Going in Circles...

[Richard Hunter]

Hi Rick. I've had my XH-A1 for a couple of years and still love this camera. However I too would like to have a tapeless workflow, just to start editing faster instead of waiting for tape captures.

So I've been looking at the Sony HD unit that is nice and small and takes videocam batteries and was almost ready to buy one, until I saw this:

Sony : HVR-MRC1K (HVRMRC1K) : Produktübersicht : Deutschland

This is a CF card recorder, also by Sony, and looks like a really good solution for my needs. I would still intend to shoot tape simultaneously as an archive media.

Now all I need are reports from some early adopters to see if it is as good as it loooks. :)

Richard

[Bill Pryor]

I have read (in other threads on here) that unit will work on the Canon. But nobody seems to know if they really have it for sale in the U.S. yet.

It seems I'm in the minority by being happy with tape. I shoot way too much footage that doesn't get edited for sometimes weeks, and then I have to save the original forever. The thought of having to go back to the hotel room every night on an out of town shoot and spend all that time downloading, checking and backing up footage is not my idea of a fun thing to do after shooting for 10 hours.

[Chris Christensen]

I have the A1 at home and the Z1 at work... So far I like The A1 better as it is a better switch from a DVX100... In my opinion things function more the same on the A1. Also as bill said, it has the nice ring for the iris. Both cameras waste too much space on auto functions, but that's prosumer for you... I think you would be quite happy with either one, but if the EX1 is in your price range than so is the HPX170, I would just get that. ;)

[Richard Hunter]

Hi Bill. Yes I haven't seen that anybody actually has stock of this recorder yet.

What you say about tape makes sense, I would still want to shoot tapes as archive. The thing about compact flash though is that the price is very reasonable compared with P2 or SxS cards, and it should be feasible to carry a few of them around. And of course, if you run out of cards once in a while and are not in a position to save the data, you still have the option to shoot tape only, or to reuse the CF card and store the tapes to capture later. Even if you could only cut your tape captures by half, I thought it should still be worth considering.

Richard

[Tripp Woelfel]

Re: tapeless capture. There's been a lot written here and elsewhere. Eliminating capture is good. Archiving... a problem.

I have alternate suggestion. When I shoot a race, I end up with 7 or 8 tapes. Since I have and HV10 and HV30 and two systems with with CS3 installed, I capture on two systems simultaneously, to the internal drive on the editing system and to a USB drive on the second. Then when the capture's done, I move the USB drive to the edit system and dump the footage to the internal drive. Much faster overall.

The added benefit of the second system is that whilst the edit system is rendering/rebooting/whatever, I'll use the 2nd system to prep graphics or work on audio. Net result is that I'm more productive.

This may or may not work for you. I'm just putting it out there as an alternative. Oh BTW, the 2nd system is a laptop with Encore so I can take it with me to the race and go direct to disk.... if it's not raining.

[Rick Bolton]

So much good input :-)

The 170 appears to have a lens wobble that actually shifts the image in the frame - it is so pronounced, Panasonic and several heavyweights are trying to sort out the issue - Panasonic has "repaired" several of them but the wobble persists. The 170 also has more noise than some were expecting - the guess is that they had to turn up the default gain due to the slower lens at full zoom. I'm waiting to see what develops - these issues have cooled me on that model for now. The HMC 150 may exhibit some of the same issues - more tolerable at that price range but not as clean as I would hope for.

The EX1 is at the top of my price range - still not sure about the CMOS artifacts. My concern is, having little experience / first hand knowledge, is that if I buy one and the artifacting bites me in the rear I will really feel stupid as I have read so much about it.

The new SONY recording module has me very interested as well - especially at the current price of the A1 - with the module we are still at less than an EX1 or 170 and can have it both ways I guess? The A1 is very proven - love the 20X L glass - and is so available.

That is where my going in circles continues to return me.

Would one of you experienced gurus outline the NLE workflow involving the A1, SONY recorder, and Mac computers - that would really help.

[Rick Bolton]

Most of you have probably read all of this - but:

HPX170 Lens Wobble Improved - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking

[Bill Pryor]

The 170 and 150 are two different animals entirely (and not to be confused with Sony's old 150 and 170). The 170 does DVCPRO HD onto P2 cards--it's like the HVX200 but without the tape mechanism. The 150 shoots AVCHD onto CF cards, so they are cheaper but you have to be sure your NLE will handle AVCHD OK.

Personally I would go with the EX1 simply because of its 1/2" chips if for no other reason. As I've said earlier, in shooting for 8 or 9 days over a 3 week period with an A1U, I saw no evidence of any problems with the CMOS chip. Another good thing about the EX1 is that you're not married to a proprietary format like P2, so there's more than one brand of card out there.

You could also look at the Z7, which gives you tape or the hard drive--same little drive that will work on the Canon if/when it becomes available as a separate item.

The problem with hanging around these boards and reading too much is that you can get bogged down in measurebating. Chris's term, not mine, although I wish I had coined it. People talk about artifacts you'll probably never see, the true believers for one brand or format or another will promote their belief to extremes, and on and on. I'm not saying you shouldn't gather all the info you can, and this is a good place to do it...but you eventually have to see a camera in person before buying, in my opinion. When I bought mine, I had used a Z1 and was all prepared to buy it until the XH A1 was announced. I was going to fly to N.Y. to check it out at B&H but fortunately a dealer here got one before I needed it and I was able to get some hands on time without buying a plane ticket. Flying to N.Y. might seem extreme, but you look at the cost of a round trip ticket--fly up early in the morning, come back that night--and cab or subway fare, and it's not all that much to be sure before spending a lot of serious money.

[Rick Bolton]

Bill - all good points. In the DSLR world the pixel peepers and techoids can provide so much info and differing points of view that you become frozen. Your point on artifacts is most relevant.

Composition, content, flow add more value than pixel peeping unless something really serious shows up. I have about another month before I have to purchase - someone pointed out that this should really be an easy decision - the + / - are fairly well documented. The torture comes from weighing the relative impact on what you think you need to get done :-)

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Bill Pryor

The 150 shoots AVCHD onto CF cards...

Sorry, Bill -- the 150 shoots AVCHD onto SDHC cards. Don't mean to nitpick, but there is a pretty big difference in form factor between CF and SDHC cards.

you can get bogged down in measurebating. Chris's term, not mine...

Wish I could take credit for it, but the term was actually coined by Ken Rockwell, not me.

[Bill Pryor]

Thanks for that catch, big difference for sure. I knew that, but CF just sorta came out, I guess. Darn, I always thought you coined the term. I've quoted it for a long time now. The baton shall be passed to Rockwell.

[Phil Taylor]

I have used Serious Magic's DV Rack as well as Ultra for several years now. I use a laptop for the software and DV Rack has a multitude of controls to help one hone in on excellent recordings (including focus). Serious Magic was purchased by Adobe in October 2006.

It is a wonderful system. I have Edius loaded on my laptop also and can edit on site if I wish. The only drawback is the fact that you are tethered to the laptop.

[James R. Leong]

Capture Magic HD works with the A1. Trial Version here:

Capture Magic HD 1.0 software download - Mac OS X - VersionTracker

[Tom Roper]

The reasons I give assurance to the XH-A1 comes from my own EX1. I know firsthand the picture quality is fully its peer in 60i. They digress a little bit at 24p, the EX1 bettering its own 60i performance and the XH-A1 not quite as good at 24p as its own 60i. The EX1 is several stops more useful in low light. The EX1 audio is uncompressed as well. I observed the advantage of that in a side by side concert shoot last July. But the camera is big bucks more, especially right now. So if you need it, you need it. But the XH-A1 is way disproportionately better in a lot of circumstances, faster focus, better lens. About the latter, the XH-A1 lens stays sharper at 20x zoom than the EX1 at 14x, for distant targets like landscapes. The EX1 lens does remain razor sharp at full zoom on closeup subjects like portraits, so saying the XH-A1 lens is better is maybe jumping the gun, but not by much. At the wide end, the EX1 is absent of CA, probably owing to electronic reprocessing, the XH-A1 suffers there by comparison only, since all the HD cams have this to some degree or more, and even the EX1 shows it at 14x on distant targets. I don't need to say anything about the tapeless acquisition, most everyone seems sold on that although to me its more about the image quality and ability to shoot slo-mo, fast, time-lapse etc. The XH-A1 is also lighter and easier to manage handheld for extended periods. The XH-A1 has a better viewfinder, the EX1 has the better LCD.

This is just my opinion, but I prefer the XH-A1 over everything else in the class besides the EX1 for the reason that they got the most important elements right for me, outstanding Canon L series lens with ring focus, zoom and iris, and a high resolution 1440x1080 imager, and top notch DSP encoding, the image remains very clean and organic. Add one more, a wealth of high end image control features. Suffice to say, if you have the EX1 you'll love that camera too like your Ferrari, goes 198 mph but high maintenance.

[Rick Bolton]

Tom & others - part of going around in circles has to do with the various "weighting" we give each of the pros & cons - a 5% better (whatever that means) LCD vs some amount of CA at full zoom or ultra low light noise or..........

Another contributor to the indecisive issue is the marginal quality of many of the sample clips that I see on Vimeo or........

That said - take the cost / bang for the buck off the table - not an issue at this level of purchase.

Two primary types of shots:

As many as three people in frame - interior lighting - little motion - cine look.

The other main shot is landscape - city views and nature (as in the cliff tops at Big Sur with the rocks and surf below in frame) - acceptable lighting - some motion. Some cine look emphasis but with HD DETAIL more in play.

XH A1 or EX1?