Hello,

I do have all the presets on an excel sheet and right now I'm using the Truecolor preset, but I'm wondering what you experts think about the following:

I have a tendency to think that the best preset is the one that let me have the most options possible as I edit.
I mean the biggest latitude in the the corrections I want to do. So knowing that having the biggest latitude is post is what interest me, which preset from the list found on this forum would you say is better?

A stupid question,
Why not leave the cam in the default setting and do everything in post?
Thank you

There's a "BBC preset" which I use if I need to keep the footage neutral:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-xh-series-hdv-camcorders/470413-bbc-custom-preset.html

@Lerry
1) Default color profiles usually stink and are based on some manufacturer purpose not necessarily related to "latitude" (whatever that means
2) Why not shoot it the way you want it and save all that time in post?
3) Search here on True Color presets and profiles and pretty much everywhere it comes up, this debate erupts

IMHO, you should shoot it the way you want it. If you don't know what that is, then shoot it true color. YMMV

Thank you, for your answers, I'm checking the thread mentioned about TrueColor

I thought about this some more and I realized later that what you probably meant by "latitude" was to capture the most dynamic range which results in ugly captured footage but gives you headroom in the highlights. I am unaware of a preset for that other than the low light preset called LowLt12 for the A1. There may be others. Sorry if I misled you.

Well, from what i understand now, it's WAY better NOT to use any kind of preset and do all the work in post. I spend the day talking to many people about this and you better believe me. Do NOT use presets. Use the default factory and LEARN how to use your editing suite. That's the way to go. If you have time and need quality. If you don't have time and you want to output to the net for an in a hurry task, sure, use preset, but be aware that anything done in a preset pushes you in a particular direction that might not be correctable in post.
I looked at the TrueColor preset, and frankly there is something VERY wrong in pushing the RGM to 40.
Fine if you are going to film your duck in your yard to show to your grandmother, but if you are going to so some serious work, a narrative, a doc, etc... This is setting you off big time in a certain direction and you have too much bias in the info gathered through your camera.

Now, I'm convinced, gather as must unbiased, virgin info you can, and that's done through default factory setting, and work in post.
Many will disagree, but hey, I spent a weekend "playing" with this particular issue.
For me cam presets are a thing of the past
L.

Well, well, good to see.

Another shooter sees the light about presets (or NOT using same!).

Hallebloodylujah!


CS

Tip of the Month: Try shooting 1/2 to 1 stop down. Works wonders.

Larry, I have long shot with TrueColor based upon my desire, like yours, to capture maximum neutral information and allow maximum flexibility in post. I recall reading a detailed explanation of TrueColor by Paolo Ciccone, the author (apparently, this article is no longer available at his website) and seeing vectorscope images showing well-balanced and neutral color.

Hence, for my edification, I must ask what exactly troubles you about this preset? The red-green matrix (and, admittedly, I don't know what this does)?

I recall (again) a magenta tinge in the factory setting that some presets, like TrueColor, attempted to eradicate. Wonder if this is a problem for you...?

If you can post screen grabs of TrueColor (bad) and factory (good), that would get you a gold star...and probably convince me to look at factory again.

-Steve

p.s. I also ask because I'm interested in shooting more than ducks. ;)

Presets are good as a way to minimize the amount of correction (and thus time) required in post. This can be important for many shooters/editors working to a tight schedule.

They also allow one to bias the shot in favor of selected aspects of the image: shadows, highlights, gamma, certain colors, etc. With 8 bits of data recorded to tape it lets one prioritize the allocation of those bits to the part of the image gray/color scale that are most important to the task at hand.

The effective use of presets requires a clear understanding of the shooting environment, and the intended final product.

Presets are good as a way to minimize the amount of correction (and thus time) required in post. This can be important for many shooters/editors working to a tight schedule.

They also allow one to bias the shot in favor of selected aspects of the image: shadows, highlights, gamma, certain colors, etc. With 8 bits of data recorded to tape it lets one prioritize the allocation of those bits to the part of the image gray/color scale that are most important to the task at hand.

The effective use of presets requires a clear understanding of the shooting environment, and the intended final product.

I'm not sure whether you're addressing me specifically, Don, but sincere thanks just the same for the brief explanation. In this specific case, a perception is that the TrueColor preset is what Canon would have (should have?) made as the factory default, given what the preset's author viewed as deficiencies in the existing factory default. (The original TC blog evaporated, so unfortunately I can't check the accuracy of my recollections!) Hence, it was my understanding, hopefully not ill-informed, that TC was not biased at all (or at least sought to eliminate factory bias), especially as to color.

That's why I felt compelled to ask essentially what is the matter with the TC preset, so far as Larry's stated purpose was concerned?

Meanwhile, I think I'll take some test footage to compare TC with factory and push it around in my NLE. Could be time for a reevaluation of my shooting preferences all these years. :)

-Steve

Well, from what i understand now, it's WAY better NOT to use any kind of preset and do all the work in post. I spend the day talking to many people about this and you better believe me. Do NOT use presets. Use the default factory and LEARN how to use your editing suite. That's the way to go. If you have time and need quality. If you don't have time and you want to output to the net for an in a hurry task, sure, use preset, but be aware that anything done in a preset pushes you in a particular direction that might not be correctable in post.
I looked at the TrueColor preset, and frankly there is something VERY wrong in pushing the RGM to 40.
Fine if you are going to film your duck in your yard to show to your grandmother, but if you are going to so some serious work, a narrative, a doc, etc... This is setting you off big time in a certain direction and you have too much bias in the info gathered through your camera.

Now, I'm convinced, gather as must unbiased, virgin info you can, and that's done through default factory setting, and work in post.
Many will disagree, but hey, I spent a weekend "playing" with this particular issue.
For me cam presets are a thing of the past
L.

Hmmm, have you read Alan Roberts' article? BBC - R&D - Publications - WHP034 - Addendum 22 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp034-add25.shtml)
Do so before you condemn all presets. I can't help feeling that you are assuming that the factory settings are so carefully chosen that they are flatly (ho-ho) the best possible. A well known Gershwin song springs to mind on that point.

Alan Roberts knows his stuff and I wouldn't dismiss his opinion out of hand.
However at the same time I can understand Chris Soucy's point. Some presents can fair bug**r things up and cause anguish in post (as well as making exposure very unpredictable).

I would second the "tip of the month" BTW.

I shoot with the true color preset with the understanding that it was designed to give the most dynamic range for post. So far it works very well for me...boost the whites & crush the blacks and it comes to life...tweak the saturation.

When I bought the camera 4 years ago, I tried most of the presets and eventually settled on TrueColor which gives the most neutral colours without being too flat.
I made a copy of Paolo's report which is attached. His work was done on the A1 model.

Thanks to everybody, I'm going to give another look into that TrueColor preset and read the report.
To address questions above, my concern was that actually the TrueColor was not actually true color and was pushing me in a particular direction. Some people used to see a bluish color, I saw some reddish skin tone, and I must say on a nicely calibrated monitor.
Ok, I really appreciate all the feedback.
I'll go read that report

Larry, on the TrueColor preset thread here, I carried on a dialogue with a few people who did and did not see a bluish cast. As far as we could figure out, it came down to slight differences between A1's. I saw a bluish cast, as determined by analysis of screen grabs in Photoshop. Therefore, I customized the TC preset to remove the bluish cast.

I have installed but not yet played with the BBC preset. One thing that jumped out was its sharpening set to +3, which is very crisp compared to TC's -9. I prefer to sharpen, if any, in post. Usually, I don't.

I'm grateful for David's posting of the original article on TC. You'll see Canon's factory setting lacks quite a bit of color information compared to what the TC preset can pull out of the A1.

-Steve

Canon factory default settings are likely intended to be the most neutral with respect to the full range of what folks are likely to shoot. Not great for any specific purpose, but a starting point.

Knee, Black, gamma, etc. all effect the transfer function (output value for a give input to a pixel) Any adjustment is a copmpromise, and what increases detail (allocated pixel values) in highlights tends to reduce detail from shadows,

There is an interesting discussion on latitude of the new C300 camcorder (maybe in its forum here on the Canon web page, I forget where I read it).

So knowing that having the biggest latitude is post is what interest me, which preset from the list found on this forum would you say is better?


I just shoot factory default and have some color correction presets in Edius. Have experimented with presets but all seemed to have some side effects like deviating colors and it was very hard to correct that, when shooting factory default I at least have all the control I need to create a look I want while retaining the best dynamic range if needed. (presets often also crush blacks or blow out highlights even further loosing detail in those area's.

To everybody.
Ok, I'm going to review what I thought about presets. Yes, the TrueColor preset might actually be worth it. I was kind of set off by one big change, the RGM to 40, I think it's the RGM.
I thought such a big change simply couldn't be justified.
After carefully comparing several settings, including the default factory setting on a calibrated monitor, and playing with changing color, contrasts etc in Vegas, I do believe that the TrueColor setting is the one that should be used. Yes, it does appear to give the best latitude. That says a lot about the default factory setting that is totally unjustified.
Thank you so much for all your input.
I think for the few years left in that cam, it's going to be shooting with the TrueColor Preset
Larry

To everybody.
Ok, I'm going to review what I thought about presets. Yes, the TrueColor preset might actually be worth it. I was kind of set off by one big change, the RGM to 40, I think it's the RGM.
I thought such a big change simply couldn't be justified.
After carefully comparing several settings, including the default factory setting on a calibrated monitor, and playing with changing color, contrasts etc in Vegas, I do believe that the TrueColor setting is the one that should be used. Yes, it does appear to give the best latitude. That says a lot about the default factory setting that is totally unjustified.
Thank you so much for all your input.
I think for the few years left in that cam, it's going to be shooting with the TrueColor Preset
Larry

Larry, if you wouldn't mind posting back, I'm curious to know (more exactly) what tinkering you did in Vegas to give you peace of mind about TC, relative to factory.

It wasn't until I played with some stock footage (shot on a Red) that I realized how astonishingly little I can push around HDV without it falling apart. That's not the fault of the A1 or any particular preset, of course, but it got me to wondering what you saw (or didn't) that affected your decision.

Hi both (all!)

Very interesting to find this after a long time away from this forum.

I was hunting for news of presets as although I now have a DSLR, I still use both my XHA1 cameras for observational video at Children's Playschools and for other music-related projects where you need to set up and get an image / sound as quickly as possible with minimum wasteage. The XHA1 is so much easier to use than a DSLR. I have two thoughts about the presets, having used the VividRGB presets for years/ However, I didn't like the slightly depressing greenish cast it seemed to put in low-light elements of a scene so going to do some experimenting, including using the Truecolor.

I'm also going to test the following assumptions, which are:

1) With the HDV codec, it's better to try to get the image as close as you can to what you want so you don't have to push the image too far in post. And
2) It's also good to turn off anything that might take away processing power, such as in-camera noise-reduction, which I think is horrible in any case.

Now that there is very good software to remove noise (I use Neat 3, which I think is superb) and also to remove that slightly nasty magenta Chromatic aberration which you get in wide shots, I though it was a good time for me to revisit what's available which maximises the camera's processing for just encoding the image. So thank you for this inspirational post.

I'm still a great fan of the XHA1 because it has so many useful features which make it so much better than the DSLR option, for example the XLR inputs and component outputs for monitoring. To get away from tape I use a DN-60 to capture on CF card, which means I can do 2-hour takes if need be, then I can edit direct from that by putting the card in a USB3 reader and dragging and dropping the M2T files straight into Vegas. Works a treat and it's so quick and easy to use. Saves cluttering up my HDD with unwanted stuff - but you haves the option to keep a simultaneous tape copy for safety by running a tape in parallel with the DN-60. So I think the XHA1 still gets a lease of life regardless of what's appeared since.

I'll report back - cheers all!

Quick comment:

The BBC preset seemed to have more detail available in the shadows but (as you'd imagine) creates slightly more noise in the image if you stretch the mids / crush the blacks.

I thought initially the Truecolor one looked worse (by far) than the others, but when you recover the sharpness it looks better than the presets with in-camera sharpening (which produces a line around objects).

Will say more as I experiment.

Keep your eye out for a Canon announcement saying 'after xxxx Canon will no longer support their XHA1/S range of cams.'

Because they'll run out of spare parts and the cost to make more is prohibitive, they won't do it.
The DV tape transport is the last one and heads, guides and pinchrollers will disappear first.
Some independents may stock up and advertise.

Always keep a DV tape cam in good condition to play your tape archives. Their HV40 is a good bet.

Cheers.

Good advice - thanks! I still have two of these cameras, and love them. I'm planning to do most of my stuff now on CF card rather than tape, though, and bought the DN-60 for that very reason. They're such good cameras and recording to CF gives them a new lease of life. I did think of getting an Atomos Ninja or Samurai, and converting the component out to SDI / HDMI but that seemed expensive and probably not worth while, whereas the DN-60 does give you a very good solution for tapeless recording.

Comparing the image quality with what I'm getting from my hacked Panasonic GH2 I think the XHA1 is not nearly as good, but image quality isn't the whole story, and the resulting videos for my projects are a lot better with the XHA1 because the usability of the XHA1 is a lot better :-)

EDIT: Good point about retrieving archive stuff as I have a lot of tapes!

Had a bash at comparing three presets:

VividRGB
BBC
TrueColor

First of all, this is what the three looked like with no processing - ie as shot:

3 presets as shot - VividRGB, BBC and TrueColor on Vimeo

VividRGB and TrueColor gave more crushed blacks in the original video;
BBC had much more shadow detail here, for example in the blue of the glass bowl and the shadow areas of the apple - as you might expect, with stretched blacks.
TrueColor looks VERY soft compared with the other two - but that's not the whole story: see below.

I then tried seeing what would happen if I tried to get the shots to (approximately!) match each other, and that was quite fun. It's this version you see here:

vividRGB BBC Truecolor - comparison of capture, compensated in Speedgrade to look similar. on Vimeo

IGNORE the word "unmodified" in the top left as they were all adjusted in Speedgrade, and that made quite a difference. The most interesting difference was in the sharpening. With the VividRGB and BBC having high / moderate levels of sharpening already (and adjusted in Speedgrade to match each other), the in-camera sharpening created a sort of "halo" around contrasty areas like the pen and the LH edge of the paper as well as the text (where I point to the preset names). The Truecolor preset (very soft in-camera but after sharpening in Speedgrade) looked much more natural and didn't have the "edges" of the other two presets, although there were some blocky artefacts around the handwritten text and these were worse once I'd sharpened the TrueColor than in the other two. Interesting test though and I'll do more. I'm keen to get something quite clean-looking for my observational video work.

Sorry it's not very scientific!

This is a very interesting thread to me, as I use both an XH-A1 and an XH-A1S in my small business. There are always trade offs between speed of turning out the work and resulting quality of the work. Plus, different clients are sometimes more and sometimes less willing to pay for the time to produce their project. So shooting with one preset can improve final quality, at the expense of more time in post. Another preset improves initial quality of the footage, and hence final quality of the product for a client not willing to pay enough to make extra post time worth it.

And of course, a good tapeless solution was mentioned earlier in the thread regarding the DN-60. While I'd like to move to a matched pair of tapeless cameras with features (xlr inputs and 3 control rings) at least equal to my present pair of Canons, that would be quite an expensive investment for a small business owner.

So for now, I'm leaning towards keeping my two cameras for another 18-24 months. Not to hijack the thread, but would a pair of DN-60s and all the resulting CF cards, batteries, etc. be a wise investment for the next 18-24 months? Sometimes I need 6 hours of actual footage per camera for a lot of the jobs..,

About all I could reasonably afford right now would be a pair of XA-10s, and many of my clients wouldn't like the looks of those tiny cameras.

What do you guys think?

Hi Roger,

I do think your summary is a good one - go for a good in-camera picture which doesn't need much in post, or go for something (for example, using less in-camera sharpening) which can then give you more to play with at the expense of more time in post.

I weighed up the following (I have two of these cameras):

- Continue to use the XHA1 as is - but I'm starting to get odd tape dropouts on my "main" one
- Buy and use a DN-60
- Buy another camera to replace the XHA1 cameras I have
- Buy a Ninja or similar recorder with a component to digital converter
- Buy a recorder with component input

In the end I thought the camera probably wasn't good enough to justify buying a Ninja or other recorder and it would lead to a lot more clutter to bring with me. Also for any greenscreen or other critical setup work, I'd probably use my DSLR anyway.
Not sure what I'd replace the XHA1 with which would be as good without spending quite a lot of money (assuming I didn't get much for my XHA1 cams). I really love them for the work I do.

The DN-60 was perfect for me as a compromise - I can still continue to use the camera which I find really great to use quickly but now it's a joy to use and totally makes the XHA1 a go-to camera where you need to do the sort of things an XHA1 does well. You will also need to buy a CF card reader. I use the Kingston USB3 reader and can edit HD straight off the CF card. It's so quick, it's just amazing. It's SO brilliant - do it. Very cost-effective. You might have to weigh up if you need two, so I bought one with the intention of just using tape with my second camera.

Thanks Mark for your input. I'm beginning to experience those random odd tape dropouts on both of the XH's, and also on both of my HV-30s. I'm wondering if the quality of the tapes themselves are beginning to fall off. Oddly enough, when I reuse an old tape, dropouts are almost nonexistent. It's the brand new tapes, same Sony's as always, that have the drop outs. I've heard stories online that the manufacturing of tapes has been farmed out to China, but the labels still say Sony, Panasonic, etc. Not sure if that's true or not.

I'd want two DN-60s. That would mean twice the cards. Already have CF card readers. How's the battery life? Sometimes AC power isn't readily available. Could put four lithiums in each of the DN-60s. Expensive, but some gigs are worth it.

As for presets, I acquired both of the cameras used, and both came with apparently the same ten presets preloaded. Not sure which presets they are. They appear the same on both cameras, though the cameras came from different original owners. I usually just use the default, with careful attention to the white balance and exposure, setting both cameras to match each other. It's great having two matching cameras. Actually, it's more like four matching cameras. The HV-30s are pretty close, not quite as rich a look. But they don't have 3 chips.

Roger, dust and airborne microgrit getting into tape transports are major causes of tape dropouts.
Before you open the tape carriage, always wipe the top of the camera down with a clean damp rag and change tapes in a dust free area.

As an example, run a damp cotton bud down that groove on the top of your HV30.

And always use the same brand cleaner tape as the DV recording tape you use.

Cheers.

Oddly enough, when I reuse an old tape, dropouts are almost nonexistent. It's the brand new tapes, same Sony's as always, that have the drop outs. I've heard stories online that the manufacturing of tapes has been farmed out to China, but the labels still say Sony, Panasonic, etc. Not sure if that's true or not..

Interesting, as I've similarly had better luck with used tapes than with new ones - but interestingly, they are all tapes I bought at the same time, so the 'new' ones are just unused but the same age as the old ones and yet don't work so well. Don't know why that is in my case.

The point about dust is a good one. I have an attachment for my vacuum cleaner which allows my to get into tiny places - I use it for removing dust from heat-sink fins inside my PC, and maybe (with care) it may work on the XHA1 tape compartment, at least to remove surface dust. I wouldn't directly touch the parts of the mechanism but you probably wouldn't need to. I use it for occasionally winkling out any dust from my DSLR that gets in during lens changes. But I'm careless with tapes sometimes and don't keep them in their boxes, which is bad.

To answer your question about batteries in the DN-60 I have a 32GB Sandisk extreme card which lasts about 2.5 hours, and I use 2700mAh AA rechargeables, which will run the DN-60 for about the same length of time (2.5 hours) before needing to be recharged. Hope that helps. If I were doing an important gig I'd probably just use AA Duracells or similar.

It wasn't until I played with some stock footage (shot on a Red) that I realized how astonishingly little I can push around HDV without it falling apart.

Upsampling HDV to 4:4:4 or at least 4:2:2 chroma before color correcting yields better results. However, if you are not color correcting, then upsampling the chroma and immediately downsampling it back to 4:2:0 when rendering yields worse results. Most NLEs have been optimized for the typical case for HDV source where little if any color correcting is done. Therefore, if you plan to do much color correcting in post, carefully upsample the chroma before import.

For lattitude in post I'm surprised people haven't suggested PED=0, GAM=CINE1, KNE=LOW, BLK=STRETCH as in the factory default CINE.V custom preset. Simply take any existing preset, change these four parameters and you end up with a much flatter transfer function that gives more lattitude in post.

For lattitude in post I'm surprised people haven't suggested PED=0, GAM=CINE1, KNE=LOW, BLK=STRETCH as in the factory default CINE.V custom preset. Simply take any existing preset, change these four parameters and you end up with a much flatter transfer function that gives more lattitude in post.

I'll definitely give that a go - thank you!

Roger, dust and airborne microgrit getting into tape transports are major causes of tape dropouts.
Before you open the tape carriage, always wipe the top of the camera down with a clean damp rag and change tapes in a dust free area.

As an example, run a damp cotton bud down that groove on the top of your HV30.

And always use the same brand cleaner tape as the DV recording tape you use.

Cheers.

Hey Allan. Dust is a big bugaboo with not only electronics in general, but especially with moving parts like the tape mechanisms in the cameras. I'm very careful about keeping the gear clean, thirty years of working in clinical laboratories. Both of the HV-30s that I use for capture decks are older than the XH's, and the tape mechanisms have had much more wear and tear from rewinding etc.

Always use the same brand of tape, either Sony 60 minute or 80 minute.

Some of what I've loosely described as dropouts may actually be little glitches occurring during capture to the PC. When I recapture the same footage, sometimes the glitch disappears, sometimes not. Usually not worth all the time for extensive troubleshooting for a small nuisance. However, the nuisance does seem to be growing. Hope to move away from tape entirely when I can afford to, or can't afford not to.

Both of the HV-30s that I use for capture decks are older than the XH's, and the tape mechanisms have had much more wear and tear from rewinding etc.

The hardware on the HV30 isn't as sophisticated as a real deck and as a result doesn't adjust the tracking to read tapes recorded on different cameras the same way. With wear the tracking on each camera changes. If there are dropouts, I recapture using the same camera that recorded the tape.

Having worked in the pro magnetic tape industry for over 50 years, I've never heard that one especially with regard to DV tape transports.

I agree there's head guide and pinchroller wear on all tape transports, and I have a HV20 and HV40. They're 'real' transports proved and improved
over many years by Canon, it wouldn't make sense to use anything less.

But I'm not saying that playing a tape on the original camera won't cure its dropouts. If the problem was very serious try it.

Roger, once grit gets on your DV tape surface and causes dropouts, it's almost impossible to remove. Sometimes you can remove it by continually
fast forward and rewinding over the exact timecode spot where the dropout is .. we've done it and by playing the tape, seen the dropout
move along the tape surface by timecode reading. That means we were moving the 'dry grit.'

But if it's what's called 'wet grit' it's sticky, and doing this can grind it into the tape surface. We've done this too and it's permanent.
Heat with high humidity can contribute to this.

This wet microgrit is prevalent in cities where lots of construction is taking place, it's usually hard as diamonds and gets blown by the wind.

The best tape dropout preventative, is to not let ANY grit or dust get in the transport in the first place. Even after cleaning the top of the camera,
opening the carriage and removing the tape, I upend the camera and give it a light shake to let any loose microgrit drop out.

For the same reasons, never leave DV tapes lying around out of their cases, to pick up dust.
And only run cleaner tapes through once, you don't want to put any crap back in the camera. ppl baulk at paying for a tape
they can only use once through, that's why the instructions say use it twice, then discard it.

I was involved with Greencorp in Sydney when they made all widths of mag tape, and if it wasn't for the gigantic third world market today,
we'd have seen the end of mag tape years ago.

Cheers.

For lattitude in post I'm surprised people haven't suggested PED=0, GAM=CINE1, KNE=LOW, BLK=STRETCH as in the factory default CINE.V custom preset. Simply take any existing preset, change these four parameters and you end up with a much flatter transfer function that gives more lattitude in post.

Eric, just to come back to you - I tried this out and it works really well with my workflow in Sony Vegas, which is to import the footage, noise-reduce the m2t using Neat NR, then do the work on the image (and this is where your settings do work remarkably well) and then give it a final gentle sharpen. It's not footage you'd particularly want to use without any treatment, but it can take quite a lot of manipulation and comes out looking really good! By using Neat NR first, you don't seem to run into any significant noise issues as you manipulate the curves or levels. Thank you so much for this suggestion.

Eric, just to come back to you - I tried this out and it works really well with my workflow in Sony Vegas, which is to import the footage, noise-reduce the m2t using Neat NR, then do the work on the image (and this is where your settings do work remarkably well) and then give it a final gentle sharpen. It's not footage you'd particularly want to use without any treatment, but it can take quite a lot of manipulation and comes out looking really good! By using Neat NR first, you don't seem to run into any significant noise issues as you manipulate the curves or levels. Thank you so much for this suggestion.

I'll also toss in a thanks to Eric for the suggestion. I have long used a mildly tweaked version of the TruColor preset, but always found the blacks to be a touch crushed when grading in post. Last night I discovered to my horror, despite precautions that I thought I had taken, that a recent servicing had wiped out my TruColor preset. So this thread gave a me good reason to program TruColor and TruColor-S, the latter so-named for the stretched black.

Mark, I'm curious about 2 things.

1. What sharpening do you use in camera and if it is none to minimal, how well does it look when added in post (I also use Vegas, BTW)?

EDIT: I just saw your post #24 with footage. Did you use the original TruColor sharpening of -9?

2. Do you use Neat Video on ALL footage? I used to, but in my hands even a gentle application of NV resulted in 'plastic' looking footage. (Yes, it performs wonderful miracles on low-light footage where the A1 is a horrific performer.)

Hey Allan,

Thanks for all the tips regarding "grit." I've been doing my best to avoid those problems. However, the job a few days ago made me think of "True Grit" because John Wayne audio was used, three nights of covering the Rodeo. Lots of dust and grit there. Previous job was a four day mostly outdoor trade show of heavy construction equipment. While I was careful to keep the cameras and tapes as clean as possible, it was windy and some grit may in fact have gotten in during tape changes.

I wiped the cameras down with a soft damp cloth, as usual. Also ran head cleaner for ten seconds on the HV-30 being used as the capture deck.

Both jobs were multicam shoots, so no critical footage was lost. Didn't bother to recapture. When I get a little more caught up, I'll experiment to see how the dropouts behave using the original cameras for each of the problematic tapes. Tapes are always labeled with which camera A,B,C, or D they were shot with so it will be easy to match tape with original camera.

It's a pretty standard system I use for labeling tapes, for example:
20130118A2 means it was the 2nd tape of a series shot on the A cam on January 18th. Then files captured have appropriate names. The construction trade show had 25 tapes.

Mark, I'm curious about 2 things.

1. What sharpening do you use in camera and if it is none to minimal, how well does it look when added in post (I also use Vegas, BTW)?

EDIT: I just saw your post #24 with footage. Did you use the original TruColor sharpening of -9?

2. Do you use Neat Video on ALL footage? I used to, but in my hands even a gentle application of NV resulted in 'plastic' looking footage. (Yes, it performs wonderful miracles on low-light footage where the A1 is a horrific performer.)

Hi Steven,

Take this with the pinch of salt it deserves, as I originally put the vividRGB preset in my camera years ago and just never changed it, so I've only started playing around again in the last two days with the various presets to get more latitude in editing. So to your questions:

1: Yes - the first video in post #24 was with the original TruColor sharpening of -9. I was surprised that it looks OK once you sharpen it (see 2nd video, same post). However, I did the "treated" versions (2nd video in post #24) in Speedgrade and Speedgrade seems to make footage a bit soft for some reason I can't quite get my head around yet so I think I'll stick to doing it all in Vegas.

2: I've been using the hacked GH2 for a couple of years and the results are incredibly sharp and wonderful - so I've rather neglected my XHA1 cameras. But I have rediscovered them for "run and gun" type stuff where the form-factor works so well and for a project where I want clean-looking shots rather than shallow DOF "art". And yes, I've been using neat (this is v3) on all footage from the XHA1 just to get the last bit of noise out. I've literally just used the default with "adaptive filtration" checked, then "configure" -> "auto profile" - then select "auto fine tune" then "noise filter settings" then "apply".

Notes - which might help:

In Neat, with very low light, yes you need to tweak it manually. If you go to the noise filter settings tab, you can view the pictures as YCrCb and the sliders then allow you to work on each of those and you can monitor the appropriate image to see the effect so you can minimise the "plastic" look.

Then after doing Neat, I usually have levels and curves set up (in that order).

To finish with, I do a bit of sharpening and rather than use unsharp mask, I use Convolution Kernel, which is very quick to process. For XHA1 sharpening in HD I typically use:

Row 1 | Col 1 | -1.000
Row 1 | Col 2 | -2.000
Row 1 | Col 3 | -1.000

Row 2 | Col 1 | -2.000
Row 2 | Col 2 | 33.000
Row 2 | Col 3 | -2.000

Row 3 | Col 1 | -1.000
Row 3 | Col 2 | -2.000
Row 3 | Col 3 | -1.000

I'm using a modified version of the "BBC" preset mentioned elsewhere - but with the stretch as recommended by Eric Olson. Sharpness was on +3 on this preset.

Here's some random handheld footage using all of the above, in my living room today. All natural window light. The original footage looked pretty "flat". In particular, even the shot at 0:35 would have looked very contrasty normally, almost a silhouette, but with this setup, was very un-contrasty out of the camera, and with curves I was able to keep some window detail as well as keep the detail in my clothes. So quite a lot of flexibility to play with levels etc. Excuse the squeaky piano stool and the tilted shot at that point!

Private Video on Vimeo

Mark, thank you so much for the detailed and thoughtful reply. Many moons ago I played with the convolution kernel and, not knowing what I was doing, I dismissed the FX. This evening I gave it a whirl on some A1 footage and, whoa!, it does look great, and so much better than even a very conservative application of Sharpen or Unsharpen Mask.

Your 'art supply and piano' footage looked great to me and probably is among the best that I've seen wrung from the A1. (Nice piece of music, too!)

I am a habitual user of Magic Bullet Looks for grading, a one-stop shop, if you will. I am curious, however, to know why you apply both Levels and Color Curves. In the past, I've used one or the other, not both.

Cheers to you.

Hi Steven,

Thanks so much! By the way, the piano piece is an accompaniment for a choir - a bit of a pig to learn and involves much swearing. That was a curse-free section.

I agree convolution kernel seems to do the best job, and it's very quick to process. The middle slider of row 2 adjusts the sharpening, and unless I want different sharpening on each clip, I put convolution kernel at track or output level so I know I just have one instance of it.

Just had a play with the Curves in Magic Bullet Looks. You're absolutely right - they're really great and you may not need levels as well. For my video I was just using the regular Vegas FX chain - which was

Neat -> Sony Levels -> Sony Color Curves

The reason for using levels first and then curves: I use levels to to take the input level down to black where I want things to be solid blacks. You can then manipulate the curves without worrying about the black lifting. Another useful trick is to create extra "nodes" in the curve which will isolate a portion of the curve if, for example, you want to manipulate the mid-range values without affecting other parts of the curve. The curve in MB already has isolated points.

Apologies if you know these, but I find the following tricks really useful in Vegas:

- To save time you can save any FX chain as a filter package. With the Plugin chooser window open, and with your FX chain of choice already in the clip (keep to default values), click "save as..." and that chain (with its values) will be saved for recall into any clip from the Filter Packages window, ready to tweak.
- If you want to compare the look of each clip quickly, one after the other, put one marker ("m") in each clip, then use the numbers on the top row of your keyboard to go straight to that marker. Works in fullscreen mode too. You can also play from any of those points using the space bar - very useful in fullscreen mode.

Camera presets were:

GAM 1 | KNE L | BLK S | PED 0 | SET 0 |
SHP 3 | HDF H | DHV 0 | COR 0 | NR1 0 | NR2 0 |
CMX N | GHN 0 | CPH 0 | RGN 0 | CGN 0 | BGN 0 |
RGM -6 | RBM -4 | GRM 0 | GBM 0 | BRM -17 | BGM 2 |

...the SHP 3 value was just what was suggested but I'm sure that or anything lower would be fine too.

Re my above - some footage taken at night - garden and in my kitchen with domestic lighting. Seems to hold up well with a lot of movement and low(ish) light and still yields a nice clean image.

I love the latitude this preset (above) gives me. Thanks to Eric Olson for getting me all fired up and using my XHA1 again and to Steven Reid for the encouragement. Now I'm looking forward to getting the lights out and trying some proper stuff with it!

Assorted night-time shots - messy kitchen and dark garden on Vimeo

Mark, thanks for the additional examples. This weekend will give me a chance to properly shoot some test footage. (BTW, I love the guitar in the fruit bowl.)

It's to play while I'm waiting for the chemistry set stuff to finish reacting!

The videos look really good Mark. Skill using what you have, both the camera and the software, trumps having the latest and greatest equipment without the skill.

I spent the past few evenings doing tests with in-camera presets and post effects. (No footage posted here, so skip if that's what you're looking for.)

1. I made 4 versions of TruColor: 'regular' and with stretched blacks, each with SHP set to -9 and +3.

2. Post filter chain (in Sony Vegas) = Neat Video 3 --> Magic Bullets (curves only) --> Convolution Kernel.

3. In all instances using zebras, I shot some well-lit stuff around my house at about F 4.0 - 4.4, which is what I've found to be the lower limit of the A1's lens sweet spot. I have the Canon wide angle adapter on my A1, so I could get pretty close to my subjects.

4. SHP = -9: gads, this looked awful in post. I tried hard, but I couldn't rescue it even with Convolution Kernel. It just looked soft no matter what. I like 'organic' and 'film-like', but my footage (properly focused) still left hard edges pretty soft.

5. SHP = +3: POW! Now we're talking. No halos on sharp edges.

6. OK, Mark, you revived my interest in Neat Video: in my well-lit scenes, I had background objects in deep shadows. As expected, the grain was just awful. Man, that is probably my worst gripe with the A1. After a very conservative treatment with Neat Video, the grain all but disappeared, and the properly exposed areas looked great without taking on a plastic effect.

7. Overall, I like TruColor-S, so named because of the stretched blacks, with SHP = +3.

8. I really DON'T like clicking through representative clips from each scene for NeatVideo to sample, but the end result is SO worth it.

Thanks specially to Mark and Eric for motivating me to play and tweak my presets to better excellence. I'm happy to squeeze some extra life out of my beloved A1.

This is really fab to read, Steven. I'm so pleased. I feel exactly the same way about my cameras - am going to copy the preset across to the second XHA1 I own for any two-camera stuff. I think the Neat NR makes the whole thing look so clean. The only quibble I have at all with the cameras is that very small highlights have a sort of "horizontal lines" thing going on in the immediate region of the highlight if you look closely. It looks like interlacing artefacts, even though I'm shooting in 25F, but that's nothing to do with the presets.

We're taking the cameras to document a music education project with young children on Friday (I'm doing the music and my wife is project leader and an ex-BBC cameraperson), and given you often don't get much opportunity to adjust the camera (I have to leave it on auto / shutter priority in these cases because of the fast movement and changes of light) this will give me the reassurance that I have a bit of wiggle-room to make the images look good from now on, so I'm really pleased. Coupled with the way I can now do a 2.5 hour single take if I want to (observational video is different from normal video and it's useful to have detail and continuous shots rather than "art") this is going to be perfect. For child protection reasons I can never post footage of this work but it's going to make a very useful contribution to the study and promotion of this particular educational niche, and will equally translate well to DVD should we have the need / permission to do that.

I'm so pleased personally that I stumbled back onto this site after a while away from it; so thanks to the moderators etc who run it. Now I feel good about having kept these cameras when it was tempting to sell them.

By the way, Steven, is your WA lens the Canon WD-H72? Do you recommend it? I'm thinking here of shooting in sometimes quite confined areas but with the ability to go in physically close sometimes. But is there a limited zoom range with it in place? How about the magenta fringing - is that worse with the WA adaptor? Does it knock down the light levels coming into the camera or make no difference?

The videos look really good Mark. Skill using what you have, both the camera and the software, trumps having the latest and greatest equipment without the skill.

Roger, thanks so much for that very kind comment. I sometimes worry about spending hours tweaking settings, but it's done and now I can go out and get as good an image out of my XHA1 as is technically possible. After spending hours trying to rescue some footage that was "OK" but wasn't particularly correctable, I came here to see what I could do to improve the presets and the workflow with the plugins available to me. Hence I'm so pleased at the support of people on this forum and to have the possibility of cleaner, more gradable images will really make a difference to the projects I'm involved in (and to my sanity, in editing - because it seems to take 10x longer to put something right than getting it right in the first place).

The thing that most surprises me is that the best possible image out of the camera isn't necessarily the one that requires least grading. It seems that the uncontrasty, "flat" image seems to produce the best results. I'm amazed what you can discover in an image after tweaking the curves even though you're not technically using the most of the dynamic range available - as long as the exposure is as right as possible, of course. I believe (though can't prove it) that the sensor noise in the XHA1 acts as a gentle dither which (when coded in the camera and then noise-reduced in post) ends up giving a very nice image and it seems to keep the image more together and less noisy with all but extreme curves. Of course Noise-reduction technology wasn't particularly available or fast to process when these cameras first came out - so now we have more possibilities than we did originally.

By the way, Steven, is your WA lens the Canon WD-H72? Do you recommend it? I'm thinking here of shooting in sometimes quite confined areas but with the ability to go in physically close sometimes. But is there a limited zoom range with it in place? How about the magenta fringing - is that worse with the WA adaptor? Does it knock down the light levels coming into the camera or make no difference?

Mark, yes I have the WD-H72 and I heartily recommend it, as do many, many others who use it. It is a zoom-through adapter, but the A1's 20x zoom on the native lens partially compensates the loss of zoom with the H72 mounted. For instance, I recently shot a choral concert from ~70ft from the choir. The H72 was the only way I could get the entire choir in frame. Even so, I could still zoom into the choir to isolate just a few individuals in the frame.

The H72 lives on my A1 unless I really need the long end of the zoom for, e.g., sports or nature footage.

It is heavy -- a serious piece of glass. It blocks AF, so you're on manual focus (my default, anyway). I had read about the weight on reviews, but feeling it first hand was another experience. I had to move the A1 back on my tripod's baseplate to compensate for the already heavy front end of the A1. Also, it makes the A1 look quite a bit larger if you care about that sort of thing (clients might <shrug>).

I have not noticed a substantial change in magenta fringing. I try to avoid that anyway, but I certainly haven't noticed it with the H72 mounted.

Also, while I haven't done proper testing, I haven't noticed any appreciable (or even noticeable) light loss with it mounted.

Finally, at the very shortest end, I have noticed a small amount of barrel distortion. It is supposed to be a distortion-less adapter, so say others, but small amounts of barrel distortion are quite apparent when shooting columns or other similar vertical structures. Not a big deal. It is edge-to-edge sharp with no chromatic aberration. Nice!

Of course Noise-reduction technology wasn't particularly available or fast to process when these cameras first came out . . .

Quite right! I used NeatVideo since v1 (c. 2009, I think), and it made for painfully slow renders. I just had to give it up for all but the most noisy footage. But current v3 seems much more streamlined and snappy, putting regular use of NV back into the realm of the everyday workflow for me and my aging rig.

Hi Steven,

That info on the wideangle lens - really useful. Great to hear about the sharpness. The narrow end of the zoom range is not something I use a lot anyway - mainly the camera is kept on wide when I use it, but sometimes not wide enough! I'm assuming this is a sort of "bayonet twist-on" like the lens hood that comes with the XHA1?

BTW with Neat video 3 I only recently found out about the optimization - it can work out the best combination of GPU and CPU acceleration - although to be honest I've never noticed any difference with the processing speed you get after running this. You can also set up camera noise profiles on Neat but again I don't tend to bother - unless there are extremes of noise, just accepting what it suggests is fine. I wish though that there was a macro that would just do that without (as you say) having to click through and accept the default options each time.

I'm assuming this is a sort of "bayonet twist-on" like the lens hood that comes with the XHA1?

No. It screws into the lens body to an astonishing depth using the same threads that a lens filter uses. (For that reason, you have to remove any filters, such as a UV filter.) Once assembled, it is essentially -- and looks to be -- a part of the camera, not an add-on. Very sturdy and solid, much more so than any screw-on lens filter.

Concerning NV profiles, I really do try to find large and featureless portions of video that can be used to accurately profile the noise, per NV's recommended procedure. But sometimes this is impossible, e.g., in a jungle, on water, cloudy sky, etc. For that reason, and IF I remember, I shoot several seconds of my white balance card (~ 10 sq. in.) in proper focus after white-balancing in a particular scene. Whilst accurate, this procedure becomes a chore because the noise changes at each F-stop, which of course can vary if outdoors. For controlled environments, such as the indoor concert shoot I mentioned above, it would be ideal.