Decided for the XL2 at DVinfo.net

Frank Aalbers · January 26th, 2005, 02:08 AM

So I finnaly decided.

The HDV Z1 from Sony or the XL2.

It's the XL2 !

Reasons XL2 ? Clean 24p motion and very High quality for DV. Much easier to manipulate data on a PC. Progessive. Better lowlight capabilities then Z1. Much better sound.

Reasons against Z1. No way to get clean deinterlaced motion with good moblur for 24p. Not even when shooting 50i. Best deinterlacing was Interpolate. But that wasn't good enough. DvMaker's result for 60i to 24p is too stuttery. Downconverting from HDV to DV didn't give better results then straight from the XL2. Worse lowlight capability then XL2.

If there just was a true 24p HD cam available ... wait a minute ... there is ! I just don't have that kind of money !

Frank

Eugene Weaver · January 27th, 2005, 02:29 PM

Hey, I just got my Canon XL2 exactly seven days ago and I have read and reread the instructions manuel. So far, the little bit of footage I have filmed has been very nice and I am happy with what I payed for.

I am not looking into a Mac with Final Cut Pro so I can really see what this camera can do. Welcome to the XL club!

Frank Aalbers · January 27th, 2005, 08:42 PM

Thanks !

I just ordered it today ... just got my bonus ! :-)

Probably another 7 days to ship. Can't wait !

Frank

Frank Aalbers · January 28th, 2005, 11:42 PM

Haha !

I got it for $4500 at a Video Shop In San Francisco. You could ask rush delivery within 2 workindays for NO additional cost ! Canon pays for it ! Sweet !

Can't wait !

Soon baby ... sooooon ! :-)

I waited like 3 months for it ....

Frank

Frank Aalbers · January 29th, 2005, 02:02 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Eugene Weaver : Hey, I just got my Canon XL2 exactly seven days ago and I have read and reread the instructions manuel. So far, the little bit of footage I have filmed has been very nice and I am happy with what I payed for.

I am not looking into a Mac with Final Cut Pro so I can really see what this camera can do. Welcome to the XL club! -->>>
Hi Eugene !

Did you first try to get a hang of it using auto , or id you get straight to fidling with all settings ? :-)

Frank

Kyriakos Karababas · January 31st, 2005, 12:38 PM

Where exactly do they sell them here in San Francisco?

Steev Dinkins · January 31st, 2005, 01:35 PM

Good to hear someone who has also been on the fence between the HDV cams vs XL2 and found the XL2 to be a better buy. Everything I've seen from the HDV cams have looked like really large and clear but kinda crappy video footage, not the cinema-looking gorgeous imagery of the XL2, although the XL2 is only SD resolution. I figure it's better to have "the look" than the resolution.

And I've also been trying to figure out what people are doing about the HDV's F'ing interlaced video. I hate interlaced video now for anything other than getting that "news", "reality TV" or "sports" look. It doesn't seems that anyone has had much success with doing progressive video with the HDV cams, have there?

Anyway, XL2 it shall be for a while - very nice DV camera indeed. :)

Eugene Weaver · February 1st, 2005, 09:07 AM

<<<-- Originally posted by Frank Aalbers : <<<-- Originally posted by Eugene Weaver : Hey, I just got my Canon XL2 exactly seven days ago and I have read and reread the instructions manuel. So far, the little bit of footage I have filmed has been very nice and I am happy with what I payed for.

I am not looking into a Mac with Final Cut Pro so I can really see what this camera can do. Welcome to the XL club! -->>>
Hi Eugene !

Did you first try to get a hang of it using auto , or id you get straight to fidling with all settings ? :-)

Frank -->>>

to be honest, I started with auto then quickly moved on to toying with different settings. The custom presets are great and come in very handy. I still like to use the auto just so I know the picture will turn out good.

Mac and Final Cut will be the next adventure. After I have done some stuff for work (corporate meetings, product descriptions, etc) I will hopefully know a lot more about the camera and editing so I can start getting into some short film work.

I have several friends that are chomping at the bit to get started and have scripts and locations ready to go. Now it's up to me and my learning curve.

Frank Aalbers · February 1st, 2005, 10:25 AM

<<<-- Originally posted by Kyriakos Karababas : Where exactly do they sell them here in San Francisco? -->>>

Here :

http://www.gassers.com/

Kevin Kocak · February 1st, 2005, 10:26 AM

be prepared when you move into post. If you are using external FW drives you will not be able to capture from your XL2 with a PCI FW card. There is an issue with Canon cameras and MAC computers maybe PC's too but I have not heard of it. It seems that Canon's do not like to share the FW bus with other devices connected via FW. Round up a cheap mini cam or buy the PCI card and save yourself some time and lost productivity. Run a search and you shall see. Another good place to investigate is over on the Apple FCP board. Run a search there on Canon cameras

Douglas Robbins · February 4th, 2005, 02:23 AM

There is no problem with capturing to an external Firewire Drive from your XL2 from Final Cut Pro. I've captured over 20 hours of footage in the last two weeks without incident. You must make sure your drive is fast enough and has enough cache, but given the proper technology, the camera will get along with FCP just fine.

There were problems with Canon cameras of the past but they seemed to have fixed the issue some time ago. It was an issue, by the way, that affected PCs and Macintosh computers alike. Even using one of those problematic cameras, I was always able to capture from the XL1 to FCP using the Firewire Basic setting.

Douglas

Kevin Kocak · February 4th, 2005, 07:30 AM

Douglas- How are you connecting your camera and your FW drive to your computer? Do you have a PCI FW card installed? What kind of FW drive are you using? Sorry for the all of the questions but I am very interested to hear about your set up. I have seen tons of documentation about this on the Apple site and would like to figure out how yours is working when so many other people are having problems. I am very interested in remedying my situation. Thanx

Douglas Robbins · February 4th, 2005, 12:34 PM

Kevin,

I'm set up on a G5, but I used to work at a studio that had a flank of G4s set up in the exact same way. This is the basic configuration:

1. Run OS X. I don't know that it won't work on earlier operating systems, but I have no experience with them.

2. Make sure you are using 7200 rpm or faster drives with at least 8mb of cache. Drives with less cache may work, but will not work reliably. Drives with slower rpm speeds are unlikely to work reliably either. I've had good luck with Maxtor and Seagate external drives.

3. Make sure before you put one megabite of data on these drives that you format them with Disk Utility. Format the drives so they are OS Extended. For optimum performance they should not be Journaled, although I have used Journaled firewire drives and they seem to work fine.

4. I've never used a PCI Firewire card on any of the systems I have used. I've only used the built-in Firewire ports that came with the computer from the factory. This does not mean that you can't use a PCI or PCI-X firewire card, but you probably have to make sure its the right card and I don't know much about that.

5. I've used two basic configurations to capture media to the external fw drive, both with equal success. You can either (1) hook the fw drive up to the computer and then daisy chain the video deck/video camera to the fw drive, or you can (2) hook the fw drive up to the computer and then hook the deck directly up to the computer as well using a different fw port. I believe the daisy chain method is superior but I have read that others have had problems with it. You should just try it both ways and us the method that works.

Hope that helps

Douglas

Frank Aalbers · February 7th, 2005, 08:28 PM

Woohoo !

It finally arrived today !

I'ma proud XL2 owner now ! :-)

Frank

George Castro · February 8th, 2005, 01:12 PM

Congrats Frank! Dang, i have to wait until the summer to even consider getting an XL2. Just gotta be patient i guess.

What are you gonna use it for?

George

January 26th, 2005, 02:08 AM	#1
Frank Aalbers Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Oakland,CA Posts: 135	Decided for the XL2 So I finnaly decided. The HDV Z1 from Sony or the XL2. It's the XL2 ! Reasons XL2 ? Clean 24p motion and very High quality for DV. Much easier to manipulate data on a PC. Progessive. Better lowlight capabilities then Z1. Much better sound. Reasons against Z1. No way to get clean deinterlaced motion with good moblur for 24p. Not even when shooting 50i. Best deinterlacing was Interpolate. But that wasn't good enough. DvMaker's result for 60i to 24p is too stuttery. Downconverting from HDV to DV didn't give better results then straight from the XL2. Worse lowlight capability then XL2. If there just was a true 24p HD cam available ... wait a minute ... there is ! I just don't have that kind of money ! Frank

January 31st, 2005, 12:38 PM	#6
Kyriakos Karababas New Boot Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 7	What video store in San Francisco? Where exactly do they sell them here in San Francisco?

February 1st, 2005, 10:25 AM	#9
Frank Aalbers Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Oakland,CA Posts: 135	Re: What video store in San Francisco? <<<-- Originally posted by Kyriakos Karababas : Where exactly do they sell them here in San Francisco? -->>> Here : http://www.gassers.com/

February 8th, 2005, 01:12 PM	#15
George Castro New Boot Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Escondido, CA Posts: 5	Congrats Frank! Dang, i have to wait until the summer to even consider getting an XL2. Just gotta be patient i guess. What are you gonna use it for? George __________________ God Bless you

January 27th, 2005, 02:29 PM	#2
Eugene Weaver Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Millersburg, Ohio Posts: 35	Hey, I just got my Canon XL2 exactly seven days ago and I have read and reread the instructions manuel. So far, the little bit of footage I have filmed has been very nice and I am happy with what I payed for. I am not looking into a Mac with Final Cut Pro so I can really see what this camera can do. Welcome to the XL club!

January 27th, 2005, 08:42 PM	#3
Frank Aalbers Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Oakland,CA Posts: 135	Thanks ! I just ordered it today ... just got my bonus ! :-) Probably another 7 days to ship. Can't wait ! Frank

January 28th, 2005, 11:42 PM	#4
Frank Aalbers Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Oakland,CA Posts: 135	Haha ! I got it for $4500 at a Video Shop In San Francisco. You could ask rush delivery within 2 workindays for NO additional cost ! Canon pays for it ! Sweet ! Can't wait ! Soon baby ... sooooon ! :-) I waited like 3 months for it .... Frank

January 29th, 2005, 02:02 PM	#5
Frank Aalbers Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Oakland,CA Posts: 135	<<<-- Originally posted by Eugene Weaver : Hey, I just got my Canon XL2 exactly seven days ago and I have read and reread the instructions manuel. So far, the little bit of footage I have filmed has been very nice and I am happy with what I payed for. I am not looking into a Mac with Final Cut Pro so I can really see what this camera can do. Welcome to the XL club! -->>> Hi Eugene ! Did you first try to get a hang of it using auto , or id you get straight to fidling with all settings ? :-) Frank

January 31st, 2005, 01:35 PM	#7
Steev Dinkins Major Player Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: San Francisco, CA Posts: 613	Good to hear someone who has also been on the fence between the HDV cams vs XL2 and found the XL2 to be a better buy. Everything I've seen from the HDV cams have looked like really large and clear but kinda crappy video footage, not the cinema-looking gorgeous imagery of the XL2, although the XL2 is only SD resolution. I figure it's better to have "the look" than the resolution. And I've also been trying to figure out what people are doing about the HDV's F'ing interlaced video. I hate interlaced video now for anything other than getting that "news", "reality TV" or "sports" look. It doesn't seems that anyone has had much success with doing progressive video with the HDV cams, have there? Anyway, XL2 it shall be for a while - very nice DV camera indeed. :)

February 1st, 2005, 09:07 AM	#8
Eugene Weaver Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Millersburg, Ohio Posts: 35	<<<-- Originally posted by Frank Aalbers : <<<-- Originally posted by Eugene Weaver : Hey, I just got my Canon XL2 exactly seven days ago and I have read and reread the instructions manuel. So far, the little bit of footage I have filmed has been very nice and I am happy with what I payed for. I am not looking into a Mac with Final Cut Pro so I can really see what this camera can do. Welcome to the XL club! -->>> Hi Eugene ! Did you first try to get a hang of it using auto , or id you get straight to fidling with all settings ? :-) Frank -->>> to be honest, I started with auto then quickly moved on to toying with different settings. The custom presets are great and come in very handy. I still like to use the auto just so I know the picture will turn out good. Mac and Final Cut will be the next adventure. After I have done some stuff for work (corporate meetings, product descriptions, etc) I will hopefully know a lot more about the camera and editing so I can start getting into some short film work. I have several friends that are chomping at the bit to get started and have scripts and locations ready to go. Now it's up to me and my learning curve.

February 1st, 2005, 10:26 AM	#10
Kevin Kocak Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Tampa, Fl Posts: 149	be prepared when you move into post. If you are using external FW drives you will not be able to capture from your XL2 with a PCI FW card. There is an issue with Canon cameras and MAC computers maybe PC's too but I have not heard of it. It seems that Canon's do not like to share the FW bus with other devices connected via FW. Round up a cheap mini cam or buy the PCI card and save yourself some time and lost productivity. Run a search and you shall see. Another good place to investigate is over on the Apple FCP board. Run a search there on Canon cameras

February 4th, 2005, 02:23 AM	#11
Douglas Robbins Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: san bruno, ca Posts: 60	There is no problem with capturing to an external Firewire Drive from your XL2 from Final Cut Pro. I've captured over 20 hours of footage in the last two weeks without incident. You must make sure your drive is fast enough and has enough cache, but given the proper technology, the camera will get along with FCP just fine. There were problems with Canon cameras of the past but they seemed to have fixed the issue some time ago. It was an issue, by the way, that affected PCs and Macintosh computers alike. Even using one of those problematic cameras, I was always able to capture from the XL1 to FCP using the Firewire Basic setting. Douglas

February 4th, 2005, 07:30 AM	#12
Kevin Kocak Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Tampa, Fl Posts: 149	Douglas- How are you connecting your camera and your FW drive to your computer? Do you have a PCI FW card installed? What kind of FW drive are you using? Sorry for the all of the questions but I am very interested to hear about your set up. I have seen tons of documentation about this on the Apple site and would like to figure out how yours is working when so many other people are having problems. I am very interested in remedying my situation. Thanx

February 4th, 2005, 12:34 PM	#13
Douglas Robbins Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: san bruno, ca Posts: 60	Kevin, I'm set up on a G5, but I used to work at a studio that had a flank of G4s set up in the exact same way. This is the basic configuration: 1. Run OS X. I don't know that it won't work on earlier operating systems, but I have no experience with them. 2. Make sure you are using 7200 rpm or faster drives with at least 8mb of cache. Drives with less cache may work, but will not work reliably. Drives with slower rpm speeds are unlikely to work reliably either. I've had good luck with Maxtor and Seagate external drives. 3. Make sure before you put one megabite of data on these drives that you format them with Disk Utility. Format the drives so they are OS Extended. For optimum performance they should not be Journaled, although I have used Journaled firewire drives and they seem to work fine. 4. I've never used a PCI Firewire card on any of the systems I have used. I've only used the built-in Firewire ports that came with the computer from the factory. This does not mean that you can't use a PCI or PCI-X firewire card, but you probably have to make sure its the right card and I don't know much about that. 5. I've used two basic configurations to capture media to the external fw drive, both with equal success. You can either (1) hook the fw drive up to the computer and then daisy chain the video deck/video camera to the fw drive, or you can (2) hook the fw drive up to the computer and then hook the deck directly up to the computer as well using a different fw port. I believe the daisy chain method is superior but I have read that others have had problems with it. You should just try it both ways and us the method that works. Hope that helps Douglas

February 7th, 2005, 08:28 PM	#14
Frank Aalbers Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Oakland,CA Posts: 135	Woohoo ! It finally arrived today ! I'ma proud XL2 owner now ! :-) Frank