My Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 camera arrived around 6:30 PM 12/17/2009. I open the package and checked the Lumix box to be sure all item were present and accounted for. I also receive a Transcend 16 GB, HDHC, class 6, memory card, which is the fasts on the market right now. Also in the shipping package was a Lowepro case to carry the camera. The memory card and carrying case were additional cost.
The battery comes uncharged, so the first step is to charge the battery with the charger that came in the Lumix camera box. It took a little under two hours to charge. Next I inserted the 16 gb memory card and batter into the ZS3 camera, turn on the camera, navigated to setup --> format, and formated the memory card. This put an msdos, (eg FAT 32, I think), file system on the card with the default empty folders. Next I played around with the camera to see that everything worked. The camera operates as advertised. I installed the Panasonic Lumix PHOTOfunStudio software that with the camera. Its windows or mac only, so I installed into my XP Pro VM running on Virtualbox, which is hosted in Fedora 11. I didn't much care for the PHOTOfunStudio software, so I quickly abandoned it. I made some test movies using Sony's 720P AVCHD format. I plugged the camera into my computer using a USB port and gThumb came up, but it only recognized the picture, not the 720P videos. This proved not to be a problem; because, a new icon appeared on my Fedora desktop indicating Fedora had a 16 GB hard drive mounted, which was my camera's memory card. I was able to use Nautilus to browse the memory card's file system and copy and past the .mts videos onto Federa's ext 4 file system. For some reason the file extension on the camera is .mts, but when I used PHOTOfunSTUDIO to acquire the videos from the camera, it renamed the video using an .m2ts extension. The video didn't change and the .mts extension used by the camera is probably due to the old msdos file extension limit of only three characters. I was able to play the mts/m2ts HD videos using movie player, mplayer and VLC, which were the only players I tried. The 720p videos also played great using the Twonky Server Multimedia Server, which streamed the video to my PS3 that has a Samsung HDTV attached. I was able to upload an .mts video to youtube which played fine. Next I tried to put a test movie onto a DVD, but the DeVeDe software package didn't recognize the .mts or .m2ts video files, so I renamed the video file using an .mp4 extension, and DeVeDe accepted the movie file and recognized that it was a 720x by 1280x resolution. DeVeDe created an .iso image of the .mp4 movie file, but it downgraded the resolution to 480x by 720x. One advantage of the downgraded resolution is a blueray DVD is not needed when the file is in a lower resolution, and I was able to play the DVD from my computer's standard DVD and the PS3 Blueray DVD as well. Next I was able to use dvd::rip to rip the DVD and put it into a more standard .avi container. I'm very pleased with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 camera and Linux seems to have everything I need to work with The Sony/Panasonic new AVCHD video format, which is quickly becoming the standard for Sony and Panasonic CAM's. Below is a video I took of Penny today. Penny is my Pug dog. I like to baby talk Penny, so the way I sound and talk on the video is not my normal tone of conversation. LOL Below is a link to my youtube 720 by 1280, (eq 720p) video. My Limux ZS3 also has a 1080i setting, but I haven't used it yet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAvC7NtAXk8 Below is a link to the 720p .mp4 video: http://www.smvfp.com/smvfp_images/penny.12-19-2009.mp4 Here is a link to the 720 by 480 .avi: http://www.smvfp.com/smvfp_images/penny.12-19-2009.avi Here are some pictures: http://www.smvfp.com/smvfp_images/penny.00001.jpg http://www.smvfp.com/smvfp_images/penny.00002.jpg http://www.smvfp.com/smvfp_images/penny.00003.jpg http://www.smvfp.com/smvfp_images/penny.00004.jpg Regards, LelandJ _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
