Can someone please post some 4:3 and 16:9 frame grabs when available? Thanks!

Uncompressed would be sweet.

Simon Beer said he was gonna be posting video this week on www.xl2.co.uk.

Hi All,

Firstly new photos added on the site at www.xl1s.com/photos.php

Secondly, first frame grab is here: www.xl1s.com/capture/clown.tif (1.2MB)

I'm uploading a 55MB video clip exported out of FCE2, I'll add the URL for that after lunch. This is a dv clip lasting 15sec.

Our techs have been going over the camera with charts, scopes and other stuff I will not beging to pretend I understand. Any techie questions please post and I'll get some answers for you

Apparently, the V & H resolution match in 16:9. Something letting other 16:9 DV cameras down (apparently). One of our chaps said "I'm pleasantly surprised" and the other said it was better than expected.

More coming after lunch.

Cheers!

Simon.

Simon,

Would you kindly ask that wooly chap to stop clowning around and clear the frame for the focus chart. Thank you so much.

Looking forward to the video clip!

I'm also wondering if the TIFF (thanks!) is a 16:9 frame and then
exported as letterboxed (ie, downsampled). Can you export it
as a full 720x480 without the letterbox?

First good news, it seems to be side to side! No black "bars"

The new mounting plate, now--is that actually compatible with the existing VCT 14? And does it appear to have the capability to mount lightweight rods?

Hi Rob,

I exported directly out of FCE2 which is all I have on my work machine. The black bars must have got added by the program. I'll try FCP later when I'm at home.

The video clip which is exported from Final Cut is www.xl1s.com/capture/clown50i (55 MB QuickTime file, rename to .MOV)

Please download and do with as you see fit, if anyone would like to upload it on there site then please post the url here so that there is another download site.

Cheers!

Simon.

Simon, I'd like to upload it to DV Info Net, although it may not happen until later this evening. Thanks,

Thanks Simon,

Much appreciated. If possible, can you get a clip captured at 25p? Thanks.

I checked the movie out, but QuickTime under Windows displays
it really bad. If you have Pro make sure you enable high-quality
under Movie -> Get Movie Properties.

I checked it out in Vegas after setting the project to PAL 50i,
looks good. But motion was not fluid. Do you remeber at what
shutter speed this was shot? Hmmm, I just converted it to AVI
DV and it played much smoother. That's odd! (You want he AVI
version as well, Chris?)

Just a note to everyone else. For some reason both Microsoft DV
and QuickTime DV default to showing DV footage at 50% quality
(or worse) per default. They probably did this for performance
reasons but it means you cannot judge the footage when watching
it at the default settings (that goes for any DV footage).

I just explained how to change it for QuickTime (if you have Pro).
You don't seem to be able to change this anymore in Windows
Media Player. I will hunt around a bit to see if I can locate it.

This all for PC users.

For anyone who wants to verify this under Windows Media Player.
Go start an AVI DV and make sure View -> Zoom -> 100% is set.

You should see your movie at 50% resolution or at least a lot
smaller than full DV even if you've selected 100%! That's what
I am talking about. QuickTime player does show it at full
resolution, just looks very bad (see fix above).

I found the fix for Windows Media Player:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Performance
Go to Advanced and then make sure digital video slider is set
all the way to LARGE (right side). Then OK your way out of all
the screens and CLOSE WMP!!!!

Restart the player and watch the DV file. Ahhh, full resolution!

Yes, definitely must watch at high quality as far as Quicktime goes. I'd like to see a full 16:9 resolution progressive clip. I think this one of the clown is 4:3 50i with faux letterbox.

Right then,

www.xl1s.com/capture/clown.tif - sorted, I had FCE set to 4:3, reuploaded.

www.xl1s.com/capture/clown50i - reuploading after capturing in 16:9

I have a 25p shot that I'll upload tommorow, I'm almost out of webspace at the moment on this domain.

Cheers!

Simon.

Simon,

You are a star... Just downloading them now.

It's Great to see that the UK are the first (that I know of) that acturally have pics and movies from the camera :)

Cheers,

Thanks Simon.

Good people of the dvinfo.net shire, Simon's lovely test footage is now available for your downloading and enjoyment from:

http://static.dvinfo.net/simonb/clown.tif

and

http://static.dvinfo.net/simonb/clown50i.mov

Right click to download the file to your hard drive.

Thanks Jenn for taking care of this -- much appreciated!

The 50i movie sample looks really good from FCP 4.5 going out to my Sony PVM-14M4U. I am very curious to see how well the 24p sample looks if it is indeed higher resolution.

Bring on the clowns...

http://static.dvinfo.net/simonb/clown25p.mov

25P footage now posted.

Cheers!

Simon.

Oh no! Not the clown! Where did you get that eerie chap?

The clown was sitting in the window of a nearby charity shop for a number of months before being sold.

It was later discovered our rentals dept technical manager had purchased the clown because of his colourful nature.

The clown is now an integral part of our test bay and takes up 2 rack units next to the waveform and vectorscope :o)

Cheers!

Simon.

Thanks for posting the footage. How is the clown lit?

As nice as that clown is, I wonder if you might take the camera out on the street and show us a bit of your corner of London in daylight.

It's curious that Canon, which obviously had lots of PR ready to go on the announcement, didn't have its own footage ready to show on the Web.

The clown reminds me of the old BBC test screen, that used to come on every so often during the 80's... I'm sure that was your intention?

When is the Canon Test Footage gonna be posted?

Hello. Im very excited about the new xl2 like everyone else and I've tried to download the videos several times but it stops and says it's finished at 40 - 45 megs.
It would be very nice if somebody could put them up on another server that works.

I got 9 frame grabs of the film noir scene set up at DVexpo but I got no place to put them. Chris, is it alright if I send you the pics and you put them on Dvinfo.net?

Mark, put up your frame grabs here.....

http://www.photobucket.com


Then provide us with links.

Daniel, can I call you pixelmagic as a nickname on these forums?LOL just kidding.


I tried putting them on photobucket, but they dont allow you to submit Tiff files and I dont wanna put them up as jpegs.

JPEGS are better than nothing. Just set compression quality to the highest setting. We will still be able to see how well the XL2 performs.

You know instead of registering with some service or whatever, why not just email 'em to me, we have tons of storage space and server bandwidth for this sort of thing, and I'm happy to host them. Thanks,

hmm.. great server bandwidth. I guess Im the only one who can't download the complete videoclips :-( ..it stops after a few minutes.

Did ya get the frame grabs, Chris?

... http://static.dvinfo.net/simonb/clown25p.mov ..

lets see if it works now

Nope... none of my friends can download it either :-/ ...it just stops downloading after a few minutes. ..wondering whats wrong.

I have the same problem form Germany.

The download of the "clown50i" file from www.xl1s.com has work.



regards
Daniel

wow.. then u're lucky all I could download was the tiff file and 40 megs of the clip (pretty close). It didnt go very fast but at 95kb/sec from the dvinfo server the speed shouldn't be the problem. Well I wish myself luck in the future :-)

Okay, here are some frame grabs from the DV Expo's film noir scene, that my brother (Mark) promised. I managed to upload them to my old Aol webspace. We came across the fact a couple of the frames became interlaced.. due to using 2:3 instead of 2:3:3:2.. we believe. On clips you can try a 3:2 pulldown to fix those frames.

http://members.aol.com/grgurmg/xl2noir/framegrab1.tif
http://members.aol.com/grgurmg/xl2noir/framegrab2.tif
http://members.aol.com/grgurmg/xl2noir/framegrab3.tif
http://members.aol.com/grgurmg/xl2noir/framegrab4.tif
http://members.aol.com/grgurmg/xl2noir/framegrab5.tif
http://members.aol.com/grgurmg/xl2noir/framegrab6.tif
http://members.aol.com/grgurmg/xl2noir/framegrab7.tif
http://members.aol.com/grgurmg/xl2noir/framegrab8.tif

As far as settings are concerned, everything was done in camera, of course, with the CineGamma on and I believe the Black setting set to press. The setup levels and pedestal were also tweaked, don't remember the exact settings. The b&ws were done with the color gain all the way done and the colors were done with the c-gain still down a couple notches as well as the red gain down a bit with the CineMatrix on. All of the shots were done with the film grain on.. forgot to take some with it off.

Oh yeah, incase anyones wondering... the color images were taken when one of the Canon guys went a little overboard with the fog machine. ; ) One of the Canon guys rushing into the set to help clear out the fog was the guy who shot all the XL2 demo videos from the Expo. Which is what the XL2 intro clips on CanonDV.com are of.

I'll be looking into posting some of the video on a pertinent threat.

Michael

I should probably discuss this with you offline -- but this is quicker -- the ones you sent, I couldn't open. But I can grab the ones you just linked to and upload 'em to our house to take the pressure of your server if you want. A short video clip should be no problem either.

I was around when the fog machine went bonkers -- talk about a glitch, I think people were convinced something was seriously wrong when they thought it was smoke and not fog. It was a laughable moment after it finally cleared.

Sounds good Chris. Lemme know when that's done.

Here's a link to a short b&w clip I put together from the scene.
It's compressed with mpeg2 so it'll fit on my webspace. I preadjusted the aspect ration and did the pulldown in after effects first before rendering it in premiere.

Since the audio was just a garble of background noise, I threw in something else to set the clips mood :}

http://members.aol.com/oiojohnlennon/xl2noir/mpeg2clip1.mpg

I'll post a color clip soon too.

Mark, see http://www.dvinfo.net/canonxl2/images/grgurev/.

Thanks,

So, what does everyone think of the images my bro posted?

The b&w clip looked great.

Simon, when is the Canon Test Footage going to be on www.Xl-2.com?

I downloaded and viewed the footage at Marg Grguev' site. Footage looks slightly better than the XL1s. A little bit of flicker/shimmer that looks like compression probs. I wouldn't call it earth shattering, but, there is a small improvement over the XL1s.

I don't agree with bill I think there is a marke dimprovement over the xl1s but I do have a question when I imported the clip into FCP I noticed this strange translucent banding there was about 8 or so going acrosse the screen I thought it might be monitor but then I hooked it up to a different monitor and saw the same thing. My system is set up for PAL so i doubt that's the source of the problem did anyone else notice this or am I going insane?

Is this link working yet??

http://static.dvinfo.net/simonb/clown25p.mov

Kevin, I have no luck with that link either