Comparison of Lumix 3D1 versus Sony TD10 3D Video cameras

The Panasonic Lumix 3D1 is a compact 3D still and video camera while the Sony TD10 is a larger, traditional styled video camera that shoots 3D video and some stills.

Both are described as 1920×1080 3D video resolution; however, due to the way the video is encoded in each camera, the Lumix 3D1 is shooting at 1920×1080 but encoding in the squeezed 960x1080x2 mode. That is, the left and right images are squeezed down and combined into a squished side-by-side video format (this is the same format that is used by the Youtube 3D support). The Sony TD10 (and it successor the TD20) records dual 1920×1080 video and encodes that as two complete 1920×1080 video streams.

The result is that while the Lumix 3D1 looks quite good for an inexpensive, compact consumer 3D camera, the dual 1920x1080p encoding of the Sony TD10 produces a noticeably sharper image.

To view this and see the difference, you need to select the 1080p viewing option in the Youtube player and display in full screen (on a 1920×1080 sized screen!) Even though Youtube is in 960x1080x2 format, starting with the higher resolution of the TD10 results in a better image quality all the way through.

In each pair of clips in the demo video, the 3D1 comes first, then the TD10.

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