Major advantage of the XL H1?

[Laurence Maher]

P.S.

Here's the exact quotes from Scott Billups (pardon that he's always VERY short with his answers.

My questions were "Hey just found out about this canon that's supposed to do 24f but not 24p so I'm sceptical after Sony gave us a joke that way. His response was . . .

"24fps is not relevent to the future. XLH1 is the ticket"

That was vague, so I wronte:

Could you explain in deatial why you pick the canon over the panasonic, please comment on the HD-SDI, the 24f, the hdv etc. and his response was:

"Image keys better and it has a much better lens. ~ s"

That's it. That's all he gave. As you can see it's not much to go on. I know he's into digital and so I'm think his version of a better key may mean one he's doing on a 1080i TV presentation anyway, which wouldn't help me if I'm doing a feature seeking big screen distribution. I need something that will work on a big screen. Make of this what you will guys.


Thanks for the input, please keep it coming.


Larry

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Laurence Maher

Panasonic lens may or may not be better than canon lens, a factor being that an adapter for the panasonic my hinder things.

The glass is unknown at this point. Canon has a great reputation, but then so does Leica. The manual controls on the HVX lens should be better than the manual controls on the Canon, and the HVX lens will be wider. The Canon will have much more telephoto, it'll have the automated focus transition feature, and of course the lens is removable.

2. 24f may be as good as 24p

Five minutes of testing will prove that. Until it's tested and verified as to exactly what it's doing, it's all speculation.

3. 24f on 1080i on panasonic may be as good as 24p

The Panasonic does legitimate 24p.

4. Panasonic has variable frame rate for slow mo, etc. where canon doesn't

Correct. However, keep in mind that the variable frame rates in the HVX are only in the 720p mode.

5. Panasonc can dv tapes via tape drive and can Do DVCPro 50 and DVCPro HD via p2 or firestore at 100mbps (codec HD ) straight onto firesore, but not uncompressed.

And also direct to a computer, or direct to an external DVCPRO-HD tape deck, etc. You can also capture uncompressed via the analog component outputs. But it doesn't do HD-SDI natively (you can get an adapter to convert analog component to HD-SDI, but that's not as good as native HD-SDI).

6. Canon can do hdv onto hdv tape and also onto firestore?

Correct. And of course it can also do DV onto DV tape or onto a Firestore.

7. Neither canon nor panasonic can do uncompresseed HD unless going HD-SDI out to some sort of pain in the butt box or external drive

Correct in concept. You'd need some sort of expensive external device to capture uncompressed; the Canon can output uncompressed in HD-SDI, the Panasonic in analog component. Neither camera will likely prove to be a viable uncompressed capture source in the field though, as uncompressed HD is not all that portable of a capture solution!

8. Canon (interlaced) and Panasonic (progressive) can still manage a decent quality single frame 1080 (non interlaced) single.

Certainly. And the Panasonic can also do 720p for more progressive options, and it can also do interlaced. And the Canon's 24F and 30F modes may very well prove to be a decent quality source for single frames as well!

[Chris Hurd]

Barry has already done a great job answering this, but I just wanted to throw in a few more things to consider:

Originally Posted by Laurence Maher

3. 24f on 1080i on panasonic may be as good as 24p

24F may turn out to be "progressive" in everything but name... it may turn out to produce results indistinguishable from progressive scan... but the world at large doesn't know that as of yet, and won't until Canon releases some 24F material for public viewing.

4. Panasonic has variable frame rate for slow mo, etc. where canon doesn't

Actually the Panasonic HVX200 will not have *variable* frame rates... it will have *selectable* frame rates. There is a big difference between the two. "Variable" means you can smoothly ramp from one frame rate to another during a shot; "selectable" means you have a choice of frame rates to shoot in. Jan C. has stated more than once that "variable" is a VariCam option, not an HVX200 option. The HVX200 will give you quite a spread of frame rates to choose from, though, while on the Canon XL H1 you have only a couple.

7. Neither canon nor panasonic can do uncompresseed HD unless going HD-SDI out to some sort of box or external drive

Both the Canon XL H1 and Panasonic HVX200 offer uncompressed HD through component outputs, only the Canon offers uncompressed output through HD-SDI. It would not be a "box" or an external drive that you're recording to, but rather an HD video tape recorder such as an HDCAM, DVCPRO HD or D5-HD deck.

8. Canon (interlaced) and Panasonic (progressive) can still manage a decent quality single frame 1080 (non interlaced) single.

The Canon actually has a still-photo recording feature built in, and it records your choice of 1920x1080 down to VGA size images on a removeable SD card (it also has direct printing via PictBridge, 5fps continuous shooting, and other digicam-type photo features).

[Robert Niemann]

Is it theoretically possible, that the CCDs record the even and odd lines temporally so close to each other, that it looks like progressive and therefore deinterlacing is not necessary? Or in other words: Could there be the full resolution in the F(rame) modes?

[Dylan Pank]

Another possibility is that pixel shift is used to increase the resolution of a single field in F mode, seeing as the CCDs seem to be actual full 1440*1080. So while the i signal is unPSed, the F rates will be.

If I remember right, frame mode in the XL1 was done like this, which gave a resolution about midway between interlaced and single field.

[Dylan Pank]

Originally Posted by Robert Niemann

Is it theoretically possible, that the CCDs record the even and odd lines temporally so close to each other, that it looks like progressive and therefore deinterlacing is not necessary? Or in other words: Could there be the full resolution in the F(rame) modes?

Only if they were simultaneous, as in the F900's Progressive Segmented frame discussed earlier, otherwise high speed movement (either of the frame or within it) would have interlacing artefacts.

[Dalen Johnson]

This board has been excellent an excellent source of information.

I would like to see if I understand the whole frame rate Pal/NTSC deal.

- Pal/NTSC have nothing to do with HD (this is resolution or frame size, which is consistent in europe and america with HD)

- However 60i is for America Japan (because of the electricity), 50i is for Europe (except for France), which leads me to 24 and 25.

- can 25p be displayed in America, and 24p in Europe? (its all below the 60 and 50 hz. frequency.)

I live in Europe, so if I own a 24p camera do i have to convert it to 25p?
(Wouldnt think so.)

Thanks

dalen

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Dalen Johnson

Am I also correct that you get uncompressed HD directly in the camera if you record directly to the P2 card?

Not uncompressed, no. Uncompressed high-def only gives you about five seconds of footage per gigabyte. So what gets stored on the P2 cards is footage compressed with DVCPRO-HD compression, which is the same format as used in the $70,000 VariCam.

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Dalen Johnson

- Pal/NTSC have nothing to do with HD (this is resolution or frame size, which is consistent in europe and america with HD)

That is correct; the frame size and resolution are the same whether in Europe or America, etc. The difference is in the frame rate.

- However 60i is for America Japan (because of the electricity), 50i is for Europe (except for France), which leads me to 24 and 25.

I don't think it has much to do with electricity anymore (since computer monitors can easily scan at just about any scanning rate). Rather, America kept 60 because of the vast library of existing footage, and it is for that same reason that Europe will go with 50. 24 works in America because it can be directly translated to 60 using 2:3 pulldown. 25 works in Europe because it is a straight conversion to 50i.

- can 25p be displayed in America, and 24p in Europe? (its all below the 60 and 50 hz. frequency.)

No. 25P is not compatible with any broadcast transmission standard in America, nor can it be put on DVDs. And the reverse is basically true about Europe; they display 25p but not 24p. No European broadcast standard would allow 24p transmission.

I live in Europe, so if I own a 24p camera do i have to convert it to 25p?
(Wouldnt think so.)

Yes, if you want to see it on a television or if you want to broadcast it, or burn it to a DVD. 25p is the "right" frame rate for Europe.

[Dalen Johnson]

Barry,

Thanks. I think Ive got it now.
Even with HD Europe and America will still be different due to the choice of 60 and 50 hz.

if you shoot in 24 or 25 (depending on your country), when it is broadcast on television it has to be converted or translated into 60 or 50i.
(I guess this is called pulldown, never really understood that, but I think I see clearer now.)

Thats kind of a bummer when I think about it, but like many people have said, few people need a camera for both europe and america.

again, thanks for your reply

dalen

[Greg Boston]

The America 60i, Europe 50i are maintained so that the image refresh is in sync with things like lights. Even standard household lamps are turning on and off at twice the frequency of the power line. We can't see it with the naked eye but it woud lead to unwanted strobe effects on the recorded image.

-gb-

[Mike Marriage]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

The America 60i, Europe 50i are maintained so that the image refresh is in sync with things like lights. Even standard household lamps are turning on and off at twice the frequency of the power line. We can't see it with the naked eye but it woud lead to unwanted strobe effects on the recorded image.

Tungstens will not produce a flicker because the sampling is so fast that they do not have any time to cool between cycles. Fluorescents, particularly old ones, do produce a flicker though.

I wish we had have had international standards back in the days these things were invented. It used to be a big problem nationally before there was a national grid, because local power stations all worked at different voltages.