It’s still heavier than Panasonic’s cheaper camcorders, but the overall look and feel still puts this unit in the compact camcorder category. It may not be the kind of camcorder that professional camera operators would use, but we’re also in the age where people are filming with iPhones, and the Panasonic HC-VX981K just fits the bill better in terms of overall video quality. The HC-VX981K doesn’t really reinvent the wheel and retains many of the key features, including the 1/2.3-inch backlit sensor, LEICA Dicomar lens with 20x optical zoom, wireless camera support, 3-inch touchscreen, and overall look. The main new feature is a tribute to the many people who still own a 1080p display. Of course, there’s no serious reason to own a 4K camcorder if you don’t have a screen with 4K support. 4K videos have a very large file size, and you can’t really appreciate the quality if you’re watching the video on a screen with a lower resolution. The Panasonic HC-VX981K makes the 4K spec more useful for people who just want higher quality 1080p video. While all 4K camcorders, including the HC-VX981K, have the ability to record in 1080p and the results are pretty good, the Panasonic HC-VX981K has additional approaches to achieve better results. Panasonic has included special in-camera editing solutions that let you turn 4K video into focused 1080p video without complicated software. “Focused” is the key word, because this process doesn’t involve downsampling the video, but basic editing functions like cropping and zooming. If you shoot a 4K video and use the editing option to crop out a 1080p portion of the video, you’ll get a much more stable and focused result than if you shoot natively in 1080p. Depending on the result you want, there are several options. You can let the video zoom to 1080p without changing the angle, or you can instead create a cropping area over the subject and keep it focused. You can also pan or sacrifice the 4K resolution for more stable 1080p footage.
