Canon Xl-h1

[gregpen]

Okay, now Canon's thrown down the gauntlet!

http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ModelDetailAct&fcategoryid=165&modelid=12152


XL H1

3CCD Camcorder


Item Code: 0967B001
Available in December 2005

High Definition's Highest Expression

Whether you're a broadcast ENG producer, or documentary, feature, or commercial videographer, the XL H1 is the affordable, lightweight HD camcorder you've been waiting for.

Its Superior Canon Optics and exceptional image processing give you a brilliant HD image. The XL H1 also features uncompressed HD-SDI (SMPTE 292M) and SD-SDI (SMPTE 259M) output, as well as Genlock input and SMPTE time code input and output for multi-camera shoots. And, with its customizable open-architecture approach, selectable frame rates including 24F, and multiple output options, you've got exactly the right tool -- every time.

The XL H1 features total Cine control, customizable settings and a well-balanced design -- for the creative control, flexibility and advanced capability your video work demands.

HD Resolution with Selectable Frame Rates HD Resolution with Selectable Frame Rates
Professional JackPack Professional JackPack
Total Cine Control Total Cine Control
20x HD Video Lens 20x HD Video Lens
Still Image Recording Still Image Recording
Three Native 16:9 Image Sensors Three Native 16:9 Image Sensors
DIGIC DV II Image Processor DIGIC DV II Image Processor
Combination 16:9 EVF and LCD panel Combination 16:9 EVF and LCD panel
Custom Presets and Custom Keys Custom Presets and Custom Keys
Flange Back Adjustment Flange Back Adjustment
SMPTE Time Code and Color Bars SMPTE Time Code and Color Bars
Clear Scan Clear Scan
Skin Detail Skin Detail
4 Channel Audio 4 Channel Audio
Interface Connections Interface Connections
60i / 50i Video Mode Option 60i / 50i Video Mode Option
HDV Recording HDV Recording

MUHAHAHAHAHAHA ;-)

[Ryan_W]

Still HDV. :thumbdown

[braw]

Still no true progressive. It's a Z1 with a detachable lens.

[XCheck]

For about five seconds, I was thinking "wow, I will have some hard decisions to make".

NOPE. Doesn't appeal to me.

[Walter_Graff]

I will definitely look at this camera when I can. I am looking for an inexpensive HD camera and Canon seems to have done it right. At least they did earlier with the XL2

[Nathyn]

Still no true progressive. It's a Z1 with a detachable lens.
That's not really accurate. It captures 24 frames but simply makes the frame look progressive. So it's not 24p, but it's still 24 frames. The Z1 does nothing of the sort. It simply mask the image to make it seem like it's 24p. Canon's 24f can still be used for film output or 24p DVDs while sony's can not. It's a nice work around and if the image looks good, it's all mine. For $9,000, if the image is better than JVCs I bet it and the HVx will clean house. People will pay more for a good image. And whether it's 24p or not it's still 1080i at 24 frames. If the image looks progressive, that will work for most people. If you light the DVX100 right, a lot of normal people still don't know it's not film. MTV is using a lot of filmic HD right now. I'd get this and a firestore and I'm ready to go.
Still HDV. :thumbdown
I remember when the DVx100 came out and people said "it's still DV" and such, well look it now. And isn't this cam capable of uncompressed output?

[MattC]

I think it will essentially be 24p (Barry Green wrote about this on DVInfo.net) but it will be derived from non progressive chips. Because of this they can't call it 24p but are instead calling it 24F. It will be one of two things. It will either be BS and it will suck, or it will be a technological breakthrough and you, nor anyone else will be able to tell the difference as it will create 24 frames of full resolution footage per second.

We won't know until we test it.

Matt

[bikefilms]

New Dire Straits/ Canon collaboration:

I want my,

I want my,

I want my HDV.

Ha,
Now look at them yo-yo's,
That's the way you do it.
You pay your sister for that 24P.
That ain't workin,
That's the way you lose it.
Money for somethin,
And mis-sync for free.

Now that ain't workin,
That's the way you lose it.
Lemme tell ya
Their guise ain't numb.

Ladies get a handle on your,
Little zinger.
Ladies get a jury that is done.

We got-to instal these XLH- ones,
Bitchen gamma, delivery-y-y.
We got to move these interlacers,
We got to move these HDV'ssss.......

[MattC]

Yes the cam can output 4:2:2 uncompressed, both from the composite out and from HD-SDI. Now for many, that isn't a good solution but for me (other than the surveillance type footage I shoot) HD-SDI would be the Shizzle.

Matt

Is shizzle right? I feel so urban - so hip....

[bikefilms]

HDV is still a sorry format.

-a

[Nathyn]

HDV is still a sorry format.

-a

You mean like DV once was considered?

[Digigenic]

Still no true progressive. It's a Z1 with a detachable lens.
- by Chris Hurd - Quoted from the "Canon XL H1 Image Sensors, DSP and Frame Rates" (http://www.dvinfo.net/canonxlh1/articles/article06.php) article on
The XLH1 Watchdog page.
"The Canon 30F and 24F frame rates and the technology which creates them are related in no way whatsoever to the current Sony HDV implementations known as CineFrame 30 and CineFrame 24 (which have been commonly referred to as CF30 and CF24). Instead, the Canon 30F and 24F frame rates are identical to the 30P and 24P results produced by progressive scan CCDs."
Just cause you've never seen it before, doesn't mean it aint real...

[bikefilms]

Oh no, DV is still sorry. Less sorry than HDV. The HDV contrast is waaaaay behind DV.

[Walter_Graff]

You mean like DV once was considered?


Yea there sure is a lack of knowledge about the HDV format basically because of a few folks who spoke ignorantly on the web some time ago and others who have never use it continue the myth. I have shot a number of things with HDV and was very impressed. Canon has made a great choice here and this camera will be a contender in the professional world. It has more professional features than others in it's class. This is the first camera I want to see for consideration of my next purchase. As for MTV, yes, lots of what they shoot is now done with the Sony HDV cameras. I love the feature that allow you to record in both 60i and 50i at the same time on this camera.

[braw]

- by Chris Hurd - Quoted from the "Canon XL H1 Image Sensors, DSP and Frame Rates" (http://www.dvinfo.net/canonxlh1/articles/article06.php) article on
The XLH1 Watchdog page.
"The Canon 30F and 24F frame rates and the technology which creates them are related in no way whatsoever to the current Sony HDV implementations known as CineFrame 30 and CineFrame 24 (which have been commonly referred to as CF30 and CF24). Instead, the Canon 30F and 24F frame rates are identical to the 30P and 24P results produced by progressive scan CCDs."

So if I'm to understand this, and I will admit I don't fully, it's not the same as cineframe. However, it isn't true progressive correct? So they brand it F instead of P because it isn't P. So even if it is a new way of achieving progressive like images, isn't it deinterlacing it to achieve this? So you should the in theory lose some resolution similar to the Z1. I know it's just been announced, but what exactly IS 24F?

He says identical, but if it's not actual progressive, then what is it, and what's the workaround?

[bikefilms]

Hi Walter,

There's no doubting your experience and thoughts on the matter. But from my own experience, I hold true to my comments. The trade-off of contrast for resolution isn't for everyone. Holmes & Watson couldn't find the shadow and highlight detail in Sony's HDV.

[vidled]

...with the Sony HDV cameras. I love the feature that allow you to record in both 60i and 50i at the same time on this camera.

With the new Canon XL-H1 this will be available as an OPTION. (Cam needs to be sent in to service center.)

[MattC]

4:2:2 uncompressed is not HDV....

[Digigenic]

...So even if it is a new way of achieving progressive like images, isn't it deinterlacing it to achieve this? So you should the in theory lose some resolution similar to the Z1. I know it's just been announced, but what exactly IS 24F? He says identical, but if it's not actual progressive, then what is it, and what's the workaround?
Here's the rest of the paragraph from the original quote, explaining in a little more detail how it achieves the frame rate.
...The Canon XL H1 CCD block is interlace, not progressive, therefore the 30fps and 24fps frame rates cannot be referred to technically as 30P and 24P. However, 30F and 24F from the XL H1 appear identical to 30P and 24P, as they are basically the same results as progressive, but produced by different means. When the XL H1 is set to Frame recording, the CCDs are actually clocked at 24 frames per second. The video signal remains at 24fps as it is passed from the CCD block to the baseband LSI, and through the HD Codec LSI. Only when it reaches the recording output stage is it resampled to 60i via a 3:2 pull-up method.- by Chris Hurd - Quoted from the "Canon XL H1 Image Sensors, DSP and Frame Rates" article on
The XLH1 Watchdog page.

[Flintstone]

I guess the Canon 'F' would be translated to Sony's 'PsF' (Progressive segmented Frame)? :undecided

[Nathyn]

My question is how does HDV look on film output. No one has answered this burning question yet. I'll get this baby and shoot everything at HDV and then bump it down to DV for SD and bump it up to an HD Master for everything else. Check that out. I'm still interested in the Panny. It all depends on the work flow. If I can have true 1080/24p HD versus HVD and get about and hour of footage on a 40 GB Firestore then I have some thinking to do. Although I here I can get about three hours HDV on an 80 GB firestore.

How much footage are we looking at in 1080/24p HD (not HDV) stored on 40 gigs or 80 gigs? This is the info I need to know and how much space are we talking. Also will there be bigger Firestores for HD? (120GB or 180GB perhaps?). This is what will make the difference for me. I'd rather be able to store three hours or more of footage on an FS. Frankly I'd buy two Firestores before I buy two P2 cards. If I could even store an hour or so 720/24p from the HVX on an FS 40GB and maybe 2 hours on an FS 80GB, I think I'd buy the HVX. But I really want to know the specs on Panny's 1080/24p, because 1080i/24f is looking pretty good as far as storage is concerned. I have to see what this looks like though before I make any decisions. Anyone got any info for me?

[Digigenic]

The quote below should help reiterate that there is absolutely no similarity drawn between Canon and Sony's methods for achieving their frame rates.

"...The Sony CineFrame modes simply drop one field and upsample it to the full frame... This is a crude form of deinterlacing. The Canon solution samples a frame as two fields and recombines them to a full frame. There would be no loss of resolution with the Canon approach. - Creative Cow Forums"

Canon=good . Sony=bad . Panasonic=unquestionable

[braw]

Ok. I'm sure they figured out a far better method then cineframe, but, interlaced is two fields taken at different times correct? If the entire sensor was sampled at the same instant for 1 frame, that would be progressive, right? So no matter what the technology is, it's sampling 2 fields, and then combining them, right?

The DVX actually interlaces a progressive frame for the sake of storage in a medium that doesn't inherently allow for it. So this would take an interlaced image consisting of two fields, deinterlace to a progressive frame, then interlace it again and stick it in a 60i timeline again? Or, if it isn't adding an extra step to the process, then it stores the interlaced frames with header info to treat it as progressive on capture.

I may be way off here, but either way it can't be "as good as" progressive if it's a workaround like that. I don't doubt it will be good (compared to cineframe), but why bother? This isn't entirely true, but it seems that 1080i deinterlaced is about the equivalent to 720p...in laymen terms. So why not give us 720p like JVC?

[MattC]

Read this:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=51066&page=2&pp=15

[Digigenic]

I may be way off here, but either way it can't be "as good as" progressive if it's a workaround like that. I don't doubt it will be good (compared to cineframe), but why bother? This isn't entirely true, but it seems that 1080i deinterlaced is about the equivalent to 720p...in laymen terms. So why not give us 720p like JVC?
Certainly, it isn't the traditional means of achieving the set standard for progressive frame rates, but it still achieved that standard by redefining the standard.
They're freakin magicians I tell you :laugh:
With regard to choosing 1080i over 720p, I don't think they had a choice with the sensor, if I'm not mistaken they were provided by Sony. I'm sure Panny and Sony knew what Canon was going to do, I mean, look at how these HD/HDV camcorders are perfectly positioned in correlation with one another, all of these guys know their purpose, and Canon is just serving it's purpose in the market. Nobody is stepping on anybody's toes here.
EDIT: Apparently I was mistaken on my assertion that these chips were produced by Sony, I've been informed in another thread that they are custom made by someone else, but it wasn't specified who exactly[?].

[Barry_Green]

My question is how does HDV look on film output. No one has answered this burning question yet.
Marcus van Bavel has. He said HDV looks sharper than any DV film print he's done. But that was based on Sony 1080i HDV -- it may look better from 720/24p, and better still from Canon 1080/24F, and better still from Panasonic 1080/24P. It remains to be seen. But I believe Marcus' opinion was that HDV resolution was sharper than DV on the film print.

How much footage are we looking at in 1080/24p HD (not HDV) stored on 40 gigs or 80 gigs?
Do you guys have any idea how wildly impractical it would be to store HD-SDI high-def on a hard disk?

HD-SDI takes up (assuming I did the math right) somewhere around 6 seconds per gigabyte. So you're talking about 10 gigabytes per minute.
However, that doesn't mean you could record four minutes on a 40-gig drive! With today's technology you'd need a RAID of about eight hard disks just to handle the data transfer rate. There is not now, nor is there likely to be any time soon, any sort of "FireStore" that can handle 1.5 Gigabits per second. The fastest FireStore right now is 40 Megabits, and they're going to produce one that's 100 megabits per second. The HD-SDI would need a drive 15 TIMES as fast.

Not gonna happen anytime soon.

HD-SDI works well for sending to an HDCAM or D-5 type of tape deck, or maybe a switcher, or to a super-powerful mega desktop computer. But as a field recording unit -- ain't gonna happen. Well, someday it will, but not this year.


I'd rather be able to store three hours or more of footage on an FS.
On HDV, yes you can do that. HD-SDI? Three hours? You're talking about something like a two-terabyte raid of 8 hard disks striped together to accomplish that.

If I could even store an hour or so 720/24p from the HVX on an FS 40GB and maybe 2 hours on an FS 80GB, I think I'd buy the HVX.
You can. The 40gb will store almost two hours of 720/24p, and almost four hours of 720/24p on the 80gb drive.

But I really want to know the specs on Panny's 1080/24p, because 1080i/24f is looking pretty good as far as storage is concerned.
What don't you know about the specs of Panasonic's 1080/24p? Storage space? You'll get around 45 minutes on a 40gb drive, and an hour and a half on an 80gb drive.

[Barry_Green]

I guess the Canon 'F' would be translated to Sony's 'PsF' (Progressive segmented Frame)? :undecided
We simply do not know. What I will acknowledge is that I don't really care what they call it, or how it works, or how it achieves its results; I'm just concerned with what the results look like. CineFrame 24 is horrible. We've been assured that the Canon implementation is not CineFrame 24. We've been told it looks the same as 24p.

A little testing will verify that.

If it looks and acts and talks and smells and walks like 24p, then they can call it "24F" if they want; doesn't change what it actually is. And if it's bogus, we'll report that too.

[Nathyn]

Marcus van Bavel has. He said HDV looks sharper than any DV film print he's done. But that was based on Sony 1080i HDV -- it may look better from 720/24p, and better still from Canon 1080/24F, and better still from Panasonic 1080/24P. It remains to be seen. But I believe Marcus' opinion was that HDV resolution was sharper than DV on the film print.
Marcus is my boy. (Well I don't really know him, but I do have his book). If he says it's good I'm apt to believe it. I deem him and Adam Wilt as pretty trustworthy. But I can't wait to hear what the indy guys think about it.

On HDV, yes you can do that.
Three hours of HDV footage on a FS and it looks sharp on film out. That's a big selling point for me. Are we talking 1080/24f (the Canon). If so I think my mind is partly made up, but I have to see the image before I really know. I've got a light kit now and some people want to see what I'm going to deliver next. No more straight DV. I'd be bumping everything down to DV or up to HD Masters.

We're talking a whole overhaul. I'd need to buy one of those new G5s when they come out and the new FCP Studio. I want to be ready for HD-DVD and plus do some other stuff. I'm not fooling around anymore so this is big decision.

What don't you know about the specs of Panasonic's 1080/24p? Storage space? You'll get around 45 minutes on a 40gb drive, and an hour and a half on an 80gb drive.

That's exactly what I wanted to know. I actually did the math on this at some point but was unsure I was doing it right.

-Nate

[callan]

notice 60i not 60P, where's the slo-mo that's one of the coolest things about the HVX!

plus, have you ever held and XL1 body? Cripes! I was seriously considering one before i bought my DVX , it felt so bad on you shoulder...at least this one comes with a screen I think.

Removable lens is awesome though. I wish panny had something like this, even though it would increase the price.

Once again Canon tries to answer but ends up whimpering. LONG LIVE PANNY!

[Walter_Graff]

"We simply do not know. What I will acknowledge is that I don't really care what they call it, or how it works, or how it achieves its results; I'm just concerned with what the results look like. CineFrame 24 is horrible. We've been assured that the Canon implementation is not CineFrame 24. We've been told it looks the same as 24p."

That's because it IS 24p. but recorded in interlace. DO NOT COMPARE THIS TO SONY'S CINEFRAME. THIS IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. 30F and 24F is identical to the 30P and 24P. Since the H1 ccd block is interlace and not progressive technically they can not call it P. When you switch to 24F, the clock speed of the CCDs is 24 fps. It remains that way though the cameras processors and only when it is recorded is it resampled to 60i via a 3:2 pull-up. So the results are the same as they are with 24P.

[esperman]

My big question about the canon is the lense...is it mechanical controlled, or like the current one.....stupid servo with focus issues?

SDI out is real nice....although only for critical viewing or going to external deck.

[MattC]

I'm sure it will be in keeping with Canon's philosophy of multiple lenses. This is a critisism I didn't understand regarding the XL2 and don't understand regarding this Camera. Actually, I understand it more regarding this camera because as of now there is only one lens for it, but I suspect that will change soon. The 20X lens is a great lens designed to do certain things VERY well, which it does. It was not designed to be a manual, mechanically controlled lens. If that's what you want (with the XL2) you simply attach a manual lens and use that. People compare the feel of the 20X servo lens to the "Mechanical" lens of the DVX. But compare the Canon manual lens to the DVX and I don't think you would care very much for the feel of the DVX lens at all. If all you were shooting was narrative work, you were able to buy the XL2 body with the 16X manual lens, a killer combination. So we may have to wait a bit for that on this camera, that's fine with me, I'm not running out and going to HD in the next 6 months anyway. But the 20X is still a hell of a piece of glass.

Matt

[esperman]

too bad they just wont sell the camera body at a reduced cost. Racking focus has always been a problem with standard xl series lense's. But this camera's sdi options, and the ability to mount a real lenses does make me want to play with the camera. I think this camera and the hvx200 are going after the same target audience. Any word on the audio of this camera?

[MattC]

Well they sold the XL2 body only at a reduced cost or bundled with the manual lens, so perhaps in time.

The audio, I *believe* is four channel, 16/192. Pretty good. The audio on the XL2 by the way is outstanding if you are unfamiliar with it. Better than any I've heard from an equivalent camera.

[braw]

30F and 24F is identical to the 30P and 24P. Since the H1 ccd block is interlace and not progressive technically they can not call it P.

So a progressive imager can sample the whole image at once right? What Canon has done is take an interlaced CCD and found a way to sample both fields at the same time? Turning an interlaced CCD into virtually a progressive one through software?

Is this accurate? So there's no offset in the time that the image is sampled? It can sample both firlds at the exact same time?

[Walter_Graff]

I did a search and found this. It might help:

http://www.dvinfo.net/canonxlh1/articles/article06.php

[Isaac_Brody]

So is it true that the ccd isn't true progressive but instead interpolating a progressive frame in software? Is there a reason why they didn't use a progressive ccd?

[stephenlnoe]

I did a search and found this. It might help:

http://www.dvinfo.net/canonxlh1/articles/article06.php


Saw that yesterday. It makes sense. Let's see what the images look like. HD-SDI and genlock. This camera is way up the food chain from the HD-100 or HVX200 which I'm sure it's competing with.

[Aaron Koolen]

Way up the food chain? For whom? For broadcast, yeah, but for us low budget indies - nup. I doubt we'll be able to afford all the goodies needed for the HD-SDI capture. Also, we'll need to do the old "buy a manual lense" trick as it looks like the lens is just the old servo type like before - yuk. Oh, and it's HDV.

The res is nice, and will be interesting to see how it's 'F' modes work.

[jaegersing]

That's because it IS 24p. but recorded in interlace. DO NOT COMPARE THIS TO SONY'S CINEFRAME. THIS IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. 30F and 24F is identical to the 30P and 24P. Since the H1 ccd block is interlace and not progressive technically they can not call it P. When you switch to 24F, the clock speed of the CCDs is 24 fps. It remains that way though the cameras processors and only when it is recorded is it resampled to 60i via a 3:2 pull-up. So the results are the same as they are with 24P.

If the CCD block is interlaced and not progressive, how is it that these 24 images captured from the CCD every second are frames and not fields? What is described above would seem to me to be 24i and not 24p. If the CCD block was switchable between interlaced and progressive capture modes I am sure Canon would be calling this "True 24p" and not 24F.

Walter, can you please explain this further? When you say "That's because it IS 24p. but recorded in interlace" I get very confused. If you mean that a progressive capture is stored to tape in an interlaced format to comply with the HDV spec, well, the XL2 captures at 24p and records to tape in an interlaced format to comply with the DV spec, yet it is still called 24p. 24F must mean something else so it would be great to have a more detailed explanation of how it works.

Richard Hunter

[Zig_Zigman]

If you can afford HD-SDi capture, you can afford to rent a helluva lot more cam than this.

lowbudge filmmakers want to take it home and edit it. Not send it to a production house.

[Aaron Koolen]

Exactly - I think this camera is a different market to what we were hoping/wanting/expected

[Barry_Green]

Exactly - I think this camera is a different market to what we were hoping/wanting/expected
Well, that depends on who you define "we" as. For the struggling indie filmmaker, no the Canon is probably not the camera you want. Its main innovations (HD-SDI output and genlock etc) bring practically nothing to the table that a filmmaker could use.

But for studio use, for network use, for use in a football game on the sidelines, piping an HD-SDI run back to the truck -- that's where the Canon is a step or two above the competition. The 20x lens should prove quite useful in sports coverage, and the full 60i acquisition lets it do jobs that the JVC couldn't do. Offering native HD-SDI out puts it on a level above the HVX and HD100 for live HD truck jobs.

Differences are good -- it is because of differences like this that we can determine which product is more suitable for our particular needs. There are some users who will take one look at the HD-SDI output and say "stop right there, this is the camera I need." I think a lot of people on this board are the indie filmmaker types, those who struggled to save three grand for a DVX, and are looking to sell an arm (and a leg) to raise the money for an HVX; for them I don't think the Canon offers features they'll need above and beyond it. But for broadcasters and live remotes and multi-camera studio configurations, the Canon definitely has attractive features for that market.

But that's just based on some preliminary readings of spec sheets -- the proof will be in the actual pudding; meaning, day-to-day usage and viewing the footage.

[MattC]

Exactly. I find this to be a good thing. Everyone sort of settling into their niche. It makes decisions much easier - for me at least.

[Shaw]

Walter, can you please explain this further? When you say "That's because it IS 24p. but recorded in interlace" I get very confused. If you mean that a progressive capture is stored to tape in an interlaced format to comply with the HDV spec, well, the XL2 captures at 24p and records to tape in an interlaced format to comply with the DV spec, yet it is still called 24p. 24F must mean something else so it would be great to have a more detailed explanation of how it works.

Not Walter but I this is how I understand it (I have NOT asked the Canon guys so take it with a grain of salt...)

1) It is NOT the same thing as Sony's "cineframe 24" mode
2) The CCDs ARE interlaced
3) It isn't the same as Canon's frame movie mode

Canon seems to have found a way to capture each field at the same time and then read this out like a normal interlaced camera. That is to say, capture the entire frame, read out field one, read out field two, combine both fields afterwords (not by interpolation but merely add 1 + 2 together since they were captured at the same time), and then perform a pulldown to a normal interlaced stream just as the DVX does with material from a progressive chip. The DVX on the other hand would capture the entire frame at once, just like the canon, and then read the data off the chip one line at a time rather than field by field.

So yeah, it would seem so. I don't understand the details yet but it seems to be the real thing just achieved by a different process than reading out each line sequentially as a progressive scan chip would (hence the reason they can't really call it "progressive" anc chose F instead).

Time will tell I suppose!

[MattC]

I think when it goes into 24F mode the chips are reclocked to 24khz, no?

[Shaw]

Yeah, that's what Canon says. It's still interlaced though hence my above reasoning.

I most certainly could be wrong :)

[MattC]

God only knows....

[fomoDVXpal]

in the end you get a TRUE progressive image

[Haakon]

Well, that depends on who you define "we" as. For the struggling indie filmmaker, no the Canon is probably not the camera you want. Its main innovations (HD-SDI output and genlock etc) bring practically nothing to the table that a filmmaker could use.

But for studio use, for network use, for use in a football game on the sidelines, piping an HD-SDI run back to the truck -- that's where the Canon is a step or two above the competition. The 20x lens should prove quite useful in sports coverage, and the full 60i acquisition lets it do jobs that the JVC couldn't do. Offering native HD-SDI out puts it on a level above the HVX and HD100 for live HD truck jobs.

I think this post is spot-on. There's no question that the XL H1 will appeal to some people. I just didn't realize previously how many people on these forums apparently use their cameras to shoot churches and football games... :grin:

[MattC]

You have to think that the "indie filmmaker" (and as we refer to it here, it's really the ultra-low budget indie filmmaker without much resources) is probably the smallest segment for camcorder sales? No?

[Haakon]

You have to think that the "indie filmmaker" (and as we refer to it here, it's really the ultra-low budget indie filmmaker without much resources) is probably the smallest segment for camcorder sales? No?
You're probably right on that point, and as such, Canon will still probably have a market to sell the XL H1 to. I guess that because the DVX specifically opened so many doors for independent filmmakers (and this *is* dvxuser.com, after all), I would expect that a lot of the people who view these forums do make independent films (or at least in higher concentration than perhaps other, more generic camcorder forums). That being said, I'm surprised at many people's responses to Canon's newest offering, which serves up things like HD-SDI that is completely unusable to most of the people here, and Genlock, which most independent filmmakers aren't going to give a hoot about. Top it off with a $9,000 pricetag and a highly compressed native recording format and it makes the camera pretty unattractive in that realm of video acquisition. And of course, this camera will probably offer something to someone that will be of benefit to their workflow (goodness knows Walter will buy one), but I'll be surprised if it has much of an impact on the way most of the people that visit this forum do their work.

[jrv3034]

...That being said, I'm surprised at many people's responses to Canon's newest offering, which serves up things like HD-SDI that is completely unusable to most of the people here, and Genlock, which most independent filmmakers aren't going to give a hoot about. Top it off with a $9,000 pricetag and a highly compressed native recording format and it makes the camera pretty unattractive in that realm of video acquisition. And of course, this camera will probably offer something to someone that will be of benefit to their workflow (goodness knows Walter will buy one), but I'll be surprised if it has much of an impact on the way most of the people that visit this forum do their work.

I completely agree. As an indie filmmaker, one doesn't need to be worrying about carrying around a rented HD Tape Deck while shooting, when the HVX can capture the DVCProHD 4:2:2 footage natively to a Firestore for a total of less than $8000 ($6000 HVX + $2000 FS). Heck, if you really want a tape backup, you can just rent the HD Deck and firewire from the HVX... And if you can do it with the XL H1, you can with the HVX. The HVX is still cheaper than the XL H1 that comes in at $9000 WITHOUT the HD tape deck.

And, no. I don't want HDV. Not for indie filmmaking. If I'm moving up from DV, it's going to be to a much better format, not one that can suffer from dropouts, artifacts, and has a limited color space. Gimme an HVX w/Firestore for $8000 total and I have 1hr 30min of full out 1080/24p 4:2:2 footage, with a camera as intuitive and professional as the DVX, and I'll be a very happy camper. Sorry, Canon. It just doesn't seem like I'm your target market. If I were in the business of shooting events, concerts, weddings, etc., then I'd definitely settle for HDV, and most likely the XL HD (what with GenLock for multiple cameras and all, plus you can give the client a MiniDV tape at the end of the shoot). But not for filmmaking.

[esperman]

I completely agree. As an indie filmmaker, one doesn't need to be worrying about carrying around a rented HD Tape Deck while shooting, when the HVX can capture the DVCProHD 4:2:2 footage natively to a Firestore for a total of less than $8000 ($6000 HVX + $2000 FS). Heck, if you really want a tape backup, you can just rent the HD Deck and firewire from the HVX... And if you can do it with the XL H1, you can with the HVX. The HVX is still cheaper than the XL H1 that comes in at $9000 WITHOUT the HD tape deck.


I agree.....but like the canon, we'll have the option of taking HD via DVX's D4 component out and go to any HD format we wish as well, or use a high end monitor for critical viewing. Not too many here seem to discuss this fact. the extra costs for canon's HD-SDI feature doens't really justify the price for indy filmmakers. Plus native HDV just doens't make sense to me for use on serious work.

and if this standard lense "acts" like the xl2's...meaning I can't follow focus becuase the damned servo is so loose and inaccurate...who cares what the rez of the lense is.

The ability to mount additional lenses...such as 35mm prime kits IS GOOD. This is by far the best feature of the camera. But....adding 3K for the kit and makes this camera too pricey for most people on here. So, 13-14K for this kit...or 19K for a used f900 HDCAM? hmm.......

If canon just sold it with a good manual focus ring....I'd be tempted. But not right now.

[braw]

in the end you get a TRUE progressive image

Someone please help me out here. If it is interlaced, it cannot be capturing both fields at the same time. Then it would be a progressive imager no matter what the sensor was built for. So if it captures each field one after the other and combines them, then there should be a slight time offset in each field and some sort of interpolation should be needed to blend or create motion blur between the differences in each field.

Even in 60i, with fast movement, there's a noticeable difference in one field to the next. If they are running at 24khz then the differences would be more pronounced. So there's no way it's a true progressive image unless it's a true progressive image.

[kyle_doris]

this camera is perfect for sports coverage for small film houses doing local broadcasting. especially for football. it will sell. sports is becoming predominantly HD, this is the perfect camera for that nitch of the market

i see NO reason to turn my personal HVX fund into a "XLH1 fund" though, haha.

[SquidLips]

Sounds more and more like HVX will be the best choice for the narrative filmmaker....

But are the P2 cards the only thing the HVX records too? Or does it have a tape mechanism as well? For us to be able to go out and shoot an hour of, say, 720 24P footage a day, what else are we going to have to buy?

[athouguia]

Sounds more and more like HVX will be the best choice for the narrative filmmaker....

But are the P2 cards the only thing the HVX records too? Or does it have a tape mechanism as well? For us to be able to go out and shoot an hour of, say, 720 24P footage a day, what else are we going to have to buy?

It also records to mini-DV tapes, but only in SD... not HD!

[David Jimerson]

Sounds more and more like HVX will be the best choice for the narrative filmmaker....

But are the P2 cards the only thing the HVX records too? Or does it have a tape mechanism as well? For us to be able to go out and shoot an hour of, say, 720 24P footage a day, what else are we going to have to buy?

You can record HD to an external drive, like a Firestore or a laptop.

But check out the HVX section for ideas on P2 workflow -- it's not as limiting as you think and in fact should fit the narrative film maker quite well.

[Nathyn]

You have to think that the "indie filmmaker" (and as we refer to it here, it's really the ultra-low budget indie filmmaker without much resources) is probably the smallest segment for camcorder sales? No?

I'm going to disagree here. The one thing to consider is storage. Where are you going to store all that great footage. Think about it. One or two hours of tape is about equal to a days worth of work. 1 minute is about equal to 1 gig of storage right? You're going to need a raid to really get down with this camera.

Now if you've got a terabyte drive or a good raid system this camera is all you. A big terabyte raid could cost an extra $5,000 - $10,000. Now if you're working in HDV, you can buy a 1 terabyte drive for about $1000 and a 80 gig Firestore which holds about 3 hours of 1080/24p HDV. You can put you whole film on the drive (in the end you're looking at about 60 - 100 hours or more that you're going to pull you 90 or 120 minutes of footage from.

Let's be conservative and say 60 hours. 3600 minutes of footage so you'll need a 4000gig. Now a whole DV project can be stored on a 250 - 500gb drive. If HDV specs are accurate a 1TB external drive should hold your whole HDV project plus. Even at the $9000 price tag you're looking at $9000, $1000 (80 gig Firestore), and another $1000 for the harddrive if you buy a 1TB drive. so all and all you're looking at $11,000. That's a difference of $5000 or more in end user cost based on the Raid system you buy (don't forget you're going to need an inexpensive HD monitor either way). Is my math right on this?

My only concern is how motion looks in HDV and if film output is good. There's been some complaints about the motion but if you remember some people said the motion on the original XL and the DVX wasn't so good, but most people didn't see a problem and these became the top two cameras used by indie filmmakers. It's something to think about.

-Nate

[Knock Out Films]

could you shoot HD-SDI into DVrack and capture at DVCProHD codec or other intermediate codec. Another post says Sirens was shot on DVX using DVrack, they must have been tethered to a tower of some sort. I here they loved shooting that way.

Cheers,
Chris

[Antoine_Fabi]

That's exactly what they have in mind i think...

[jrv3034]

Sounds more and more like HVX will be the best choice for the narrative filmmaker....

But are the P2 cards the only thing the HVX records too? Or does it have a tape mechanism as well? For us to be able to go out and shoot an hour of, say, 720 24P footage a day, what else are we going to have to buy?

Yeah, you can get the HVX for $6000 and the Firestore (100GB) for $2000, so for a total of $8000 (or less, probably) you have full DVCProHD 1080/24p for over 1hr 30min.

The tape drive will only record MiniDV. No HD or DVCPro50 to tape, unless you hook up an external deck via Firewire. But the beauty of this camera is going tapeless. Hook up the Firestore and record long takes. At the end of the day, dump to a big external hard disk.

Why bother with the XL H1 connected to DV Rack if you're going to convert it to DVCProHD? Much easier to use an HVX and record IN CAMERA to DVCProHD, without being tethered to anything.

[Gibby]

There are probably many other professional uses for the XL H1 than just hard lined sports production. Some examples: HD & SD reality television, documentaries, HD & SD stock footage (especially when using Canon primes and a laptop), high-end corporate videos, regional commercials, and on and on. That's not to say the H1 is the *best* camera for those uses, just that it could be used for them.

I think if the truth were known, there is a large number of *non-indie* television and video producers, directors, editors, and camera operators that visit inexpensive video technology Internet boards to: 1) keep abreast of new developments in affordable production technology 2) learn tips on how to use the affordable cameras 3) to network with potential allies 4) effectively bid against their competition who *are* current on affordable tech options 5) make suggestions that might improve lower-end production equipment 6) do research for instructional DVDs and articles they intend to write 7) to be a "hero" to their associates by integrating cost-cutting technology into their company's production process 8) a natural curiosity and excitement about newly-breaking technology 9) even though they use higher end formats and equipment, they are not ego-connected with that and thus want to keep an open mind for other workflows that make sense 10) mentor others because it just feels good to do so 11) and on and on and on and on....

Most of the television and high-end business visitors to these *prosumer* tech boards do so in stealth mode. They don't post, they just absorb the info. They're smart to do so. They've swallowed their egos to the point that they realize that it benefits their career to be aware of the whole spectrum of technology and equipment available to them.

Low-end cameras are like vegetable section of your supermarket - all the vegetables are related, but each one has a different taste and cooking use. To finish the analogy, if you only have enough money to buy one kind of vegetable, you buy the one that best suits what you plan to cook. If you have more funds, and cook many different kinds of meals, you may buy several different types of vegetables that are individually suited to what you plan to cook. Because you only cook one type of meal, what's the point in criticizing the meal choice of another cook? Even if you're James Beard or Emeril, do you have all the answers? No...

The nature of constant progress in knowledge is: the more you learn the more you should realize you don't know. In a tech industry like ours collectively, take a stance that you have all the answers and you have just programmed yourself for professional extinction! Many of your competitors will keep learning and will eventually out-compete you.

What's with these little fiefdoms of "indie", "TV", "events", etc.? Today's technology allows you to expand you business model more than at any time in the history of the media production industry. Open you mind, continually study new industry technology, get out of your comfortable little niche, look around for ways to expand your professional offerings, and it just may shock you how many other opportunities are out there! It feels good professionally, emotionally, and financially! Many times I simultaneously have several projects going in several mediums: television, video, web, and disk. It broadens you professionally - and financially. Indie films are not something I've concentrated on, but I intend to produce some indie films. Why - in view of all the other *niches* I work in? Because its another challenge to meet and I don't believe in *niching* myself professionally.

With media convergence, well-defined sub niches in media production are essentially a thing of the past. No matter which camera and editing system (s) you have there are multiple ways to make money with it, and in the process work your way out of your sub niche. Unless indie films is absolutely the only thing your heart desires, and you've resolved yourself to the fiscal realities of that narrow option, why not learn enough to be an *everything* producer? Busy clients don't want to shop a-la-carte for every portion of their media production needs, Someone, or some company, that can solve all their problems at once by being a turnkey provider of a full spectrum of media production services, is the one who will get their business. You don't need a storefront or any employees. You can do it with a home office, some capable low-end equipment, and some contacts for good freelance labor. Nobody can own all the formats and makes of production and postproduction equipment. Simply rent the equipment you need and build it into your bid to the client. By holding overhead down in other areas your bids should still be lower than your competitors.

Bottom line: Your camera and editing systems will do a wider variety of professional projects than you think, and there are no lines dividing the media production community into niches unless we accept that to be the case.

Gibby
www.cut4.tv

[starway2001@mac.com]

As an independent filmmaker, I don't understand why other filmmakers don't see the inclusion of HD-SDI output as an exciting feature. I would love to record the XL-H1's uncompressed 4:2:2 signal to an HDW-F500 HDCAM. These VTRs can be rented from a variety of houses. HDCINEMA out of Los Angeles has some great rates for these units for indy filmmakers. Or for that matter you can rent the AJ-HD1200A DVCPro HD VTR for even cheaper and go the 720P route.

As far as any hassle or the issue of lugging around an external recording device I don't think this argument holds any water. "Most" filmmakers are going to be lugging around a monitor and monitor-stand along with cabling it. Same goes for the microphone cables (or mixer cables). I never hear of a director or cinematographer complaining that their lights, light-stands, apple boxes, c-stands, flags, scrims, silks, cables, etc. "get in the way" of making their movie.

Why does adding one VTR suddenly gum up the works?

[harlan]

Because the HD-SDI output really isn't that exciting a feature. All the HDV cameras have uncompressed outs on them - they're typically analog component outputs, but a tiny little convertor box will happily convert the signal to HD-SDI. There's really no perceptible difference between the two. Sure HD-SDI is better, but ultimately it's not that big of deal.

[Luis Caffesse]

"I don't understand why other filmmakers don't see the inclusion of HD-SDI output as an exciting feature. I would love to record the XL-H1's uncompressed 4:2:2 signal to an HDW-F500 HDCAM. These VTRs can be rented from a variety of houses. HDCINEMA out of Los Angeles has some great rates for these units for indy filmmakers. Or for that matter you can rent the AJ-HD1200A DVCPro HD VTR for even cheaper and go the 720P route."

I don't understand why you would be that excited about paying $1000 more for a camera so that you can then pay even more to rent a DVCProHD deck to record onto, and then have to deal with audio complications also (audio isn't run through the HDSDI output, so I guess you could run it through a mixer and out to the deck, or you could run a tape in the camera and sync it all up in post).... OR you could pay LESS than $9000 and shoot DVCProHD on the camera with the HVX and the forthcoming firestore drive.

If for some reason you HAVE to have 1080i, then I guess the Canon HDSDI output and a HDCam deck would be your best bet. Of course at that point, why not just rent an F900?

For under $9000 you could rent an F900 package for about 2 weeks here ($1300/day)
An HDW-F500 HDCam deck goes for $850 a day.

SOOOOO.....
If you want to shoot to an HDW-F500 deck using the HDSDI output on the Canon....
It will cost you $9000 for the camera, plus $2550.00 per week that you want to rent the deck.

An F900 Camera package will cost about $3900 a week.

It becomes cheaper after 7 weeks of shooting (F900= $27,300 Canon+deck= $26,850)

Of course, to top it off....we're comparing prices between a 2/3 inch and a 1/3 inch camera.
(and to shoot the same format, the 2/3 inch will be cheaper in the short term).

So unless you're shooting in a studio out to a deck on a very regular basis...I just don't see much to get excited about.

[starway2001@mac.com]

Because the HD-SDI output really isn't that exciting a feature. All the HDV cameras have uncompressed outs on them - they're typically analog component outputs, but a tiny little convertor box will happily convert the signal to HD-SDI. There's really no perceptible difference between the two. Sure HD-SDI is better, but ultimately it's not that big of deal.

I certainly wouldn't want to use any cameras internal D/A converter and then re-convert it back to digital. That wouldn't make any sense. IMO, a direct digital pipeline to the deck would be the best bet.

[starway2001@mac.com]

I don't understand why you would be that excited about paying $1000 more for a camera so that you can then pay even more to rent a DVCProHD deck to record onto, and then have to deal with audio complications also (audio isn't run through the HDSDI output, so I guess you could run it through a mixer and out to the deck, or you could run a tape in the camera and sync it all up in post).... OR you could pay LESS than $9000 and shoot DVCProHD on the camera with the HVX and the forthcoming firestore drive.

I'm paying a $1000 more for a camera that comes with a real lens. I'm also paying for the option to rent additional lenses as future projects require. Whether that be a Mini35 solution or a manual lens option. Good glass straight to the CCD is always better than putting additional glass in front of questionable glass. To me, optics is half the battle. And, rack focus issues aside, Canon's stock lenses are superior to fixed lenses.

Also, using the camera in its stock configuration recording to HDV is a perfectly acceptable medium for shooting corporate projects, b-roll, and other non-theatrical professional projects (the stuff that pays the bills).

If for some reason you HAVE to have 1080i, then I guess the Canon HDSDI output and a HDCam deck would be your best bet. Of course at that point, why not just rent an F900?

I always rent when the budget allows. If our projects are self-financed then we shoot with what we have. And for small, personal, short-film projects HDV is perfect acceptable. Shit, it's superior to DV in many ways. So I'm not interested on getting onboard the "HDV is Crap" bandwagon (not that that's what you're arguing). I wouldn't shoot a feature film in that format, but there are MANY projects where I would.

For under $9000 you could rent an F900 package for about 2 weeks here ($1300/day) An HDW-F500 HDCam deck goes for $850 a day.

There are many rental houses out here in L.A. where you can rent these decks for a lot cheaper than $850/day if you're renting for multiple weeks (4 or more). Again, the F500 is only one possible deck solution. 720P is a perfectly acceptable resolution and medium for narrative work. I would choose the AJ-HD1200A as the deck of choice, which is considerably cheaper to rent. If the HVX had an HD-SDI output, I would probably record to this deck instead of P2 because of it's continuous record capability.

SOOOOO.....
If you want to shoot to an HDW-F500 deck using the HDSDI output on the Canon....
It will cost you $9000 for the camera, plus $2550.00 per week that you want to rent the deck.

An F900 Camera package will cost about $3900 a week.

It becomes cheaper after 7 weeks of shooting (F900= $27,300 Canon+deck= $26,850)

Even if I had the budget to rent an F900, I wouldn't use the internal deck anyway (3:1:1). So I'd still be renting the F500 in order to maintain the 4:2:2 color. And really, isn't this why we have the option of HD-SDI anyway? To preserve the color and bypass the HDV circuitry? To at least have the OPTION, even if the protective flap is never removed?

So unless you're shooting in a studio out to a deck on a very regular basis...I just don't see much to get excited about.

I think Canon was smart to add this feature to their camera. I wish JVC had done the same with the HD-100.

[harlan]

I certainly wouldn't want to use any cameras internal D/A converter and then re-convert it back to digital. That wouldn't make any sense. IMO, a direct digital pipeline to the deck would be the best bet.


I'm not promoting HDV in any way shape or form. Personally, I think HDV sucks, but it's definitely a step up from DV.

I also don't care if the signal gets passed through 500 different converters, so long as the final image looks the same, and there is no perceptible difference between analog or HD-SDI outs on those cameras. The difference on a scope is quite negligible. Is there a difference? Of course, but nowhere near enough of a difference to justify the extra expense for the Canon camera.

My point is simply that the whole "HD-SDI feature" of the Canon HD1 is being blown waaaay out of proportion. It's great that they decided to include that feature, but it's certainly not that big of a deal - considering you can accomplish the same thing on any of the other HDV cameras for less money while maintaining a perceptibly identical image.

The difference between the Analog Uncompressed HD output vs. Digital Uncompressed HD output is nowhere near the differences associated with Component vs. SDI.

I'm ecstatic about the Canon camera, and can't wait to test one out. Just don't let the HD-SDI output sway you into purchasing that particular camera when another camera may be better suited to your needs.

[myfriendimage]

I will definitely look at this camera when I can. I am looking for an inexpensive HD camera and Canon seems to have done it right. At least they did earlier with the XL2

haha inexpensive, its 9-12grand!

[Nathyn]

Again no one's addressing the storage question. RAIDS cost money. You'll be pay more money for the HVX on the backend (building your system around it) unless you already have an HD system in place.

-Nate

[jrv3034]

You don't need a RAID setup to edit DVCProHD. Firewire 400 or 800 should be fine. Get a nice Terabyte Firewire Hard disk, and you're good to go. Shouldn't be more than $900.

The fact is that HD costs more money than SD. Both DVCProHD and HDV. No one's forcing anyone to move up to HD. If you want to, be prepared for more storage expenses.

This is why I really like the HVX's philosophy... Shoot SD on MiniDV until you're ready to move up to HD. Then just plug in a Firestore or P2 card or laptop, and shoot 1080/24p 4:2:2 DVCProHD.

[Walter_Graff]

Makes me think of two ting:

1. the term "dropped frames"

2. Something I read on Blackmagic's site that always stays with me:

"DV100 ("DVCPRO HD") = 100 Mb/sec. This is professional or broadcast quality and supports RT Extreme™ effects. Some people would say it looks a little "soft". DVCPRO HD is much higher quality than HDV but quickly suffers from conspicuous generational loss if you have to render it."

[Policar]

I think DVCPRO HD can sustain one generation of compression, which is all anything really goes through in Final Cut Pro. I remember seeing some test and it stood up well, although not fantastically. But for effects shots, this could lead to issues or necessitate an uncompressed work flow, which would be a mess with HD.

I've found DV can survive one compression cycle, but quickly degrades afterwards, so I figure DVCPRO, as a similar codec, offers similar results.

[mmm]

I think DVCPRO HD can sustain one generation of compression, which is all anything really goes through in Final Cut Pro. I remember seeing some test and it stood up well, although not fantastically. But for effects shots, this could lead to issues or necessitate an uncompressed work flow, which would be a mess with HD.

I've found DV can survive one compression cycle, but quickly degrades afterwards, so I figure DVCPRO, as a similar codec, offers similar results.

I don't see the big deal with multiple generations either. If you need to do it, go uncompressed, if not, encode straight to MPEG2 for DVD (or HD DVD) from the original.

[stephenlnoe]

You don't need a RAID setup to edit DVCProHD. Firewire 400 or 800 should be fine. Get a nice Terabyte Firewire Hard disk, and you're good to go. Shouldn't be more than $900.


FW is cutting it close for multiple streams of DVCProHD (100Mb 1080). Now for DVCProHD 720/24p (40Mb) then you could get away with it. SCSI is always better and a RAID helps handle the risk management factors of loosing data. I posted on another thread the intended P2 workflow as put forth by Panasonic.

You write that there is a miniDV tape drive on the HVX and that you can use that until you are ready for HD. This is a good hedge by Panasonic, but all manufacturers of these types of cams have included DV25 with their camera.

With HDV your archive is on the tape so you can have a viable NLE with a 200Gig hard drive and tape indexes and not need to purchase anything but tapes to feed the HDV camera but the quality is lower, but how much lower?

HDV 720p:______Frame res 1280x720, 4:2:0, Y sample: 1280x720, Cr,Cb Sample 640x360
DVCProHD 720p:_Frame res 1280x720, 4:2:2, Y sample: 960x720, Cr,Cb Sample 480x720

There is a difference but it's not as far apart as is being suggested.

[jrv3034]

Makes me think of two ting:

1. the term "dropped frames"

Wait... Isn't HDV more taxing on the CPU than DVCProHD? I could be wrong here, but shouldn't you get fewer dropped framed with DVCProHD than with HDV? Or does it depend mostly on the speed of the hard disk?

Either way, nobody should shoot HD of ANY flavor unless they have the equipment to handle it. Sure, you can "technically" edit 1080HD on a Mac mini, but nobody recommends it. HD is more expensive than SD. Period. HDV or DVCProHD. Use it only if you need it. For indie films with intent of transfer to film, I imagine it'll be a HUGE advantage to shoot in HD. Wedding shooters, not as much, for now at least.

I'm in the process of finishing a feature length film shot with a DVX. We had 36 MiniDV tapes to digitize after the shoot. That sucked big time. I can't wait to get into a tapeless workflow for the next one. Tape, for narrative filmmaking, is simply not necessary anymore. Which is why the HVX appeals to me. Completely tapeless in DVCProHD 1080/24p for less than $8000. I don't want a "halfway there" version of HD. I want the full quality thing. And that's DVCProHD or HD Cam, and the latter is a *bit* expensive right now.

FOr event videography, I totally agree that HDV in the Canon or JVC flavors seems best. Shoot, and hand the client a tape on the spot. But $9000 for the XL H1, simply to record HDV (I don't need HD-SDI or Genlock) or $6000 plus hard disk module for the HD100 (I want it tapeless) for HDV recording doesn't do it for me, when for $8000 I can record full-out DVCProHD in 1080/24p for an hour and a half to a Firestore.

[esperman]

Makes me think of two ting:

1. the term "dropped frames"

2. Something I read on Blackmagic's site that always stays with me:

"DV100 ("DVCPRO HD") = 100 Mb/sec. This is professional or broadcast quality and supports RT Extreme™ effects. Some people would say it looks a little "soft". DVCPRO HD is much higher quality than HDV but quickly suffers from conspicuous generational loss if you have to render it."

Walter,
you shoot varicam right? How many dropped frames have you experienced? A bad tape affects any format. Also, with P2..there would be no dropped frames anyway?
right?

Any format that is constantly being rerendered will suffer quality loss. thats why we have alpha channles for compositing seperately!

[JesterJJZ]

Well I was interested for a solid 2 seconds there. End result......Meh.

[Walter_Graff]

"Walter,
you shoot varicam right? How many dropped frames have you experienced? A bad tape affects any format. Also, with P2..there would be no dropped frames anyway?
right? "

Well what folks seem to think is that you simply plug it in and it goes. My system uses a Decklink HDPro board and fiber RAID for my Varicam footage. If I tried to run such video through a regular drive, I wouldn't be editing much. I have never used the firewire port on my HD deck and don't have any plans to. I have heard it's not a way one wants to go if there is a choice. While I don't know what these prosumer cameras will be putting out, it will be interesting to see how much more these cameras really cost once you need to put together a system that can sustain the speeds necessary for higher data movement. And from what the pros I spoke to that use P2 now are saying about simply plugging in P2 cards into various computers is they don't always jive. As long as different editing softwares use their own proprietary software drivers, it might not be as simple as the brochure preaches. Even worse, wait to you see the rendering times and computer system challenges these prosumer "HD" cameras are going to create. I don't know what data rates these P2s are running but systems in pro HD need 64 bit slots running 100 or 133mhz buses. Single drive capture of HD is not reliable as I know it. And even than only certain types of drives like Cheeta Ultra 320s or Maxtor Ultra 320's work. Ultra 160's don't. So I would think that if the data rates on these prosumer cameras are up to snuff, folks better get use to RAIDS or homemade JBOD's and an expensive card to control them. My card on my G5 can handle 500MB/sec throughput with my Atto card but that's $500. The PC version from Adaptec would be around $350. It's all adding up. So the computer has to be up to snuff, controller card, dual drives or you'll be rendering till tomorrow. Hey I think the reality is that $6000 camera is going to cost more like $15,000 just to get going properly if this is truly HD.

[Nathyn]

"Walter,
Hey I think the reality is that $6000 camera is going to cost more like $15,000 just to get going properly if this is truly HD.

That's what I've been trying to tell people. The JVCs and Canons (HDV cams) are so appealing because you can use them right out the box if you're got the right software. And if not the upgrades aren't that expensive compared to what you're going to have to buy to edit and use true HD.

-Nate

[Barry_Green]

You can put you whole film on the drive (in the end you're looking at about 60 - 100 hours or more that you're going to pull you 90 or 120 minutes of footage from.
100 HOURS of footage, on line, for a 90-minute film? That's... excessive. A low-budget 35mm film would shoot maybe 50,000 feet... that's a shooting ratio of six to one. Meaning a total of 9 hours, not 100. And even then, you wouldn't print all that footage, you'd only print the "good stuff" -- hence the term "cut and print!" You don't print the bad takes or the mess-ups, you only print the good stuff (meaning, the lab develops it all, yes, but doesn't go to the expense of making a workprint of the unusable footage).

So on a low-budget 35mm shoot, you'd have maybe at most six hours of footage to whittle down to your 90 minutes. Why do you think you'd need to archive a hundred hours of source footage? Cut it, delete it, and move on. Your online and archive solution should be vastly, vastly, vastly smaller than what you're estimating here.

My only concern is how motion looks in HDV and if film output is good.
Motion in Z1 CF24 is awful. Motion in JVC HD100 is ideal. Motion in the XL H1 remains to be seen.

It's not "motion", per se, that's the problem, it's whether the codec gets overloaded at some point. Regular motion doesn't do that -- MPEG was designed to capture motion, so it has motion prediction algorithms that do a pretty decent job.

[Barry_Green]

could you shoot HD-SDI into DVrack and capture at DVCProHD codec or other intermediate codec.
Why not just shoot on an HVX then? As long as you plan on capturing into DVCPRO-HD, why not shoot with the convenient onboard P2 cards? The point behind having the HD-SDI port is to take advantage of the potential better quality, no?

Another post says Sirens was shot on DVX using DVrack, they must have been tethered to a tower of some sort.
No tower, it was a regular inexpensive Toshiba laptop. We captured direct to external USB hard disks.

[Barry_Green]

720P is a perfectly acceptable resolution and medium for narrative work. I would choose the AJ-HD1200A as the deck of choice, which is considerably cheaper to rent. If the HVX had an HD-SDI output, I would probably record to this deck instead of P2 because of it's continuous record capability.
That doesn't make much economic sense though. Why not just buy the FireStore instead of spending a bunch of money renting that deck... the FireStore will give you continuous record capability, it'll be tiny and untethered to a deck, there's no additional expense for tape, and the footage is pre-digitized and ready to use. Additionally, if you were looking at using the AJ-HD1200A, then HD-SDI would just get in the way -- you can output pure DVCPRO-HD via firewire from the camera straight to the deck; you don't need to go through any HD-SDI process.


Even if I had the budget to rent an F900, I wouldn't use the internal deck anyway (3:1:1). So I'd still be renting the F500 in order to maintain the 4:2:2 color.
Okay, not following you there either -- the F500 is an HDCAM deck. Therefore, it's 3:1:1. Why do you think the F500 would have 4:2:2?

[Barry_Green]

Also, with P2..there would be no dropped frames anyway?
right?
Correct. P2 completely eliminates any threat of dropped frames, or tape dropout, or anything like that. Those type of things affect tape-based systems, not P2 or other solid-state recording systems.

Any format that is constantly being rerendered will suffer quality loss. thats why we have alpha channles for compositing seperately!
Exactly. All lossy codecs will compound their losses upon recompression. Some DV codecs are better than others, some of the best can go a few generations without noticeable degradation, but some other codecs can't handle a second generation at all. HDV being a prime example. I would expect DVCPRO-HD wouldn't prefer multiple generations, you'd be better off to avoid recompressing with any of these codecs if you can.

[Barry_Green]

I don't know what data rates these P2s are running but systems in pro HD need 64 bit slots running 100 or 133mhz buses.
P2 is highly over-engineered for the task at hand. A P2 card runs at 640 megabits per second, fast enough to support six simultaneous streams of full-bandwidth DVCPRO-HD.

Single drive capture of HD is not reliable as I know it.
With P2, "capture" is irrelevant. The footage is captured the moment it's shot. After that you simply copy it from one place to another, just like with any file. There is no such thing as "capture" in the P2 workflow; that gets totally eliminated.

[Nathyn]

Barry, I don't know what I was thinking when I said that. You're right, it should be 6 - 10 hours not 60-100. I hope everyone caught that. Sorry. What I'm trying to say is you're talking about a lot of footage and we're getting into terabyte drives. 10 hours of footage is 600 minutes so you're talking about 600 Gigs. Plus render files special effects and the like. A two terabyte drive would be decent start.

-Nate

[starway2001@mac.com]

That doesn't make much economic sense though. Why not just buy the FireStore instead of spending a bunch of money renting that deck... the FireStore will give you continuous record capability, it'll be tiny and untethered to a deck, there's no additional expense for tape, and the footage is pre-digitized and ready to use. Additionally, if you were looking at using the AJ-HD1200A, then HD-SDI would just get in the way -- you can output pure DVCPRO-HD via firewire from the camera straight to the deck; you don't need to go through any HD-SDI process.

I understand your logic here. The FireStore is a great solution for these new breed of HD cameras. However, the FireStore solution only works with the cameras internal codec, be it HDV or DVCPro-HD. If I were to opt for the Canon the FireStore would only record the HDV signal. But if I wanted to shoot some blue or green screen footage, I have the option of recorded HD-SDI out to an SRW500 or D5.

Okay, not following you there either -- the F500 is an HDCAM deck. Therefore, it's 3:1:1. Why do you think the F500 would have 4:2:2?

I was under the impression that the F500 is a 4:2:2 deck while the camera's internal deck was 3:1:1. If I'm wrong, I stand corrected. Otherwise, the SRW5000 or Panasonic D5 would be the ideal recording deck.

[starway2001@mac.com]

How long will it take to offload a fully loaded P2 to a laptop or portable drive?

Can one P2 be recording in camera while the second P2 is offloading?

How does hot swapping work?

[Barry_Green]

How long will it take to offload a fully loaded P2 to a laptop or portable drive?
Depends on the speed of the laptop or portable drive, and the capacity of the card. The P2 card itself runs at 640 megabits, and the Cardbus32 slot it uses is capable of 132 megaBytes per second. So theoretically you could offload an 8gb card in as little as 100 seconds. But that presumes that whatever you're offloading it to can ingest an 80-megabyte-per-second transfer rate.

If you're using the camera as a source device to offload the card, one limiting factor would be the USB2 or Firewire bus. USB2 and Firewire are both slower than the card's maximum speed.

Obviously it would take twice as long to fully offload an 8gb card as it would to offload a 4gb card, etc.

Can one P2 be recording in camera while the second P2 is offloading?
If you remove the full card and offload it by plugging it into a laptop, then yes you can do exactly what you're talking about. The camera itself cannot record and offload at the same time; you'd have to pick one or the other. But the cards are hot-swappable so you could pluck out the full one and plug it into a laptop (or P2 Store or desktop or whatever) and offload it.

How does hot swapping work?
You've got two slots, so if you had two or three cards you can eject one and swap in another. Recording will automatically span cards, so you could do one continuous take that's longer than an individual card. In fact, if you offloaded fast enough, you could theoretically record for hours or days continuously, as long as you can keep feeding it an empty card before the card-in-use gets full.

[SergejIvanovits]

... you could theoretically record for hours or days continuously, as long as you can keep feeding it an empty card before the card-in-use gets full. Theoretically yes. I guess to take out and put the P2 card into the camera will result in some kind of shaking the camera.

[mmm]

So on a low-budget 35mm shoot, you'd have maybe at most six hours of footage to whittle down to your 90 minutes. Why do you think you'd need to archive a hundred hours of source footage? Cut it, delete it, and move on. Your online and archive solution should be vastly, vastly, vastly smaller than what you're estimating here.


...but who shoots 6:1 on video... Of course, it can be done! I was on a 90 minute 35mm feature where we shot under 30,000ft! The joy of moving away from film is that you can let the camera roll until you have a scene the way you need.

I average a ratio of ~12:1, so I would expect to shoot around 720 minutes for a 90 min feature, however, I would what to keep hold of EVERY FRAME of that footage.

It is very different to 35 mm and workprints. In that system, your camera negative is you built in archive, there is no such archive with P2.

I certainly wouldn't advise anyone to be deleting anything at all until the film was completely, 100% signed off. Only then I MAY dispose of SOME of the footage.

In my eyes this is the Achillies Heel of P2. People are used to built in archives - film, video tape, XDCAM -and whether people are prepared to make the transition will be interesting to see. I know there are "work-arounds," but who wants "work-around" systems, which is what P2 will always be. I may still buy into it, I am yet to decide.

[SergejIvanovits]

In my eyes this is the Achillies Heel of P2. People are used to built in archives - film, video tape, XDCAM -and whether people are prepared to make the transition will be interesting to see. I know there are "work-arounds," but who wants "work-around" systems, which is what P2 will always be. I may still buy into it, I am yet to decide.

Actually you can build your archive on DL DVD. One P2 shoot goes on one DL DVD.

[mmm]

Actually you can build your archive on DL DVD. One P2 shoot goes on one DL DVD.

I know, there are workarounds, but there will NEVER be a built in archive...

...well unless you don't reuse the cards, but that's crazy talk! :laugh:

[braw]

Damn Barry, that has to be the most consecutive machine gun stile responses I've ever seen you do. :shocked:

[MovieSwede]

As for storing DVCPRO. The harddrives going to get cheaper and cheaper. Remember the old good days when i got extra memory for my amiga500, it was actually 512 kb extra memory. It was fantastic. And I also read about harddrives that could store up to 180 mb of data.

It will not take long before DVCPRO HD storage will be as cheap as Ice cream.

[SergejIvanovits]

It will not take long before DVCPRO HD storage will be as cheap as Ice cream.

In this days DL DVD-+RW is the solution. ~8Gb fits on a DL DVD-+RW. It means 1 DVD /P2.

[esperman]

P2 is highly over-engineered for the task at hand. A P2 card runs at 640 megabits per second, fast enough to support six simultaneous streams of full-bandwidth DVCPRO-HD.


With P2, "capture" is irrelevant. The footage is captured the moment it's shot. After that you simply copy it from one place to another, just like with any file. There is no such thing as "capture" in the P2 workflow; that gets totally eliminated.

I think Walter's point is this.....shooting in DVCPROHD is cool, but he prefers to edit in an uncompressed format in his edit system. So, the ability of the hxv to transfer a QT DVCPROHD codec file onto his raid is not a benefit, and not worth the costs. He is then stuck with a compressed file to edit with. Or he'll have to take out the D4 signal and go through his capture card.

However, I've edited DVCPROHD files via firewire capture, and have been pretty impressed. And for straight A/B editing..it's a great solution. So, the abilty to avoid capturing footage, and just transfering footage from P2 to disk sounds great to me.

However, Walter is correct, you'll need more than a firewire drive. A standard serial ATA raid would work well. Then archive P2 to DVD or something along those lines.

[Isaac_Brody]

In this days DL DVD-+RW is the solution. ~8Gb fits on a DL DVD-+RW. It means 1 DVD /P2.

Good way to look at it. DL DVD's are about four dollars each, about the same cost as minidv tape.

[braw]

Just wanted to bump this thread and say so far preliminary evidence, not proof, that the new 24F mode will most likely be interpolation from one field with the CCD clocked at a different frequency. So, like I said and got no real response, a "better" version of cineframe. NOT "just like" progressive at all, more like deinterlaced and uprezzed in camera.

I await final results with shoe in hand! :beer:

[Policar]

The clips at dvinfo show way too much resolution for it to be anything like cineframe. The only issue I see is a lack of dynamic range, and I think it's just the fact that canon's not underexposing as they should be to get a "film-look." The lens looks amazing, though. The resolution and lack of significant chromatic abberation are incredible. Blown highlights look oddly acceptable, but it still looks like high end video.

The HDV codec seems different from Sony's. Looks flawless. And I'm no fan of HDV....

Wow.

[braw]

This thread here (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=52053) seems to indicate that it uses one field and interpolates with the Digic II chip the other filed giving you "progressive" 1080p, but only half is most likely actual capture. This may be wrong but general concensus seems to point in that direction. :beer:

[evinsky]

My guess is that they clock the chip at 24Fps interlaced and then use a comparitive algorythym to
merge/blend/smash the two fields back together to get one 24F frame. Whatever interpolation is done is there to compensate for any temporal difference between fields A & B. This is why the image holds so much detail, but may also be responsible for that creamy look.

[robroysyd]

Why would there be any temporal difference between the fields?
Canon have I believe been quite clear on how this works. Shutter opens, CCDs loose charge, shutter closes. CCD is scanned, first one row then the alternate row. two scans are merged to produce a single frame. Seems simple enough to me and it's done in other cameras, no one seems to have any issues accepting that they're progressive.
In fact no video camera is true progressive scan, even if all the CCD elements are scanned in one pass this takes time, so one could argue there's a temporal separating between all the pixels. Only a film camera exposes the entire frame instantly and even then some film cameras shutters do't even do that leading to motion artifacts if you're not careful.
It simply doesn't matter how the CCDs are scanned, what matters is how they're exposed by the electronic shutter.
Even many digital still camera scan the CCD interlaced, it's just simpler and it means they can use CCDs designed for interlaced except produce a true progressive image.

[evinsky]

That is not exactly accurate. In an interlaced read out there is a temporal difference between lines right next to each other. A progressive chip may read out line by line but the image is captured in a single, linear manner that preserves the most detail. Because of the nature of interlaced there would be 1/48 of second difference between the A & B fields. That is huge durring high motion rendering. However, the footage I've seen seems to take care of these issues in processing just fine. As long as the projected judder issue is a deck not camera issue.

[braw]

So it's either interpolating the difference between the field offset, or interpolating the whole other field from one field? It sounds like those are the two most reasonable assumptions about how it's achieving 24F.

[evinsky]

I really don't see how they are getting the resolution their dysplaying if they are interpolating half of thier information. There has to be some comparitive processing from the other field to maintain detail. Otherwise it's just a 540 line camera uprezzed to 1080, it wouldn't look any better than an uprezzed XL2.

[robroysyd]

In an interlaced read out there is a temporal difference between lines right next to each other. A progressive chip may read out line by line but the image is captured in a single, linear manner that preserves the most detail.
NO. How the CCDs are SCANNED doesn't matter at all. It's how they acquire the image that makes the difference. THe CCDs in the DVX100 are I believe scanned progressively yet from that it can derive a genuine interlaced sequence. Expose the CCDs at 50fps and discard alternate lines from every scan, result is a interlaced image sequence with each field taken 20mS apart.
Cinealta cameras expose the CCDs 24 times per second yet scan them twice for each alternate line and merge the result. This yields a true 24fps image sequence.
One could in fact technically scan every 4th line per pass, so long as the data you're getting back from the CCDs was acquired by them at the same point in time the result can still be made into a true progressive image sequence with no interpolation.
The linear scanning theory holds no water at all, if that were true we'd be seeing wierd motion artifacts the same as you get with roller blind shutters in old film cameras, moving wheels ending up as ovals etc.

[evinsky]

Well, I'm not a camera engineer so this is where I will stop guessing. All I know is that it looks good, but heavily processed, which is not necessarily a problem as long as it can maintain detail in a post workflow.

[robroysyd]

Agreed, all that really matters is how it looks on the screen and mostly audiences come to see the story not the image quality. Looking at actual footage from the camera on a 23" LCD out of Vegas so far it looks great, the 24F footage looks very good.
The motion is 24fps although the gamma and lighting makes it look more like HD video than film but the camera was certainly not in the hands of an expert. I can see no sign of any nasties though, even when the camera is panned fast everything hold together nicely.