Hey All,

What are some options to capture uncompressed HD on the canon XL-H1? I know there is the Wafian ($15,000.00) option, but is there a deck you can hook into? Could you take a regular DV deck and run a feed to it, or even a digibeta?

Also, on the MiniDV built in... what is the best quality that it can capture?

Basically, are there any recording option that isnt going to cost 10 grand to get the best quality from the camera?

Hi Bryon,

To wit, there are NO uncompressed deck options, HD or SD, even approaching $50K. Wafian is compressed, albeit claimed to be visually lossless (which I'm inclined to believe), but it is NOT a tape deck. The only way to get uncompressed from this camera is to pipe it into a computer. On the Mac, I have a Kona LH card which can do this, but it requires a fast RAID and a cutting edge G5 to be happy.

I am configuring my computer system to be a little more production friendly, but it's never going to be as convenient as actually OWNING a good HD deck like the Panny 1200a.

You either have to be willing to be tethered to a computer, or spend a fortune on an overkill HD deck...to get uncompressed quality.

HDV on the H1 is plenty good.