't allow users to make their own, informed purchases.
In addition, it won’t be possible to use video lights or flash accessories if shooting with an external mic, since all three accessory options connect to this one singular shoe.
Other audio options for the Sony HDR-HC3 include selection of bit rate within the Standard Set menu. The HDR-HC3 allows selection of either 12 or 16 bit sampling rates: the 12 bit mode records two stereo sounds at a lower quality, while 16 bit records one at high quality. In HDV format, the camcorder will only record audio at 16 bit.
An audio mix feature also allows the user to monitor
four-channel audio recordings produced by other products. When in this
feature, the LCD shows a horizontal bar in the center of the screen with
a sliding indicator for moving between ST1, the original sound, and ST2,
the audio file which was overdubbed in playback. This is a nice little
feature if shooting with multiple camcorder units, but the likelihood of
it really being used with the HC3 is low.
Adjusted audio balances will reset to the default
setting if the power switch remains off for more than twelve hours. A volume
control is also provided through the Standard Set menu structure which
contains the audio mode and audio mix sub-menus. This is a simple +/- touch
screen interface that allows for user control over audio levels. However,
it's not possible to adjust the right and left channels independently.
Canon: http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ProductCatIndexAct&fcategoryid=173
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