New User's First Impressions: John Ferrick (a.k.a. "Informer")
posted on DV-L 11/19/97
reprinted with permission

At the Video and Audio Show here in London, Optex had the XL1 and Canon had supplied them with a CD for sales support. Since this unit comes from the Photo Division of Canon and not the Video Division, there was considerable emphasis on the lens support, and there was a section about the fact that the older VLS lenses would not work with the XL1 but that the support for the EOS lenses was featured.

Again the unit I saw was pre-production, a unit with a paper label denoting "PAL" and mounted on a tripod plate that I could not realistically remove to read the serial number.

While I did not have a comprehensive list to follow I would make the following observations...

Considerable focus seemed to be placed on a very modern look to the unit, and, in my opinion, with mixed success.

The shoulder mount, this is a hinged pad on the back of the XL1, that in theory you swing down, and it is to give you shoulder support. The general opinion after using it is that it is a failure. The weight of the camera with the lens if centered far forward, and the shoulder pad, seems to be designed with the idea that you will pull the XL1 towards you and this will steady the camcorder. This got very tireing, and as far as I'm concerned was useless. After a while we found that we just folded the pad up, but then the rear would not sit on your shoulder.

The tape load and unload is a step backward from Sony and more in line with Panasonic's approach. You have a plastic cover that you open and then you manually unlock and move out the cassette. You come to appreciate the auto load and unload. The flap hinges back and is nowhere near the quality of the rest of the metal fabrication.

On the left side rear there is another flap that you open (also plastic) under which are the switches and knobs for the audio. This would make it impossible to vary the levels while looking thru the videwfinder, and are rather small and "consumer".

There is a small LCD VU meter that is by the handle, it is pretty small and at the show it was hard to read, but it is closer to your eye view than the system that Sony used on the VX1000 of putting it on the rear.

There is a sliding cover that you slide back in a circular fashion and it exposes the buttons for the menu selection. These are tiny and impossible to read the markings (over time I guess you would remember the location).

There is a rotation switch that selects the camera functions. Seems to work well, and is rear lit.

The lens is self-contained with the ND switch, steady shot, and the two rings that are for zoom and focus. These are continuous and do not have a hard stop and can be used independantly.

To change the lens you have to power off the camcorder. The only caution here is that this usually leads to broken time code when the tape is removed (the Watchdog notes: you can easily avoid this problem, see the article Not in Your XL1 Manual: Color Bars & Time Code).

The viewfinder is color, and on a non scientific basis appears to be equal to the VX 1000.

My impression overall was the move to interchangable lenses is great, but the school is still out on how the lower pixel-count CCD system will really test out, and the overemphasis on the look of the design made some tradeoffs against ergonimics.

If I seem pretty negative about the XL1, and a lot was based on an early prototype (which had paper labels) that I saw. A few points might be worth considering. I had a pretty frank off the record discussion with Canon and the point they made was that they were banking on the superior lens technology to carry them. Their view and obviously they would never admit it officially was that electronically the VX1000 was better, but optically the XL1 was better and the lens system was going to carry the day. Problem is, this is their first DV unit, and because of some strained relationships with Sony they have had to build their own transports, etc. They are bound to have teething problems. Their comment was that if you really want to see excellent images, put on an EOS lens.

(A couple of months later) I spent quite a bit of time with Joe Bogacz and Tim Smith of Canon at the Consumer Electronics Show. Joe had received Michael Pappas's call yesterday morning. They are extremely supportive of Mike... far better than what I have ever seen from Sony or Panasonic.

They are not the least bit upset with Mike Pappas. Joe said that in fact his group has not had a production unit to test, and that they had had Canon Japan send over one of their specialists to test some of the first units. At that time they did not notice the problem, but Joe has not been able to personally test a production unit. He is flying back to New York and will test a unit on Monday and report back on Tuesday (the Watchdog notes: Bogacz took the time and effort to fly out to California and meet with Pappas in person about this).

Mike Pappas's posts are in my opinon exactly what this forum is about. We, the early adaptors, have every right to inform the other early adaptors of anything we find, see, believe, hear etc. This open exchange is essential. More and more folks look to the internet as the major (and in some cases, the only) source of information about DV.

Here is a summary of my discussion with Joe (Bogacz) and Tim (Smith)...

While not officially stating as such, you would not get a denial that the CCD block and pixel shift system is from Panasonic and is probably the same unit (my guess) as the AG-EZ1. The lens resolves to about 600 horizontal lines, and the whole combo to 525. But this is the first time in using these type of components that it has been possible to get to this resolution and so we are on new ground. In the earlier L1/L2 series the lens systems (EOS) could get to the high level of resolution, but the rest of the chain could not. So at this stage Canon wants to look carefully at the whole process. Joe initially felt that the analog output came before the compression but on futher discussion he and I beleive that like the Sony it comes later. (If you look at time code on the analog out vs the frame number on the digital, at least on the VX1000, there is a frame delay). Also from a design standpoint, when you feed firewire in and need to get analog out, it is a simpiler design to tie the analog stage to the compression stage.

In fact, the pixel shift is both vertical and horizontal. But again this is the first time that the whole chain can even display over 500 lines (Sony claims the DV spec is capable of only 500 lines).

So in what is becomming fairly typical these days, the folks supporting the products, Joe and Tim, only get the production units after they have been shipped to the dealers (the Watchdog notes: Jan Crittenden Sherfy of Panasonic Broadcast Systems has publicly complained several times about this questionable corporate practice).

We went on to talk about other issues. Time code and user bits... seems that all the Big Guys really don't want this feature on their non-pro units, but Canon has no pro base to protect so perhaps a third party solution is possible. I am now aware that there is a "RM-95-like device" that Canon uses. But for now we are at ground zero here. I suggested that setting the user bits and start time was essential, also a need for a fool proof way to make sure the TC was continuous.

The audio: Joe will check into whether it is locked or not. I brought up the old Adobe, etc. issues of being able to use the extra audio tracks in NLE.

The physical layout and balance: There currently is only a prototype of the XLR extender that resolves the balance issue (the Watchdog notes: since the time this piece was written, the MA-100 XLR adaptor has gone into production and is available). Joe agrees with my comments about the camera's balance.

We discussed the ability of the transport to shift up to DV-CAM speeds. Not currently implemented.

We discussed the problems with clean endpoints on writes for assembly or inserts. Joe will look into whether or not the analog out has VITC (like Panasonic seems to be doing).

We talked about Canon's plans for a full motion DV capture using Adaptec. It seems it is in Adaptec's hands, but none of the majors seem to be comfortable yet with the state of the drivers for the Adaptec boards (I talked to Panasonic, Sony, Sharp, JVC and Canon). It is Canon's intention to have an upgrade in the software that is doing still frame capture to support for full motion.

Again, we need this type of open dialog, we need to be able to find problems and post them debate them. In my opinion there should not be any question of trying to move these type of issues off forum.

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Written by John Ferrick
Thrown together by Chris Hurd