XL1 / XL1S various posts

[Joshua Reafsnyder]

I just bought an XL-1 from B & H and from what i gather its covered with a 14 day return policy and a 30/90 day work/parts warranty.

[Jim Justice]

Greetings from Cincy,
I'm new to the forum but glad I found it.
My question is....I do alot of music videos/live performance shows and have never had to much luck with pulling a direct sbd patch into the Xl1s. What equipment would you suggest to use as a preamp/mixer for better performance. It's extremely hard to monitor sound during a live show, and rely mostly on the visual monitoring of the levels, but I am doing something wrong because everytime its either clipped to the bajesus or not enough gusto, but my audio levels are right on.
Thoughts, comments??
Thanks in advance.

[Nelson Dewey]

A DP has expressed an interest in renting my XL1-S occasionally for tests and rehearsals.
Any suggestions on what a reasonable day rate would be? I'm in Vancouver BC.
Nelson

[Don Palomaki]

You should get decent sound with the XL1. Clipping implies an improper setup, probably overdriving the XL1 inputs.

How are you feeding audio to the XL1, and what settings are you using?

If you are shooting from near the sound baod and have an electrically clean environment, the easy setup is to take a tape output form the mixer (typically abotu -10 dBV level) to the Audio 1 input, and use manual audio level control.

If the mixer only has balanced outputs, that is OK, and in fact better if you have to run cable some distance to the XL1 or are in an electrically noisy environment. They you will need a XLR adapter such as the MA-100, Studio One, Beachtek, etc. Be sure to match levels, the MA-100/200 is not designed for line level input, only for mic level inputs.

Hi all,

I introduced myself in the "Neighborhood" forum here;

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=52140

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to learn from experienced, knowledgable people and I will try not to abuse the priviledge (by doing research and leg work first, then asking).

When I started capturing from miniDV tape I realized how little hard drive space I actually have. I happen to have a couple of 120GB IDE hard drives around so I thought about getting an external 1394 enclosure and installing my editing program on it, and basically keeping this drive for DV only. Do you have any recommendations about which ext enclosure works best and any other considerations?

Also, I have found myself in need of being able to produce slow motion for technical analysis and while I can slow things down in editing, if the "detail" isn't there on tape, it won't be in the final. Having worked as a still photographer I'm aware of the relationship between shutter speed and f-stop with regard to exposure, and when I worked with 16mm in the military, I knew that to produce slow motion, a higher frame rate was needed. I'm not seeing that the XL1s has this capability with regard to FPS so I'm a little confused. Will adjusting shutter speed give me what I want in this situation?

Also, I shot some tape that when captured and encoded, looks fuzzy, or at least not as sharp as it could be. This was using the auto focus mode. Do I need to manually focus to "set" the auto focus so it will be sharp?

You can find an example of what I am talking about here, it's a 5,700k file;

http://www.digihub.com/05-09-21_BD.wmv

Thanks in advance to allowing me to benefit from your wisdom and experience.

Ken

(my biggest fumble yet, traveling hundreds of miles to two different shoots and then realizing I didn't have my on-camera mic turned on, sheeez)

[Jason Hodges]

Hello all, I am new here. After searching before posting i was unable to find the answer but what have you all found to be the battery of choice for extended life. I still only have the stock battery. I have seen ones advertised on Ebay as having a 7.5 or 8 hr life. I am looking for a battery that will allow me to record for extended periods before swicthing the battery or charging. Any advice you guys can give is appreciated. thanks

[Mike Rinkunas]

Jason,

you may want to look at one of the add-on accessories, the CH-910. It is a dual charger holder that holds 2 batteries. If memory serves me right, you can even switch batteries on it as you are shooting.

hope this helps,
~Mike

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Jason,

I have purchased some of the Canon BP-945 type batteries on Ebay. Four of the one's I purchased were outstanding ($31.00 each in 2003). I could power the XL1s, at idle for over 18 hours, and many hours of recording, more than 4 hours, probably 7 hours. In general, I can tape constantly for half a working day without worrying about the battery.

I purchased 12 more from another vendor (Less than $20 each in 2005) and they were also good, but not quite as good as my first four.

If you are interested powering the camera for an extended period of time, you may use the dual battery adapter, as mentioned above.

Also, you can purchase the car adapter/charger from Canon which allows you to use a 12 to 24 volt battery system. Two car batteries, or 4-6 volt Golf Cart batteries will power the camera for weeks. As this setup is not very portable, it will probably not suit your needs.

However, the car battery adapter / charger is very handy in that you can charge one battery as long as you have access to a vehicle. I find that this battery charger does not drain the car battery excessively while charging the camera battery.

[David Ennis]

Ken, welcome to the forum.

People here are very friendly, but I think your post has gone unanswered because your first question was not specific to XL1 / XL1s cams at all, and the others only marginally. Also, there is a collection of questions that are unrelated to each other, making it more of a chore to answer. No worries, These are common errors for new guys, and even experienced hands forget sometimes. Choose the forum for each subject carefully, keep the scope of each post narrow, and I'm sure you'll find this website to be all you hoped for and more.

Frame rate is not adjustable. Some cams allow you to select either 30 fps or 24 fps, but that's it. 60i is still 30 fps, but with two interlaced fields per frame. Increasing the shutter speed will have the effect of exposing each frame more quickly and thus reducing the blur of fast moving objects.

I looked at your link. That's a nice little clip, very watchable even with the focus issue--I ran it five or six times. Autofocus is often unreliable in dim lighting, so yes, manual would have been better. Was it humid? If the cam had come out of an air conditioned vehicle, or even if the dew point was rising due to weather condtions, A thin film of condensation might fuzz it up also.

Hi everyone,

I am a young starting filmmaker and have been shooting my short films with a Hi8 camera. I just recently started learning about camcorders and got myself a Canon XL1. Does anyone have any ADVICE that they can give me for acheiving the best look and sound? I watched this one mans independent film that was shot with the same XL1 camera and for some reason the quality did not seem very well. I heard that there is a better solution to transferring your video directly from your camera to your computer, but I'm unsure of it. If there is anyone who has suggestions to getting great picture quality and sound that would be great. Thank you.

[Kevin Wild]

Chad, I have one piece of advice for you: Look around these boards.

Seriously, and I don't mean to sound mean, but before you ask for advice, you might want to look around. These boards are full of great information. Feel free to ask any specific questions, though, and you'll have a slew of people ready to answer.

Thanks and welcome!

Kevin

[Karl Heiner]

Originally Posted by Chad K

Hi everyone,

I am a young starting filmmaker and have been shooting my short films with a Hi8 camera. I just recently started learning about camcorders and got myself a Canon XL1. Does anyone have any ADVICE that they can give me for acheiving the best look and sound? I watched this one mans independent film that was shot with the same XL1 camera and for some reason the quality did not seem very well. I heard that there is a better solution to transferring your video directly from your camera to your computer, but I'm unsure of it. If there is anyone who has suggestions to getting great picture quality and sound that would be great. Thank you.

hello chad,

kevin has a good point.
got myself a xl1-s last year, been learning by reading a lot, here, and everything else i can get my hands on it. off course, i learn also by shooting, reviewing, writing my settings down, going to rehearsals etc. trial and error.
over the last year the quality of my videos has improved..a lot...but i still have no clue about a lot of things.
i learned here, that you get super answers to specific questions, but nobody wants to do other people homeworks. which is cool with me.

i think the best connection (no loss of frames) is the IEEE 1394 no matter were too. (pc,vtr, monitor)

greetings

[Daniel Wojtowicz]

i recently was going to rent a xl-2 for something but i ended up buying one instead. One store here in edmonton was going to charge like 215 dollars per day. I know its not the same camera but hope it helps anyways. You can also call local places around where you are and ask how much they charge to rent theirs

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

In Belgium I saw one on the internet renting it for 52 euros a day.

[Andrew Hsu]

As a soon-to-be owner of a DTE (direct to edit) device, I'm wondering if it is possible to do 100% TRUE tapeless recording.

Obviously, you need to have a tape in your camera in order to allow it to record. You can't tape DTE if you can't push the record button!

But I'm wondering if it is bad for a camera to have a tape casing with it's tape removed running in record mode.

I would think that it is OK since there is zero friction on any of the heads, but I'm not a mechanical engineer so I don't know if the camera heads actually NEED to have tape running through them to perform properly.

I would rarely or never do this because I would want to have a tape for archival purposes anyway, but in the case I wanted to shoot something quick and simple--like a birthday home movie, let's say--it would be cool to be able to go 100% TRUE tapeless.

So the question is: Is it bad for an XL1 or GL2 to not have any tape in the MiniDV tape casing while "recording"?

Thanks!