Canon XH-A1 HD Work Flow

[David Berrent]

Did you set the camera to shoot HD or NTSC?

If you’re sure you shot HD, do not downconvert the video during playback. If you shot it in HDV, play it back and import it as HDV

Make sure your video playback is set to HD? Your HDV might be greyed because it’s only getting an NTSC signal from the camera?

[Christy Elton]

thanks
We shoot HDV from a another canon camera.

“play it back and import it as HDV ” — I think I was doing this, is there a trick?

How do I check to see if the playback is HD? Again, I do not have a manual and cannot find it on line. There is mode select on the outside and that is set to HD. How do I check to make sure that the camera is sending an HD signal. THANKS SO MUCH. I think this that the camera must be sending an NSTC signal but cannot figure out how to change it.

[Tim Morris]

I am having the same problem, and also asked canon their opinion. (waiting)

I bypassed final cut altogether, and was just capturing video with qt pro. It seems that the output of the live camera is outputing 1080i HD through the firewire port, but not the VTR. Any tape shot in HD is playing back in SD. – When a firewire cable is plugged into my mac

In VTR mode, I open the signal setup menu, and adjust the playback STD option to “HD” but I noticed that if you keep that menu open it grays out as soon as you plug in a firewire cable. I’ve tried multiple cables, ports and even looped it out of my ext. HD.

macpro 2.66 dual, 7Gb ram, osx 10.5.6,

[Dan Wagner]

Looks like I’m not the only one having this issue cause I thought I broke the camera.

I’ve tried the exact steps as well on both Tiger and Leopard with no avail. I’ve attempted in Final Cut as well as IMovie 08,09.

One thing I did notice though is that it looks like the systtem just doesn’t recognize the camera. If you go to Apple> About this Mac> and look at the Firewire settings it doesn’t even detect the camera as a device. I know this works because I tried this with my GL2 and it connects fine.

[Rachel Nanstad]

Hi

I connected by Canon XH A1 to my iMac with a 4 pin 4 pin firewire with 400 mbps data transfer speed, but there is a slight delay in the transfer. Is that normal? Or should I use a 800 mbps cable? Any info is greatly appreciated!

Rachel

[Will Griffith]

Yes Rachel, that is normal. The A1 only communicates at the 400mbs firewire anyway.

[Tim Smith]

Iv read alot of the same problem, which I am also encountering.
Has anyone found a cure for this??
I cant find anything across forums that has had an answer.

I have a slight twist to the tale.

After many days of testing/playing about, I was able to capture my HDV footgae fine. It looked great and it captured as it should.
ONLY, the next day same settings, back to how it was….not recognising my Canon XHA1 atall.

Capture in SD, that works also, so why not HDV.
I have read many articles surrounding faulty firewire ports. Could this be related. I shouldn’t see why as SD captures fine.

grayed menus are also odd on insertion of firewire cable, is canon not telling us something??
I spend 80% of the time sitting, looking knowing there is no menu option I haven’t tried.

Recorded in: HDV 25F 1080i
Capturing at: HDV firewire basic/ HDV/ 1080i 25f
FCP: 5
OSX: 10.5.10

I may take your advise tim and try qt to get the process moving.

[Frank Pretorius]

Thx Randy, your post helped to solve my problem.