Digital Trends

Samsung SC-DC564 April 10th, 2007 | by Jason Tomczak

Video Playback in DVD Player

I made videos on two separate miniDVDs using SP and XP modes. After finalizing the discs in the SC-DC564 camcorder, I tested the miniDVD recordings on my home theater system. When the DVDs first loaded, a nice graphical menu of the DVDs’ video clips appeared on screen. I thought that was a very nice touch. I selected a clip and hit "play." The video quality was good. Not great, mind you, but good. Colors were a bit washed out and there was some evident pixellation.

I was about to sign off on the playback as being acceptable when the DVD started to skip. The audio feed made little digital burps and tweets, sometimes sounding like one of those degraded audio signals in The Matrix. I ejected the DVD to make sure there wasn't any dust on it. It was clean and scratch-free. I played the DVD again, this time selecting several different recorded tracks. All tracks selected were graced by the digital audio burps and tweets. The final clip on the first DVD had significant video distortion - large pink, green, and blue pixel blocks that would appear and melt away, only to give rise to another equally frustrating video anomaly.

The second DVD proved just as faulty. While the bulk of the video and audio was good, the intermittent squawks, blips, and burps made me shake my head in dismay.

Video Playback from SD Card

Given that numerous camcorders these days can record directly to a memory card, I thought the SC-DC564 would be able to bring some honor back to itself by recording better quality digital video on my 2GB high-speed SD card.

The results were less than stellar. More accurately, they caused me to mutter a few colorful curses. The AVI files looked as though they had been recorded on a camera phone.

Still Images

As with most camcorders these days, the SC-DC564 can take still images. The stills are saved to the optional SD memory card. There are two possible sizes for photos: 1152 x 864 pixels and 800 x 600 pixels. Both are pretty low resolution. Even in "Super Fine" mode, the still images I took resembled something snapped from a cheap cell phone or an early webcam.

LCD Screen

The 2.7" color LCD display is average in size and, of course, follows the same 16:9 ratio as the video the SC-DC564 records. On the unit I've been using, the screen flickers constantly, like a cheap tube TV. Because I'm very picky, this flicker drives me nuts.

Battery Life

In my numerous video and still tests, the stock battery on the SC-DC564 ran out in less than an hour. Thinking I had failed to properly charge the battery when I first set it up, I recharged the battery overnight. Another round of recording videos proved that the battery aggressively bottoms out in record time. It's like a 12-cylinder car going through a pint of gas. Poof – gone!


Conclusion

While the Samsung SC-DC564 miniDVD camcorder is a beautiful product to look at and would look terribly impressive in anyone's grip, the overall performance truly disappoints. Still images looked like they came from a camera phone. Video clips recorded to the SD card looked badly pixellated and the colors were washed out. Videos recorded onto miniDVDs were certainly better, but they didn't rise to the quality most people have come to expect in a newly-released camcorder. DVD playback on a standard DVD player proved troublesome. Of course, at an average price of $349 USD, the Samsung SC-DC564 is on the lower echelon of consumer-grade camcorders. Expectations shouldn't be too high for $349 USD.

While I love most Samsung products (such as the very impressive LN-S2651D LCD HDTV), I cannot bring myself to recommend the SC-DC564 to anyone. It is not a camcorder I would find myself using on any occasion.

The SC-DC564 is a very unfair and misleading example of the great technology products Samsung is able to produce.


Pros:

• Low comparative price
• Sleek physical design

Cons:

• Poor quality video results
• Short battery life
• No sample media included