Canon XL-H1 for audio

timapter

timapter

Veteran
Hi guys,

starting in indie feature on monday, and the cam team have just decided to go with the XL H1 hd camera by Canon.

I went in to check it out (as I havent worked with it before), and its pretty nice. However, I had one issue.

Working with my SD302, sending tone at 0 (line), and running the cam at line level, the dials on the camera were only JUST getting me to -12db on the levels when ALL THE WAY UP. That is surely not right. I did notice a feature in the menu which read "R-XLR Gainup", which gives 12db more gain on the xlr inputs, but that cant be ideal....

On the flip side, when sending a mic level signal from the SD, and running the XLR inputs at mic level, I was getting a decent workable gain range - perhaps 60 or 70% on the pots on the camera.


Anyone know anything about this? Should I be running mic level for this? If thats the case, what things should I watch out for? I'll be running a 25m umbilical from my desk to camera. I dont ever work with mic level to camera, so I'm unfamiliar with max run lengths, RF issues etc if there are any...

Thanks everyone!
 
also, any feedback on this camera in general would be cool. i noticed a pretty noisy headphone amp, should i consider monitoring of the rca's or is this not neccesary?

any other quirks and stuff would be greatly appreciated. thank you.
 
known issiue -
canon never was good with audio as they are with optics
worked ones with , ended going with mic level on some doco ****
 
timapter said:
...
Working with my SD302, sending tone at 0 (line), and running the cam at line level, the dials on the camera were only JUST getting me to -12db on the levels when ALL THE WAY UP. That is surely not right. I did notice a feature in the menu which read "R-XLR Gainup", which gives 12db more gain on the xlr inputs, but that cant be ideal....

On the flip side, when sending a mic level signal from the SD, and running the XLR inputs at mic level, I was getting a decent workable gain range - perhaps 60 or 70% on the pots on the camera.


Anyone know anything about this? Should I be running mic level for this? If thats the case, what things should I watch out for? I'll be running a 25m umbilical from my desk to camera. I dont ever work with mic level to camera, so I'm unfamiliar with max run lengths, RF issues etc if there are any...

Thanks everyone!
Click to expand...

Take this with a grain of salt because my memory might be faulty but I recall reading somewhere that when the XLR inputs on that camera are set to "line" it switches in a pad to knock the incoming signal down to mic level at the preamp. So sending line level in preference to mic level isn't really buying you anything unless you need a really, really long cable run from the mixer - like 100 metres or so.

Remember that peaks on speech can run 12dB or even more over the average level represented by 0VU tone and you want to avoid clipping on peaks at all costs! Setting 0VU tone to -12dB means peaks are brushing up on the 0dBFS mark and you have zero, zilch, nada headroom to handle any unexpected increases in volume. SMPTE standard setup calls for 0VU = +4dBu = -20dBFS digital but you might want to go a smidge hotter than that in the camera original. The 302 meters are calibrated to 0VU = 0dBu and that's what it sends tone at so setting tone to -20dBFS in the camera should be good, that's going to be about 4dB hotter than the -24dBFS the standard would strictly call for but well within a margin of safety to prevent clipping on overs and is pretty much standard practice these days. Plus the SD manual section on their meter calibration suggests 0VU indicated tone on the meter should be set to -20dBFS.

Take a look in the back of the 302 manual on its option for setting camera gain with full-level tone. That's another way to go about calibrating them. Essentially it sends tone at the level where the mixer's limiter is just about to kick in. You adjust the camera inputs until its clipping warning just starts to flicker on and then back it down a smidge.
 
Last edited:
if i remember correctly, the previous XL1 and XL2 only had mic in and to go line in, had to use rca input. the xh1 is first model with line in XLR. I use those once. set level at -20 mic in. I think with this cam when shooting HD it compresses audio. forgot the ratio though. i had a 5 cam shoot. used lockits on these cams and after 2 hours shooting, there was up to 7 frames of drift between all the cams. go figure....

great info from wolf and jay rose
http://groups.google.com/group/rec....fd4?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=xl2+test#cc32ea2f5ff8dfd4

its mostly xl1 and xl2 but i dont imagine canon knows or cares enough to do the xh1 audio entirely different
 
That's what I though too, the RCA input what's the line level input and the XLR a crappy mic level input.
Jay Rose has a trick that I like for these low end cameras, set up the audio to automatic and feed the camera with your 302 tone at 0 db. The camera should tell you what level it's feeling "comfortable" with. You can twisted from there
 
I have a XH-A1 which I understand has the same audio design as the H1. In any case I get the same results as you. I've tried cranking up the SD302's output levels but decided that it left me too little headroom. So I mainly just crank the level pots on the A1 to near max and live with that. Others switch to mic level. In the A1 manual it states that line level is 6 dBV which is over 8 dBu. It doesn't say max so I assume that's nominal. BTW, at least for the A1, the manual states that the 12db boost only works if the XLRs are set for mic level.

-Dan
 
I tested XH-A1 with SD302 line level out, camera pots at max setting: S/N ratio over 90 dB and exactly 0 dBFS at peaks.

Good enough for me...
 
Thanks for the responses everyone, and apologies for my absense - been without an internet connection. Welcome to africa, man.

I made a little error in my initial post, I will be going with a -20 line up, which gives me peaks in the -6 region (the last 6 db for unexpected jumps).

Based on what I'm hearing from you guys, I'm going to run mic level into the camera, in order to apply less gain to the sh*t canon amps - my SD will provide cleaner gain, I'm sure.

Start shooting tonight, 6 night shoots, then 9 day shoots. Wish me luck and see you all on the other side. ;)
 
I do not quite follow you, mentaly that is. If you feed line level to Canon you bypass the "sh*tty" preamps altogether, no? In my combo (not exactly the same camera) I get near perfect audio (over 90 dB S/N ratio) and absolute peaks hitting 0 dBFS with no clipped samples. This with SD302 line out at normal full level, XH-A1 pots at maximum position, getting signal from line in.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top