Here are some random clips from Sundance Film Festival filmed with the
XLH1. The H1 was adjusted away from its normal flat look. The H1 image can
be pushed much farther out then even this with it's menu controls in all directions if desired...

XLH1 Settings for these shots were:

-4 master ped
+2 color sat
Cine-Gamma 2
Gain -3db

All this was recorded to HDV tape. Transfered via SDI to Kona card into
DVCproHD 1080i. Reversed telecine to 23.98. "" No Re-compression ""
The h.264 version has excellent quality, yet the footage is hit with another pass of compression. First HDV, second DVCproHD, third .h264...... These clips will only be up be for 48hrs...

BTW, these are Raw DVCproHD files....

Link to clips:
http://www.pbase.com/arrfilms



Michael Pappas
Arrfilms@hotmail.com
PappasArts & Arrfilms Main site

CONTACT VIA AOL INSTANT MESSENGER
AT { PAPPASARTS2 }


XLH1 and HVX200 frame grabs and news here:
http://www.pbase.com/Arrfilms

http://www.PappasArts.com
http://www.Myspace.com/PappasArts

thanks for posting the links.
everyday i am more amazed by what the canon xl-h1 can do.
can't wait to see something on the big screen from this camera
thanks barlowelton.
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

Yesterday, Barlow's piece was on the Sundance Website for streaming.

thanks for posting the links.
everyday i am more amazed by what the canon xl-h1 can do.
can't wait to see something on the big screen from this camera
thanks barlowelton.
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

I guarantee there will be many, many indie hd movies shot with the H1.

Funny thing with Sundance: Their booklet that describes all the films notes the format of projection for the festival. I saw more HDCAM than film entries. Shoot, Carlos' film was shot Super16 and blown up to 35, yet the booklet says it's 35mm. The interesting thing is that you can tell from the frame grabs that many of them were SD DV. It would seem that all digital entries have to go to HDCAM for projection. There were also a lot of entries that were obviously shot on film but projected HD.

Film is slowly going out of style for festival projection, it would seem. Not much reason to worry about how well your HD would transfer to film.

I had trouble with the final link - seems like I downloaded a file that has no extension or filesize: "mrbarlowwelton".

It's late - perhaps I've made a goof here? Please advise - I'm very excited to see your work as always.

Thanks,
Shawn

Ooops - sorry. Tried the link a few more times and it got me into iDisk. Must have been a server burp or something.

Looking forward to the clips... Thanks again.

Great looking clips, I've got my first shoot with an H1 tomorrow - really looking forward to it.

All this was recorded to HDV tape. Transfered via SDI to Kona card into DVCproHD 1080i. Reversed telecine to 23.98. "" No Re-compression "" The h.264 version has excellent quality, yet the footage is hit with another pass of compression. First HDV, second DVCproHD, third .h264......

Barlow, the footage looks great. I actually posted additonal praises in the "Thinking about H1 instead of HVX now" thread, as your footage was just what I needed to see this morning to start me out with a great day, specifically the "MiscSundance2.mov."

Could you (or anyone else) please point out why you elected to put the HDV footage through the above process? Would it have looked just as good if you just imported the original HDV you shot straight into FCP to keep the workflow streamlined?

Thank you.

Sorry to be a thorn... I'm having trouble playing these back. I can drop them in my Edius SP timeline (I'm WinXP), and I'm only getting audio. Sooo, I guess I don't have the necessary video codec. I'm trying to download the .264 versions now, but not sure if I have that codec either.

I'm going to download the latest free quicktime player for Windows (thought I already had). Will that get me everything I need to view these? Otherwise, I can upgrade to Quicktime pro for $30 - no problem if it gets me to where I need to be. I'm assuming with Quicktime pro I'll get the .264 codec at a minimum(?).

BTW - I've opened the non-264 clips in Canopus procoder, and it says the video frame size is 640x360, frame rate 23.98 with the video codec as: DVCPRO HD 1080i60.

It's rare that I run into playback difficulties on this machine - it pretty much views/exports & transcodes into every format. Any clarification to get me on board with you guys is greatly appreciated.

It would seem that all digital entries have to go to HDCAM for projection.
Barlow,
The only digital format Sundance officially projects is HDCAM. Everyone accepted must turn in a 35mm film reel or HDCAM master only.

- ShannonRawls.com

Great looking clips, I've got my first shoot with an H1 tomorrow - really looking forward to it.

Great, Steve! Let us know your impressions.

I have another "Day in the Life" segment airing 9pm EST this evening on the Sundance channel as part of "Festival Dailies". It's shot SD 24F with the H1. It follows a pair of filmmakers who made a very interesting documentary called "The Trials of Darryl Hunt".

Tune in or Tivo if you can.

Elton, after seeing your footage damn, you've really got me thinking of double dipping with Pana and Canon! =)

It seems the H1 is truly a mini cine-alta.

Barlow, please post more footage if you can. i can't seem to get enough video from the H1.
i need a fix.
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

Barlow, if you have any footage that you would like some color timing or effects done, i'd love the chance to give it a shot. i mostly use after effects and i have most of the plugins that are available for the program.
TO THE MOON AND BEYOND.
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

Workin' on my last segment today. Shot 24F SD most of yesterday, but then Roger Ebert showed up at the filmmaker's red carpet moment (he was dressed casual shooting pictures of Isabel with his DSLR--looked more like a regular fan than a celebrity...pretty cool) and I had to flip the switch to HDV. So I made my post a little more complex because I'm doing the SDI thing with some of the footage, and then cropping and dc'in to DV.

I'll post lots more stuff in a few days.

Darrell, let's talk. I'd like to see some of this stuff worked through Magic Bullet (HD if you have it)

Best,

Barlow

It seems the H1 is truly a mini cine-alta.

That's what I keep thinking every time I look at the footage. There's no doubt in my mind they were aiming that high with this little baby.

For those who might be interested...

My final segment airs tomorrow night (Sat) at 9pm EST on Sundance. I follow another director named Isabel Croixet who has a movie with Tim Robbins in it called "The Secret Life of Words". Pretty intense drama.

Roger Ebert makes a very short appearance in my piece, so do tune in if you can. It's 24F SD XLH1 again.

Barlow, i droped you an email.
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

Barlow, so recompressing from HDV to DVCPRO actually retains a higher quality image? How can that be? So when the footage aired, how did you deliver it? Straight from the tape or?

Hi Nikial,

It's hard to actually quantify, but the H1's SDI is almost like a super firewire as it spits out a true 1.45Gbs 1080i signal--even from HDV tape playback--that is seemingly oversampled before it's recompressed to DV100. It looks about as good as the original HDV, (colors actually seemed better) but now in an i-frame format, it is much easier to deal with in FCP.

An experiment I'm going to try is recording DV from the SDI output of the camera, and also recording DV to tape. I've heard that you can actually get a slightly better image this way, but who knows? We'll see.

I cut my first piece shot in HDV in a DVCPROHD 1080i timeline. For delivery, I actually made a single DVCPRO HD QT file of the timeline, and then imported into Compressor, cropped for 4x3 (I shot 4x3 safe) and converted to DV. It held up beautifully. Did a Print to Video to a DSR-11 DVCAM deck and that was it. The piece was recaptured firewire into an Avid
and assembled along with the other segments into a final DVCAM master show tape. That's what went to the Sundance channel satellite truck.

For those that might go the SDI route, they will be amazed at how useful and powerful it really is. It's funny to use it just to transfer footage from HDV, but it really came in handy. I probably wouldn't have shot Carlos' segment in HDV if there were no SDI. I didn't want to navigate the choppy waters of the HDV realm with a tight deadline. With DV100, you don't have to conform a timeline and rebuild GOP's, which I knew would slow me down too much. DVCPROHD feels a lot like working with good old DV, but it's friggin' HD!

The thing I liked the most is it's all originated from HDV footage from a MiniDV tape! To look this good AFTER compression makes me feel good about HDV and its ability to create even better looking movies using the XL-H1. Tonight I re-watched "Open Water". Lord have mercy on that footage. If I had to shoot with a Sony VX2000 with its 410,000 pixeled CCD's and aspired to sell the movie for $2.4mil, I would either need Ridley Scott as my director or a miracle.

Now, if we only had some ACTION SEQUENCES with 24f HDV, then we'd be able to wrap up this HDV stigma. I hope the DIGIC processor does good in that. Heath is testing some this weekend.

- ShannonRawls.com