Dear all,

I just read Scott Billup's "Digital Moviemaking", he had this to say about the XL1s PAL...

Page 88 -

"The truely hip thing about the XL1, this camera is that it lets you shoot in 25fps, progressive scan, and has an anamorphic setting that actually compresses the image horizontally. When firewared to your editing program and decompresses into true 16:9 aspect, you have the best quality DV image possible for printing to film from the mini-dv cam."

Now that seems to be very wrong as compared to the views of the posters here, And I think you guys have the right idea, I just wonder how a "guru" in the digital format can be so misinformed?? I am asking because I found a review of the book by David Lynch on the back cover and his book has a forward by the Roger Corman.

Has anyone else read this book???

Daniel

Daniel,

not sure I understand your question. The PAL camera does "faux" progressive 25fps in frame movie mode. It also compresses a portion of the CCD image into 16x9 for 16x9 broadcast (and blow up to film).

I does not however have real progressive 25p and a real 16x9 CCD. All 16x9 aquiring in SD needs compression horizontally to fit the 720x576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC) format. SD has no other native aspect ratio than 4x3. In comparison HDTV does not need any type of compression since it is 16x9 native.

Scott Billups is not exactly "misinformed." I just wish he would have stated things with higher accuracy.

"this camera is that it lets you shoot in 25fps" -- that is, the more expensive and harder to locate PAL version lets you shoot in 25fps.

"progressive scan" -- that is, Frame Movie mode, which is not true progressive scan, but delivers the same results as progressive scan.

"anamorphic setting... decompresses into true 16:9 aspect" -- that is, it's still the fake 16x9 electronic trickery which does incur a loss of image quality just like every other native 4x3 camera out there, but is widely considered to be the best-looking fake 16x9 you can buy.

Remember that his book (I have a copy on my shelf) was written in 1999 (published in 2000), in a time before the XL1S and PD150, and things have changed a bit since then. Hope this helps,

<<<-- Originally posted by Chris Hurd : Remember that his book (I have a copy on my shelf) was written in 1999 (published in 2000), in a time before the XL1S and PD150, and things have changed a bit since then. Hope this helps, -->>>

He has an updated version coming out January of 2003, or at least that is what his web site mentions:

http://www.pixelmonger.com/home.html