Potential Xl H1 purchase

T

theiliad

Member
Hello all,

I'm in the midst of starting a commercial production company and need to decide on which HD camera would best suit our needs. I am currently set on the Canon Xl H1. My reasons being the resolution of the chips and the interchangable lenses. I do have a few worries though which I hope some of you can help me with.

I would prefer at all costs to stay away from HDV and any tape based recording media, which I find quite time comsuming ( especially if you don't have a deck) in post production. This is, too me, the main area that the HVX 200 wins out over the XL H1, with its use
of P2 cards. Also the use of DVCPRO HD and real 24p is an obvious advantage

So, this leaves me with the HD SDI out on the Canon and some sort of HD or Flash based rercorder ( saw one on canons website but can't remember the name). Has anyone got much experience with this? How does is look, can you use different Codecs, is there much noise from the Harddrive. How about proper 24p, is there anyway to get this out of the XL H1?

Contunuing from this, I've just bought a Canon 30D DSLR, what do I need to use the lens I have with the camera on the XLH1.Does anyone have any experience with this,
I know ther multiplcation factor is 7.2, making the SLR lenses useless except for telephoto.


Thanks in advance
 
You are very lucky to be starting a company and thinking about purchasing a XL H1. I don't own a production company I just freelance and I shoot and edit video for a college.

Have you used the HVX and the XL H1?
If you are going to be doing the shooting also you might want to at least hold them both in person before you slap down the money.

Are you doing lots of green screen work?
If so the HVX is probably going to be better and easier to work with.
Even better would be the XL H1 using the cineform codec. This is about 2k extra thou.

I would recommend waiting on the camera purchase.
You should spend the money on yellow pages,website,brochures, etc. If you need something you can rent it. This is actually how a lot of production companies operate. If they love your work but want a varicam shoot then what?
Give them what they want and charge them for it.

What part of the country are you located?
If it is a small market then maybe you should buy the camera because usually they just care about the final product and don't put so many stipulations on your work.

If you are still up in the air about what platform to edit on,what cam to shoot, and what is the best workflow you should probably consult the hdforindies.com guy. He seems to lean toward macs but I would trust his advice. Also if you don't have a website,flyer,etc. Send me a pm and I can lead you in the right direction. This is a little something I am working on for my self. Link
 
thanks for the responces so far.

I'm living in Ireland which unfortunatly rules out some of your suggestions. There is nowhere that rents cameras of that calibre and similarly noboby sells them either!( I was actually considering offering the Xl H1 for rent as away of offsetting the cost.

I don't know much about Cineform, what's the performance supposed to be like?

I'll be using Macs with FCP HD almost exclusively, I not averse to trying other systems but I'm happy with the FCP workflow.

When I set out to start the company I was relatively certain that it was going to be the HVX 200 I would be getting, but I've since changed my mind for various reasons ( lack of a shoulder mounted/interchangable model being the death nail)
Also, the prohibative expensive of P2 figured in the decision

I have read differing opinions on HDV ( admittedly mostly from the DVXUser crowd, so maybe not the most Fair & Balanced). Generally not the best, perhaps someone can elaborate more?

And after all this there is things like the JVC HD100/200/250 which seem to be at a similar level to the XL H1, any thoughts?
 
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I think your XL-H1 option will be work great! However, I didn't put me away from other non-traditional cams like Silicon Imaging, for instance. It can be a good interchangeable bet for you!

EDIT -- I was there (JVC 720p too but away nowadays 'cause its lower resolution) and now my river goes in another direction... Precisely also 'cause Cineform 10-bit codec.
 
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okay the Canon XL H1 does sound like a great solution for your situation. Renting the camera out to others is a good idea. tape is not a bad thing overall. It is a very cheap backup system that works reliably over 99% of the time. the canonis perfect for your situation.
1. It's a Canon, it's big, it's hd, and it looks professional.
2. Very easy to backup your footage.
3. Very low storage requirements even if you edit in dvcprohd format.
4. You can get uncompressed if you do green screen work.
5. You can shoot 60i or 24f. Work arounds for 24f but still very doable. I also seen a test of Canon 1080i60 downconverted to slomo 720p60. remember varicam only does 720p60 and is upconverted and used in movies for some slomo scenes.
 
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