Panasonic has revealed details of its new solid-state handheld HD camcorder, the AG-HMC151.

Building on the success of the DV-based AG-DVX100, the new camcorder is a tapeless, solid state camcorder that features three native 16:9 progressive 1/3-inch CCD imagers with an optical image stabilisation (O.I.S.) function to ensure stable shooting.

It has a 28mm Leica Dicomar wide-angle zoom lens (35MM equivalent).

The Panasonic AG-HMC151 handheld offers 1080i and 720p recording at 13 Mbps, comparable to current HDV compression formats with bit rates of 25Mbps.

An additional, higher bit rate mode is incorporated for higher-level use.
The AG-HMC151 supports a full range of HD formats and is 50-Hz/59.94-Hz switchable.

It utilises the second-generation long GOP HD standard, AVCHD. Based on MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 high-profile encoding, AVCHD provides a near doubling of bandwidth efficiency and considerably improved video performance over the older MPEG-2 compression used in HDV formats.

Announced by Panasonic and Sony, this industry-standard format is now supported by more than 30 companies and implemented in numerous camcorders, NLE systems, and consumer HD playback devices.

The AG-HMC151 records onto SD and SDHC memory cards. With the 32-GB SDHC memory card and the camcorder's 6-Mbps recording mode, users can record up to 12 hours of HD video and audio on a single SD card.