PowerShot S1 IS video clips VGA 30fps

[Chris Hurd]

Howdy from Texas,

I've been requested to post some sample movie mode clips from the Canon PowerShot S1 IS. This 3mp digicam is a bit different than all others in that its movie mode in VGA quality (640x480) at a full thirty frames per second (30fps). There is no time limit on the length of the clip; you can record one hour in a single shot if you had a CF card with enough capacity.

I had only a 256mb CF card and due to upload restraints, my sample clips are not very long. The first is only 17 seconds and was shot in QVGA mode (320x240) at 30fps. It is 11.3mb in size. This was shot handheld, my apologies for the unsteadiness of the shot.

http://www.dvinfo.net/media/hurd/MVI_0758.AVI

The second clip is 37 seconds and was shot is VGA "fine" mode (640x480, best quality setting as opposed to "normal" VGA) at 30fps. It is 68.6mb in size. I used a little mini-tripod for this shot.

http://www.dvinfo.net/media/hurd/MVI_0764.AVI

Please download these clips to your computer first and open locally from your own hard drive. Please don't open them directly from the server! Otherwise you'll choke the poor thing.

About the clips: we had a Texas springtime shower this afternoon and a couple of snails came out afterwards to prowl along my front walkway. When the bricks are wet, they can move around quite well!

These are .AVI files using motion-JPEG encoding and should open fine in Windows Media Player, WinAmp or other viewers. Let me know what you think please. Enjoy,

[Simon Fenton]

Chris,

Without a doubt these clips prove that "movie mode" is rapidly nearing the quality of DV. Pretec now have a CF card available in 12 Gig capacity, (alas very expensive!), - incidentaly the capacity of a DV tape is also 12 gig.

How much manual control do you have over focus, aperture, color balance etc?

thanks for uploading the clips.

[Rob Lohman]

See also the original thread Simon.

I'm interested in what the camera can do as well. You can
download a brochure, Quick Start guide and instruction manual
and software guide at the Canon site.

[Michael Sinclair]

I was telling my wife about this camera. We own an A-70. I got her into digital and she can hold her own now in a conversation. I was surprised when this cam came out. The fact that it will white balance, auto exposure and zoom while filming video. 10x zoom like a video camera. The lenz stabilizer. Amazing. Then I read that people who bought I believe a Rio 4bg Mp3 player were using the micro drive in it in their Canon cameras. Rio stopped the ability to do that in june. Someoen will crack that code soon. People were getting a 4GB drive for 180 bucks then putting the old CF card in the mp3 player and still had a working 512mb mp3 player. Amazing how the technology is changing. I just bought an Optura 300. Will be here Monday. Professionals on this site rated that cam as awesome in it's class. Building a new AMD 64 machine with 2Gb of ram and a great video card to process my stills and video. Plextor DVD burner. I know Macs are better for media but the kids want video games too ;) BTW, My A-70 gave me 15 months of video clips that I would have never had. Pretty clear ones too.

[Kin Kwan]

Hi Chris, Thanks for uploading those clips for us! Now we can get 35mm DOF without using any 35mm adapters. (correct me if I'm wrong)

I was wondering if the videos were recompressed or were they taken straight off of the CF card. The compression quality seemed a little bit poor. Also, can you post a clip with a shallow DOF. It'd be nice to see some of that in action.

[Michael Sinclair]

Chris, can you post a clip in the original canon avi format (if that is what the cam has). My Canon drivers will probably play it since I have the A-70. Maybe a 10 second clip in best quality. My video compressors always make the quality less from my A-70 clips.

[Chris Hurd]

The wife and I are out-and-around today, lots to do in town, but I'll take care of these requests later this weekend.

[Frank Roberts]

In order to get 35mm DOF, the chip size must be one inch. the ccd in the Powershot is .37

[Michael Sinclair]

My wife has a laptop. I wonder what would happen if I walked around with the Optura 300 with fire wire on my wife's laptop. I have Premiere but am so new that I never really used it. I know Macs are better, but I have to work with what I have. Can I get even higher quality video through the laptop?

[Kent Nichols]

<<<-- Originally posted by Michael Sinclair : My wife has a laptop. I wonder what would happen if I walked around with the Optura 300 with fire wire on my wife's laptop. I have Premiere but am so new that I never really used it. I know Macs are better, but I have to work with what I have. Can I get even higher quality video through the laptop? -->>>

Using the Firewire output from the Optura won't be any better than going direct to tape. The laptop would essentially be a device like a Firestore DV hard drive. To get the higher resolution from the Optura you'd need to take multiple stills in the Megapixel range, which is something completely different.

-Kent

[Michael Sinclair]

Thanks Kent. I am new at all of this. I was wondering though about putting the camera in still picture mode and then using a video program to capture it in video. I saw that a few folks on here were speaking about that. I believe that some members were speaking about the Optura capturing sort of high definition video this way. I have the Optura 300 now and will experiment with it some. I'll try to post some of it somewhere. As I read the forums over the next few months, I hope to learn as much as possible. I will be 40 this month and I need a good hobby to play with as I get old and arthritic ;) The thread where mention is made of the firewire ability is below. Johanne Adler and Steve Nunez experimented with the Optura 300 this way.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21421&highlight=optura+300

[Kent Nichols]

<<<-- Originally posted by Michael Sinclair : Thanks Kent. I am new at all of this. I was wondering though about putting the camera in still picture mode and then using a video program to capture it in video. I saw that a few folks on here were speaking about that.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21421&highlight=optura+300 -->>>

Right, but that sort of thing isn't realtime, you could shoot stills in series, which could be pieced together to create HD res video, but it wouldn't be anything like sync sound. But for fun things like time lapse and homebrew motion control it's way cool.

These forums are at the vanguard of video imaging. Good luck and have fun.

-Kent

[Kin Kwan]

Actually, what Michael's talking about is true. You can connect your (megapixel) camcorder into your laptop/pc through firewire, use a capturing program (Premiere, FCP, or even WinDV), and capture FULL resolution video with no interlacing artifacts.

I've tested this with my Optura 20 and it works. I'm very sure that it'll work for the Optura 300 also.

[Kent Nichols]

<<<-- Originally posted by Kin Kwan : Actually, what Michael's talking about is true. You can connect your (megapixel) camcorder into your laptop/pc through firewire, use a capturing program (Premiere, FCP, or even WinDV), and capture FULL resolution video with no interlacing artifacts.

I've tested this with my Optura 20 and it works. I'm very sure that it'll work for the Optura 300 also. -->>>


SWEET!

-Kent

[Jef Bryant]

"You can connect your (megapixel) camcorder into your laptop/pc through firewire, use a capturing program (Premiere, FCP, or even WinDV), and capture FULL resolution video with no interlacing artifacts."

Wait, doesn't it just capture at dv resolution (720x480 downsampled from the larger image) from the firewire, or am I misunderstanding something here?