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Canon HDV camera records DVCPRO HD as well?
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What I dont understand is why Canon didnt go for broke on this one. They dont have any higher end gear to protect… Do they not know what we want? I know there are other factors at play which we, the average consumer, dont know about but im still dumbfounded by A- lack of progressive CCD’s and B- the choice of only HDV and DV recording in camera. I understand HDV is natively supported by a wide range of software but its such an awful, horrible, retched codec. Grass Valleys new cam looks brilliant, but they have high-end gear to protect so they dont offer 24p. It drives me nuts!! Its not hard to list out the specs of a camera that would blow away all the competition. People would argue that the features I list are too expensive, yet they show up in all these new “affordable” HD cameras… just not on the same one. Some of these features like adding SDI out for the HVX would make it more expensive, but others are just “choices,” bad choices that wouldnt greatly effect the manufacturing costs.
I argued in the past about lack of interchangeable lenses on the HVX…. this is what most people want. Yet because of course Panasonic did not go with interchangeable lenses, there were a million reasons given about why its not the best way to go and how much is would add to the cost of the camera. Well look, Canon did it, JVC did it.
Its simple really, the Canon would really be stellar if it was real 24p, and offered direct to disk recording in a format other than HDV (jpeg 200 would be great as suggested.) If they got rid of the tape mechanism all together, I wonder how much those two features would have cost to add to the camera if they were part of the plan from the beginning. Id bet very little.
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Add me to the list of people who can’t understand Canon’s logic on this one. They seemed to go head-to-head with Panasonic for the prosumer and independent production market for awhile, but the specs of these two camera in terms of recording formats could not be more tilted to the Panasonic side.
I’m wondering if the tape transport on this Canon XL-H1 camera is to serve the same purpose that the transport on the Panny HVX-200 serves… just with the addition of HDV to put “high-def” onto cheap tape, as well as a DTE hard disk / solid-state media drive (whatever term you want to use for, what in the end, it is nothing more than a glorified removeable media / flash drive). Does anyone know if there is any sort of DTE solution available with the Canon XL-H1? Even if it is Firestore based? (maybe the same one they are planning for use with the HVX-200?) As with many people, I’m not really too thrilled about HDV and I’d like to use something else for HD productions if at all possible.
Lets do a quick feature comparison list of each camera…
Panasonic HVX-200
Positive:
DV, DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO HD, 1080/60i, 1080/24p, 1080/30p, 720/60p, 720/24p, 720/30p, 480/60i, 480/24p, 480/30p, variable frame rates in 720, native 16×9 3-CCD, two 48k XLR channels, HD (D4) component output, miniDV transport (argue if you want, for at least the next 2-3 years this will be MORE than handy for many people), solid-state DTE based technologyCould be better:
P2 prices and/or P2 solid-state recording format, lack of Firewire out to external hard drive (without a Firestore device), lack of interchangeable lens, no HD-SDI outputCanon XL-H1
Positive:
HD-SDI output, 20x HD video zoom lens, removeable/interchangeable lens, genlock, SMPTE timecode in-and-out, miniDV and HDV tape transport (again, I don’t want HDV, but for many people and clients, this could be beneficial), photo mode on SD memory cards, aspect ratio guide functions on viewfinder (4×3, 13×9, 14×9, 1.66:1, 1.75:1 1.85:1, 235:1)Could be better:
solid-state DTE based technology (maybe it’s available, I just haven’t read it yet), 16×9 interlaced CCDs, no true progressive recording available at all, no 24P option, 1080i only for HD -
I got to play with the H1 today at res fest… its a solid camera. The design is really superb although its quite heavy. I asked the Canon rep about the progressive thing and he said there is a “cineframe” mode that has the same end result as progressive but since its not really progressive they cant use 24p in any of the literature. However, he admitted that he had no idea how it was done and that Canon has not yet reveled to them how they were achieving the progressive frames. I didnt buy the shtick, the CCD’s are interlaced… I dont know how you can end up with true progressive from that.
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[Emery] “Its simple really, the Canon would really be stellar if it was real 24p, and offered direct to disk recording”
Maybe canon gets their ccd block from sony and sony does not want to offer progressive alternative.
Dv-tape is still needed for legacy reasons in lots of shooting situations and even hdv might be handy in some multicamera low budget productions. All that canon needs now is a box that takes in hd-sdi and 2.5″ hdd and has some nice (maybe jpeg2000) compression encoding in it. -
[Bettsy] “The other advantage this camera has over the HVX is the option of shooting with the Pro-35 Digital adaptor, giving real wide angle lenses and primes.”
Maybe you’re talking about P+S’s Mini35 and I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t also fit in front of hvx200.
[Bettsy] “I imagine the limiting factor on the image qaulity will be the 1/3″ chips.”
That surely will limit this baby. If you think about sensitivity Z1 with 960×1080, how low it is with 1440×1080 1/3″ chips…
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[Emery] “What I dont understand is why Canon didnt go for broke on this one. They dont have any higher end gear to protect…”
Canon are making lots of money selling HD and SD and Cine lenses.
They do not want to compete with “big boys”.
Also it will be interesting to see if that Canon HD lens will have the same controls as previous Canon XL-1…speaking of lenses…I would lile to ask Jan if he has any idea how wide the lens will be on Pana 200HD camera.
jiri -
I have seen the lens on the HVX and I think it is very good. We had it in the lab an it is better than the other lenses I have seen on the JVC, which breathes badly and has aberrations, and the Sony which has significant aberrations. The Canon I don’t know as I have not had an opportunity to play with it.
I did and still do think it is odd that the footage that they decided to show was recorded on a DVCPRO HD machine rather than on the HDV Codec. And the rationale was that they wanted to show people what was possible coming out of the HD-SDI port. My reponse to that is, “so everyone that buys this camera is going run right out and buy a $26,000 DVCPRO HD machine to work with it?” Most of the folks I know that have $8000 to spend on the camera would like to see the cameras recording capability.
Best,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
Jan, if the HVX200 had SDI I/O then you could shoot on the Canon, and record over SDI to the DVCproHD codec on the HVX, and onto P2, and not have to lug around a $20k+ DVCproHD deck around with you 🙂 🙂 🙂
Sorry, couldn’t resist that little joke.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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[Graeme Nattress] “Jan, if the HVX200 had SDI I/O then you could shoot on the Canon, and record over SDI to the DVCproHD codec on the HVX, and onto P2, and not have to lug around a $20k+ DVCproHD deck around with you 🙂 🙂 :-)”
True but then you would have to record on P2, and then you would wonder okay why am I hooking up a 1/3″ camera to this other 1/3″ camera? Ha, Ha, Ha.
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[Jan Crittenden Livingston] “I did and still do think it is odd that the footage that they decided to show was recorded on a DVCPRO HD machine”
Absolutely right. But maybe you could do some deal with canon that they could advertise how much better canon camera looks when recorded with panasonic vtr. 🙂
And seriously, genlock, tc i/o and hd-sdi connectors are really killer features in this price group.
Panny should also consider these to hvx-200a, don’t you think?
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