HD cameras (1 Viewer)

Does anyone know how good the quality of the footage is from the Canon
XM2, XL1 and XL2?

Cheers,

Oscar

Hi Oscar,

I looked into this some time ago. The XL1 and XL2 produce excellent quality footage and have interchangeable lenses. With an adapter Canon EF series lenses can be used on these cameras. But I notice your thread title is 'HD cameras' - these are not HD. Canon have just launched two variants on the XL-H1 which is the high definition version of the XL2. You are looking at around £4000 for the basic version. Worth looking on the Calumet website for details. Well out of my budget!

Neil

Hi,

Is the XL H1 A similar, worse, or better quality than the XLh1? Also, how different are the other versions to the basic one?

Do you have any footage from either the XM2, XL2, or XL1?

Cheers,

Oscar.

I have no personal experience of these cameras, but did consider buying a high quality DV camera earlier this year and did a bit of research. I decided to wait and perhaps that has been a good decision as the XL-H1A is now released. (I currently use a Canon IXUS 970 IS in video mode for videoscoping and it's surprisingly good!).

The XL-1 and XL-2 have long been considered the DV cameras of choice for low budget professional / semi-professional wildlife film making. It's worth checking out http://www.wildlife-film.com/ as sometimes second hand cameras are advertised.

I believe the XL H1, XL H1S and XL H1A all use the same optics and CCD set-up and the difference is in the outputs, time code inputs and Gen Lock functions, none of which would matter to me. It depends how serious a project you have as to whether these functions would matter. The new XL-H1A is superior to (and cheaper than) the now discontinued XL-H1 mainly because of improved software and a new generation lens. The white balance adjustment range has been extended and the gain range increased from +18dB to +36dB, and the increments refined.

Hope this helps.

Neil

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the info.
Is the XL H1-A HD

Cheers,

Oscar.

Yes, the XL-H1A is HD. If you have a big project in mind, you will need a PC with plenty of memory and a big hard drive to cope with HD editing. My PC, with 2GB of RAM, grinds to a halt with the clips required to create a 15 minute video in standard definition video on Adobe Premiere Elements 4. I have had to divide this project into two sections for editing. HD video is much more memory intensive!

Neil

I have a 200GB portable disk.
Will that be OK??

Cheers,

Oscar.

On my hi-def camcorder (a Sony HDR-SR10 - I don't use it much for bird video) the storage cost is around 55 MB per minute of video in MPEG-2 hi-def mode. This is a compressed format. It will depend on the format the camera stores the video in - uncompressed formats are much more storage-hungry but you don't lose any detail.

I think you will be fine for storage with that for now. The other factor is having enough memory on your PC for it to be able to hold and manipulate the video while you edit it. I would suggest 2GB RAM is a bare minimum.

Neil

Birder Ozzie said:

I have a 200GB portable disk.
Will that be OK??

Cheers,

Oscar.

Click to expand...

As Neil points out at 55Mb per minute (compressed), 200Gb will only provide you with storage for a handful of HD films, depending on their length of course. Personally I can't see the point of losing detail when you've spent so much on a camera so would always use uncompressed as storage space is relatively cheap these days.

The problem with most portable storage drives is that they are usually connected via USB which makes them quite slow for read/write operations. If it has to be external then a SATA drive would be preferable.

Another problem with DVD editing is that the software can create very large temporary files whilst in use (just like in Photoshop). I'd suggest installing a 500Mb (£50) or better still a 1Tb (£100) internal SATA drive, assuming you have a motherboard which supports SATA although it is possible to fit a simple controller card. Make sure your existing hard drive has sufficient space(preferably partitioned) for use as a scratch disk.

I have 4Gb of RAM in my PC which has a 3GHz cpu and I can make it cough a bit with Photoshop let alone when using Premiere so 8GB of RAM would be preferable. Check out www.crucial.com/uk for affordable, high quality memory module upgrades.

Remember too that if you want to output to DVD in HD you'll need a Blu-Ray recorder for your PC although these and their media have become much more affordable of late (£170 for a decent reader/writer and £6 each for disks).

Hope this doesn't sound negative or put you off in any way. At the end of the day it shouldn't be all about 'bangs for bucks' but making sure you have fun!

Regards


Martin

Good points, Martin. And I guess the temporary files made by Premiere will be correspondingly large too.

Am I right in thinking that to fully utilise 8GB of RAM you would need the 64 bit version of Vista ? I think the standard 32 bit version can only address 4GB of RAM.

Neil

I've seen temporary files in Photoshop increase by the file size with each action performed and can reach Gb proportions in no time although it can be restricted by limiting the number of history states.

You are quite right to point out that XP only addresses 4Gb of RAM but I believe there workarounds to increase this limit. Vista will support much more than you can currently buy and currently install in a standard motherboard.

For the technically minded who want to improve their Windows XP (32bit) memory allocation I found the following useful:

Windows XP Pro can use up to 4GB of RAM, but when you first install all of it you will only see 3 GB. this is caused by one or both of the following:

1. There is a BIOS setting that uses a portion of the RAM as a temp file backup solution, which can be disabled in the BIOS.
2. Add the /PAE switch to the boot.ini file, this will access the full 4GB, but will limit 2GB to the OS and 2GB to other programs. If you add the /3GB switch after the /PAE it will allocate 1GB RAM to the OS, and 3GB to all other apps.
3. The PAE kernel can be enabled automatically without the /PAE switch present in the boot entry if the system has DEP enabled (/NOEXECUTE switch is present) or the system processor supports hardware-enforced DEP. Presence of the /NOEXECUTE switch on a system with a processor that supports hardware-enforced DEP implies the /PAE switch. If the system processor is capable of hardware-enforced DEP and the /NOEXECUTE switch is not present in the boot entry, Windows assumes /NOEXECUTE=optin by default and enables PAE mode.
4. Phew!....


The bottom line is that editing high quality video (DV and especially HD) is very resource hungry but if you simply want to transfer your tapes to disk and produce compressed quality output then most modern PC's will be adequate (but as I mentioned below, it seems a waste to record in HD then degrade its quality).

Hope this helps.


Martin

If you want to edit Hi Def look at the latest Casablanca video editing machines (made in Germany). Not cheap but they are supposed to do it in real time. There is probably still a waiting list as they have only recently been introduced.

Nice kit - thanks Geoff!

I like the idea of editing on through an HD TV so that you're working on what you'll eventually see.

Not cheap as you say but if you've spent £5k on a camera the another £3k isn't out of the way. I suspect I could build a custom PC for less though!

Does the XL-H1 A, XL1, XL2, and XM2 record on memory cards or not??

If you mean for capturing still photos, then not as far as I'm aware (although I haven't had my hands on all four of them). Cameras such as the GL2 do but none of them are a patch on good quality modern DSLR due to the much lower megapixel CCDs.

If you're refering to capturing moving images then certainly not.