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

Kaku Ito · October 2nd, 2005, 11:19 PM

You see, even when you try so hard, even taking time to shoot, things don't get perfect so I call my effort as "study" rather than professional work.

I'm inclined with understanding of music, sound, sports (at least BMX and mountainbiking) and with more than average (as normal person) understanding of video, nonlinear editing environment and web technologies. I'm not pro of any of them (I run companies distributing MOTU software/hardware and system integrating NLE and music production system), but at least always try to stand users' side and sympathize to research the useability and quality, and at the end, develop the culture of production and the real performance of music and sports, capturing the precious moments, performance that may happen only once or twice.

Thank you Eric for sticking around and I'm not taking it personally with you, but filmmaking style is not my bag at all, so we should do cooperative testing for the next time, to make senario to do perfect testing here, that will make me understand filmmaking aspect and I'm sure others that want to getting into would appreciate it, too.

Kaku Ito · October 2nd, 2005, 11:26 PM

Thank you for all of you for the encouragement.

Another hard thing for me is to express professionally in English as a second language. My writing might not sound professional, but I tell you, even at my current level of writing English, I improved a lot from posting and getting commnents here. So, I thank you all.

Pekka Uotila · October 2nd, 2005, 11:27 PM

Thank you Kaku,
making tests is heavy that I know for sure...
Atleast I got a lot of information and I am very happy that you shared your weekend with us .

Michael Maier · October 3rd, 2005, 01:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eric Brown

This thing from what I saw can kick some serious butt when the right people get their hands on it.

Well, that's true with any camera.

But I don't think controlled conditions will take away the video look. Nate's L.A. footage was also in uncontrolled conditions and looks like film. 24f doesn’t look the same as 24p.
It's what I said before. Resolution doesn't make a camera.
I know it's quite early to fully judge. But my first impressions are that the HD100 is an overall better camera.

Michael Maier · October 3rd, 2005, 02:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaku Ito

Well, that is one of the reasons why I hate providing what I don't usually do. Filmmaking approach. I should never do that in the future.

I did mention before that rock musicain can't play classic music in its tradditional way.

I'm into capturing the real performance rather than making up stories and situations, so yes, I'm not the right person to put my hands on this camera.

XL H1 is too heavy for my purpose, and don't even balance on my shoulder like HD100 would, and not light enough to take it around in the extreme situation.

Hey Kaku, you are doing a great favor for this whole community. You shouldn’t feel bad at all. I'm sure we all are very grateful to you. If it wasn't for you, we would most likely have to wait a long time till footage hit the "airwaves." So, don't be so hard on yourself. Specially that your footage looks great. It's not your fault it doesn't look like film. You shot it properly. I think it wouldn't look much more filmic even if you had done the test with filmmaking in mind, using a full crew with all the equipment. If you had shot those clips with an Arriflex or any other 35mm camera, no matter what, it would have looked like film. So, it's not your fault at all.

Kaku Ito · October 3rd, 2005, 03:07 AM

Michael,

Don't worry Michael, I know I tend to take things too seriously.

By the way, my source, Mr. Sekiguchi at Apex (Canon's broadcast lense dealer) told me that Canon changed the distribution channel on this XL H1, from the consumer channel to broadcast channel. He is going to talk to the broadcast product manger next week to report all of our cooporative effort here. If we raise enough recognition here, so we might be able to do another test in the near future. I personally requested that I want smaller HDV with 720p or 720 interlaced in a casio G-shock sytle chassis. No other brand had done it before, so it might be a kick.

Mr. Sekiguchi was able to get the sample unit last week, to start taking it around to his broadcast related customers beginning this week, and he thought of me and got okay from Mr. Yamaguchi of Canon Sales to let me use it for the last weekend. They are the same people that helped someone from france who wanted to shoot independent movie with XL2.
They're intention and actual efforts to help the people in the field is very generous and in the contrary, I never had received any kind of recognition from Panasonic nor Sony (I got help on GS400, DVC30, FX1 and HC1 from Pro Video Station Shinjuku and Mr. Nakamura from VideoAlpha magazine). So, I must mention that I really appreciate their help.

For the tourist coming to Japan, Pro Video Station always have the cheapest price tag for these popular cams. They are right in Shinjuku around all of the other huge camera stores are. So check it out and if you mention my name they will be extra nice to you.

Evan C. King · October 3rd, 2005, 08:40 AM

If you really can put in a word to the product manager just tell them to make a gl2 with hdv and 1080i24f (or 720p24 jvc style, which I doubt they'd ever do) and 2 xlr inputs, that's all I and probably a lot of people need!

Kaku Ito · October 3rd, 2005, 09:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evan C. King

If you really can put in a word to the product manager just tell them to make a gl2 with hdv and 1080i24f (or 720p24 jvc style, which I doubt they'd ever do) and 2 xlr inputs, that's all I and probably a lot of people need!

We can try this anyway. I've been writing a column in a professional video magazine for close to ten years now. The topic is all up to me, so for the last several months, I've been writing about affordable HD production environment and the column is called "Affordable HD Study" on VideoAlpha magazine published by ShashinKogyo Shuppan. Since Canon could be different from Sony or Panasonic, I can keep putting requests that we can gather here on my column and hope they would listen. But my main goal is to suggest them the hardcore HDV camera with the chassis of G-shock style, so we can take it to extreme conditions without so much weight.

My requests are G-shock style chassis, DVC30 style manual zoom ring, 2 XLRs like Evan says (or maybe even detachable unit) and special vistasize mode (less active pixels to avoid compression breakups for fast camera action) and so on. I will probably make a special blog section to keep sending the message. If you want to join me, feel free.

Michael Pappas · October 9th, 2005, 04:47 PM

What codec is this! It won't play... I took it to my XPpro box and it wouldn't play on that either. So not on my macs or PC. What do I need?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

Hi,

The resolution is very high as expected. So high in fact that you can scale the image immensely. I've made an example for you, you'll want to see this:

Click here for wmv

Couple of observations. The footage is slow to edit even on a twin processor computer (same as Sony). Get ready to wait for rendering because multiple streams in real time are almost impossible. The clips in the CX color corrector show the highlights blasting 100IRE. Japan's NTSC is NTSC-MJ which puts their blacks at 0 IRE. In the supplied clips the blacks are right around 6.5 IRE. The footage looks like video right off a handy cam and I'm sure the settings will need to be adjusted. Are there any preset gamma curves prebuilt into the cameras menu?

All in all, it has the real resolution but the editing goes slow. The camera needs adjusting to get some more color range out of it.

Damien Belleville · October 20th, 2005, 06:55 PM

I managed to play it with Media Player Classic - wmv9 codecs installed.

John Mitchell · October 24th, 2005, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Pappas

What codec is this! It won't play... I took it to my XPpro box and it wouldn't play on that either. So not on my macs or PC. What do I need?

Michael - this might work:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=HDTV_Pump

primarily for playing back HD transport streams, handy to have anyway.

Otherwise Chris did mention the free VLC player at the top of this thread

http://www.videolan.org/

October 2nd, 2005, 11:27 PM	#93
Pekka Uotila Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Helsinki, Finland Posts: 51	Thank you Kaku, making tests is heavy that I know for sure... Atleast I got a lot of information and I am very happy that you shared your weekend with us . __________________ Pekka

October 2nd, 2005, 11:19 PM	#91
Kaku Ito Trustee Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo Posts: 1,382	You see, even when you try so hard, even taking time to shoot, things don't get perfect so I call my effort as "study" rather than professional work. I'm inclined with understanding of music, sound, sports (at least BMX and mountainbiking) and with more than average (as normal person) understanding of video, nonlinear editing environment and web technologies. I'm not pro of any of them (I run companies distributing MOTU software/hardware and system integrating NLE and music production system), but at least always try to stand users' side and sympathize to research the useability and quality, and at the end, develop the culture of production and the real performance of music and sports, capturing the precious moments, performance that may happen only once or twice. Thank you Eric for sticking around and I'm not taking it personally with you, but filmmaking style is not my bag at all, so we should do cooperative testing for the next time, to make senario to do perfect testing here, that will make me understand filmmaking aspect and I'm sure others that want to getting into would appreciate it, too.

October 2nd, 2005, 11:26 PM	#92
Kaku Ito Trustee Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo Posts: 1,382	Thank you for all of you for the encouragement. Another hard thing for me is to express professionally in English as a second language. My writing might not sound professional, but I tell you, even at my current level of writing English, I improved a lot from posting and getting commnents here. So, I thank you all.

October 3rd, 2005, 03:07 AM	#96
Kaku Ito Trustee Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo Posts: 1,382	Michael, Don't worry Michael, I know I tend to take things too seriously. By the way, my source, Mr. Sekiguchi at Apex (Canon's broadcast lense dealer) told me that Canon changed the distribution channel on this XL H1, from the consumer channel to broadcast channel. He is going to talk to the broadcast product manger next week to report all of our cooporative effort here. If we raise enough recognition here, so we might be able to do another test in the near future. I personally requested that I want smaller HDV with 720p or 720 interlaced in a casio G-shock sytle chassis. No other brand had done it before, so it might be a kick. Mr. Sekiguchi was able to get the sample unit last week, to start taking it around to his broadcast related customers beginning this week, and he thought of me and got okay from Mr. Yamaguchi of Canon Sales to let me use it for the last weekend. They are the same people that helped someone from france who wanted to shoot independent movie with XL2. They're intention and actual efforts to help the people in the field is very generous and in the contrary, I never had received any kind of recognition from Panasonic nor Sony (I got help on GS400, DVC30, FX1 and HC1 from Pro Video Station Shinjuku and Mr. Nakamura from VideoAlpha magazine). So, I must mention that I really appreciate their help. For the tourist coming to Japan, Pro Video Station always have the cheapest price tag for these popular cams. They are right in Shinjuku around all of the other huge camera stores are. So check it out and if you mention my name they will be extra nice to you.

October 3rd, 2005, 08:40 AM	#97
Evan C. King Major Player Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Toronto Posts: 532	If you really can put in a word to the product manager just tell them to make a gl2 with hdv and 1080i24f (or 720p24 jvc style, which I doubt they'd ever do) and 2 xlr inputs, that's all I and probably a lot of people need!

October 20th, 2005, 06:55 PM	#100
Damien Belleville New Boot Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Annecy, France Posts: 7	I managed to play it with Media Player Classic - wmv9 codecs installed.