sell XL2 for new XH G1 ? SDI question.

[Jeff Geissler]

I was curious as to what people thought about selling the XL2 (could I get 3k for it?) and getting the XHG1.

What is the benefit of having the uncompressed SDI output? (and is it worth spending the extra to get it...)

Any thoughts are welcome...
~THANKS

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

I think you could get 3k for an XL2 if it's in really good shape with low hours and you throw some good extras at it, maybe an extra lens.
Then it would be easy to get 3k.

I don't think many people will use the uncompressed thing, because it seems the quality of the HDV recording to tape is already outstanding, and for *most* (not all) people enough and the image quality difference isn't worth the price difference that comes with the SDI output AND the recording device (big hard drive or external recording device, very expensive)

[Bill Pryor]

I agree--I think most who use the SDI will be small TV stations, and people who might do a lot of studio shooting where you don't move around a lot, with cables running to some recording device like a computer with big drives. For most location shooting, hand held, documentary style, nobudget films, etc., you probably would never use it. The other thing it has is genlock, which you would never use unless doing mulitcamera shoots.

I wouldn't dump the XL2 yet until this new camera is out on the market awhile. I've seen better looking footage from the XL2 than I have from any other 1/3" chip SD camera. One good selling point is that it does true 24p, not the F-mode. However, the person who would be interested in buying it is probably going to be a person who already has one and wants another. It may be difficult to sell once the $4K HDV camera is on the market.

[Matthew Nayman]

The XL2 is an amazing ly sharp camera, and the image holds up on a big screen. It is an awomse cam, and would use it as a B cam to the new XH line, as opposed to selling mine,.

[Barlow Elton]

Originally Posted by Bill Pryor

One good selling point is that it does true 24p, not the F-mode.

SD mode on the XL-H1 in 24 fps is "true 24p" too. There is enough resolution in a single 1080i field to slice out a 24p SD frame.

[Matt Martin]

Hi Jeff,

If you're planning on doing bluescreen work, multi-camera shoots, shooting footage with a lot of action/motion, or transferring your footage to film, you'll probably want to consider the HX-G1. Otherwise, the HX-A1 is probably the better and more cost effective solution for you.

There are several advantages for using HD SDI 4:2:2 uncompressed output instead of recording a compressed 4:2:0 HDV signal to tape that has undergone MPEG compression to fit on the tape (probably a compression ratio of around 10:1?).... provided that you have a deck or capture card (like Decklink's HD card for PC or Mac) that allows you to capture the uncompressed footage.

Advantages of uncompressed HD SDI 4:2:2:
- More color information in the signal gives you brighter, sharper colors.
- Less compression significantly decreases motion artifacts in your footage. If you're shooting something with a lot of motion and action like a sports event, the uncompressed footage will be much sharper than HDV footage. Of course, if you want to transfer your footage to film or project it to a big screen you're going to have better results with the 4:2:2 uncompressed footage as well.
- When shooting Bluescreen footage, your results will be A LOT better with the SDI 4:2:2 signal. Trying to get a good key with the highly compressed HDV signal is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Tools like Ultra by Serious Magic help, but can't give you results like you'll get from uncompressed footage with a larger color space and less compression.
- If you're connecting your camera to a switcher for a multicamera shoot, you can send an SDI signal for long distances over coax cable and have no degradation of the signal when it reaches the mixer, whereas you can introduce a lot of noise on an analog cable and can't run the cable as far.
Plus, you send the video and the audio over the one SDI cable, as opposed to having to run 4 cables (YUV, and audio) for the analog connections.
- Speaking of multicamera shoots, the G1 has a genlock input and timecode i/o, which allows you to sync all your cameras.

Disadvantages of using SDI:
- You must connect a cable from your camera to a deck to record the footage, which limits where you can shoot and how you can shoot.
- The uncompressed footage takes up a lot of storage space on your hard drive(s), which isn't cheap. Plus long render times will come with your larger files.
- The cost of HD SDI equipment is at a whole other level - cameras monitors, mixers, etc. are usually at least twice as expensive as analog equipment.

If you aren't going to worry about multicamera shoots where you need to genlock the cameras, but you still want to get uncompressed footage from the HX-A1, you can take the uncompressed 4:2:2 analog YUV signals out of it and feed it a Decklink HD capture card. The card can digitize and capture the signal to your hard drive, and can event downconvert the footage into SD if you want it to. (Of course it has to convert from analog to digital, so it's not as good as SDI where no conversion is required, but it's still pretty darn good.) Also, for multicam HD shoots where live mixing is required, the Edirol HD 440 mixer takes in analog YUV signals, so you could use that with the XH-A1 as well.

Have fun! Either way, both the G1 and A1 look like awesome cameras. Can't wait to see how they perform.

[Paul Matwiy]

Depends. I own an XL2. It's advantages are progressive CCDs and a true 24p mode. The XHG1 has HD resolution going for it and size. I love the look of footage shot on the XL2, but have issues with its size and weight occasionally. That and the HD resolution might tip the balance in favor of the XHG1, but I would factor in the cost of a Cineform intermediate Codec as I would not want to do any, but the simplest editing, in the HDV/MPEG-2 codec.