Edirol F1 helps revive an old friend (XL H1)

[Kevin Martorana]

Well....getting my bags ready for NAB '10. Last year was the first year I missed it in over 18 years !! (lousy economy !).

Anyhow...Although many of you wish Canon had some new, wowie 35mm sized ccd chip camera than ran on a hard drive, or compact flash.....and took 35mm digital lenses (i'm included in the list of these people!). I don't think it's gonna happen. We've known that.

BUT...even though I'm an adopter of early tech, and I certainly love the "less compressed" HD formats...and the nano flash technology out there from Convergent Design...

...I purchased this crazy little box from Edirol and I'm giddy about it. The F1 is a box that accepts the firewire input from the H1 and UNDERSTANDS 24 FFFFFF !! Really ! Heck...anybody can do 1080i HDV....but 24F....ha !

It has a 120gig REMOVABLE Hard Drive that is supported on shock absorbers. It can record 2 channels of audio embedded with the video...AND can record 2 MORE channels of UNCOMPRESED audio with it's XLR connectors.

YEAH...it's recording HDV 25mb video...(Edirol has some other box that takes the HDSDI output and makes the F1 record 50mbs...but it can't be attached to the camera easily- cool for studio use)...but so is the HDV tape in my H1.

I've used the HDSDI on my H1 to go to DVCPro100 and it looks GREAT ! Many projects I work on don't need that quality...and the HDV that CANON can record looks fabulous.

So the problem with ingesting the 24F has now become a thing of the past. We used to use our HV10 as a "deck" with our Avid.

This F1 plugs into the Avid via USB...and Voila ! .m2t files. Version 4.05 of Avid MC sees the files and imports them into Avid with NO problem. AND...the 24f files go into a NATIVE 24f sequence !

Edirol had a great deal on this box....it included the F1, a AntonBauer Gold mount and an additional (2nd) 120 gig HD.

My guess is they didn't sell enough of these...so they may be trying to dump them. But honestly...if you need file based recording...in HDV quality...I've been DELIGHTED with this.

This will give my H1 another 2 years of use...before I have to buy and XDCam HD or whatever is hot in the year 2013 !!

[Michael Galvan]

This is great Ken!

I LOVE my Canon XL H1S, and have been seriously contemplating getting the Nanoflash for it (I've captured a lot from the HD-SDI to ProResHQ and the quality is phenomenal).

Only thing holding me back at this point is seeing what Canon will announce at NAB this year.

Glad to see that this solution works for you!

Here's a pic of my camera setup currently :)

[Kevin Martorana]

Thanks Michael....
I just saw this on the dvinfo website...

Canon's next gen file based camcorder....

Canon Reveals Their Next Pro Video Cam at DVInfo.net

It'll be interesting to see at NAB any real specifics they have about the unit.

[Ronan Fournier]

Originally Posted by Michael Galvan

I LOVE my Canon XL H1S, and have been seriously contemplating getting the Nanoflash for it (I've captured a lot from the HD-SDI to ProResHQ and the quality is phenomenal).

Hi Michael,
I've bough the NanoFlash for my XLH1 (original) and I'm not disapointed at all. Indeed, 4.2.2 MPEG2 @100 Mb/s is a nice improvment in picture quality, compare to HDV 4.2.0 MPEG2 @ 25Mb/s .

[Bob Hart]

Ronan.

Please forgive this question. Are you related to Rene Fournier, the designer of the legendary Fournier RF seriers of motor gliders?

[Gregory Dillard]

Question for everyone. I have the first generation Canon XL H1 and i'm STILL glad to say that it puts out a phenomenal image! Couple of "i'm concerned" about what maybe ahead for us CANON loyalists. As i anticipate what CANON has up their sleeves I constantly ask myself, "what were they thinking?" That relates to the PHENOMENAL images that come from the Canon 5D Mark II, as well as the Nikon d3s. Some of these images are comparable to the RED camera and are absolutely stunning!! The RED has the variable frame rates as well as the Panasonic P2 cameras, Sony EX series, and the JVC cameras. Why was Canon not even in this game? I held off last year hoping that Canon would release a camera with variable frame rate, tapeless, and they came out with a tape based system with no variable frame rate! WHAT! I think it's bad enough that I have to watch what RED, Panasonic, Sony, and JVC can do, but not Canon. I've been patient long enough, but NAB will more than likely be the point of if I decide to stay with Canon. Trust me, i'm a loyalist and I don't want to abandon them, but I would like to have those features. I guess i'm like everyone else waiting to see what there new camera will look like as it compares to their dSLR cameras. For the life of me they can't possibly have a prosumer camera that doesn't look better than their dSLR cameras.
With that being said I have converted my Firestore FS4 drive to a FS4HD, and i switched the hard drive from a 40GB to a 160GB drive. I'm happy, but its 4:2:0, plus it doesn't handle the 1080 24f (only 60i). On certain shoots, I'm tethered directly to my AJA I/O HD, and if you don't know this is simply the BEST! This camera still has life especially if I'm fortunate to get the AJA Ki Pro, which is the same as the I/O HD, but i'm not tethered to a computer. When i get the Ki Pro, then i can really become mobile without being tethered to a computer. Canon, don't let us down at NAB!