For those who were hesitating on this camera due to the lack of support in Apple's iMovie, the problem is now fixed. With the latest updates, including the most recent Quicktime, my SD9 now imports smoothly right into iMovie.

As some of the earlier reviews have pointed out, this awesome little camera suffered from lack of support in Apple's editing applications like iMovie 08.

Well that's all in the past. With the release of OS 10.5.3 and QuickTime 7.5 a few days ago, the HDC-SD9 (and the hard-drive-based HDC-HS9 as well) are now fully compatible. You can easily import and edit your HD movies in iMovie, in all the camera's formats.

I love this camera. My only complaint is that spare batteries are absurdly expensive. Other than that, it's fantastic.

Unfortunately, this high-definition camera doesn't work with iMovie, so I had to return it. I am buying a Canon HF-10 which is listed on the iMovie page as a truly compatible model. Hopefully it works better. I am interested in seamlessly downloading movies from a camera into iMovie and onto DVDs and the web. I am NOT interested in using video conversion software. Simply put, I should be able to plug a camera into my mac and make movies very easily (that's why I bought the mac). Whether or not this problem is Apple's or Panasonic's, I don't really care. But I had to punish Panasonic because it is too late to return the Mac. (Actually, Apple won't let you return a mac at all!)

The Canon HF10 seems to be the only other high-def camcorder that offers 1080p (progressive) scan at 60 frames per second. Although, it is nearly impossible to discern this from reading the marketing garbage that is all over the web. "True Hi-Def" is thrown around for virtually every camera, even though most appear to be 1080i (interlaced), which is the only format hi-def TVs play currently. In 3 years, they will all be 1080p though (in my ignorant imagination) so I want a camera that will support that.

I purchased this camcorder from Amazon just after it came out, and discovered the price dropped considerably not long after. I contacted Amazon within 30 days and promptly received a credit back for the difference. Nice job!

Not much more to add that hasn't already been said, but I have started using the HDC-SD9 for taking stills as well. The shots are in widescreen format to boot, and the image stabilization helps. The shots are quite flattering to faces (it seems to rosy up cheeks though - not totally natural). The flash does overkill - most people are whitened out. If you are in a flash situation, I am learning that it helps to back off a bit, or actually cover the flash partially with your finger.

If you don't have a good card reader for SDHC cards yet - I recommend getting one asap. I've small USB key style one from Sandisk that works quite well (read that: fast) and only cost $10.

Not many packages support the AVCHD format used by the HDC-SD9, but I have purchased Vegas 9 Professional. It is NOT new user friendly, and has a steep learning curve. In retrospect, I discovered that the Nero 8 Ultra Edition that I already owned has very good support for files created by this camcorder, and is quite fast and should work well for most users. Nero 8 also provides a great program for recoding to other formats.

If you think you want Vegas - I suggest downloading the 30-day trial from Sony's website and see what you think - but in the meantime - get Nero 8 and save yourself a lot of time and money...

BTW - you do need a good PC for editing with any of the software (Panasonic's, Nero, Vegas) - most notebooks don't have enough horsepower - I strongly recommend at least a Core2 Duo desktop system with a large hard drive and a fast graphics card and adequate RAM (min 1GB, higher is better).

I think this is a great product. Lightweight and handy. I read some bad reviews about the picture quality, but I don't agree. Low light performance is still acceptable for point and shoot users.
Cons: The software is not that great to edit movies, but works pretty well to save and burn them.
Pros: Everything else.

Well I bought this camera back in March, but was forced to use the crummy software that came with it on my Vaio. As of today, with version 7.1.2 of iMovie, video produced by this camera imports just pretty quickly. When playing it in iMovie there were some oddities, but I think that is related to the fact that I have a MacBook and thus do not have a real GPU.

On to some points of the actual camera:

I've taken this camera skiing. Even with some of the advanced features that it suggests, it is pretty easy for the CCDs to be swamped by the sheer amount of light that you get on a sunny day near the end of the season. The "wind cut" feature helps with some of the sound that you get when skiing on a windy day at 14+ mph, but it is still pretty prevalent. Fortunately, while it does leave the wind noise in there, you can hear people talking pretty well.

I've taken this camera to a concert. As expected, the flashing lights backlighting a dark stage give this camera a bit of trouble. When it is recording in 1080p, it seems to be a bit worse, but that might just have been a different set of lights being used.

I've also used this camera in a poorly lit restaurant. Unfortunately I forgot to turn on the feature to focus the microphones on the subject of the lens, and thus the 5 microphones defeated me with the large background noise. Using the low light mode, the camera was able to take video, but it is incredibly noisy with poor resolution. I don't think I will use it without sufficient light in the future.

All in all I like the camera and how compact it is. Now that it is fully supported by Apple, I plan on using it more often.

Before I publish this review, I've been using the camera for almost 2 weeks. I've been contemplating hard whether I was able to get my money's worth. But the sad thing is, I didn't. Here are my reasons:

1. The HDC-SD9 has awful low-light performance.
-I thought that the camera's manual iris and aperture would solve the problem since the Magicpix mode is obviously intended for still shots only and the low-light mode barely improves lighting conditions on dark scenes. But the shots still have a lot of noise and grain whether you adjust the manual iris to 18 dB and aperture opening to 1/24 or 1/30. It's really frustrating.

2. The auto-focus has a hard time focusing when on 5x-10x.
-True, there is the tele-macro mode function so that distant images look clearer. But when you are already recording, the tele-macro mode can't be used. So, you have to establish your focus before you record distant images either on manual mode or you have to switch on the tele-macro mode, which is really a big hassle when you need to make a quick zoom on a subject. Another problem is that it usually takes a second or two for the auto-focus to stabilize.

3. The 24p and cinema color mode seems overrated.
-One reason why I bought this camera is because of its 24p and cinema color mode. But to me and for others who probably have a good eye too, the movement of the camera doesn't seem fluid or just like that of the
movies. There is still the home video feel to it.

But to be fair with the HDC-SD9, there are some aspects that it was able to perform well.

1. Sound quality is incredibly awesome!
- I see no reason why one has to purchase a directional microphone separately when using the HDC-SD9. The zoom and focus mic mode of the camera does the job excellently! And if you want to have a movie feel to your clips, just use the surround mode. This is probably one of the reasons why there is no need for an accessory shoe for the SD9 (except of course when you consider lighting).

2. Image quality is excellent under good lighting conditions.

3. Still pictures are decent enough.


Overall, I would rate this product with 3 stars or 60%.

Pros
Extremely small (fits in the front pocket of my shorts)
Awesome picture quality outside with good light.
3CCD
Great zoom
The best image stabilizer I've ever used on a video camera.
Really like that is uses memory cards rather than tape or hard drives.


Cons'
Low light performance is not good.
LCD is great but if you wear sunglasses it goes completely black.
I didn't think I needed a viewfinder but if you're inside somewhere dark you have no way to record without distracting the people around you.
Needs a good manual focus ring not a menu driven manual focus that's hard to use.
Poor low light performance.
There is a flash on the front of the camera that should be replaced with a led for the video camera portion.
AVCHD requires lots of computer horse power to edit.

Not a lot of software to view the .mts files with but Nero Vision 4 for Nero 8 Ultra works fine.


Definitely a great camcorder for outside daytime use but not great of dark environments.

This fancy (and tiny) piece of technology delivers all you can expect from a <1K HD camcorder. Indoor video quality is ok, outdoor videos are very colorful and sharp (on my 1080p 42' LCD). Great quality!! I cannot imagine that Sony offers much more for twice the price.

I also bought a 16GB memory card for about 75$. This is probably all you need for your family movies.

Pros:
Price.
Lightweight.
Compact and easy to use.
Good High level light pictures.
SD Card is located nicely and easy to access.
Sound Quality is great.

Cons:
Extremely! poor low light video quality. I mean POOR, Crappy, decrepid, lame, sub-par, not good etc, etc.
Bundled Software is crap.
Have to open the viewer to remove the battery.
Poor Still Picture Quality.

I almost returned this camera due to its poor low light performance. Not what I would expect from something that carries the "HD" symbol. I got this camera to document our new babies life and you have to know that things like family get togethers and X-mas are not going to be outdoors or even during the day time hours sometimes. The picture quality starts to degrade right just before dusk. Lots of grain in faces and video noise when the lights are even slightly low. During the day or with direct light on the subject...no problem. When I first got the camera it was almost dark, so out of the box, I was really pissed at how bad the videos turned out. Only after recording the next day did I even get close to true HD looking videos.

If you plan on any type of low light level recording, stay way away from this camera.

I'm very satisfied with this camcorder. It's small, the video is crisp and clear and I like the features. I can get anywhere from 1 to a little over 2 hours on a 4 GB sdhc card depending on the video quality settings I use and about 90 minutes on a fully charged battery.

Some people have complained about their hand blocking the microphones but mine seem to fit just fine. My hands are not exactly tiny and they fit well.

The only downside of this camcorder is the low light video can be quite bad.

You can view video samples for this camcorder on my website at [...]

Eric

I love this camera. It slips into a pocket and is amazing value. The HD shots are stunning in the right light and conditions. The two main downsides are well known - the auto low light is not great and the fiddly little control that you must move to navigate to change settings and view pictures is irritating. But overall it is a great value package - not least now that you can get 16GB cards at an economic price (eg Transend). Interestingly, I used a cheap 8GB Sandisk catergory 2 card with no problems even though the spec says you need category 4 minimum.

The camera is a technical marvel. I've been wanting an HD camera ever since they came out. The HDC-SD9 has not dissapointed me. Five years ago you'd have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to get video this good. Now the downside.

The files are kept in a complex file structure on the memory drive. I wasn't able to copy the MTS files from the /STREAM folder and play them on my T61 Thinkpad. I tried downloading various CODECs and stuff, but wasn't succesfull. I finally loaded the HD Writer software from Panasonic and that worked. But when I exported to MPEG the result was lousy.

I haven't tried editing software with it yet, but I know this much. It will be another two to three years before this format plays in all the media players. But I can't see this format failing so I'll be glad I have my kids in HD later on.

Bottom line is that the technology and price are right, but file-format ease of use is still a few years away. You'll love making videos, but you'll hate post-production.

I'll start by saying that I did what seemed like endless research and tried out every camera in this range before ultimately deciding on this one. What I hope to do with this review is share my experiences and hopefully provide the kind of information I wanted to see when I was doing research.

Now, about the specifics of this camera. It's a 3CCD model, which was one of the major selling points for me. I do a lot of outdoor shooting of high action sports (rock climbing), and this camera surprised me with it's quality and it's ability to capture colors so accurately. The 3CCD design also means that if you're going to be doing some blue/green screen effects that you'll get a better key. It's build quality is very solid; and by that I mean it doesn't seem flimsy at an point. The the automatic lens cover is wonderful. It has 4 recording quality modes, and a 24p cinema mode. I use the HA1920 mode, which records 1920x1080i60 resolution at 16Mbps AVCHD and works out to 2 hours 8 minutes on a 16GB SDHC card. While I don't use the 24p mode shooting action sports outdoors, I have tried it indoors and it really does give a cinema-like feel to the video; it's a nice feature to have. I'm using this card Transcend 16GB SDHC CARD (SD 2.0 SPD CLASS 6) with Co Card Reader, and the included card reader tends to transfer files slightly faster than the USB connection on the camera does; plus-it allows you to charge the battery while you're importing the video. The optical image stabilizer on this camera is nothing short of amazing. It records consistent jitter-free footage, even while hanging from a rock face 30 meters above the ground. The zoom is also VERY smooth, and there is absolutely no zoom motor noise picked up by the microphone. The intelligent shooting guide, and the other assist features are great.

Pros:
-Amazing quality video
-Superior optical stabilization
-Intelligent shooting guide
-Battery life is very good, often better than the manual quotes
-Smooth zoom/zoom noise not picked up by microphone
-Uses SDHC cards, which are cheap enough to keep a few on hand
-Editing is easy on OS X. iMovie imports the video into it's amazing user interface, and the Final Cut products let you browse and select which video to import using the Log and Transfer window (Shift+Command+8). I prefer importing the footage into the Apple Intermediate Codec using Final Cut, then importing to iMovie if I want to browse it quickly.

Cons:
-Extra batteries are expensive.
-You can't use the camera on AC power and charge the battery at the same time.
-The thumbstick is awkwardly positioned, but you get used to it. It's kind of like playing tetris with the controller sideways.
-AVCHD can take a while to import if you have a slower machine(I don't but I can see how others might become frustrated).
-Manual focus is essentially impossible to use effectively.

Other Thoughts:
This camera has 3 few user-assist features that I found helpful.
1) Zebra stripe mode: This will put zebra stripes on the screen to help you identify areas of the video with poor exposure.

2) Wire frames: These can be set to various sizes, and they help you to center your shots.

3) Intelligent Shooting Guide: With this active, the camera will warn you, on screen, if you have any serious errors going on such as panning too fast, incorrect contrast settings, low light mode, etc. It even pops up the on screen menu, and skips to the screen where the option it recommends is located. For example, I was shooting outdoors and I walked into a bike tunnel, the camera recommended I activate low light mode and it skipped to the proper menu, so all I had to do was press a button to confirm. You can also ignore it's advice and it won't keep nagging you. A very helpful feature, useful for both novices and advanced users.

One last thing to consider, when you convert the raw AVCHD footage to Apple Intermediate Codec or ProRes 422 the resulting files are going to be massive. Make sure you have an external hard drive to store this stuff on. As far as transcoding the raw AVCHD to AIC or ProRes422... some may say that you will lose quality, etc. This is nonsense, AIC and ProRes422 were created for this very purpose--to make editing high res, high bitrate video more feasible on modern machines. They were designed to preserve quality, and ProRes422 is even touted as being visually lossless. If you wanted to edit raw AVCHD you would need a 8-core machine.

Summary:
While I did list a few cons, they pros FAR outweigh them, even to the point where I can forget about the cons altogether. For the features and the quality this camera provides, I think it is an excellent buy.

The camera is very impressive, intuitive and small. The quality of the picture is excellent. Playback is easy. It was good choice.

I liked it very much.
i bought it to capture moments of my new born baby, and its fantastic, very light, easy to handle, good looking, good quality pictures.

I 've read a lot of reviews before purchasing this camcorder. Excellent video in sun light, even overall it 's a little bit yellowish to my taste. Amazon is best price, and they refund me the difference when the price went lower in within 30 days after purchase.

Low light is OK. and I found it better than the JVC HD camcorder that my brother has. Extremely low light is not acceptable.

I do not have time to test the 5.1 audio on my NAD receiver.

Insert the SD card in to a playstation 3 SD lot and there you go. Or copy the files to a DVD and watch it thru the PS3 bluray drive. HD resolution!

Go for it! Small size and picture quality will make you happy.