Shooting a short film

[Todd Terry]

I shoot with the XLH1 every day. Don’t sweat the “24f” vs “24P”… they look, behave and perform identically.

The only stumbling block I’ve seen with the Canons is that if you shoot in HDV mode and 24f framerate, not all (in fact most) decks cannot play the footage. You would have to capture footage using either the camera as your source deck (or another Canon camera, such as the little HV20 or HV30), or use a deck that will be able to handle the footage, such as the Sony M35.

If you shoot in standard-def mode, then any MiniDV deck should be able to handle the footage, the peculiarity is limited to HDV only.

Whey you shoot standard-def footage in 24f, it is actually recorded interlaced and will import into a project as 29.987 footage (but toggle through it and it still retains the 2:3, so it is bascially 24fps progressive footage but in a 60i wrapper).

On the other hand when you shoot HDV footage in 24f, it is recorded as true progressive 23.976 footage and imports that way.

The XLH1 is a great camera… and has about two-dozen different adjustable parameters so you can really paint the image properly just as you can with much more expensive cameras. It also has lots of physical knobs, buttons, and switches so you don’t have to wade through endless on-screen menus to adjust the things you most often use. It has HD-SDI output so if you want to record to an external recorder you can get true HD that way and bypass the HDV compression. And an absolutely stunning picture. I’ve never understood why this camera wasn’t more wildly popular… except that when it first came out it was one of the more expensive (if not the most expensive) of the small HDV cameras, so I think many people opted for less costly choices.

After a couple of decades in the business and having used dozens of cameras (from DV to 35mm), I have to say the H1 is among my very favorites.

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Daniel Persson]

Thx, you have made me relax. What do you need to record with HD-SDI, a normal harddisc or?
What do you mean by deck i don’t know that word. You mean when i capture into a non-linear editing program i have to use the camera if it’s on tape? you don’t have to do anything in post to get the 24p afterwards?

[Todd Terry]

[daniel persson] “What do you mean by deck i don’t know that word.”

deck = videotape deck, the machine you stick a videotape in to play it. Such as….

[daniel persson] “You mean when i capture into a non-linear editing program i have to use the camera if it’s on tape?”

Well, obviously something has to play the tape for your non-linear editor to capture the footage. Yes, you can use the camera for playback while you capture the footage. Or, you can use a tape deck… if it is a machine that can handle Canon HDV 24f footage, such as the Sony M35 shown above.

[daniel persson] “What do you need to record with HD-SDI, a normal harddisc or?”

No, you must use a device specifically made for recording SDI video. Convergent Design makes one, there are others as well. If it is a studio setting (as opposed to on a remote location), you can also feed the HD-SDI signal from the camera straight into your non-linear editor and record “live” rather than recording in camera (provided your NLE can accept an HD-SDI signal in). The Canon does not embed audio within the HD-SDI signal, so audio must be captured another way (usually by setting your NLE to capture video via HD-SDI, but audio via analog inputs or firewire).

[daniel persson] “you don’t have to do anything in post to get the 24p afterwards?”

No, you don’t have to do anything in post to get 24p. It just comes in that way.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Daniel Persson]

Thank you very much you have helped me understand a lot of things