Sony HDR-SR11 First Impressions Review
Yesterday was a big day… As soon as 5:00 PM hit, I was out of the office and on the road to go pick up my new toy. It arrived at my house on Friday but nobody was home, so the meanies at UPS held it in their warehouse all weekend. Waiting was painful, but it was certainly worth it. This is one awesome piece of kit!
After spending a significant amount of time mulling over all the pros and cons of HD camcorders, I finally settled on the Sony HDR-SR11
Handling
The first thing I noticed when taking it out of the box was that it has a bit of heft, much more so than the Sony DCR-HC48. This is not a bad thing; it feels very solid and well-built. All of the ports are covered by very robust doors, and the on/off/mode switch, zoom toggle, record button, and other controls feel very substantial and well placed. I like the knurled metal knob at the front for doing manual adjustments of focus, exposure, AE shift, and white-balance shift. The touch screen is beautiful; it’s larger than most and has 921,000 pixels, over four times as many as typical camcorder displays. The touch-screen interface seems straightforward, but it can be difficult to find certain settings at first.
Video Quality and Playback
Video quality is stunning; I took it out in the yard and made some quick videos of flowers and trees, then plugged the camcorder’s USB port into the Playstation 3. I was able to play back the AVCHD files via the PS3 without a hitch, and Mel (my wife) and I were both blown away by the beautiful picture. Color representation seemed very good, as did contrast and sharpness. The zoom is also excellent; at 12x optical, it bests most HD camcorders. The amazing thing is that the digital zoom seems completely useable up to 25x. I noticed no picture degradation, likely because the camera is using the sensor’s extra pixels for the zoom. (Remember, HD video only requires 2.1 megapixels, and this camera has 5.66.)
Editing on the Mac
Without loading any software or drivers, I simply plugged the camera’s USB port into my MacBook Pro, which is a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo “Santa Rosa” model with 2GB of RAM and OS X 10.5.2. Since I took a few still photos, iPhoto launched automatically and offered to download the pictures to my library. That process went very smoothly, just like with any other digital camera.
Next I launched iMovie ’08, which immediately recognized the camcorder and showed a thumbnail of each clip on the camcorder’s HDD. iMovie also allowed me to play back previews of the clips and to deselect any unwanted clips prior to transfer. This sure beats tape-based camcorders! I recorded only 1 minute and 20 seconds of video, but it took around 5 minutes to transfer and transcode. So far this seems to be the only real downside to AVCHD. The video also ate up a whopping 1.36 GB of disk space… Ouch! Once the video was on my computer, editing was very snappy; moving clips around and adding transitions and effects seemed as fast as with SD footage from the DCR-HC48. The only time I noticed some slight hesitation was during transitions when previewing the movie full-screen.
I used Quicktime to export the movie at 720p for upload to Vimeo using the instructions found here. Exporting the 51 second movie took about 10 minutes and resulted in a 32.2 megabyte file. You can watch the video in SD Flash below, or click the link to go to Vimeo and watch in HD Flash or download the Quicktime file (bottom right corner of Vimeo page).
Overall I’m very pleased with the camcorder so far. I’m looking forward to spending more time with it this weekend. Because this camcorder touts “10MP still images”, I plan on doing a little write-up on the still photo performance soon. Hopefully someone out there is interested in all this gobbledegook, but at least I’m having fun being a geek and playing with my toys!
UPDATE 3/31/08 The still image testing of the HDR-SR11 is now available here.
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Great review! So far you are the first one to post this kind of review for the average user. I have been looking for it so badly since it was released a couple of weeks ago. I would love if you could compare the 10mp stills with another similar regular camera.
but I think it is worthy 
Too bad the video eats up that amount of HD space though
I am very close to buy it…
Karl
I’m glad you liked the review Karl! I agree about the HDD space; it won’t be long at all before I have to invest in a fast external HDD. I suppose another option is to export a high quality version of the edited movie and then delete the original footage, but I’m always hesitant to delete originals. And then there’s the question of backups…
Karl, the still image comparison is now ready here!
Thanks for the video. I have the SR11 arriving tomorrow at my office. I have been reviewing the SR12 and decided I probably didn’t need that much space. I should post some video up here soon. Thanks again for giving me a sneak peak.
Thanks Trunk!
[...] order to insure an astounding megapixel number they actually cheat! You see, as I mentioned in my first impressions review, the camcorder has a 5.66 megapixel sensor. So how does a 5.66 MP sensor produce a 10.2 MP image? [...]
[...] good choice for use with today’s AVCHD camcorders. All the newest AVCHD models (including the Sony HDR-SR11) record true 1920×1080 HD video. But despite Final Cut Express (FCE) 4.0 advertising support [...]
Sean,
You seem like a promising resource for my question, as I’ve Googled my fingertips off without finding significant help for this problem:
I bought the HDR-SR11 a couple days ago and have played around with it since. I agree that the quality is absolutely STUNNING, but I am having trouble with the importing of files into Final Cut Pro. They import fine, but FCP modifies them.
No matter what I do, Final Cut changes the resolution of the imported files to 2560 x 1080, obviously much wider that the native 1920 x 1080 of the camera, resulting in a nasty stretch of the frame. Do you have any suggestions?
Everett,
I am using FInal Cut Express 4.0 and have no experience with Final Cut Pro. (I wish I could afford it!) Not sure if FCP has “Easy Setup” like FCE does, but in FCE it is accessed from the main menu or by hitting ^Q. In Easy Setup, make sure you are using “HDV-Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i60″. Next create a brand new project, use “Log & Transfer” to import the video from the camera, then drag one of the clips into the new project. All should be well, or at least this is what worked for me. Be sure to check some of the clips directly from the scratch folder in Quicktime to make sure they are being imported correctly. Also make sure you aren’t placing an odd-sized image or clip as the first item in the sequence, as FCP may be resizing the project around this item.
Good luck, let me know how it turns out!
Sean
Sean
THANKS!!!
I’ve looked everywhere trying to see why I couldn’t download to FCE 4. Your post told me what to do!!
It works!!
You are my hero man!!
THANK YOU VERY MUCH
I posted this question to the website “Contact,” but thought I would put it out here in the comments area too to get additional feedback.
I currently have a Canon ZR40 miniDV camera that’s about 6 years old and have been using it to record our family vacations overseas. This year we’re planning on going to Egypt and Jordan. Since it’s a somewhat special trip, I’m wondering if it’s worthwhile upgrading to a high definition camera. Any help on the following:
1. Considering that I’ll be using the camcorder to record our vacation and not close-ups, will there be much of a image quality difference between the miniDV and SR11 camcorders? (i.e. Will the image quality look like those High Def scenery channels on cable TV.)
2. I’ve seen some pricing from $1200 – $1400. Any idea how stable the pricing on HD camcorders is? (Will the price drop by $400 6 months from now?)
3. Your review said 1.38GB for just over a minute of video. Does that mean for a 2 hr DVD I should have over 120 gigs of harddrive space?
Thanks for your help,
Michael
Michael, if you haven’t read my articles Which HD Camcorder to Buy? and So You Want to Make an HD Movie…, they might help.
To answer your questions specifically:
1. HD camcorders excel at scenes with lots of detail, such as landscapes and city scenes. More pixels means more edges, textures, and lines, which really helps when shooting footage with lots going on. The image difference should be more noticeable in these types of scenes than in close-ups. While a consumer HD camcorder can’t match the quality of the $20,000 professional cameras used to shoot HD footage for TV, with the right lighting and setup it can come close enough.
2. Amazon has the HDR-SR11 for a $1099 here
. If you are a Costco member, they have it for $1049. You can expect some price drop over time with any high-tech item you buy. Last hear the popular HD camcorder was the Canon HV20, which was selling for $900 or more. You can now pick one up on Amazon for $759. I expect HD camcorders to remain very popular and hold their value well, much like DSLR cameras.
3. It was 1.36 GB for 1 minute 20 seconds of video in the Apple Intermediate Codec format. The files directly from the camera will average around 120 MB per minute. You can copy the files from the camera straight onto a DVD and play them back on a Sony Playstation 3 in full HD. If you create a DVD with iDVD or other video DVD authoring software, you will lose the HD resolution. You probably shouldn’t bother with HD if you plan on watching your footage via a standard DVD player. For more info on editing and playback see the “So You Want to…” article I mentioned above.
Good luck; let me know how it goes!
Hey thanks for posting a human-based review of this camcorder.
It answered all the real-life usability questions that all the hardcore review sites tend to ignore.
Sean: I’ve got an SR11 and it’s been great. One problem, iMovie 08 does not open the acvhd files on the camera. The camera mounts as a hard drive, and I can download pictures on it to iPhoto, but iMovie doesn’t blink. No clips ready for editing.. just my old camcorder stuff…
I’ve got the most recent version, I’m running OS 10.4.11, fully updated. Any ideas?
Hi Ken,
Sorry for it took me a while to get back to you, I was on vacation.
After connecting the HDR-SR11 to the computer, be sure to turn it on and select the correct “USB Connect” icon on the camcorder’s touch screen. (NOTE: If you select the “USB Connect” icon for memory stick and your videos are on the hard-disk, iMovie won’t detect your movies.)
By default OS X sees the camcorder as a digital camera and will launch iPhoto when it is connected. If you don’t want iPhoto to launch automatically you can open “Image Capture.app”, go to Preferences, and change “When a camera is connected, open:” to “No application”. Otherwise, just close iPhoto after you’ve connected the HDR-SR11, then open iMovie ’08.
Once in iMovie ’08, it should automatically say “Camera Detected” and open the “Import From: HDR-SR11″ window. If this does not happen, the HDR-SR11 media (hard-disk or memory stick) with your movies may not be formatted properly. First make a backup image of the HDR-SR11 media using “Disk Utility.app”, then on the camcorder go to “Home, Manage Media, Media Format” and select the media you want to format. This will erase all of the data on the media, but the it should restore the proper structure to the media so iMovie can recognize it.
Good luck!
Sean
Hey, I just bought a SR11 and I should get it tomorrow (fingers crossed). I see that it works fine with iMovie 08 but I personally use iMovie 06, mainly because 08 is a bastardization of 06. I fairly sure that 06 won’t read the AVCD format. Any way I can get my video clips to iMovie 06 with my Macbook Pro (2GB of RAM, intel, 2.2 GHz)?
Cody, you can use Voltaic ($30, available here) to convert the files into a format you can use with iMovie ’06. If you have ’08 on your computer, you can also import the files using it then switch to back to iMovie ’06 for editing. Or you could bite the bullet and buy Final Cut Express 4.0!
You Can just use iMovie 08 to import the files from a HDR-SR11, then, once they are all imported, close the program, find the location where iMovie 08 saved your imported files and fire up iMovie 06, drag all of your imported clips into the clips pane in 06 and you will be good to go
Excuse me how big is the program that comes with the camera?
I have 5 .MTS sample files from the HDR-SR11 and can’t do anything with them…
I have only used the HDR-SR11 with my Mac, which requires no programs to be installed. It works right out of the box with iMovie ’08 or Final Cut Express 4.0. I don’t know how big the Windows application is that comes with the camera.
On the Mac, iMovie ’08 and Final Cut Express can’t open the .MTS files directly. The camcorder must be plugged in to the computer for the files to be recognized. One work around is to create a disk image of the camcorder’s hard drive, mount that, then put the .MTS files in the disk image. Again I’m not sure how it works on the Windows side.
Sean,
Thanks for the review. I am thinking about buying the SR11 or SR12. Two questions I have for you…#1 What can you tell me about the battery life? #2 Is there an option to record in SD rather than in HD to reduce the space required on the HDD for things that don’t necessarily need to be in HD?
Thanks,
Brooks
Battery life is about an hour with the included battery and over two hours with the NPFH70 battery
(recommended).
And yes, you can record in several different quality modes (including standard-def) which will increase the overall number of hours of video you can fit on the camera’s hard drive.
Make sure you have the latest updates to Final Cut Studio 2 installed in order for Sony’s AVCHD files to be imported at the correct size, 1920×1080. I thought I had all the updates with 6.0.3, but some “behind the scenes” files for Final Cut needed to be updated for correct transfer.
Hi
I am having a little trouble with this camera and I’m not sure what to do. Everyone says it has excellent PQ, but when I use it in low light conditions it is extremely grainy. Is no one else noticing this? I am recording in 1920×1080 and hooking up to a Sony 52XBR4 via hdmi and when I film in the house or outside at night it looks like a old tape Camcorder. Are all high def cameras like this or is there something I am missing?
Thanks
Desmond
Desmond, try manually lowering the exposure using the control knob on the front of the camera in low-light conditions. The camera is trying too hard to correctly expose a dark scene by boosting the gain way up, which creates a lot of noise. If you control the exposure yourself you’ll prevent this from happening. But HD camcorders all suffer from noise in low-light. Just watch some HD television shows like Dirty Jobs and you’ll eventually see that same noise in low light conditions on their Pro video cameras!
Sean,
Just got my HDR-SR11 — very nice. Then I got iLife 08 — also very nice. Already have Apple TV. How do I get 1080i movies from my camera moved to Apple TV without losing resolution?
Sorry Bill, I don’t have an Apple TV so I’m not quite sure how the transfer works. I would imagine that you’d have to put the 1080i movie into iTunes then sync iTunes with the Apple TV. Good luck!
Hi Sean,
A very detailed and the info here is in real “HD”. This is definitely influencing my decision on SR11 .. I have one question and that is whether slow motion recording is possible with Sony SR11? I’ve seen some footage on youtube, but just want to hear it from you. If possible, can you please put a sample footage link in your response.
Thx. Kishe.
Kische, yes, the HDR-SR11 supports recording 3-second (real-time) slow-motion clips. I used the slow motion feature extensively in my NIN – Discipline video. Go here to check it out: http://www.vimeo.com/1141277
If you register you can download the Quicktime file.
Hi Sean!
Very useful blog!
One question:
What about the Steadyshot?
On my HC1 the electronic Steadyshot does a bad job.
How is your impression?
Works the optical SteadyShot of the SR11 well?
Is it possible to take high quality “freehand”-shots?
Thx
Hi Steve,
Steadyshot on this camcorder works very well. It is optical, which means the lens uses mechanical means to correct for shake, which results in a high quality picture. The electronic Steadyshot varieties correct for shake by using extra pixels on the image sensor, meaning that the overall quality decreases whenever the camera tries to make the image more stable. Also these electronic varieties never work as well as the mechanical ones at reducing shake.
I’ve done quite a bit of freehand work with the HDR-SR11 and I’ve been pleased with the results. You do have to have a steady hand though, as the high-resolution picture makes shaking a lot more noticeable than on a standard resolution camcorder.
Sean
Hi Sean,
My wife and I recently purchased the Sony HDR-SR11. She has a mac and we cannot for the life of us figure out how to get the video off of the camera. We do not have iMovie 08 (her mac is one model behind) but we did purchase Final Cut Express. We tried following your directions above as well as the instructions in the program help file. Still no luck. We can see the clips in the “Log & Transfer” and even preview them. But when we drag to import them there is an error in the transfer – nothing happens. Are we doing something wrong?
Thank you for the help -
Hi Pete.
First things first, be sure to run software update and upgrade to Final Cut Express 4.0.1. This version has new “Easy Setup” options for AVCHD cameras. Be sure to select “Final Cut Express, Easy Setup…” and then choose “AVCHD-Apple Intermediate Codec 1920x1080i60″.
Next, when you do “Log and Transfer”, select the clip you want to import, then click the “Add Clip to Queue” button to below the preview. The clip should show up in the queue area at the bottom left corner of the Log and Transfer window with a rotating processing symbol. Once done processing the clip will show up in the browser window of your project.
Good luck!
Sean
i did the final cut express when i go 2 log & transfer and the program shuts down on me can you help thanks
Hi Sean
I just uploaded a few video clips from a new Sony HDR-CX12 into Finalcut Studio 6.0.4 just like you showed above. It does have easy setup like Finalcut Express. I’m using a media card on this camcorder not a internal harddrive. 16 geg chip I purchased at the Sony store. All should be fine. All you settings that you mentioned.
—–
HDV-Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i60
—–
Unfortunately I’m getting a jumping motion effect on all my video.
I’m uploading on a Macpro using Max OS X 10.4.11 {Tiger}
Processor 2 x 2 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
With 2 GB Ram
I’m about to take the camera back but I really don’t want too because it does shoot a nice 10 megapixel photo.
It is very light weight with a 12 zoom nice Carl Zeisse lens.
Do you think you can hwelp me out with this problem?
Regards
Hal
Hi Hal,
I haven’t seen this problem before, but I’m not experienced with Final Cut Studio. It sounds like your machine should have plenty of horsepower to play back the video. Do you see any jumping when you play the video back from the camcorder directly to the TV?
Here is a sample clip from my camera that you can try to see if it’s the computer or the camera: http://seansense.net/movies/00002.MTS
Just download the file and place it in the same folder on your memory card as the other .MTS files, then import it via Final Cut.
Also I know that Apple recently issued an update for Final Cut Express that added presets specifically for AVCHD cameras. You might want to run Software Update and then recheck your preset.
Good luck!
Sean
Hi Sean
Thanx for taking your time to help me out.
I took the Sony back, It still jittered and when I used a 3rd party program to convert
{Voltaic 1.5.0 }
That worked fine but gave me way to big of files!
I just want to be able to do batch capture and uploads off the media card or camera harddrive. Having to convert is costing me too much time and also space on my hardrives.
I’m handicap so this little camera’s light weight was perfect, plus I take tons of photos.
Do you recomnd any other Camcorders that are light weight-quality stills and mac-quicktime friendly?
Regards
Hal
I have read this board many times and still have trouble with final cut express [4.0.1] and my hdr-sr11. When i open up log and transfer, i am able to put the clips into the queue, but when transferring them, there is an exclamation mark, and the progress is idled.
What i tried was to import the clips with imovie 08 into a new event, go to the folder where the event .mov files are kept, and import this into final cut express. This worked.
What I was wondering was whether or not you or anyone else had this problem.
Yonatan,
Several people have had problems importing SD clips from the HDR-SR11 into FCE. Are you importing SD or HD clips? Try just importing HD clips and see if that helps. Also if you click on the exclamation it should give you an error message. What does the message say?
Sean
[...] Sony HDR-SR11 First Impressions Review with 5,706 [...]
Sean,
I have had the same problem as some others where I can drag the files from my SR-11 into the queue but I get the exclamation point as well. The error says “No Data”. Any thoughts?
Are the files SD or HD?
Hi Sean,
Thanks for taking the time to reply to these messages. I am trying to upload some footage on Final Cut Pro Studio 2 onto my SR-11 and have tried the things you have recommended such as HDV-Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i60. However, I am not able to upload any of this onto the system. Do you have any solutions or updates about this problem? Thanks so much!
Hi,
I haven’t used Pro Studio, just Final Cut Express 4.0. Here are the steps I would go through with FCE:
I would first select “Final Cut Express, Easy Setup…” and then choose “AVCHD-Apple Intermediate Codec 1920×1080i60?.
Next, I would do “Log and Transfer” with the camera connected via USB, powered on, and the “USB SELECT (HD)” option selected on the camera’s touch-screen. Next I wold choose the clip I want to import, then click the “Add Clip to Queue” button to below the preview. The clip should show up in the queue area at the bottom left corner of the Log and Transfer window with a rotating processing symbol. Once done processing the clip will show up in the browser window of your project.
Sean
Thanks Sean!! It worked!!!
Hello! Maybe you can help me…
I’m currently using my boyfriend’s old macbook pro, and I recently got a Sony HDR-SR11 video camera for Christmas. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to upload the video from the camera to the computer -the still photos will upload, but not the videos.
Every website I’ve checked has told me I need a firewire cable…But I’m sure this isn’t true. I’m in Russia at the moment, and we tested uploading video to my laptop while I was in the states before I left, and I’m only supposed to need the USB cable. But it won’t upload! I have iMovieHD…do I need iMovie 08 to do this? I’ve searched my computer and I don’t have iMovie 08 –so then how did the footage from my camera get onto my computer when I was in the states?! Or am I completely mistaken, and imagined the test in the first place?
When I plug the video camera into my computer, a “USB SELECT” screen comes up with only 4 options- “USB CONNECT”, “USB CONNECT” (with a different picture), “PRINT” and “DISC BURN”. None of them seem to work. My computer will recognise the camera is there, but will only open the still photographs, not the movies. It says that I don’t have a program that can even open the folders where I think the movies are.
I’m a little hopeless when it comes to computers, please help!
Hello,
Unfortunately you need either iMovie ’08 or Final Cut Express 4 on an Intel Mac to import video from the HDR-SR11.
One other option is to use Voltiac: http://www.shedworx.com/voltaichd It costs $34.99, but it allows you convert the AVCHD files from the SR11 into MOV files you can edit.
And you should use the “USB CONNECT” option with the hard-drive icon (circles) next to it, unless you’re recording to a MemoryStick, then chose the other icon.
Good luck!
Sean
Hi Sean,
I`m looking for a possible best set up configuration to get the best HD video.
I`m using the “easy” mode and dos not look HD.
Can you give us what could be the best setings for video and pic.(HDR-SR11)
Thanks a lot
Hi,
and would really appreciate your feedback..
As so many have said previously – thanks for the down-to-earth reviews, and taking the time to answer all these queries…
Well its been over a year since your first post , and i wonder if you wouldn’t mind doing another short review of the Cam.
After 12 months + of use, what have you found to be the pros/cons of the cam?
Any regrets on the purchase?
would you still recommend the Sony HDR-SR11?
I’m about to pick one up after a year of saving
regards
Nirish
Hi! I’m trying to load my videos and pics to the computer but it’s not allowing me. I have a Dell XPS Computer. Do I need to download anything to access the pictures and videos?
Thanks soooo much for your instructions on importing HDV from the HDR SR11 to final cut express 4! The apple ” genius ” could not show me how. He told me to get a different camera that has firewire.
Thanks Again!
-John
Sean,
I have a Sony HDR-SR11 Handycam and a MacBook Pro with OS 10.6.2 Snow Lep. iMovie 8.0.5. Standard def. video imports onto iMovie fine. HD video is not recognized! Plenty of memory avail. The funny thing is, somehow I got a HD clip onto iMovie! Just one. Now, I can’t seem to repeat the task. Help! Carl