Hello, I am considering the purchase of an XL H1 and I will apologize ahead of time for the fact that I am at the beginning of what will no doubt be a LONG learning curve...frame rates, 1080i, etc mean absolutely nothing to me......I went to the Watchdog site, and while it listed frame rates I did not see an explanation (perhaps I missed it) of what the different frame rates were for.....I did a search here typing in "Frame Rates" and found 57 posts, but none of them seemed to answer my question....

I am not necessarily looking for all the answers to be given to me here, but if there is a good resource out there that people can point me at, I am more than happy to read and learn elsewhere.

My basic questions are...
1) What are the advantages and disadvantages of the different frame rates?

2) I am a wildlife videographer...sometimes my subjects are fairly static, sometimes they are moving fast (i.e. running animals, birds in flight, wingflapping, etc.)......which of the different frame rates will do the best job of capturing images where there is fast movement? (and why?)

3) Currently I am shooting an XL1S and for instance with birds in flight I get alot of "ghosting" in terms of the wing movement....will I also get that with the XL H1 at whichever the best frame rate setting for fast movement is?

4) I have one of the original Mac G5 towers (not with the new chip architecture)....is that up to the task of editing the HD footage from the XL H1? (I am editing in Final Cut Pro)

5) I have hundreds of hours of footage shot on my XL 1S....will I be able to mix this older footage with the new footage from the XL H1 and still get a pleasing final result?

6) Last but not least, I have FCP 4.5 HD.....will it edit XL H1 footage or do I need an upgrade?

Thanks to all ahead of time.....in trying to sort through this information with my own lack of knowledge about this, I feel kind of like someone who can't swim who was thrown into the pond....

Thanks,
John

1)The short answer is frame rates give a different feel to the footage. 24f feels a little more film like. 60i feels a little more tv/doc like. 30f is sort of a mixture fo the two, but I would say feels more cinematic then sports oriented.

2) This is purely personal preference I think. my guess is you'll like the 60i a little bit better for getting closer to "real" life. But if you're shooting the sequel to winged migration you may prefer the 24f or 30f mode.

3)I'm not sure what you mean by ghosting. My guess is motion blur. If you want to decrease your motion blur, make your shutter speed faster. This applies to any camera.

4) Yes it can do it. the HDV footage is really the same bit rate as DV footage, so it should handle it without too much difficulty. However your video card MAY need upgrading.

5) "Pleasing result" is kinda a subjective term. If you're sending out an SD product then, yeah, totally they should cut well together. If you're trying to output to HD then I would say there will eb anoticable difference between the xl1s and the h1.

6) Yes you'll need to upgrade to 5.1 to edit 24f HD footage natively. ALternately you could downconver to DV out of the camera and keep the 4.5 but you'll only be working in SD.

Good luck! Another advantage of the h1 is you cna pop the ef to xl adapter on the camera and get some really long lens shots which I'm told is great for wildlife shooters.

Hi Nick. What is the ef to xl adapter. Telephoto extender? What are the specs for ordering.
Thanks
Chris

Chris the adapter allows you to mount any Canon EF lenses to an XL body. Since the sensor size of the XL camera line is much smaller than that of a 35mm camera, the EF lenses become 'telephoto' by default to a factor of approximately 7x I believe. So take any standard EF lens, mount it on an XL body and multiply the focal length by 7. A 50mm 'normal' lens becomes a 350mm telephoto.

Also I believe a dvinfo user is selling an ef to xl adapter in the private classifieds right now.

3) Currently I am shooting an XL1S and for instance with birds in flight I get alot of "ghosting" in terms of the wing movement....will I also get that with the XL H1 at whichever the best frame rate setting for fast movement is?
John, I think you are referring to wing flicker or strobing.
The way to deal with it is to shoot at 1/60 sec or 1/120sec.
For slow motion I prefer to shoot 60i or 1080i (do a search for the technique),
BTW the slow motion will also eliminate the mentioned flicker.