I stand firm in my position that this is NOT a big deal. So what if canon engineered this camera so that it takes 1 extra step (a very simple step IMO) to get the true 24p. I am glad to see that Ian G. came around to agree that this camera "ain't broke, so don't fix it." I don't get it. What's so hard about doing reverse telecine instead of 2:3 pulldown removal??? What? You say your software doesn't do reverse telecine. Maybe it's your software you should be trying to change. Not your camera. The software package I owned had no problem doing what needed to be done simply, and quickly, with the HV20 right out of the box.

Stefan, one thing is to realize that this is a consumer camera. It is listed such here:

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ProductCatIndexAct&fcategoryid=173

If they would list in under professional cameras here:

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ProductCatIndexAct&fcategoryid=172

and clearly state the limitation in 24p mode I would be fine with that.

How many consumers do you expect to be happy with paying extra $250 for Connect HD (don't quote me on the price please) on top of what it comes with he cam and/or additional sub $100 NLE they already might have?

How many consumers are going to be happy with interlaced artifacts when watching out-of-box video?

I did not have to do all this with my JVC HD10 or HD1, both pro and consumer versions.

Unfortunately the whole 24p is so cloudy when you read about it on canon.com or the pdf downloadable manual. Either they do not know what they are doing or they put the big cloud on it for legal reasons.

You can take any 1080i cam and run it through NLE to get progressive like 24p. If this is acceptable then there are many cams to choose from. Most would buy this cam for the 24p mode.

Again, this is a consumer cam and it doesn't deliver out-of-box performance.

When this issue is addressed I get one the same day....it is canon's opportunity to get a nice market share....

Getting back to the original point of this thread, just a quick update: spent nearly 1 hour on the phone today with Canon tech support (the Irvine Calif.Canon Service Center deflected the call that way). I spent most of the time on hold as my support rep kept checking with other people in the organization. By the end of the call (which was very cordial BTW) she informed me that someone in upper management would be made aware of the issue and would contact me directly within a week or so.

I also called the Canon R&D Facility in Irvine Calif. The woman I spoke to was not helpful and all I could get was a fax number to send a letter to voice my concerns. For those who like writing letters: it's 949-932-3510 I'm sure a few hundred (polite!) faxes would get their attention.

Getting back to the original point of this thread, just a quick update: spent nearly 1 hour on the phone today with Canon tech support.

I also called the Canon R&D Facility in Irvine Calif. For those who like writing letters: it's 949-932-3510 I'm sure a few hundred (polite!) faxes would get their attention.

Thanks for your efforts!! I faxed the number you provided with a polite query and hope others will too. Please let us know of any developments.

best,
elmer

Thanks for all the efforts to make the HV20 a better camera. I have emailed Canon as well.

Here is a thread at AVSforum about this topic: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=843628

I haven't been following this thread until I noticed the number of times CineForm is mentioned -- thank you for the complementry words.

CineForm extracts the pulldown using a real-time image analysis which we developed for a much higher-end application, it just works very nicely with these new HDV sources. We wouldn't use the flags even if they where there -- flags can be wrong, but the image doesn't lie. We don't use pulldown flags offered in the Sony V1U, as there would require engineering time to get the same result we have now. So asking for pulldown flags from Canon is the wrong request.

What you could be asking for is progressive encoding like the Canon HV20 big bothers XL-H1,G1,A1. These cameras encode 24p as 24p, not 60i. No flags are needed, as no pulldown needs to be extracted. The problem is the nature HDV NLE vendors are so slow to use this approach, Canon went with the lowest common demoniator for wider NLE support, which is 60i. Yet most NLEs don't support pulldown flagging in HDV anyway. So really you should be requesting wider 24F support from Apple, Sony and maybe Adobe (I think they have it) so then it would be fine for camera's like the HV20 to encode that way.

Non-pulldown 24p encoding of MPEG is more efficient, has fewer artifacts, and the 4:2:0 sampling will not produce any crosstalk between frames as it does with 24p in 60i.

my 2 cents.

I haven't been following this thread until I noticed the number of times CineForm is mentioned -- thank you for the complementry words.

CineForm extracts the pulldown using a real-time image analysis which we developed for a much higher-end application, it just works very nicely with these new HDV sources. We wouldn't use the flags even if they where there -- flags can be wrong, but the image doesn't lie. We don't use pulldown flags offered in the Sony V1U, as there would require engineering time to get the same result we have now. So asking for pulldown flags from Canon is the wrong request.

What you could be asking for is progressive encoding like the Canon HV20 big bothers XL-H1,G1,A1. These cameras encode 24p as 24p, not 60i. No flags are needed, as no pulldown needs to be extracted. The problem is the nature HDV NLE vendors are so slow to use this approach, Canon went with the lowest common demoniator for wider NLE support, which is 60i. Yet most NLEs don't support pulldown flagging in HDV anyway. So really you should be requesting wider 24F support from Apple, Sony and maybe Adobe (I think they have it) so then it would be fine for camera's like the HV20 to encode that way.

Non-pulldown 24p encoding of MPEG is more efficient, has fewer artifacts, and the 4:2:0 sampling will not produce any crosstalk between frames as it does with 24p in 60i.

my 2 cents.

Thanks for chimming in Dave. Your suggestion is a good one, though don't you think switching to 24F-type encoding on the HV20 is gonna be more than a firmware update? For those of us who already own the camera, at least with flags on our 24p/60i files, the assumption is FCP, Premiere and Vegas can do pulldown removal.

Agree, it would likely be more than a firmware upgrade. I was pointing out that Canon's actions makes good business sense, given the slow nature of the NLE companies. Currently I believe only Vegas recently added the use embedded HDV pulldown flags, so it is no surprise the HV20 was released without them.

I would agree a native 24/25p stream would be most optimal. :) Talk about hassle and trouble free.

Canon could simply provide a capture utility for the 24p cam or at least a media player. This would eliminate firmware changes for us, consumers.

I would agree a native 24/25p stream would be most optimal. :) Talk about hassle and trouble free.

This cam can do 25p recorded on 50i stream. What are the issues being referred here?

25p into a 50i stream, is almost the same as 25p into a 25p stream. The only thing that could change, is maybe the mpeg2 codec optimzation... but still, the results are going to be the same.

But I agree: in NTSC land, it's a HUGE diference.

emailed canon and Nick answered:

"I'm sorry that you're having problems with the 24p pulldown. We've been
made aware of the issue, and I've forwarded the concerns about the
pulldown to our development team. We'll look into the matter to see what we can do to
help. In the meantime, you might also contact the company who makes
your video editing program to see if they have any suggestions.

While trying to learn more about the issues that people are having with
24p footage the HV20, I came across a discussion happening on
dvinfo.net. While we can't verify the information there, I personally found the discussion
interesting, and it might be useful for you to get a sense of how others
are handling the problems they're running into:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=92629"

A firmware update would be really nice.

An alternate route that we might want to pursue is to contact each of the NLE makers and make a request for them to allow processing 24p footage without markers by evaluating the individual frames (similar to cineform). I think it would likely take them a while to come up with something functional (if they were even interested in doing so).

It is one additional avenue the should likely be pursued in addition to the requests being made to Canon to include the flags.

-Steve

Good work, gents! You'd think if the JES De-Interlacer can detect the frames, Apple, Adobe et al could find something to help us...and we'd really appreciate!

best,
elmer

if i buy neo hdv will NEO HDV do the pull down for 24p on the HV20 just fine ????? sony vegas 6 user here

if i buy neo hdv will NEO HDV do the pull down for 24p on the HV20 just fine ????? sony vegas 6 user here

Yes, works very well... download the tryout and see how easy it is..

Anyone coming up with anything new ?

I see that Cineform is offering free upgrade to Neo HDV from HD Connect if it was purchased after February 2007. I purchased HDConnect from BH for 189.00 recently and will be requesting the NEO HDV upgrade. Anybody gone through that already ?

David Newman, thanks for chiming in. Your post was helpful to the community and, not because of any advertising by you, I'll be buying your product because it functions as advertised.

IMHO (JD-biased as it is), Canon's advertising is at the very least a bit misleading in omitting that you cannot edit 24 frames representing a second of footage, you must edit a larger number and that introduces other issues.

Any update on this?