Had a great time at Birns & Sawyer today with the XLH1 and HVX200 demo

[PappasArts]

I had a great time at Birns & Sawyer today. Thanks for the invite. All of you were awesome. The XLH1 24F HDV material looked amazing on the projection screen. Again, had a great time at the new loaction.....

Thanks to Melissa and Marty for the wine and caps too. : -)

PS: I put up a few pics including the one of me, jim, marty and tim from today on my temp site; here is the link.

Http://www.Pbase.com/Arrfilms

Michael Pappas
Http://www.Pbase.com/Arrfilms

 

[Elton]

Do you know what resolution the screen was? I have a feeling the H1 will hold up best
on a 1080p projector.

That rigged out camera is way too cool.

 

[mmm]

You say that the artifacting was worse on the HVX..? Is that with DVCPROHD compared to HDV?

Is there a resolution drop when switching to 24p on the XLH1?

Can you expanded on the tests a little please?

Thanks

 

[Elton]

You say that the artifacting was worse on the HVX..? Is that with DVCPROHD compared to HDV?

Is there a resolution drop when switching to 24p on the XLH1?

Can you expanded on the tests a little please?

Thanks

Ahh, this is the big question with the H1. I played with one yesterday at a local dealer, and was able to hook it up to a Sony 1080p SXRD (LCoS) big screen TV, which is truly a full 1920 x 1080 display. (beautiful, btw) Results? It was beautiful, and tack sharp. Played some Z1 material on the display, and you could see the resolution drop off, particularly due to interlace artifacting.

There is a big mystery about how Canon arrives at a "progressive" image in 24F mode, despite using 1.67 MP interlace chips. All they say is "DIGIC". I think the truth is it's a workaround to arrive at a seemingly "progressive" result. Probably frame mode on uber steroids, but the results are truly high def and astonishing. One thing I noticed when switching from normal 60i mode to 24F was an obvious drop in sensitivity. I'm no engineer or expert, but that leads me to believe the chips are clocked to either 24 or 48 hz and do something along the lines of the F900 in 24 PsF mode. So, I think the camera actually samples at the desired frame rate, but is broken up into interlace and then weaved back into a progressive image sequence, but then written out as 24 frames within a 60i sequence.

A Canon representative told me that Apple is working on an update to FCP to be compatible with this mode. The idea is that you can do an advanced pulldown removal in FCP, similar to what's achieved with the DVX. As best as I can connect the dots, I think the camera saves some bits for higher quality compression of the 24 frames written to tape in HDV by utilizing repeat frames added from the encoder.

A long winded way of saying that if there is a resolution drop, it's miniscule at best.

I'm sure there will be many samples of 24F floating around on the net in the next month or two.

 

[mmm]

A long winded way of saying that if there is a resolution drop, it's miniscule at best.

I'm sure there will be many samples of 24F floating around on the net in the next month or two.

Thanks Elton!

How was the artifacting? Similar to a Z1 in 60i I presume? Could you judge what the latitude was like too?

 

[Elton]

Thanks Elton!

How was the artifacting? Similar to a Z1 in 60i I presume? Could you judge what the latitude was like too?

The 60i isn't going to look that great on a 1080p display, but the H1 is much sharper and defined in 1080 than the Z1. I think this is due to higher rez CCD's, DIGIC processing and MUCH better glass. To me, those two cameras are almost in different leagues. H1 artifacting, at least when recorded to HDV tape, is remarkably clean. I think the H1 doesn't suffer the panning problems that the Sony does. Hard to quantify, but there'll be more footage in the coming weeks to verify this.

Latitude? Well, Barry would say that it's not as good as the HVX, and he knows his stuff. From my experience at the expo, this may be correct, as the H1 seemed to handle highlights a little too stiffly, but I really don't know if this is a problem with just shooting it without really knowing how to tweak the camera. It does have knee and MANY other controls that might help, at least when we're talking about highlight handling. I think the differences may be very subtle, but again, time will tell.

DVCPRO HD may be a professional format, but the HVX isn't necessarily the CLEANEST, most artifact free of the affordable HD's out there. I have native P2 files from the show that didn't speak well for the camera. Again, I wouldn't want to show them because they were shot at Odb in the dim, crappy lighting of the show floor, but I expected it to be as clean as the DVX might've rendered the scene, regardless of resolution. It was sharp in some areas, and mushy in fine details (like hair). Also, the 1080 looked like an uprez to me...quite alot like the resolution of the Z1. A big frame size, but looked a little stretched and strained, for lack of a better phrase.

I don't know if it was a finalized camera or not, so it's impossible to say just how good the HVX really is, but for my money, the H1 represents a very good value.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

I had a great time at Birns & Sawyer today. Thanks for the invite. All of you were awesome. The XLH1 24F HDV material looked amazing on the projection screen. Again, had a great time at the new loaction.....

Thanks to Melissa and Marty for the wine and caps too. : -)

PS: I put up a few pics including the one of me, jim, marty and tim from today on my temp site; here is the link.

Http://www.Pbase.com/Arrfilms

Michael Pappas
Http://www.Pbase.com/Arrfilms

Nice reviews Michael thanks!

I'm looking forward to seeing which camera you choose.