GL / XM assorted posts, 2003

[Tim McGreggor]

thanks so much. I got it! I found the first short film that me and my brother did back in 95 when I was 10 of 11. I really want to put it on the internet. It's pretty funny.

[Zac Stein]

I found a PVC pipe with thick rubber bands works fantastic.

If you want later i could take some photos my beast.

Zac

[Jim Yang]

If you could post a picture that would be excellent!

[Marco Leavitt]

The MZS-CAM does an excellent job of dampening camera noise, but the inability to tilt it up and down is a probem with the ME66, which is a very directional mike. Also, I can't stand the hot shoe attachment, which is made out of plastic and can't be tightened very securely on to the camera for fear of stripping the threads. I recently ordered a hot shoe adapter for my trusty Audio Technica shockmount that I've previously had excellent results with when mounted on a boom pole. Haven't received it from B&H yet, so I can't say how well it works.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bh1.sph/FrameWork.class?FNC=ProductActivator__Aproductlist_html___68160___AU3760057___REG___CatID=0___SID=F3 A2B59BA10

Here's the shockmount:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bh1.sph/FrameWork.class?FNC=ProductActivator__Aproductlist_html___68143___AUAT8415___REG___CatID=0___SID=F3A 2B59BA10

[Frank Granovski]

The GL2 is a video camera. A cheap digital still cam, around 2megs, will be able to capture cleaner, sharper pictures than what a camcorder can.

[Chris Hurd]

What Frank is saying is that basically you're right -- they don't want it to compete with the Powershot line.

[Sam Fisher]

The firewire card is recognized, and the canon dv is recognized, but when I go to capture is just does nothing. When I first plugged it in, it wanted to install canon av/storage, but it couldn't find the file even on the disc that came with it. What should I do?

[Ken Tanaka]

Mac or PC? What software are you trying to use to capture and edit?

[Alex Dunn]

The conventional wisdom is that the GL2 sacrifices a little bit of resolution in Frame Mode. So obviosly it's better to use Normal Mode and then deinterlace in post.

My question is this: What is the best program for de-interlacing? Is there any good share-ware out there?

Steve Nunez mentioned "Cleaner 5.1.1 using the Sorenson 3 codec" in another thread. When and how is this used?

[Ken Tanaka]

Alex,
There is a current thread already running on this subject over here. I think you'll find it useful to review.

BTW, post-deinterlacing is not necessarily better than using Frame mode.

[Hilary Cam]

Hey guys, after a month of fiddling with my new XM2 I've got a quite a few questions for all you helpful folk at dvinfo.net, heres my first few.

What exactly does Setup Level do?

I'm assuming it's basically like a in-camera electronic brightness setting.

Which brings me to my next question, what exactly technically speaking is the difference between gain and brightness (setup level). There is a noticable difference between the two in terms of looks, but what does each actually do to achieve this?

I've found using a lower setup level, darkness aside, produces slightly more contrast and more 'filmic' blacks.

To get to the ultimate point; if your shooting in low light situations, in what order should u start manually changing settings to achieve the best image with minimum grain.

Would this order be the following...?

1) Appiture (iris, f-stop) - nb/ does a wider appiture give greater depth of field?

2) Shutter Speed

3) Setup Level

4) Gain

5) Lower Sharpness to remove grain once over about 6db gain


Thanks guys.

[Rob Lohman]

Don't change sharpness too much in either way. It will affect your
picture in a way that you will see it has extra sharpening or is to
blurry.

Now I don't know exactly what the difference between gain and
setup level is, but if I'm not mistaken it is the following: setup
level shifts the window in which the XL1s paints slightly to the
left (blacks) or right (highlights). This allows you to control the
floor of the signal (the ceiling can be controlled by iris, shutter,
gain etc.) to make sure it is in the range that is legal (for TV) or
the range you like.

Gain simply changes the sensitivity of the CCD's by either giving
them more/less power or altering the signal after it gets off the
CD. The signal is weakened (-3 db), left alone (0 db) or increased/
enhanced (+xxdb). This will add noise since it is increasing a signal
and not increasing the quality/resolution of that signal. Which will
introduce noise. This might be acceptable giving the circumstances.

Generally the wider the lens (low f2.0 for example) the more light
it will let through. Also the lower the shutter speed (1/30th or
lower for example) the more light the camera will see. Ofcourse if
you go below 1/30th your image will start to exhibit strange side
effects. DOF will be reduced when opening up the lens and zooming
in.

To answer your questions:

1) use as low as possible (f1.8 for example) to get more light
2) use as low as possible (probably don't want to go below 1/30th)
3) i have this down a notch or two to create more black detail
4) gain is the last thing you should change, because it will affect
the noise levels which can be seen easily. Only if you cannot get
enough picture with the lowest settings above do you increase
the gain
5) sharpness seems to be a personal preference, don't use it too
much though!

Hope this will help in some way....

[Michael Buendia]

can anyone recommend any settings to match the look of an xl1 (first generation) using the 16x zoom. i'll be using my gl2 as a b camera.

i normally have my sharpness up one click and i'm not sure if i should set it dead center to match the 16x lens or if how i have it set now will be fine.

any advice would be appreciated.

mb4

[Steve Nunez]

Hi Alex,

I'm a fan of the Sorenson 3 codec- which is basically a compression scheme people use to reduce the file size of video. Raw Dv footage is about 13GB per hour- as where using a codec can compress the footage (file-size wise) so that video can be presented online or saved and played via CD-rom, DVD etc...

The thing with codecs are- the many different codecs employ different compression schemes and priorities- so for some you'll get better audio- for some better motion performance etc....Media Cleaner let's you adjust certain aspects of the compression so that you can vary them to suit- for websites you'd apply alot of compression as to not keep people waiting forever to see a 2 minute clip (usually at the price of video quality.) You can vary the compression so that it's optimized for cd-rom delivery etc....

..I hope I didn't confuse you more- but hopefully you got the idea of what "compression" does....now you'll have to buy software to compress your footage- unless you have a Mac with QT Pro- you can export via QT to various formats.

Cleaner 6 is highly touted....good luck.

[David Crompton]

I am shooting some B-Roll for possible broadcast this weekend. Is there anything I should note in prepping the material especially for broadcast? Would I just take the tape to a post house and have it transferred to Beta? Any comments or advice would be appreciated...