General A1 questions

roxics

roxics

Veteran
1. Does the A1 playback regular DV footage?

2. How well can you key out footage shot on this camera compared to regular DV. I will be doing mostly chromakey work.

3. Does the camera have phantom power?

4. Is there any apparent line noise in the audio pickups?

5. Does the camera capture uncompressed 4:2:2 out the HDMI jack the way the DHV20 does? If so what is the best method to capture this way?

6. Is the tripod mount metal?

7. Can 30F footage be captured by Adobe's onLocation software (used to be called HD/DV Rack)

8. Any issues editing the footage with Vegas or Premiere Pro?

9. Any issues keying the footage or working with it in general with After Effects?

I will be doing mostly chromakey work in a very (unfortunately) small studio. Occasionally going and shooting on location somewhere.
By default I would go for an HVX but price is a major concern. With the A1 being half the price it's hard to sell my boss on something higher.
 
I don't own one of these so the only question I can answer is that it does not playback DV footage, only HDV. And probably only HDV captured by a comparable Canon camera.
 
roxics said:
1. Does the A1 playback regular DV footage?

2. How well can you key out footage shot on this camera compared to regular DV. I will be doing mostly chromakey work.

3. Does the camera have phantom power?

4. Is there any apparent line noise in the audio pickups?

5. Does the camera capture uncompressed 4:2:2 out the HDMI jack the way the DHV20 does? If so what is the best method to capture this way?

6. Is the tripod mount metal?

7. Can 30F footage be captured by Adobe's onLocation software (used to be called HD/DV Rack)

8. Any issues editing the footage with Vegas or Premiere Pro?

9. Any issues keying the footage or working with it in general with After Effects?

I will be doing mostly chromakey work in a very (unfortunately) small studio. Occasionally going and shooting on location somewhere.
By default I would go for an HVX but price is a major concern. With the A1 being half the price it's hard to sell my boss on something higher.
Click to expand...

1. Well the cam can record in DV, so yes it can playback DV - although I've not tried from other tapes & HDV is Canon only.
2. About the same I think, although I'm not an expert - not ideal, but doable if you're careful. (An intermediate codec may help - Cineform interpolates)
3. Yes.
4. Not that I've noticed, someone else may comment further on this.
5. The A1 doesn't have HDMI, only firewire and component. The G1 has HD-SDI, but is more expensive.
6. Can't remember, don't have it with me.
7. In PAL land you can do 25F, so I would think it should do 30F.
8. Works in Vegas 6, 7 is better and I prefer to use the Cineform intermediate codec which improves quality (If doing a lot of re-encoding etc.) and speed.
9. Only as much as any HDV/Mpeg-2 content

Hope that helps a little...
 
roxics said:
1. Does the A1 playback regular DV footage?

2. How well can you key out footage shot on this camera compared to regular DV. I will be doing mostly chromakey work.

3. Does the camera have phantom power?

4. Is there any apparent line noise in the audio pickups?

5. Does the camera capture uncompressed 4:2:2 out the HDMI jack the way the DHV20 does? If so what is the best method to capture this way?

6. Is the tripod mount metal?

7. Can 30F footage be captured by Adobe's onLocation software (used to be called HD/DV Rack)

8. Any issues editing the footage with Vegas or Premiere Pro?

9. Any issues keying the footage or working with it in general with After Effects?

I will be doing mostly chromakey work in a very (unfortunately) small studio. Occasionally going and shooting on location somewhere.
By default I would go for an HVX but price is a major concern. With the A1 being half the price it's hard to sell my boss on something higher.
Click to expand...

1. Yes
2. Very well, much better than DV. I've been able to key out individual hair strands.
3. Yes
4. Depends on Microphone and cables.
5. it has no HDMI jack.
6. Sturdy rubber.
7. Yes.
8. Not with Premiere, dunno about Vegas.
9. Not with me.
 
I don't use any CineForm product. I just capture live through Vegas (or through DV Rack 2.0 HD) and drag the resulting .m2t files straight to the timeline. Works fine with 24F, 30F and 60i. It's slow though (I only have Vegas 6; HDV performance was much improved in Vegas 7).
 
Thank you for the info guys.
Are you serious about the tripod mount being sturdy rubber? That seems kind of cheap on a $3500 camera. I almost didn't even ask the question because I thought it would be a silly idea for another other then metal. But I'm glad I did now.

I'm also kind of shocked at the lack of HDMI. Is there anyway to get 4:2:2 color out of the A1? Seems funny they would put this on the cheaper HV20 and not the A1.
 
actually i think its made up with whatever material the case is made up off with rubber grips, i might be wrong... i'd check buy my camera is on rails so i don't want to disassemble the whole rig, i'm sure someone else can verify that for you.

you can get 4:2:2 through component out and a capture card... perhaps maybe even direct-to-disk? you'll have to confirm with someone with a firestore for that one.

ive done excellent keying in 4:2:0 HDV colorspace with 3rd party programs like keylight and ultimatte.
 
roxics said:
Thank you for the info guys.
Are you serious about the tripod mount being sturdy rubber? That seems kind of cheap on a $3500 camera. I almost didn't even ask the question because I thought it would be a silly idea for another other then metal. But I'm glad I did now.

I'm also kind of shocked at the lack of HDMI. Is there anyway to get 4:2:2 color out of the A1? Seems funny they would put this on the cheaper HV20 and not the A1.
Click to expand...

The HV20 is a consumer camera, and HDMI on board has only recently come to market as a feature on consumer cams. I'm sure it'll be included in prosumer cams down the road, but I wouldn't worry about it.

As Marlon noted, you can get real 4:2:2 uncompressed from the component output--but only if it is a live camera-head signal, and not HDV tape playback via VTR mode.
This requires having the camera tethered to a computer capture workstation equipped with HD analog input and digital conversion. (Blackmagic HD Extreme, Kona cards, etc.)

The extra chroma sampling can help, but I wouldn't worry about it. HDV keys well, particularly if brought into a 4:2:2 intermediate codec such as CineForm, Sheer, PhotoJPEG, MJPEG, uncompressed etc.

It's important to know that the green (Y) channel contains most of the luma resolution, which has a higher sampling than anything else in HDV, so if you're doing greenscreen and move to a better intermediate codec after tape acquisition--it's almost like pulling a luma key if the background was lit properly. It's also important to note that the macroblocks of HDV are smaller than DV and the edges have better definition, so all of that adds up to having an easier time pulling keys compared to working with DV.
 
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