I recently bought an XH A1 and have been having more fun than is usually humanly allowed!
I followed the advice in this forum, installed the presets, read the manual (actually enjoyed it!) and am getting some decent camera familiarity and good shots at this point.
BUT, I've had a bit of a crazy thing happen.
I set up my OLD standard def (Cannon Optura Xi) camera and my new A1 for a 2 camera shoot.
Surprisingly, the pictures matched well enough to get away with it.
When I reviewed the footage later on a DVD, the low def consumer camera actually looked better than the A1. The picture was clearly richer, with better contrast and the colors were better as well. (Resolutions wasn't as good of course, but was still OK.)
I went back and rerendered the project as an HDV file, and looked at it again.
This time the A1 clearly looked far better and richer!
So, what I'm saying SEEMS to be happening is that when I render a high def project to DVD in Vegas, the high def picture suffers, and the standard def picture does not!
Does anyone else know why this happens?
I'd hate for my new high def camera and Vegas to not produce a superior DVD to my old consumer camera. (I found the exact same thing happens when rendered in Vegas to WMV.)
As far as my setup: I'm using Vegas 6, and the cineform intermediate to edit.
Thanks!

Hi Walt. I'm not really surprised by your findings, although many people will claim otherwise. (Wait for the responses). My old XL2 produced significantly better video than the A1 does after downconverting to SD DVD.

There are sampling theorems that prove that high res images will provide better quality after downsampling than what you get from SD native resolution, but these seem to be based on the assumption that all samples are equal. From what I see, the pixels on the A1 are smaller and noisier than those on the XL2 so the samples are not equal at all.

Since HD is the way of the future, you will no doubt get good use of your A1 in time. If you are delivering in SD, the thing to do is make full use of the A1's flexibility and custom presets, so you can get the best image possible for any lighting situation.

Richard

Hi Richard,

Former XL2 owner (great camera), now XHA1, have you done comparisons between the XL2 and XHA1 while shooting SD with the A1? Just curious of the result.

Kevin

Nothing wrong the HD source, is it a setup error in Vegas. See my post here : http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=848371&postcount=2

Nothing wrong the HD source, is it a setup error in Vegas. See my post here : http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=848371&postcount=2


Thanks for all the great advice!
I don't see a "studio RGB to computer RGB filter" in the Vegas 6 filters?
Can you give me a slightly more step by step?
Again, thanks!
Walt

Studio RGB to computer RGB is a preset within the Levels filter. I think this is an interesting discussion that I hadn't noticed before. I too think that my HDV footage is very washed out after capturing, editing, redering and burning to SD DVD with Vegas Pro 8 and DVD Architect 4.5.
I'm busy for a month now to tune the right preset in my cam that doesn't produce that washed out footage. So it is possible that my footage isn't washed out at all but that it's Vegas that MAKES it washed out.