Just received an email from canon with a link to a survey for GL/XL users. The survey is 3 pages and slants heavily toward the HD question. It also allows for the users to input their own opinions and suggestions about the future of the XL/GL line. In addition they are offering a neat little portfolio/media attache with a canon logo pen, for all who participate; a nice little perk for being a dedicated user.

I imagine that this is for those who are XL club members, but do not know for sure. Just thought I would drop the info for all to view.

Dick Steele
RareSeed Pictures

That's very interesting information, Dick. Thank you for giving us the heads-up.

Of course it also suggests that Canon may still only be in the earliest stages of planning successors to their XL1s and GL2. If this is true (and it may not be) we will not be seeing new products from them for more than 12-18 months.

Ken penned:

"Of course it also suggests that Canon may still only be in the earliest stages of planning successors to their XL1s and GL2. If this is true (and it may not be) we will not be seeing new products from them for more than 12-18 months."

Sigh....what a let down!

If updated pro-cams are but a glimmer on Canon's Snooze-ometer, then the Panasonic DVC30 may be the "GL3" for me to purchase in 2004!

http://panasonic.co.jp/bsd/sales_o/02products/products/ag-dvc30/ag-dvc30.html

Dorothy

I won't pretend to know what's going on at Canon, but allow me to present a speculative opinion on the matter. As Ken points out, and as I've said elsewhere on these boards, design concepts generally require 12 to 18 months to reach the market. That's for the clay mock-ups to become wooden models, then plastic molds, tooling processes, etc. to the final pre-production MT samples. However, we're talking about body designs here. The software guts of the thing... feature sets of the electronic innards, and so on... are usually the last stage (in order to incorporate the most recent technologies and so on). If Canon is fishing for user input, that might actually imply that the body castings are done and now they're choosing and programming the chip sets and internal menus and such. Some user input regarding desires such as 2/3rd-inch CCD's, full-size tape transports, etc. may be discarded if the body shape and dimensions are in fact already set, but other input regarding electronic features may be exactly what they're looking for and easily incorporated into the existing design (assuming there is one). In short, my own best *guess* is that an XL1S replacement may in fact be much farther along and coming sooner than we're suspecting here... perhaps within 6 to 12 months instead of 12 to 18.

And I agree wholeheartedly with Dorothy, the forthcoming Panasonic AG-DVC30 looks like a knock-out. I've got my eye on it myself. Hope this helps,

I'm betting we'll see the XL2 announced in February or March 2003 and arrive 2-3 months later--my only basis being the deadline for the XL1s rebate.

I aint no expert, and I surely don’t have any Canon connections, but it just seems like releasing the XL2 in 2005 doesn’t make any sense, especially when you stop and think that the DVX100A is out now. The DVX100A would kill the XL1s sales for an entire year IF Canon waits until 2005. (On the message boards no one is even considering whether or not they should get an XL1s or a DVX100A, it’s only whether or not to get a DVX100A or a PD170.)My bet is that the XL2 will be out either in April, or mid summer of 2004.

Chris,
With the greatest of respect for your expertise I venture to ask if these electronics companies design a body first and then try to figure out what to put into it. Shouldn't it be the other way around, work out the internal workings and then build a body for it all to go into?

Of course the auto industry often comes up with a body design and then ends up putting an under-powered engine and inadequate suspecsion in it initially, but most everyone else designs things from the inside out. At least I think that's how it usually works. But I'm no engineer, I'm just a consumer.

At any rate, what a burst of hope your comment brought that all the lights are not out at the Cannon design shop.

Nick

Nick,
As ridiculous as it may seem, the field of industrial design does indeed operate bass-ackwards quite often. I have no insight specifically into cameras but I do know that most other consumer products are designed and developed from the outside-in. That's why, for example, manufacturers so often parade non-working models through trade shows months before the real product is available.

Of course this process makes the job of engineering the innards much more challenging.

Nick, Ken said it best, and if it's any consolation, I verified with CUSA back in '99 that the original XL1 had enough room inside to accomodate hypothetical native 16x9 chips. They actually do the outer shell design first, and then pack the inside. Sounds bass-ackwards as Ken points out, but they do know what they're doing. Chipsets often change by the month, so those are the last components to go in. It's a science they've been perfecting since they got into camcorder design back in the '80's. Hope this helps (and hopefully the new stuff will show up sooner rather than later).

And, what if it is all bait? I'm trying to be optomistic here, so bear with me. What if they already know exactly what the camera will be, and they are just searching for some reassurance? I do believe, as the others, that they know exactly what they are doing! I don't know much about the business of designing and producing a new camera, but I do know that deception is a tool of the trade. I can only hope that they will deceive us all! Here's to the XL2 (if that's what they call it!)...surprise and anticipation are beautiful and tedious things, let us all embrace them as best we can!

The kind of survey that Canon is distributing could be a "verification" study; instead of looking for "ground floor" customer feedback, someone in the company is trying to verify that they've made the right design decisions (or to make a last-minute plea to change some design decisions.)

In any event, I wouldn't assume that this survey means that Canon is 12 to 18 months away from announcing its next-generation cameras.

Best wishes,
Len Feldman
Riverbend Entertainment

<<<-- Originally posted by J. Clayton Stansberry : I do believe, as the others, that they know exactly what they are doing! -->>>


Do they? I ask cause this whole HDV thing sounds a little dodgy to me. I mean sure, noone's gonna stop it now, but MPG2 editing is the worst in my experience. And MPG2 encoding? Is that really going to be good enough for independent filmmakers? There must be something I don't know about the HDV standard - does anyone have any good links that talk about these things and how they're solved with moderm technology/software etc?

Oops- sorry to branch a little OT.

Thanks
Aaron

I suggest that we get away from the crutch of tape master, get rid of the transport and the tape; go straight out ( via firewire 800+) to a HD and have a switchable compression selector that allow MPEG2, DV, HD and totally uncompressed. My god, you got to think out of the box; if the tape (MINI/FULL) can only recieve some 5:1 compressed data for DV, then they reconfigure it to output HDV to tape, that is Messed up. Just get rid of the tape all together. No CD/DVD/Tape just pure data on a harddrive, it is digital for god sake. Back it up onto a DVD and forget about it. Oh and no more tape running out, getting eaten, F 'ed up, or otherwise. Harddrive are cheap.

Just a thought,

Dick Steele
RareSeed Pictures

The current HD cam is switchable to plain DV (ofcourse you loose
the higher resolution then).

Aaron, I always felt the same about mpeg use and editing. BUT,
they are only storing full frames. So it is actually more like
MJPEG within an MPEG structure (not technically sound this, but
you get the idea). Which is not far from what DV is actually using.
So I can't imagine it would be that hard to incorporate in the
current NLE systems.

The JVC has a 6 frame GOP, I think, so it's not as bad as DVD which generally has a 15 frame GOP, but it's certainly not storing individial frames. It needs the 6 frame GOP to get a watchable HD picture out of 18mbs.

Graeme

Really? I thought it had a 1 frame GOP. Hmmm, someone has
some link to actual technical information on this? If that's true
then I'm not liking it one bit...

Yeah then it comes back to my original question I guess. Where can we get info about this?

With Dv25 being 25MBits, at 1 gop that would be 1Mbit per frame for PAL, which is 131k roughly. Now that's not much bandwidth for a 720x576 frame to go into and it's about 25x more than an uncompressed 24bit frame. So, the mpeg would have to get 25:1 compression. Can it get that and still look good enough for indy filmmakers?

Maybe my understanding is buggered but it seems like it's going to suck if there isn't 1 frame GoPs.

I'm going to keep searching for info on this as I would have thought that the big companies involved in HDV would have wanted to increase the quality of image aquisition for independent filmmakers so that they make more films, rather than lower it or keep it the same. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe by making this HDV standard they're hoping it will force more people to consider higher end cameras once they've had a taste of some form of HD....Wouldn't have thought so though.


Aaron

I cant find any links atm but i think you'll find its a 6frame GOP.

I feel that its the MPEG2 over compression for the HD10 that is fairly big show stopper. Plus MPEG2 being lossy. If they were all I frames and higher bitrates (say 25 or 30mb/s) then it'd be most likely workable.

But i'm a seeker of quality myself and to me MPEG2 is a delivery codec not a master/capture one and i really am not keen that HDV has gone that way. Especially when we are on the brink of MUCH better compression codecs that are much easiler edited (MPEG4 varients! XviD/WM9 etc etc).

Just imagine using WMV9 (yeah M$ i'm not keen on but they have a decen codec just teh same) with 720p50/60 in a HD Cam. They could use miniDV tapes as with the HD10. But instead of an ~18mb/s MPEg2 stream they could have a 15mb/s WM9/MPEG4 stream with all K frames (or which ever ones they are, you get my point) just as with DV. Plus 15mb/s bitrate for newer codecs is actaully over saturation bitrate which is what we need for quality. Plus you could fit more minutes on your miniDV tape....

So its stumped me why JVC really went that way even tho its "workable" its really not very future conscious AFAIC.

/end rant :)

Well, according to this PDF (http://pro.jvc.com/pro/attributes/HDTV/brochure/jyhd10bro.pdf[/url) on the JY-HD10 from the JVC Pro site,
the following is the case:

HD, MPEG-2 TS(GOP=6)
Recording mode: 720/30p(16:9)

SD, MPEG-2 TS(GOP=12)
Recording mode: 480/60p(16:9)

So it seems to be either an 6 or 12 GOP structure, depending on
the mode you selected. I almost can't believe it. This is a real
let down. I'm hoping very much that the official HDV standard
has a 1 GOP structure.

That lower resolution mode is running at 60 progressive frames
a second it seems. That would be interesting for slow motion
work though.