Kaku Ito's XL H1 video clips now available for download

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

How are you arriving at that conclusion when talking about the Canon?

Have you even seen the footage?

What's curious to me is that the 24F, 30F and 60i clips of the guy on the bike look so similar - I'm not sure if it's shutter speed, highlight exposure, gamma, camera work and/or something about the "F" mode that still is a little "videoish" - it's hard to say.

You both may be right. 24F and 30F are not anything like CineFrame from Sony - looks like progressive motion. However, footage does lack much filmic feel despite Vegas reporting it as 23.976 progressive footage (except I also get the 24F clip labeled as 29,97 progressive.

Like the early HD100 footage, we can't jump to conclusions yet. We need some carefully shot A/B comparisoins.

[Eli R Cantu]

Hey Kaku,

You are the man, I actually wen't to Tokyo Japan for 10 days and documented my trip with a Canon XLS.... I had tremendous time and managed to make a mini crappy documentry DVD for my friends to check out. I'm trying to finance another trip and take a friend with me this time...Know let me get to the point... It was hard shooting in Shibuya Crossing with all the flashing lights and and cars. I ended up with some harsh CA and lens Autofocus problems.

Im very intrested to see how it handles at night with the extreme amount of neon lights and activities and how it compares with my amatuer footage of TOKYO AT NIGHT.....


Thanks Eli

PS. ROPPONGI ROCKS

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Stephen van Vuuren

What's curious to me is that the 24F, 30F and 60i clips of the guy on the bike look so similar

The clips labeled bikeseq24 & 30 are actually both 30p.

The cappucino making clip and the cars passing with panning clips are 24. There may be others, but I know offhand those are 24, I checked them.

[Soroush Shahrokni]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

How are you arriving at that conclusion when talking about the Canon?

Have you even seen the footage?

Yes Nate, I was probably among the first to download the Canon footage, both Kakus and footage from a french forum. Also what I said is my personal opinion and my personal conclusion as Im only judging what I see with no regards to brand, specs nor pixel count. There are even ppl that prefer Sony CF mode over 720p!

I think the XL H1 is a great 1080i video camera but I prefer the 24P JVC look over the Canon (24P vs 24F)...and this comes from a long time Canon fan and a person who would previously not even touch a JVC. Until somebody convinces me with better 24F footage my opinion stands!

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

The clips labeled bikeseq24 & 30 are actually both 30p.

The cappucino making clip and the cars passing with panning clips are 24. There may be others, but I know offhand those are 24, I checked them.

I know as I checked as well but I'm not concluding that they were mislabled or mishot until Kaku tells us more. It seems clear that he was trying to shoot the same subject in three different modes. Why the 24F is showing up as 30F we don't know yet.

We have yet to know exactly how the 24F is set in the camera, processed etc and what shutter speeds etc. all this was shot with.

These clips, though fun to look at, are not really enough to make solid judgements with.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Soroush Shahrokni

Yes Nate, I was probably among the first to download the Canon footage, both Kakus and footage from a french forum.

I looked at the French footage and since it was lower rez MPEG and short clips, it was really hard to tell too much.

[Soroush Shahrokni]

Yeah, thats right, and non of them where 24F.

I guess Stephen is right, we will have to wait until more footage arrives!

[Nate Weaver]

Alright. View, in VLC back to back, if you will:

http://homepage.mac.com/nweaver/.Movies/XLH1-24p-1.m2t
http://homepage.mac.com/nweaver/.Mov...ywoodBlvd1.m2t

The XLH clip is in 24.

[Lauri Kettunen]

Originally Posted by Kevin Wild

It looks exactly like what I'd expect...an XL2 picture with higher resolution.

In my eyes Kaku's footages, as well as those French ones from the other thread, do seem have to more tones in the black end than XL2 images. For me, the neutral and rich tone of colors is amazing taking into account the bandwidth of HDV. Thinking backwards, each step from Betacam to XL1 to XL2 and now to XL-H1 have added more tones, and the once so marvellous Betacam appears now to be rather steep.

[Eric Brown]

Originally Posted by John Jay

file:

XLH1chromaaberration?.m2t.zip
not found on the server,

shame as this was the one I wanted to see most of all :(

I actually did see some on the car passing / panning clip (a truck actually) some green rimming on the rock at the lower right of the frame and a little purple on the mirror of the moped parked right of frame.
It's very minor, however.
The abberation I've seen from JVC grabs seems more pronounced?
All and all, I think it looks pretty nice, actually. Video-y or not.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

Alright. View, in VLC back to back, if you will:

http://homepage.mac.com/nweaver/.Movies/XLH1-24p-1.m2t
http://homepage.mac.com/nweaver/.Mov...ywoodBlvd1.m2t

The XLH clip is in 24.

Interesting - I think Barry Green is absolutely right about his 24F theory. Objects in motion seem unaturally soft compared to still background. The look is very much like motion adaptive deinterlacing you get with a software product like DV Filmmaker. I'm liking more the theory that 24F is two 48i half rez 540 line frames that the DIGIC processor puts together. Maybe that's the reason 24F cannot be wrapped in yet another stream and Canon had to create a new HDV format - too much processing?

That also means no real 1/24th shutter speed like DVX, Varicam, CineAlta as well. I don't use it that much on my DVX, but very handy in low light scenes where there is not much subject or camera movement.

I could be way wrong, but that's what I'm seeing.

[Barry Green]

Haven't seen those two clips yet (conversation & chromatic-aberration) but that just reminded me -- Tim Smith, the Canon rep at ResFest, did say that the XL H1's lens "resolves 1200 lines".

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Stephen van Vuuren

Maybe that's the reason 24F cannot be wrapped in yet another stream and Canon had to create a new HDV format

The reason the Canon 24F tapes don't play back in Sony equipment, is because it looks like Canon is using repeat flags like the JVC. You can't use old-style pulldown (putting redundant whole frames or fields) in the stream with HDV because you'd have to recompress to extract your original 24fps.

The JVC uses repeat flags, a way of just putting 24 real frames inside a 60 stream without wasting stream bandwidth on redundant frames. Repeat flags are well known MPEG2 spec according to David Newman, but I've run into plenty of software that doesn't recognize it.

It appears to me that Canon did the same trick, using flags. It has nothing to do with how the Canon got those 24 frames from the CCDs....that's another issue entirely.

[Lauri Kettunen]

Originally Posted by Eric Brown

a little purple on the mirror of the moped parked right of frame.

My monitor is calibrated, and I can second Eric's observations. Still, looking more closely at the bike sequences, the guy's shirt is purple every now and then, as well as the street. Look also the last frame of bikeseq30. In the upper right corner the wall of the building which is in light has a magenta tone. So, I wonder, whether this is a white balance issue? However, would like to emphasize, this is just a question from my side: Obviously the heavy compression must have some side effects. No free lunches available.

[Thomas Smet]

Wow this is going to be one heck of a braodcast camera. It should make for a very nice HD camera for those wedding shooters who do not mind spending $9,000.00 on a camera. I haven't checked out things very well yet but so far I do like what I see. I do agree however that I have a hard time deciding if it is worth the cost. This is even more true now with Barry Green's find of the tapes not working in any current HDV deck. I cannot remember the last time I actually used a camera for editing.

Barry do you know or think tapes in 60i would work fine in a current other 1080i deck/camera? I can see why the 24f and 30f may not work because of the flags but what about straight everyday 60i?

Kaku maybe if you get a chance you can see if tapes recorded in 60i playback from your HC1?