Panasonic will showcase a new video camera capable of recording high-definition video on the SD card, at CEATEC JAPAN 2006 held in Makuhari Messe on October 3.

The device is compliant with the AVCHD high definition (HD) digital video camera format.

Highlights of th digital camera include its newly developed image processing LSI that supports MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, as well as Panasonoc's "Three CCD system". According to the company, the camera is able to record 55 minutes of HD video (9 Mbps) on a 4GB SDHC card.

Panasonic and Sony announced basic specifications for "AVCHD" on May 11th this year, and since then have promoted the format throughout the industry. The format includes memory cards (SD Memory Card and Memory Stick) and hard disk drives as applicable recording media of the format in addition to previously-announced 8cm DVD.

The format employs MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec for video compression, and Dolby Digital (AC-3) or Linear PCM for audio codec. This makes it possible to develop HD video camera recorders which achieve compact size as well as high-quality video and audio.