I ended up printing a page with all the presets listed with name/number and description that I carry around in the camera bag for reference.

I also ran into the number limitation and just renamed the presets higher than 20 to a lower number, and put a few of the overflow into the camera preset section, which has 9. (but 7-9 are locked)

So you can have 29 presets in total I believe. (if you count the locked 7-9)

Trish

The trick is to carry around a second SD card containing another volume of twenty presets.

Gad
it's embarrising how smart some of the
little quips you come up with are Chris...lol.

That was a good one.

All the best,

David

hello,
i have found another preset...made with a vectorscope.

http://www.fxsupport.de/20.html

i will compare it to steven's vividrgb.

I don't seem to be alone in having problems loading the vivid preset. I only have 18 on the SD card at present and they all load fine. Even if I rename Vivid to 01 instead of 30 it still doesn't load.

Any Ideas?

The file could be messed up. I think I may have had trouble with the final vividgrb preset and just entered the values into an available slot manually. The values are posted on one of these final pages - I can't recall if I did that because i needed another slot or that particular preset just wasn't loading properly

trish

Just got my A1 this evening -wow - lots to learn.

I Downloaded the .cpf files to my Mac, created a new folder on the SD card called PRESET and stuffed them in. After puttting the card back in my A1 all the presets were immediately available. Got to love this forum and all the folks that have contributed.

I can't open the files on my Mac for some reason?

You don't "open" the .CPF files on a Mac or a PC. You open them in your XH A1.

I can't open the files on my Mac for some reason?

You might want to try this nice little app:

http://www.felixtheissen.com/apps/Web-Site/custom%20presets%20editors%20for%20mac%20and%20win.html

Does anyone have the actual presets list? I tried downloading these and they won't open.

PRESET05.CPF "LOWLT12" is for shooting in low light with 12db gain.

What are the exact presets for each so I can do it manually?

Thanks!

All of the settings are listed in detail, in the Excel spreadsheet in the first post of this thread.

It looks like the DVX is crushing the blacks more than the A1. It favors the Canon to my eye. It seems the Canon could be getting a larger lattitude. It also appears that the blue in the sky and greens in the trees are darker on the DVX despite the fact that the white vehicles look closer to blown out on the DVX. This points to more contrast on the DVX (or less lattitude.) I like the fact that the Canon is resolving more shadow detail and higlight detail to my eye. I do large-fomat printing for a living so color comparisons are always interesting to me...

-Jonathan
One fundamental thing your forgetting is that the DVX100 here (in this case) is NTSC (411)
More than likely the A1 footage your seeing is HDV or downscaled HDV... (420)either way, its a different colour space, UNLESS both images are shot in DV mode on both cameras..

Another thing to note is the DVX is NOT a native 16:9 cam, so 25% of the CCD isnt in use, therefore its not taking in as much light, or resolving as many pixels as teh A1. Hence the lack of sharpness and gamma lattitude.

Dont get me wrong, the A1 is a brilliant tool, but when comparing one must be sure to be accurate in all aspects

here's a bit of custom preset sample footage:

http://www.planetestudios.com/bhutan.html

the first is panalook, the second vividgrb, and the third is my own preset memory...

a note: from shooting around in bhutan, memory looks best if you have some dramatic colors, there is a lot of red and orange in the bhutanese landscape, so the footage i shoot using it looked awesome. also, it helps to blow the highlights a bit....

Very interesting thread! I've only had my A1 for a week, screwed up my first shoot due to taking lights but not being able to figure how to use the machine (had EOS 5D brain on) but that may have been a good thing as it spurred me on to really get to know this machine. To be honest I was a bit scared of all the tweaks but after reading this thread and playing with the A1's custom settings have started to fall in love with it!

Anyway, what puzzles me is why Canon don't do what they do for us EOS users with DPP software and have a bunch of standard settings (eg, portrait, landscape etc etc) on the web site.

Top thread and very, very useful!
:)

Mike

Thanks to all those who set up and made the presets available. Great stuff.

Just one thing. I've got the PAL manual and the instructions for loading the presets is on Page 77 of my book.

Actually, once I finaly figured out that I didn't really need to load them but simply access them straight from the card, all became blindingly clear.

Once I've settled on six favourites I'll load them in the camera and keep the rest on the SD card.

Once again, thanks. This is a fantastic resource and I hope some day to be able to add something to it myself.

I can't seem to download the Excel file.

What gives?

I can't seem to download the Excel file.

What gives?

That's like telling a mechanic, "My car doesn't work. What's wrong with it?"

Can you elaborate so someone can help you?

Bill

I got it now.

It was easy and they look great. Can't wait to test them.

Thanks Chris!

Thanks to all who give such excellent advice. I am very glad I joined this group.

Just made the Vividgrb stettings in my almost brandnew A1 and wow, what a difference to the normal settings.

From Holland,
Henk

Hi folks,

I'm still trying to pick my favorite custom presets and have made some images to help: A1 videos, A1 stills and a still from a still camera (Panasonic DMC-KZ7).

I picked a scene with a mix of grays, natural colors and paint. Each preset in the video lasts for two seconds. There are labels to identify them (and no audio).

http://www.singularproductions.com/presets.wmv

The stills are here:

http://www.singularproductions.com/presets_stills.zip

Bruce

Bruce, thanks for posting the samples. I am a newbie and i'll tell ya I would be lost with my a1 if it wasn't for this site and all of the awesome people here willing to share their info with us. I can't wait to get home and load these presets and get to playing around filming my 6 yr olds birthday party today. Thanks to everyone for all the hard work. This site is awesome.
chuck

Revisions of my two presets if anyone cares...

JCDVday1 - Matches the color of my Sony HC1 cameras. Tweaked from the old one I posted a while back. Now its good in low light with addition of camera light or stage lights.
www.jcdv.com/PRESET/PRESET02.CPF

JCDVlow1 - My best attempt at a really low light preset. I have to tweak some in post such as contrast, levels and/or some saturation... but its a good base. I constructed this in a room with only a computer monitor with white background (like dvinfo site) as the only light source.
www.jcdv.com/PRESET/PRESET03.CPF

so..if I don't have a card reader...am I out of luck for loading these presets on to my card until I get a card reader? or is there a way to hook the camera up to the computer with the card in the camera.....?

Hi Jeremiah, there's bad news and good news. The bad news is yes you must have an SD card reader, there's no other way (except for Canon's $600 Console software). The good news is that SD card readers are dirt cheap ($10 to $20) and are available anywhere (Wal-Mart, Radio Shack, Best Buy, maybe even Walgreens)... there's no excuse not to have one for your XH camcorder.

saweet!!!...thanks for the good news chris...on my way to the 24hr. walmart!

A card reader is just a lot more convienient & a must have... but it IS possible to access any downloaded preset by using either one of the two tweaking programs mentioned here in the forums (the two freebies... not Console) without having a reader.

Just open them from your hard drive using one of the programs & it will show you the settings. You'll just have to spend time "copying" the settings manually in the Custom Preset menu, which can take some time.

Bill

hey jerome, thanks for posting. i've been meaning to get around to tweaking a low light setting but it's currently about #1,048,479 on my to-do list. this should be fun to play with, thanks.

Since I usually am retrieving information from an SD card instead of putting info in, I do not own a card reader, i.e., I always use the device to read the card. So, to make it very simple. Go into your A1 custom preset screen and copy the first Default preset from camera to SD card. Once you do that, the camera will automatically create the "PRESET" folder. After this, simply turn your A1 dial to "Ext Control". Have it hooked to your firewire first of course, then download all the presets to your desktop. Open "My computer" and you will see "Canon Camera device" as another drive (something like that anyway). Click on this to open it. You will see a Folder....mine didn't show the name PRESET, but it was the PRESET folder, I just seen a picture of a folder. I then right click on the preset I downloaded from the desk top and COPY that file. I then right click on that folder PRESET. Choose "Paste into this folder"...and there you go..your preset is added. You CANNOT drag and drop for some reason. But if you copy and paste, it works perfectly. Did all presets within about 8 minutes.

Need a little help again. I am going to be filming in a musical studio with good indoor lighting and wanted an opinion on a custom preset for indoors. I have been using the vivid and panalook for outdoor shots and they are awesome. I have not been to the studio yet but was told lighting should not be a problem at all. I appreciate all the help.

I have just been experimenting with some of the custom presets posted here, and some are very good - others can be safely left out.

My question is, what adavantage do the presets offer?. Surely wouldn't it be better to make any adjustments in your NLE app. Using Premiere and a Matrox RTX2 card I can save any permutation and apply it to any clip. In stills photography we shoot in RAW and apply post production to the images, shouldn't we do the same with SD/HD video?

Or am I missing some vital point.

Thanks

It's basically a time-saver, to avoid having to do this process in post... for example, same-day edits in wedding videography.

Thanks Chris,

The point I was trying to bring to the fore is, once you have made your corrections to the actual video, would it affect any future post production work.

As I mentioned in my post, for stills photography we shoot in RAW format, this means nothing has been added to the file (sharpening, colour boost, jpeg compression etc.) so we have a open file on which we can apply all the corrections.

Going back to the video question, if we apply any custom presets to the video, have we in effect taken the quality off track should we want to apply any other adjustment in post. For example, if I sharpen the movie in a preset, then surely that has been applied to the file (video) and my options in post are therefore limited as far as sharpening are concerned.

From your answer, it would seem that a custom preset is a handy quick fix solution, but may limit future post production tweaks. Or have I got this wrong.

Thanks

In my opinion it is better to get as close to your desired look while shooting with the A1 rather than adding effects in post. Why? Well for one, rendering time is already stretched when rendering HDV, adding effects will only add to this time, and I believe canon's color adjustments are very good in the camera, so why wait and do it in post? You can still make those same changes in post with a little work if you are not satisfied with what you have shot. Unless you are shooting some kind of preset that is extremely unusual and maybe hard to duplicate, I would certainly recommend using a preset over the NLE, especially with the wonderful presets provided by some darn fine users here on DVinfo.net. One example would be Steven Dempsey's presets..They are great. But, I find them all unique and could see me using any of them at one time or another. Just my 2 cents. J

Hi Jeremiah, there's bad news and good news. The bad news is yes you must have an SD card reader, there's no other way (except for Canon's $600 Console software). The good news is that SD card readers are dirt cheap ($10 to $20) and are available anywhere (Wal-Mart, Radio Shack, Best Buy, maybe even Walgreens)... there's no excuse not to have one for your XH camcorder.

Here's a quick suggestion if you don't have a card reader and it's past closing time for any store that might sell one. Most of us have PDAs around that we use for other things and most PDAs use SD cards or at least have a slot for them. I used my HP Ipaq PDA by connecting it with the sync cord and dragging the preset files to the SD Card in the Ipaq using file explorer. Then just transfer the card to the camera and bam you have PRESET!

Lately I have used Steve Dempsey's Vivid preset finding the colors vivid and life like, though I do enjoy the Bleach Bypass preset as well. Just got back from a week trip and my new Vegas 7 was waiting for me. Soon I will actually have some samples to post. Weeeee....

Some of the presets from the DVInfo library are raising some questions for me.

"AC PREF1" - Who is Alister Chapman and what about his preferred settings make them good for everyone else?

"5248FILM", "5296FILM" - What about these film stocks makes them discernable? I mean, what films or scenes have a look characteristic of these stocks?

"AVGFILM" - Define the "average" film stock.

"TERRA1" - Described as a "soft" image. Is this the kind of look one could use for a vintage look, or for something more surreal? (Such as the restroom scene in Casino Royale when Bond is poisoned. Could that be done with a preset, or would a lens filter be the way to go on that one? Kind of looks like AfterEffects to me.)

I apologize if any of this sounds trivial.

Doesn't sound trivial; just sounds like you haven't done your homework. As I've explained here many times before, these presets are *translations* of existing XL H1 presets (and very rough translations at that (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=587836&postcount=2)).

Alister Chapman is a DV Info Net regular (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/member.php?u=22364) and an XL H1 owner who created a series of XL H1 presets for his own personal use, and graciously chose to share them with his fellow DV Info Net members. As to what he meant by "average" film stock, or for that matter any of his other presets, you're better off asking him directly. You'll find him in our XL H1 forum.

Same thing for the author of the Terra 1 and 2 presets -- Luis de la Cerda has an entire thread dedicated to those presets, it's located at http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=66581

The whole point of sharing these roughly translated XL H1 presets with the XH crowd is just to give a little idea of what's possible through some experimentation. They were never intended to be anything more than that. If you're thinking, what should I use these for, then the answer is that you shouldn't be using them for anything because they were never created for the XH camcorders to begin with.

They're intended only to motivate XH owners to create their *own* custom presets.

Hope this helps,

An even better answer than I had hoped for. Thanks, Chris.

I've been using the presets on my A1 with great results, as I think others on the boards have been doing. Is that bad, or am I just too lazy to make my own?

Nothing wrong with that, Ben -- those three included presets were put there for a reason!

I didn't have any trouble getting the 18 initial presets onto my SD card a few months ago, but I put PRESET25 (VIVIDRGB) on there today (in the PRESET folder) and it's not showing up in my camera. They still just go to 18. Did I do something wrong?

Valid preset names go from PRESET01.CPF on up to PRESET20.CPF so you need to re-name that file.

So is there any way to open Excel and dial in a preset, and then save it as a .CPF and put it on my SD card? I haven't been able to find a thread that describes this process yet.

EDIT: Disregard that. I'm using XHTuner instead.

Hey there,

So after a couple of requests, here is a CPF file of my bleach bypass preset, called simply "BleachBP".

In case you can't read CPF files, I'm also including the settings in Excel format and a link to the original post.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=86026

Enjoy.

Revisions of my two presets if anyone cares...

JCDVday1 - Matches the color of my Sony HC1 cameras. Tweaked from the old one I posted a while back. Now its good in low light with addition of camera light or stage lights.
www.jcdv.com/PRESET/PRESET02.CPF

JCDVlow1 - My best attempt at a really low light preset. I have to tweak some in post such as contrast, levels and/or some saturation... but its a good base. I constructed this in a room with only a computer monitor with white background (like dvinfo site) as the only light source.
www.jcdv.com/PRESET/PRESET03.CPF

Hi Jerome.
Thanks for sharing HC1 preset(JCDVday) and I used it indoor, good skin tone comparable to my PD170, outdoor I haven't tried. For your HC1 settings(color, contrast etc), can you share me those for my friend's HC1? We're planning to shoot short film using both cameras.

Thanks,
Nathan

Hi Jerome.
Thanks for sharing HC1 preset(JCDVday) and I used it indoor, good skin tone comparable to my PD170, outdoor I haven't tried. For your HC1 settings(color, contrast etc), can you share me those for my friend's HC1? We're planning to shoot short film using both cameras.

Thanks,
Nathan
No problem... on the HC1, set the camera color to +2 and sharpness to +2...

I currently film hunting videos and as the light changes from high to low light or vise-versa I would like to have presets that would make it easier for my wife to push so her video stays corrected. Does anyone have presets that would make this easier for her to use the camera with less adjusting? I would really appreciate any help here.

Steven,

On your VividRGB preset you use the Cine 1 gama and on the Panalook, Cine 2. Should the frame rate for the camera be set at 30f and 24 respectively when using these presets?

James

James, the frame rate has no influence on the preset. It is only changing the "look", not the cadence.

Wow! That was a fast answer! I appreciate your advice and your wonderful "leadership" in the area of presets. Also, congratulations on the beautiful movies on your site - now I have someting to shoot for.... Thanks.