Performance

The Sony HDR-UX20 has a 1/5-inch ClearVID CMOS sensor with Exmor technology. Gross pixel count is 2,300,000 pixels with an effective pixel count of 1,120,000 pixels at 4:3 and 1,490,000 pixels at 16:9. This compares to last year’s Sony HDR-UX7 that had a gross pixel count of 3,200,000 pixels and an effective pixel count of 2,280,000 pixels in 4:3 and 1,710,000 pixels in 16:9.

Typically, we expect that when a manufacturer shrinks their imager size and increase the pixel density, the noise will increase. However, Sony has implemented new capture and processing technology, borrowed in some regard from its Alpha line of SLR cameras. They claim that this system will offset any increase in noise from smaller pixels, but a few rounds in our testing room will be the ultimate judge.

Low Light Performance

The low light performance of the Sony HDR-UX20 may well be reduced from last year’s model, as the CMOS imager has reduced its surface area. This is an old maxim of those who follow the imaging industry, and one that manufacturers are quick to try and counter. Sony makes a few good points. First, there is the issue of material science, which means that the physical materials get a little better every year. Secondly, Sony has installed new noise reduction processes that should combat problems encountered by densely-packed chips. While these are both good points, we must remain skeptical until we can actually test the bloody things. No comment until then.

 

 

 

 

Format

Compression

Like most of Sony's camcorder lineup this year, the Sony HDR-UX20 captures video in AVCHD compression. As a step up from last year's models the Sony HDR-UX20 captures in full 1920 x 1080 rather than 1440 x 1080. The Sony HDR-UX20 allows you to record in HD FH at 16Mbps, which is a significant bump from last year’s top bitrate of 12Mbps. Other options are HD HQ at 9Mbps, HD SP at 7Mbps and HD LP at 5Mbps. 1920 x 1280 recording is only available at the top quality setting of HD FH. You can also record in standard definition.

Recording in full 1920 x 1080 is the new standard, and has been adopted by most of the major manufacturers this year for AVCHD camcorders. Once concern with DVD camcorders is that the limitations imposed by a physically spinning media are – for the time being – a hard ceiling on the total bitrate. This means you won’t be able to record at the highest quality setting to DVD media on the Sony HDR-UX20. Instead you’ll have to step down to the next quality setting. This means the 8GB of internal storage and a MemoryStick Duo/PRO Duo cards you are recording onto will be quickly filled up with the highest bitrate video. Any increase in bit rate should work to alleviate the problems we’ve seen with AVCHD in the past, including trailing and artifacting.

Media

The Sony HDR-SR12 is compatible with DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD+R DL (Dual Layer) discs. New in this year's models is the ability to record video to a MemoryStick and 8GB of internal memory, which Sony calls Hybrid Plus. The ability to record video to a memory card or internal memory does address one major issue with DVD camcorders: the limited recording times that come with DVD media. Having this kind of flexibility will be a boon to those who don't have enough DVDs with them or don't want to wait to record again while a DVD finalizes. Depending on how much footage you’ve recorded and the capacity of the DVD, finalization can take a very long time.

Probably the biggest issue with high definition DVD recording is that you lose much of the convenience that normally comes with DVD camcorders if you record high definition video. You will need to either play back the DVD on your computer using a special driver, buy a Blu-Ray player to play it back on your TV or simply connect the camcorder to your TV and use it as the playback device, which any camcorder can do. The ability to record onto a MemoryStick obviates this issue somewhat, but then you have to ask yourself if you're not better off going with a MemoryStick only device like the Sony HDR-CX7 or a hard drive device like the Sony HDR-SR12. Or you can forget about HD altogether and go with one of Sony's standard definition DVD camcorders.

Editing

Thankfully support for AVCHD editing has improved significantly since we looked at the Sony HDR-UX7 last year. You now have Sony Vegas 8.0, Ulead Video Studio 11, and Pinnacle Studio 11 to choose from. Mac users have support for AVCHD out of the box as the new iMovie 08 supports the format and Apple has also added AVCHD support to Final Cut Express 4. You will want to check to make sure that the software you purchase is specifically compatible with Sony's AVCHD camcorders. Although AVCHD is a standard there's just enough of a difference between the codec used by each manufacturer to create potential problems. The Sony HDR-UX20 ships with the very basic Picture Motion Browser ver. 2.0, which will allow you to import your videos and burn them to DVD, but not much else.

 

 

 

 

Auto / Manual Controls

Picture & Manual Control
*Automatic Control *

Sony does an excellent job with automatic controls. Simply press the Easy button and you find yourself in full automatic mode with all manual controls turned off and on-screen menu buttons doubled in size. The excellent manual controls on the Sony HDR-UX20 will make it a breeze to use for most first time users, although we should note that not everything is perfect. You will find that in some situations, such as high zooms and high contrast lighting, the automatic controls will falter.

You also have a choice of several Scene Selection modes, also called "Program AE modes" that give you one-touch adjustments to certain shooting conditions that full automatic mode may have trouble accommodating. These include Twilight, Twilight Portrait, Candle, Sunrise & Sunset, Fireworks, Landscape, Portrait, Spotlight, Beach, and Snow. Spot focus is also available in the first tab of the Camera Menu and Spot Meter is in the second tab. These are the Sony-standard one touch Spot Focus and Spot Meter adjustments that allow you to just tap on the screen where you want to focus or adjust metering. As long as the subject is large enough, these features tend to work well.

*Overall Manual Control *

Manual controls on the Sony HDR-UX20 have taken a hit compared to last year's Sony HDR-UX7 model. Although the same gamut of manual controls are available via the touch screen interface the Sony HDR-UX20 lacks the Cam Control found on previous Sony models and other models in this year's lineup. As a result, the AE Shift and WB Shift features from last year have been dropped entirely. You’ll still find regular, old exposure and white balance controls in touch screen menu.

This means you will have to make any manual adjustments via the touch screen interface. There's a good selection of manual controls, including focus, exposure and white balance. It’s annoying that the touch screen interface is slower than the Cam Control. Also, for some adjustments like focus, smudges on the screen can make it difficult to see the subject clearly. Throw in the fact that the Sony HDR-UX20's LCD display is still a small 2.7-inches and it just makes for a frustrating manual control experience.

Zoom

The Sony HDR-UX20 ups the ante in terms of zoom by increasing the optical zoom to 15x versus last year's Sony HDR-UX7 that had a 10x optical zoom. That they were able to achieve this by shrinking the CMOS down to 1/5-inch concerns us some, but we've covered that in more depth in the performance section of the review. The zoom toggle sits atop the DVD case on the right side in perfect position for your finger. Like most Sony zoom toggles, it provides very fine control and with ridged top gives you a solid grip. You can also zoom with two buttons located to the left of the LCD screen when it's folded out, although these don't give you the same fine control as the zoom toggle.

*Focus *

As we mentioned above, the loss of the Cam Control on the Sony HDR-UX20 means you will have to use the menu system to make manual adjustments. This means that focus can only be adjusted via the LCD touch screen (found on the first tab of the Camera Menu). When engaged, a plus sign button and minus sign button appear onscreen. You simply tap until the picture looks to be in focus. The problems that invariably occur with this particular Sony system have yet to be solved. First, the LCD is small of a low resolution, and it’s small, making the "eyeball" method of focusing largely guesswork. Secondly, the screen will inevitably get smudged, further degrading the appearance. This is the manual control that is most effected by the loss of the Cam Control dial.

*Exposure (Aperture) *

Manual exposure controls are also found in the Camera Menu under the second tab. You have a choice from AE shift, Scene Select and Spot Metering. Unfortunately Exposure adjustments are very opaque, meaning you don't have precise control over iris and shutter, instead both are changed depending on the adjustments you make. There are thirty-two stops available for exposure controls. There is also a spot metering option where you can tap on the screen to adjust exposure automatically based on that selection. Once again you’ll have to use the menu system as there isn’t a Cam Control.

Shutter Speed

The Sony HDR-UX20 lacks any manual shutter speed controls. There is Color Slow Shutter, a one-touch auto control that grants the camcorder permission to drop the shutter below 1/60 when deemed appropriate to get better color in low light situations. Unfortunately, this can cause the shutter to get too slow and often leads to motion blur.

White Balance

Unlike the Sony HDR-UX7 where you could make adjustments in White Balance Shift using the Cam Control you'll have to look in the menu to make these adjustments on the Sony HDR-UX20. Pre-sets include Manual, Auto, Indoor, and Outdoor. Making a manual adjustment is simple and direct, and takes the camcorder no more than a couple of seconds. The lighting on the show floor, particularly in the Sony booth, is about as challenging as it can get for auto white balance. The HDR-UX20 held up reasonably well. We got a chance to take one for a stroll to some more forgiving locations and the UX20 proved to be as adept in its manual white balance adjustment as any HD Sony.

Gain

There are no manual gain controls on the Sony HDR-UX20.

Other Manual Controls
Face Detection - Face detection is a major new feature on Sony camcorders this year. According to Sony the face detection software will be able to track up to eight different faces at a time, although our experience on the show floor showed that it had difficulty tracking any more than four faces. We actually lined up eight people to see how many it could handle and with all eight people in the shot we were able to recognize just one face. When we zoomed in further on a group we were able to get three or four faces recognized at one time. Recognized faces are enclosed in square white boxes that jump about as new faces come into the scene. Sony also tells us that they have a new bit allocation feature to increase detail in faces. The playback functionality is also present in playback mode. Read more about in Playback.

Zebra Stripes - This feature is called Zebra Stripes because when activated it will indicate areas of the scene that are overexposed by highlighting them with stripes. This allows you to make adjustments to exposure with visual feedback. You can set the sensitivity of the Zebra Stripes to 70 IRE or 100 IRE or turn it off, all in the last tab of the Camera Menu.

Guide Frames - These allow you to better line up your shots by placing a grid of white lines on the screen that split it into nine sectors. You can turn this feature on or off in the last tab of the Camera Menu.

Tele Macro - Used when you need to shoot close up, this feature will focus on the subject but leave the background unfocused so your subject stand out more.

x.v. Color - x.v.Color is Sony’s branding term for the xvYCC color gamut, an emerging system of reproducing more accurate color in recording and playback. It offers 1.8 times the viewable colors of traditional video color. The number of monitors that can actually play back Sony’s version of xvYCC is limited, but this feature could be a small measure of future-proofing your video if the new gamut takes its expected leap into prominence.

 

 

 

 

Still Features

Still Features

Still captures on the Sony HDR-UX20 have taken two steps back and one step forward. The maximum size of still images has fallen from 6.1 megapixels to 4.0 megapixels, probably due to the smaller imager found on the Sony HDR-UX20. You can also capture images while you are recording video, although the size of those images falls to three megapixels, which is again smaller than last year's 4.6 megapixels. The quality of images captured by last year's Sony HDR-UX7 produced solid still images, we'll see how the Sony HDR-UX20 does when we get it into the lab. All of the manual controls you would find when recording video are also available when capturing still images.

As with video capture we feel the loss of the Cam Control as you basically lose the ability to make quick and easy manual adjustments. Instead you'll have to pull up the on screen menu system every time you want to change a setting. The Sony HDR-UX20 has a flash mounted to the left of the lens. We worry a little about this placement as it could lead to uneven lighting, we prefer to see the flash mounted above the lens. Still images are saved onto a MemoryStick Duo/PRO Duo card.

 

 

 

 

Handling and Use

Ease of Use

Sony's Easy buttons makes its camcorders some of the easiest to use on the market. Simply press this button and all of your controls go into automatic. Menu buttons double in size to make them easier to press. If you stick with the Easy mode you'll be gold. For those who like to make their own adjustments, though, the Sony HDR-UX20 takes some significant steps back. With the Cam Control gone you will need to make almost all adjustments via the LCD touch screen. Unfortunately the touch screen has been reduced in size from a very comfortable 3.5-inches on the Sony HDR-UX7 to a much smaller 2.7-inches. This means tapping on screen buttons becomes that much harder and you'll inevitably leave smudges that will obscure a significant portion of the screen.

Handling

The Sony HDR-UX20 weighs in at 560 grams and measures 58 x 93 x 134 millimeters in size. This is significantly lighter than last year’s Sony HDR-UX7, which weighed in at 650 grams. You’ll also notice a much slimmer profile at 58mm versus the HDR-UX7’s 82mm width. These combine to make the Sony HDR-UX20 feel very comfortable in the hand. Like all DVD camcorders the taller profile gives you a lot of vertical real estate to hold onto, meaning it won’t flip or flop like we see from HDD camcorders like the Sony HDR-SR12.

One handling issue is the loss of the Cam Control. This means that you will have to use the LCD touch screen to make any manual adjustments. Throw in the fact that the LCD size has shrunk to 2.7-inches and the inevitable smudges that you get on the screen and it’s just not as good. It’s also not as fast as making adjustments with the Cam Control. As DVD camcorders are consumer focused this may be less of an issue as most people will probably throw it in Easy mode and forget about any manual adjustments, but the Prosumer crowd who like to have more control will find this frustrating.

LCD/Viewfinder

The Sony HDR-UX20 takes a significant step back over last year's Sony HDR-UX7 when it comes to the LCD display. The biggest difference is that the Sony HDR-UX20 loses significant screen real estate by going to a 2.7-inch LCD display with 211,000 pixels compared to the UX7's 3.5-inch display with the same 211,000 pixels. We like the improved pixel density, but wish it didn't come at the expense of screen size. We would have preferred that the Sony HDR-UX20 had shipped with the very nice 3.2-inch LCD display found on the Sony HDR-SR12. The Sony HDR-UX20 does come with a viewfinder in addition to the LCD display, which is nice as several camcorder lineups have gotten rid of the viewfinder entirely. It tilts up for easier viewing, but doesn't telescope out.

 

 

 

 

Audio / Playback / Connectivity

Audio

Like all high definition Sony camcorders the Sony HDR-UX20 sports a 5.1 channel surround sound mic, found near the front of the top of the device. The quality of the 5.1 channel surround sound is slightly better than what you would see from a standard mic on older camcorders. New on this year's Sony camcorders is the Link to Zoom feature, which allows you to isolate the sound from one of the mics so you can better focus on it. This is a nice feature if you're trying to pick up a person's voice in a noisy setting. We've seen this same feature as Panasonic's Zoom Mic for awhile now and it's nice to see it come to Sony.

Playback

You can easily enter playback mode on the Sony HDR-UX20 by using the dedicated button found above the LCD cavity or by pressing the on screen button on the lower left of the LCD. Playback options are the typical Sony fare, with the ability to browse clips captured and on screen playback controls. What's new with the Sony HDR-UX20 is that the new Face Detection capabilities add an option to view the faces you've captured, so you can find clips that have a certain face in them. You can activate this view with a button at the top of the screen when in playback mode. You will see an index of all the faces you’ve captured, no matter where in the clip they were captured. This means that if you tap on a face that was captured in the middle of a clip the clip will start playback at that point, which seemed to work in our time with it on the floor.

The Face Detection feature operating in playback mode

You can playback footage directly from the camcorder using the Mini HDMI port. After you've finalized a DVD you can play it back on regular DVD players if the footage was captured in standard definition. Unfortunately if you're capturing in high definition you will find your options more limited. A DVD can be played back on a Blu-Ray player or on newer Sony PC's. Otherwise you'll have to connect the camcorder directly to your TV. This limitation makes much of the convenience of having a DVD camcorder less helpful as you're choice of playback devices is so limited.

Connectivity

Connectivity options on the Sony HDR-UX20 are rather limited. You have the basics like DC-in, A/V-out and USB. Unlike last year's Sony HDR-UX7 that sported a full sized HDMI port, the Sony HDR-UX20 is following the trend of this year's Sony lineup by going with Mini HDMI, which is annoying because it means you'll have to carry around yet another cable or adaptor, and regular HDMI cables are hard enough to find for a decent price. On the top of the Sony HDR-UX20 you will find Sony's proprietary accessory shoe, which will only work with Sony branded accessories. Missing on the Sony HDR-UX20 compared to the hard drive based Sony HDR-SR12 are headphone and mic jacks.

The Active Accessory Shoe

 

 

 

 

 

Other Features/Conclusion

Other Features

Smooth Slow Record - This allows you to get a slow motion effect by recording 240 frames per second for a three second period. Once nice addition compared to last year is that you can record audio at the same time. This is found in the Home Menu under the first tab.

Super Nightshot - If you find yourself shooting in total darkness this feature will allow you to shoot up to ten feet away, but expect your shots to look a little green. There’s a switch for this found in the LCD Cavity.

Picture Effects - If you want to apply that special Sepa, Black and White or Pastel effect this is it. You can find these in the fourth tab of the Camera Menu.

*Faders - *To fee like a real videographer without much hassle you can apple a fade in/out effect automatically by activating this function found on the fourth tab of the Camera Menu. You can choose from a black or white fade.

Conclusion

As the top of the line of Sony’s DVD camcorders you’d expect the Sony HDR-UX20 to provide a high-end consumer experience, and in this it delivers, with a few notable exceptions. The Sony HDR-UX20 packs all of Sony’s newest features including a new processor, new CMOS imager, and Face Detection. That last feature doesn’t pick up as many faces as Sony claims, but does provide you with a nice index of captured faces to make finding that particular clip that much easier. The resolution has been upped to full HD at 1920 x 1080 at 16Mbps. One of the fundamental problems of DVD camcorders has also been addressed with Sony’s Hybrid+ scheme. This basically means that you can record to 8GB of internal memory as well as a MemoryStick, providing you with nice backup options when that DVD inevitably runs out of space.

On the not so good side is the loss of the Cam Control compared to last year’s Sony HDR-UX7. We understand that DVD camcorders are consumer focused, but even consumers might like the ability to make some manual adjustments without smudging their LCD. Throw in the fact that the LCD has been shrunken to 2.7 inches and there’s not much to like about it this display, especially when comparing it the great 3.2-inch, 921,000 pixel LCD on the new HDD-based HDR-SR12.

DVD camcorders are loved because there supposed to be very easy to use. Record your video, finalize the DVD, and throw it in a player. But the combination of the inability to record at the highest quality to a DVD and the fact that any high definition content you do record to a DVD requires a Blu-Ray player or specially equipped laptop tends to blunt much of that convenience. The industry seems to be moving towards HDD and flash memory camcorders and that trend seems to be borne out by the Sony HDR-SR12’s ability to record to flash memory. Of course that leads us to ask: why would you even buy a DVD camcorder?