Yet another preset sample
 

Hi folks,

I'm still trying to pick my favorite custom presets and have made some images to help: A1 videos, A1 stills and a still from a still camera (Panasonic DMC-KZ7).

I picked a scene with a mix of grays, natural colors and paint. Each preset in the video lasts for two seconds. There are labels to identify them (and no audio).

http://www.singularproductions.com/presets.wmv

The stills are here:

http://www.singularproductions.com/presets_stills.zip

Bruce

Bruce, thanks for posting the samples. I am a newbie and i'll tell ya I would be lost with my a1 if it wasn't for this site and all of the awesome people here willing to share their info with us. I can't wait to get home and load these presets and get to playing around filming my 6 yr olds birthday party today. Thanks to everyone for all the hard work. This site is awesome.
chuck

2 Presets if anyone cares....
 

Revisions of my two presets if anyone cares...

JCDVday1 - Matches the color of my Sony HC1 cameras. Tweaked from the old one I posted a while back. Now its good in low light with addition of camera light or stage lights.
www.jcdv.com/PRESET/PRESET02.CPF

JCDVlow1 - My best attempt at a really low light preset. I have to tweak some in post such as contrast, levels and/or some saturation... but its a good base. I constructed this in a room with only a computer monitor with white background (like dvinfo site) as the only light source.
www.jcdv.com/PRESET/PRESET03.CPF

so..if I don't have a card reader...am I out of luck for loading these presets on to my card until I get a card reader? or is there a way to hook the camera up to the computer with the card in the camera.....?

Hi Jeremiah, there's bad news and good news. The bad news is yes you must have an SD card reader, there's no other way (except for Canon's $600 Console software). The good news is that SD card readers are dirt cheap ($10 to $20) and are available anywhere (Wal-Mart, Radio Shack, Best Buy, maybe even Walgreens)... there's no excuse not to have one for your XH camcorder.

saweet!!!...thanks for the good news chris...on my way to the 24hr. walmart!

A card reader is just a lot more convienient & a must have... but it IS possible to access any downloaded preset by using either one of the two tweaking programs mentioned here in the forums (the two freebies... not Console) without having a reader.

Just open them from your hard drive using one of the programs & it will show you the settings. You'll just have to spend time "copying" the settings manually in the Custom Preset menu, which can take some time.

Bill

hey jerome, thanks for posting. i've been meaning to get around to tweaking a low light setting but it's currently about #1,048,479 on my to-do list. this should be fun to play with, thanks.

How To Put Presets On Sd Card Without Reader
 

Since I usually am retrieving information from an SD card instead of putting info in, I do not own a card reader, i.e., I always use the device to read the card. So, to make it very simple. Go into your A1 custom preset screen and copy the first Default preset from camera to SD card. Once you do that, the camera will automatically create the "PRESET" folder. After this, simply turn your A1 dial to "Ext Control". Have it hooked to your firewire first of course, then download all the presets to your desktop. Open "My computer" and you will see "Canon Camera device" as another drive (something like that anyway). Click on this to open it. You will see a Folder....mine didn't show the name PRESET, but it was the PRESET folder, I just seen a picture of a folder. I then right click on the preset I downloaded from the desk top and COPY that file. I then right click on that folder PRESET. Choose "Paste into this folder"...and there you go..your preset is added. You CANNOT drag and drop for some reason. But if you copy and paste, it works perfectly. Did all presets within about 8 minutes.

preset for indoor
 

Need a little help again. I am going to be filming in a musical studio with good indoor lighting and wanted an opinion on a custom preset for indoors. I have been using the vivid and panalook for outdoor shots and they are awesome. I have not been to the studio yet but was told lighting should not be a problem at all. I appreciate all the help.

Just a daft question - maybe!
 

I have just been experimenting with some of the custom presets posted here, and some are very good - others can be safely left out.

My question is, what adavantage do the presets offer?. Surely wouldn't it be better to make any adjustments in your NLE app. Using Premiere and a Matrox RTX2 card I can save any permutation and apply it to any clip. In stills photography we shoot in RAW and apply post production to the images, shouldn't we do the same with SD/HD video?

Or am I missing some vital point.

Thanks

It's basically a time-saver, to avoid having to do this process in post... for example, same-day edits in wedding videography.

Thanks Chris,

The point I was trying to bring to the fore is, once you have made your corrections to the actual video, would it affect any future post production work.

As I mentioned in my post, for stills photography we shoot in RAW format, this means nothing has been added to the file (sharpening, colour boost, jpeg compression etc.) so we have a open file on which we can apply all the corrections.

Going back to the video question, if we apply any custom presets to the video, have we in effect taken the quality off track should we want to apply any other adjustment in post. For example, if I sharpen the movie in a preset, then surely that has been applied to the file (video) and my options in post are therefore limited as far as sharpening are concerned.

From your answer, it would seem that a custom preset is a handy quick fix solution, but may limit future post production tweaks. Or have I got this wrong.

Thanks

In my opinion it is better to get as close to your desired look while shooting with the A1 rather than adding effects in post. Why? Well for one, rendering time is already stretched when rendering HDV, adding effects will only add to this time, and I believe canon's color adjustments are very good in the camera, so why wait and do it in post? You can still make those same changes in post with a little work if you are not satisfied with what you have shot. Unless you are shooting some kind of preset that is extremely unusual and maybe hard to duplicate, I would certainly recommend using a preset over the NLE, especially with the wonderful presets provided by some darn fine users here on DVinfo.net. One example would be Steven Dempsey's presets..They are great. But, I find them all unique and could see me using any of them at one time or another. Just my 2 cents. J

Pda
 

Here's a quick suggestion if you don't have a card reader and it's past closing time for any store that might sell one. Most of us have PDAs around that we use for other things and most PDAs use SD cards or at least have a slot for them. I used my HP Ipaq PDA by connecting it with the sync cord and dragging the preset files to the SD Card in the Ipaq using file explorer. Then just transfer the card to the camera and bam you have PRESET!

Lately I have used Steve Dempsey's Vivid preset finding the colors vivid and life like, though I do enjoy the Bleach Bypass preset as well. Just got back from a week trip and my new Vegas 7 was waiting for me. Soon I will actually have some samples to post. Weeeee....