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Test Drive
 

So where can I find one of these puppies to do a hands-on test drive in the Phoenix, Arizona area? Short of that, where can I test drive an XL1 or XL2? I'm making the leap from still photography to digital video and the canon cameras seem to be the best (too bad Nikon isn't in this game, I could use all my lenses like Canon photographers can use theirs on the Canon digital video cams). Thanks!

I think so, but I'm not sure CMOS technology has had enough time to mature to reach that level. But who knows, nobody thought 2K or 4K was possible for under $100,000+.

Once again... this ain't a CMOS thread... this is the Canon G1 / A1 thread. Thanks,

Oops, my bad, Chris. I totally missed your comment before =X.

Chris : do you think they are in the same league as the HVX200 ?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I switched from Canon to Sony last year because I wanted to go HD and Canon wasn't giving any hint of when they'd have affordable cameras ready. Not only can a little advance hype help pique interest in your products, but it also helps if you don't wait TWO YEARS after your competition to get those products to market!

True, but we always say, if you need to buy a camera now, find the best one and buy it. If not, wait and see if your favorite brand will have one soon. I feel bad for any potential Sharp buyers out there, though I wonder if they're going consumer-only. I'm betting your Sony is doing well for you?

heath

That is their track record though. Remember it took more than two years for them to get into DV. The Sony VX1000 came out in January 1995; the Canon Optura and XL1 weren't announced until November 1997.

Just to get back to the HDV 24f thing for a second, what do you guys use to edit it?

You can edit Canon 24F with Sony Vegas, Canopus Edius, and Adobe Premiere Pro.

Cineform codec will be the best offer.

Some folks even convert HDV to DVCProHD (e.g. on http://www.starwaypictures.com/twenty-third/) however I have to agree with Mathieu - at least if you're on a windows platform - that Cineform is currently by far the best trade off codec wise in regard to speed, nearly-loselesslyness (ugh?! ;o) and compression ratio! No real (open source) alternatives in sight.

When using HDVSplit in conjunction with AviSynth you can even automatically do some great stuff in realtime (high quality downscaling/deinterlacing/pre-CC/noise/block filtering whatever) while transcoding/capturing - although that's not suitable for the average user I presume.
So for example an interesting approach would be adding a HDV specialized high quality de-blocking filter while transcoding to Cineform... :)

Great idea! :)

Thx :) .. some time ago I developed a nice DV deartifacting filter but I'm currently looking into some "intelligent" HDV deartifacting algorithm. Although it is said that the HDV/MPEG2 compression "engine" that is used by Canon delivers a slightly higher quality output than the one used in the FX1/Z1 there still will be artefacts of course - especially in scenes with fast movement or camera movement. The most ugly HDV artefact simply is "blockiness". With the NTSC FX1 the effective resolution could even drop below SD if you had fast movement _and_ a shaky camera.

Of course this is not so big of a problem when doing a "real" movie with mostly locked down camera work. But as you all know - even if you're doing sth like that you still want camera movement. Some scenes just demand more dynamic camera movement.

I guess the most "HDV friendly" movie I've seen recently was Michael Hanekes "Caché". :-)

Algolith has a fantastic filter for AE that gets rid of MPEG artefacts and mosquito noise around edges. It works absolutely brilliantly.

But afaik it's nowhere near realtime, right? As are most of Algoliths treats.. of course they work great - but are more on the CPU intensive side.. ;)

They do have hardware solutions (actually hardware is their main forte), but I'm not sure if they have SDI etc on them.

yes i know.. but their hw is quite expensive afaik and not really a feasable option with what we discussed here... and i guess it's not bad to have some competition around ;)

I wish to jump from my Sony TR2000 Hi8 camcorder to Canon XH A1 HDV and possibly HV10 as a second camcorder.
As I have a lot of legacy footage on Hi8 tapes to convert and backup, I wonder if XH A1 has S-video IN/OUT to convert analog Hi8 IN from TR2000 as a vcr to typical DV out?