24f for those who are interested
 

I bought my XL H1 in December of 2005, and have made numerous short documentaries, commercials and a 30 minute doc for television (PBS affiliates).. All was shot at 1080i, and other than a few experiments I never touched the switch to change to 24f.

Recently I needed to switch to DVCPRO HD 720/24p at a client's request for a long documentary, so I bought an HPX500. I needed to shoot in some locations with the XL H1 though (I needed the 6x WA), so I switched the camera to 24f and tweaked my scene file to match the Panasonic and used the A1 as a deck to import footage.

Editing in FCP6 I drop the HDV 24f into the DVCPRO HD 720p timeline and the footage is almost indistinguishable...

Just thought those of you who wonder about 24f would like to know...

24f "indistinguishable"
 

Thank you for this, I have just ordered a 6X lens and was nervously wondering whether I had spent wisely or would one of the cheap lens extenders have done the job as well.

You have boosted my confidence in a lens that has not yet arrived, Thank you.

Oh no, that 6x, you will discover, is the best thing Canon makes for the XL series... Well worth the money,

Great to hear Steve! Can you share your settings with us to match the HPX?

I also have a question about the 24F mode. The 1080i50 footage of my Canon XL-H1 is interlaced. Is the 24F footage progressive or is it still interlaced? I haven't had time to test this yet but I reckon you already know the answer.

Floris: The 24f mystique has been much discussed in this forum - I'm not a technical person - if it looks good that's good enough for me...

As for scene files, basically up the Chroma - Panasonic cameras have a lot of chroma and they are 4.2.2 so you have to compensate - and crunch the blacks - I use the Cine D Matrix settings on the HPX500 so crunching the blacks on the Canons helps match it some... Everything else is pretty much subjective, Coring, Detail, etc...

I've discovered that people don't always agree on a look, so start there and check the scene files listed here - there's one that's called PANNY I think, as a matter of fact - and take a little time to find one you like.. I do this by actually shooting and intercutting, by the way, rather than only using a monitor.. I find I can tell better that way.

Also, you will probably never be able to do a 2 camera, over shoulder type shoot with the cameras and have them match within the same scene - But you CAN shoot whole scenes and intercut them in the same film.