DVX XL2 and HD

[skippyfetus]

Why do people keep asking, when is Panasonic and Canon going to go to HD, why aren't the new versions of the DVX and XL1 cameras HD?

Well, for one thing those cameras are Mini DV cameras. Don't you think they might consider releasing a completely different model for HD or at least a special addition? I know that if I was a XL1s user and was planning on upgrading I'd be pissed if they decided to switch formats and leave everyone with no choice but to switch formats. Wouldn't that be a little pushy and inconvenient for film makers who have expensive Mini DV decks and are used to doing things the MiniDV way.

I think both Panasonic and Canon will release HD cameras, but they're not going to force it on anyone. They'll probably come out with totally original models or special additions for those that want to switch.

Besides, the average consumer is not familiar with HD and probably afraid of it. From a business point of view, it would have been suicidal for Canon to make the XL2 HD. *

[Barry_Green]

I dunno, I think it was kind of suicidal of them to let Panasonic and Sony get so far ahead, and year after year they'd keep trotting out the XL1s as if anyone cared. DVExpo West was an utter embarrassment for them, there were hundreds of people swarming over the DVX100A (A, mind you, because the 100 had already been on the market for over a year!) and there was Canon, sitting lonely and all alone, with a banner proclaiming the XL1s...

We'll see if they can resurrect some sales. The DVX has quite a bit of momentum. Canon could have carved out a new niche as the star player in the HDV market, but instead they gave us an XL2 that just brings it competitive with what Panasonic had on the market nearly two years ago.

[skippyfetus]

Well, I have to say that I kinda admire Canon for that. It seems as though it must have taken some will power to not just come out with something to compete with the DVX. At least with Canon you don't have to worry about them coming out with a "new and improved" version yearly. They try to make a product that will last and stand by it and not release a new version until they feel it's nessasary. I wonder if Panasonic could hold out so long on the DVX line. They also seem very reliable. People that bought a XL1 in 97 can still use their lenses and accessories with the current model. If you look on Ebay, you'll see that people are willing to pay just as much for an old XL1 as a DVX100, now that says something about the company. No corporation seems to put anything before money, but Canon looks like they care more about their base and making a good product than a quick buck.

Canon is the same with Digital cameras... only issuing a replacement for each model every couple of years... which is a good pace I think.

Now on the other hand, the GL2... what a hunk of crap. You can get the new DVC30 for less than it and the DVC30 destroys it. I once considered that camera, but couldn't find any features to justify it's price. If Canon were smart they would make the GL3 rival the DVX.

[Barry_Green]

There won't be a GL3 -- Canon said that the XL2 will be "the last standard-def camera they introduce".

I thought the GL2 was a decent little camera. DVC30 is advanced over it, yes, but it's been quite a while since the GL2 was introduced.

There's also something to be said for the backward-compatibility, and forward-compatability, that Canon engineered here. If I had been fool enough to buy an XL1 so many years ago, and then had tried to pacify my foolishness by spending way too much on accessories (like the manual lens and the B&W viewfinder, etc) then I would be one happy camper today, seeing that Canon would let me roll my whole investment forward and catch up with the rest of the world.

Unless the XL2 is a bomb (which I highly doubt it would be), I may look at it as a second camera. That 20x lens is hard to argue with, and true progressive scan along with full-res 16:9 might make it the ultimate mini35 camera. But, we shall see what we shall see, when testing reveals how it performs and users have had a couple of months to "beta test" it.

[Zoomforce]

Canon doesnt like the number 3.. so no GL3.. instead perhaps GLHDV1.

L1,L2,XL1,XL2.. etc.. etc.

[skippyfetus]

Ok, so if that's the end of the GL series and the end of the XL series, then I guess the next big thing will be HD. I'm glad the XL2 was MiniDV because I'm not sure that I want to get into HDTV anytime soon and I think they really got the camera right this time. I'll probably buy one next year and feel good about it for two or three years after that.

[Terry_Lasater]

I'll probably buy one next year and feel good about it for two or three years after that.


Then your avatar can say, "If you touch my *XL2*, I'll kick your ass man!". *;)

[skippyfetus]

No, it'll say:

"If you're going to touch something, touch my DVX or I'll kick your ass man!"

[David Jimerson]

I'm glad the XL2 was MiniDV because I'm not sure that I want to get into HDTV anytime soon and I think they really got the camera right this time.

If it *was* HD, why would it force you to "get into" HD any sooner than you wanted?

[skippyfetus]

??? Well, I would like to buy the camera and I'm no sure that I would if it was HD, does that make sense? I'm comfortable with MiniDV... Vegas doesn't even support MiniDV does it?

[ChuckS]

"Canon is the same with Digital cameras... only issuing a replacement for each model every couple of years... which is a good pace I think." Tony_H

I’m not sure the point of all this, I guess you like Canon, I too like Canon. However, you are wrong about one thing, Canon released the D30 digital SLR, then within six months released the D60 – same camera more pixels, and then within a year after that released the D10, which eclipsed them all for less than half the price of the original. Then they went off and released the Digital Rebel line of SLR’s for less.

Also DV and HDV are not mutually exclusive, one camera could produce both formats.

Anyone want to purchase a Canon D30? :-[

[David Jimerson]

??? Well, I would like to buy the camera and I'm no sure that I would if it was HD, does that make sense? I'm comfortable with MiniDV... Vegas doesn't even support MiniDV does it?

Do you mean, does Vegas support HD? Yes, it does.

Is it that you don't like HD, or that you'd rather have 24p than HD?

[scharky]

I would rather have 24p HD with 16:9 chips, no mpeg2 compression, a 4.5-105 lens and look and feel just like the dvx :D *Can you do that one for me David?

Oh, and it needs to cost under 4grand ;D

[Josh_Boelter]

I need it to cost under ten bucks.

[Mike_Donis]

Ten bucks? No way...it should be a free upgrade they throw in: you give them your DVX, and they trade you up. ;D

[NoMaD]

DVX and XL2 are both still video and are not HD. To be considerd HD the camera has to record 720-1,080 (really only only 1080 but Panasonic cheated) lines of resolution. Video records 480-525 lines. 35mm is 4,096 lines of resolution. There are some HD prosumer cameras coming out in the future, ones that record on to chips and Harddrives and not tapes. There is even a prototype Digital camera that records 4000 lines and its made by some no name hi-teck company. HD would never record onto mini DV only HD tapes... which cost more then a roll of 16mm :-( around $110 canadian for a 40min tape. The only reason 24p works on mini DV is cuz of the pull down.

They showcase all these new cameras in LA yearly and its quite impressive.

[David Jimerson]

Yeah, we knew the XL2 isn't HD . . .

The JVC HD cam records to Mini-DV tape.

[NoMaD]

GR-HD1 manages to squeeze a "high definition" picture (720p and 1080i) onto MiniDV tape using MPEG-2 compression, which is very impressive... but your compressing your image and in a few years according to the broadcast standards commission you shoulden't have to compress. But your right it does record "HD" I was wrong. Too bad it doesn't record 1080p :-(

720p shouldn’t be considered HD and I think the broadcast standards commission even said it wasn’t.

[pedro_emauz]

Hi all,
Don't you feel strange to have a HD camera recording onto MiniDv like JVC's camera, with 1/3"CCDs? Why have a HiDef image, even at 720p or 1080i if you have to compress it into a format with 8bit colorspace, 4:1:1 smapling and 5:1 compression? You end up throwing almost every useful info away...It´s like trying to put 10 liters of water into a 1.5 liters of water...
Cheers..
Pedro :)

[pedro_emauz]

I said:
«It´s like trying to put 10 liters of water into a 1.5 liters of water... »but I wanted to write «It´s like trying to put 10 liters of water into a 1.5 liter bottle...»
sorry :-/

[David Jimerson]

It records in MPEG-2, not DV. But it records to a Mini-DV tape.

[skippyfetus]

I’m not sure the point of all this, I guess you like Canon, I too like Canon. However, you are wrong about one thing, Canon released the D30 digital SLR, then within six months released the D60 – same camera more pixels, and then within a year after that released the D10, which eclipsed them all for less than half the price of the original. Then they went off and released the Digital Rebel line of SLR’s for less.
Well, that may be true... it seems that canon used to update their cameras more often, but how long has it been since the 10D came out, no replacement yet. My Digital Rebel has been out for a while and no word of any replacement in the near future.

[skippyfetus]

Do you mean, does Vegas support HD? *Yes, it does.

Is it that you don't like HD, or that you'd rather have 24p than HD?
Yeah, I mean HD... I don't know anything about HD... I'm sure I could learn all about it in a few hours of surfing the web, but MiniDV is good enough for me right now... I'm not going to pay extra for something I don't care about. If it's not broke...

[Barry_Green]

Hi all,
Don't you feel strange to have a HD camera recording onto MiniDv like JVC's camera, with 1/3"CCDs? Why have a HiDef image, even at 720p or 1080i if you have to compress it into a format with 8bit colorspace, 4:1:1 smapling and 5:1 compression? You end up throwing almost every useful info away...It´s like trying to put 10 liters of water into a 1.5 liters of water...
Cheers..
Pedro :)
Hey Pedro, I don't think you understand quite how it works -- it's not converting HDV to be miniDV format. It's recording HDV data on the same cassette as a miniDV camera does, but the raw data is nothing like miniDV data. HDV data is recorded with 4:2:0 color sampling, at 1440 x 1080 resolution at 25 megabits per second, or 1280 x 720 resolution at 19 megabits per second. The compression is MPEG-2, not DV, and it's a lot higher than 5:1.

4:1:1 at 5:1 are the hallmarks of DV compression. HDV doesn't use DV compression, it uses MPEG-2 at 4:2:0.

[Barry_Green]

720p shouldn’t be considered HD and I think the broadcast standards commission even said it wasn’t.

720P is most certainly an approved HD standard according to the ATSC. 1920x1080 and 1280x720 are both considered High Definition.

[ChuckS]

And they both look fabulous, darling…

[Zoomforce]

yeah DVexpo west was funny.. there was more people at the $25 roasted peanuts stand than at the Canon booth.

Even NAB 2004 was funny.. It was almost like Canon pissed people off by not having any announcements. Horrible booth there. Panasonic's was sure fancy though.

[pedro_emauz]

Thanks Barry for explaining the HDV data compression.
But anyways, if i had the budget to shoot on HD, I would shoot with a camera/format that would provide me the deepest colorsapce and higher color sampling. And If I ever need a HD handicam-sized camera, there is always the Aaton A-minima ;)
Cheers

[Slapdragon]

One thing to remember, the HDV MPEG-2 format is not a good one for any producer to get into or use. The DV format does not use inter-frame compression, meaning no I-Frames, no breaking, and no need for decompression steps before editing can be done. MPEG-2, except in its low compression SX variant, uses I-Frames to create an inter-frame compression scheme. Interframe compression of this style sends a reference frame down the pipe, then a series of difference frames consisting only of sampled changes to the I-Frame. Although HDV is a nice consumer format (so is DVD for that matter) it is not a good production format. If you buy an HDV camera, you will find its quality for production is poor, and that frame accurate editing is difficult even in nonlinear editors.

[Barry_Green]

That has always been the theory, but in practice I don't really find it to be so, especially with computers becoming faster every day. I've put JVC HDV footage on the timeline in Vegas and been able to easily edit frame-accurately. My system was a little sluggish at it, but then again it's not a 3.2ghz hyperthreaded P4. There are add-on programs that can give you multiple tracks of real-time HDV already, and as processor power increases it'll further minimize any problems.

When I/B/P formats were first introduced, yes there was much consternation among programmers and editors about how it would affect editing. Having used it in practice, it's no big deal at all -- as far as frame accuracy.

I don't know if editors exist yet that can pick up the GOP on the fly and only have to recompress edited frames (i.e., HDV is blocked into GOP's of 6 frames. If you cut at three frames, you'd need to generate a new I-frame, or somehow calculate the delta off of the previous generated frame...) as it stands now, with Vegas 4.0d (which is what I tried the HDV stuff in), you basically have to re-render everything -- there's no way to pick up the existing GOP and keep the data from being recompressed. I see that as a potential achilles heel for HDV: recompressing HDV material hurts a lot more than recompressing DV material does.

But I'm sure the programmers will figure it out. If there's a way to change GOP size in mid-stream, it'd be a fairly trivial task to implement (I don't know the inner workings of MPEG-2 enough to know that). If there's no way to change GOP frames within a stream, then that's going to be a problem that can't easily be overcome.

[Slapdragon]

That has always been the theory, but in practice I don't really find it to be so, especially with computers becoming faster every day. *I've put JVC HDV footage on the timeline in Vegas and been able to easily edit frame-accurately. *My system was a little sluggish at it, but then again it's not a 3.2ghz hyperthreaded P4. *There are add-on programs that can give you multiple tracks of real-time HDV already, and as processor power increases it'll further minimize any problems.

When I/B/P formats were first introduced, yes there was much consternation among programmers and editors about how it would affect editing. *Having used it in practice, it's no big deal at all -- as far as frame accuracy.

I don't know if editors exist yet that can pick up the GOP on the fly and only have to recompress edited frames (i.e., HDV is blocked into GOP's of 6 frames. *If you cut at three frames, you'd need to generate a new I-frame, or somehow calculate the delta off of the previous generated frame...) as it stands now, with Vegas 4.0d (which is what I tried the HDV stuff in), you basically have to re-render everything -- there's no way to pick up the existing GOP and keep the data from being recompressed. *I see that as a potential achilles heel for HDV: recompressing HDV material hurts a lot more than recompressing DV material does.

But I'm sure the programmers will figure it out. *If there's a way to change GOP size in mid-stream, it'd be a fairly trivial task to implement (I don't know the inner workings of MPEG-2 enough to know that). *If there's no way to change GOP frames within a stream, then that's going to be a problem that can't easily be overcome.

MPEG-2 has difficulties in not having constantly variable I-Frames. If the camera used MPEG-4 it would be no problem.

Your real issue with HDV is in practical versus real resolution. Unless you are shooting perfectly still images, there is a loss of perceptual resolution with the loss in detail created by the fixed compression rate I-Frames.

A better solution for HDV would have been to move into the same solution offered by DV100, or even gone the DV50 route but with 4:1:1 video and higher compression, using the headroom for a higher pixel count. This is as a professional format. As a consumer format, then there is no real problem: HDV will be cheap and effective.

[MiniDV]

Hi,
Canon is an optical company wherea Sony&Panasonic have been and will be the main standard for all industry video formats (HDCAM/DVCPRO HD, DigiBeta/DVCPRO 50, DVCAM/DVCPRO, MiniDV, Betacam, etc) respectably, and I'm sure Canon knows its place. Canon will never ever release HD Camera for $60,000- 100,000 like S&P. Canon will always be a hard core leading company for digital/film photography and other image creations.
Eventually MiniDV format will be obsolete(I'd say, in a year or two) and all companies switch to HDV, a rising consumer format not HD).

Now XL2's variable frame rate(, which is a lie, since it only offers 60i/30p/24p, not 12-60fps like Cinealta or Varicam, as well as most film cameras).

I'm happy for Canon but for all DVX users it is nothing to be scared of. It's juts that by the end of this year new XL2 owners will dominate prosumer video gigs by replacing DVX owners of now.

[MovieSwede]

Im not sure HDV will be the killer of indy filmmaking with miniDV.

1. it compress to much, and that aint gonna be fun to colorcorrect and so on in post unless it has som really nice compression that im not familiar with. MiniDV is to compressed to.

2. If they gonna use 1/3 cdd to shoot HDV we vill get smaller sensors...

3. DVX with the use of S-spline can create HDTV real good on its own.

I think HDV is a nice thing for standard videoshooting to be shown on plasma tv etc. But its has to many drawbacks for Moviecreation.

I really hope that Panasonic creates Prosumer Camcorder that support real HD (50-100 not 25) and of course 2/3 ccd :D

[ChuckS]

The output that I saw live from a 3 chip HDV camera at NAB was awesome, it was difficult to say that it wasn’t 720P or 1080i. Miranda is releasing a device that converts HDV to 50Mbit 720P HD (I believe using the Panasonic CODEC) so it can be captured directly into FCP-HD. Its obviously vaporware, but that seems to be the way some vendors are looking to play in the HDV sandbox.

I didn’t find any mention of HDV on the Miranda site, but it is a cool site to check out to see what gismo’s there are for HD. ::)

[ChuckS]

Oops, sorry - here's the URL if you are so inclined:
http://www.miranda.com/

[subsunk]

Hi there MovieSwede

you suggest using Sspline Pro to upres the footage.

3. DVX with the use of S-spline can create HDTV real good on its own.


I have looked at this software and it appears to be used for still images only.

How do you mean?

steve

[Mike_Donis]

You can export a still image sequence, and apply the effect to all images. It takes long to render them all out, but you only have one effect to apply (to my understanding)

[Barry_Green]

But only if you get the "pro" version. The basic version doesn't do batch processing.

[nullphonic]

Boosted these quotes from http://siggraphnews.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=26806

Michael Zorich, Marketing Director, Canon Photographic Products Group

"I do want to go on record as saying that Canon supports HDV. We're a member of the consortium that worked on these specifications for the format, so it is our plan to come to the market with a HDV product in the future. I don't have a timeline on that yet. However, what we think we've got with the XL2 is the very best SD [standard definition] camera that's available on the market today for $5000."

"I'm very comfortable agreeing that this will in fact will be the last SD camera that Canon does bring to the market in this type of configuration. Really, our objective is to make sure that we can bring this kind of advanced image control and the open architecture concept into every product that we make moving forward at a price point that's affordable."

“When we consider the fact that moving to HD, which has its own different set of specifications than SD, we have to consider the fact that the lenses have to be different, but we don't want to abandon the investment that the XL1 owners have made in the XL series lenses. So we've got to be very strategic in how we plan out the design of the product, and making sure that it's going to be compatible so that nobody has to feel that the investment that they've made in a Canon product is obsolete."

[Barry_Green]

Hmmm. Perhaps that does leave room for a GL3... here they said the XL2 would be the last SD camera "in this type of configuration".

[Caution]

I think it was a great call by canon to not go HDV just due to the fact the price of HD lens, have you even seen the prices of those. i think canon kept this in mind knowing that majority of people with xl's would be indipendent filmmakers with lo to no budgets cant wait for the Xl 2 or the new sony HDV these 2 baby's look really promising.

If you havent seen the new sony HDV cam here is a link
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/sony-hdv-prototype-camcorder-03_17_04.htm :o WOW