So...where's the footage?
 

Enough with all this testing of charts! :-) Hasn't anyone that spent $9000 on a new camera stuck it outside and pressed record yet? Barely seen any since the pre-release cappacino machine.

Charts are great...umm...but I sure would love to see some clips in real world situations before I put my order in. Can anyone put some clips up?

Thanks!

Kevin

As soon as mine arrives I'l try to put up some footage, but to be honest it's goingt o be a little difficult for me until Apple puts out there codec, (I heard a rumor it would be with in the next month, but well it's a rumor)

Nick,

I just played with an H1 for a little while this afternoon at the local dealer.
They let me take the camera outside the building and film my kids for a few minutes.

I was able to capture both 60i and 24F from a trial version of a program called HDVxDV. Captured to my 667mhz G4 powerbook with no problems.

It's goofy kid footage, but I may post it later on.

btw, I'm a believer too. It's an amazing camera.

I don't know how long my iDisk bandwidth will hold up with these large files...but here goes:

www.homepage.mac.com/mrbarlowelton

There are 3 m2t's. All 24F

Be kind...I was just goofing off in the parking lot, and I was losing light.
I was hunting focus all over the place because I was in relatively low light and in manual. You have to stop recording in order to use the focus assist,
and I was just trying to get some stuff shot before it got dark. Seriously, I had about 10 minutes outside with the camera, and then I had to rush into their offices and try to capture a few clips before they closed.

btw, for those who don't know, you need the vlc player.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

HDVxDV, ok awesome I'll look for that. Thanks Barlow. I'm downloading your clip now, the focusing is probably my main issue as well with the camera. (we'll see if you had the same problems I did) Thanks for sacrificing your idisk.

::edit::
just downloaded your short clip HOW GREAT DOES THAT LOOK! Good job man.

Thanks, Nick. Man, I am DYING to take that camera out for a spin again, only with plenty of time to get used to things, tweak, and figure out it's quirks.

I really think the HDV is so much better than the others, it's not even close.
I did some quick pans of cars going by, and it doesn't macroblock like the Z1 would. Just smooth and sharp overall.

For PC users, these clips will also play in Windows Media Player, as well as directly importable into Vegas 5 or later.

Thanks for the clips,Barlow,looking really good.
For some reason shutter seams a little slow,is that because it was too dark?
And another thing - the clip resolution seems to be 1536x1080!?All the other XL H1 footage i've seen is 1440x1080.

Thanks for posting. Nice to see some clips right out of the box. It did look a little bland...underexposed, perhaps. I look forward to seeing more...anyone?

Thanks again!

Kevin

Barlow,
Wonderful family.

This photo here:
http://www.cinemahill.com/hidef/imag...wsbabygirl.png
Extracted from the Very First Frame of your "H1-2.M2T" file, looks like someting that was shot with FILM from a scene in a cool love/drama/thriller directed by M. Night Shyamalan or something. *smile* Check out the color temperature and contrast of this snapshot. The underexposed look was cool to me. Maybe it was the time of day and available sunlight, who knows. Kinda reminicent of the pretty video pictures my DVX100a can take. My Sony Z1U couldn't have done that out the box. It would have been sharper and more edgy-vivid (which is not a bad thing, actually). I didn't do anything to the photo. All I did was download & drop your 24p HD file into Vegas 5 and took a snapshot and saved it as a .png and uploaded it. Did you tweak the settings on the camera Barlow?

Everybody,
The footage I had, I mailed to Nick. I'm going to shoot some 'controlled' and 'dialed-in' stuff for you guys to take a look at.

- ShannonRawls.com

I shot at 1/48th at -3db, just to see how sensitive it was in those conditions.

I have no idea why your program is reporting it as 1536x1080. Wait, now I realize...that's the entire 1.67MP image.

Actually, I was intentionally slightly underexposed. Wanted to see -3db in twilight. Yesterday was a fairly thick overcast one.

I've tried the gain, and it can brighten up the image considerably without adding too much noise. I think what might've also thrown me a little off was the EVF. I think it was too bright for what I was seeing. Oh well, I'm going to take the camera out next week, maybe go down to Zion's or Bryce Canyon...or maybe go up to the Olympic Training Center in Park City and film ski jumps and bobsledding.

I'll put up a 1080i in a few.

Thank you, kindly.

Nope! Seriously, it really was about 10 minutes in a parking lot. Just put it in manual, set it to -3db and rolled as much as I could.

btw, feel free to post other stills for people who can't play the clips.

The shutter speed seemed fine to me, I appreciate that you shot in -3 as that is something I didn't do on my test with shannon, I used HDVxDV to import the clips into FCP and I was surprised that there was a lot of room to play with the clips (specifically with color corrector) I'm curious as to which white balance you used (manual or daylight preset) because I notices if I shift the colors to the red (just a little bit) the exposure and saturation look better.

That's one other thing I'll say about working in HD, I've noticed that mixed light (daylight and tungsten) and overcast, or different color temperatures will really change a picture with these cams. I didn't knotice this so much in DV (unless it was an effect I was going for) so uh, yeah everyone keep that in mind when shooting in HD.

What codec did you transcode to? I'm wondering how it held up.

I'm pretty sure I was on daylight WB.

There's a 1080i up called "15.m2t"

www.homepage.mac.com/mrbarlowelton

Shannon,

btw, did the 24F actually show up as 24p in Vegas? If so, that's very interesting because HDVxDV doesn't specifically support the H1. It just captured what was being spit out via Firewire. Some of my captures were mixed 24F/60i material in the same clip. The program didn't blink.

It absolutely did. I only downloaded 8.m2t and H1-2.m2t. Both clips were detected by Sony Vegas 5 as PROGRESSIVE SCAN, 23.976 High Definition Footage on my PC.

That's what I keep trying to tell folks....it's a 24PEE camera. It comes down the pipe as such. Nothing else to do it but slap it on your timeline and cut it as normal.

And Barlow....my brutha.....you gotta do someting about these file names. *smile*

- ShannonRawls.com

Yeah, I thought somebody might raz me for that. I was in an office conference room capturing clips, and when you hit the capture button in the program, it asks for a file name before it proceeds, so instead of wasting time describing the scene, I just punched in numbers to get as many clips captured as possible.

I used apple intermediate codec, seemed fine to me. I've come to loathe the preset white balance these days simply because of the fact that they never seem to be entirely accurate. "daylight" is almost never daylight, Color temps change throughout the day and then with enviornmental factors as well (over cast in this case). I mean it was still real close in this case but I think maybe a manual white balance would have given a little more saturation. But I could be wrong, either way the footage is awesome and I love the HDVxDV conversion software.

My camera is slated to arrive in a week, so hopefully I'll be able to post some footage then as well.

Here's a 20 second clip: http://homepage.mac.com/ajdel/FileSharing1.html
It's a Quicktime file of about 65 MB. All shots were with the 20x stock lens. I did a little tweaking in FCP WRT to contrast and color balance but did not touch saturation.

Thanks, A.J. People will need to add the .mov to the file. At least I did.

Clips 1, 2 & 4 were okay to me. Clip #3 was really nice. I guess it had richer colors and some nice depth to it.

Looking forward to getting mine tomorrow.

Thanks again.

Kevin

I think that's absolutely crazy. I'll never for the life of me imagine how they thought that was/is "good enough".

I really like the camera and wish I had the $$ to purchase, but...man, that's not a small deal.

I'm going to test it again this weekend. I believe you can use peaking while recording. It may be something you have to get the hang of, but it should be a viable alternative.

Yeah, I know. Peaking, if adjustable, is great. I hope it proves to be enough.

I already know what buttons will wear out first on my HD100...it'll be the Focus Assist buttons.

More samples
 

On my webpages www.luontovideo.net -> Special
is now a same view taken with the standard XL H1 20x and the wideangle 3x lens in PAL 50i mode.

The settings were "knee=low" and "black=stretch", and the footages were captured to Premiere and then exported to Cineform M2T PAL 1080i files. I also have a couple test results of "neutral", "knee=low", "knee=low + black=stretch", but something odd happens when I export the files from Premiere to Cineform M2T files. (... as if the files were not PAL 1080 interlaced files, but instead, progressive files. Furthermore, for some reason, Export command in Premiere offers me every time in the video settings Cineform JVCProHD 720p although I keep changing it to Cineform 1080i PAL.)

Lauri,

Thanks for giving us your recent reports. I have visited your site but really couldn't determine if there was dramatic difference between the 20X and your primes. I don't need more footage. I trust your opinion and by now I'm sure you have tried all your lenses. Will your primes (specifically 400mm and 600mm) be useful with the H1 or no as Canon says?

Currently, it seems they are useful, especially the 400 and 600 mm without zooms. Focusing, however, is more challenging than before. Or should one say, if it's not precisely in focus, you'll also notice it immediately in editing. "Peaking" and "magnification" are though helpful, but on the other hand, as it's difficult to keep the system stable when you turn the focusing ring, especially with the 600mm the feeling is like focusing during an earthquake.

I've tried 105, 135 and 300mm and found them all useable but remember not to stop them down below about f/8.

The 3X looks a little soft to me, but not in an obvious way...more like the look of what happens with iris diffraction. It's not nearly as soft as I expected, though.

Definitely usable in a pinch, or if you're shooting SD, or if you're shooting HDV for downconverted final product.

does that mean there is no 'push focus like on the z1? i shoot a lot of live events and am constantly running around and shooting different things at different distances, obviously i cnt stop recording, does this mean i cant alter the focus or iris while im running around and shooting??? wow...halt the order.. please tell me iv got this all wrong...

Yes, breathe easy, you've got it all wrong. The quote referred to the focus magnifier which switches off automatically when you start to record. You can zoom, focus and adjust the iris while recording but note that zoom and focus are apparently done with the same motor so that both cannot be done simultaneously. I believe the iris is a separate servo but am not certain of this.

ahhhhh...... you made my day :) clicks open a beer!

Yea I discovered that...made me sad. I guess since this is a footage topic i`ll toss up the 2 videos I made so far. They were done with very little planning and not nearly enough light,tough with all the dark hardwood around too. We also had to block out the windows because the evening sun mixed with indoor light was casting all sorts of harsh varying halos on things. Still look ok in my book.

http://www.curtain-wall.com/barrier_...ier_paper.html
http://www.curtain-wall.com/tapes/cu...pe_runner.html

Look ok. I had my headphones on and when the guy cut the tape, it nearly blew my headphones off, how loud? lol!