It seems clear that most DSLRs will have HD video capture from here on out...perhaps Nikon - which doesn't have a video camera business - will push the capabilities further, and drag Canon along behind them.

I spoke to a Canon rep at the UK Focus on Imaging exhibition today, and asked about 24/25fps recording and manual control.

His first answer was "If I had a pound for every time somebody asked me that, I'd be a rich man".

His second, official answer, was "Canon Europe have put an urgent request in to Canon Japan to come up with a solution."

I then asked if 24/25fps was even possible via a firmware upgrade alone, or if this was limited by hardware, and he said there was no reason to believe it couldn't be done by changing the firmware. He wasn't a technician, and he couldn't say for sure about the 24/25fps possibility, so I'm not really any wiser, but certainly Canon are well-aware of these requirements.

He was also aware that people are buying Nikon lenses, and he said that would probably be the incentive to get Canon Japan to make this work.

Ah! The market is still working :) :) :) !!!!

I heard roumors about Canon implementing the manual settings in the next firmware update but, sadly, no news about the 24p/25p issue (I live in Italy).

Hi Marcello,

On this site, we don't deal in rumors -- we deal in facts.

The implementation of manual settings for HD recording in the next 5D Mk. II firmware update is not a rumor. It's
a fact. Please refer to this discussion for more information: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/canon-eos...re-update.html

Unfortunately it does not look like 25p is being added at this time. Hope this helps,

Generally, PAL video cameras, no matter they are con-, pro- sumer or professional are around 700 USD higher priced than the same NTSC model. And it has to do with custom taxes. All products for Europe must be that price higher - no matter where you buy them from. This is why one has to pay around 600 USD to convert an NTSC cam to PAL.

Market and custom taxes are the main reason we do not have yet a unified video system. I am pretty sure that there will be two versions of 5D2: one with 30p and 24p and the other one with 25p and around 600USD more expansive.

Still one thing: there is a big tendency among US videographers to shoot 25p and this could be a benefit for their PAL mates as would be difficult to sell those 25p cameras at an European price on the US market.

Hi Max, do you realise all that happens in this process is Color throws away every sixth frame. It can look okay for scenes with limited movement, but take a look at anything moving in a predictable fashion (eg: a car driving by). You will see it jerk several times a second. Very distracting.

Using FCS2, the only way to convert properly is using Compressor. You can can get Compressor to reconstitute 5 discrete frames per second (using info from the original 6) - usually very effective but time consuming and sometimes error prone - or by slowing the footage down 20% (ie: maintaining all 30 frames over 1.2 seconds).

Compressor has tons of frame / retiming options - have a play.

As Christian said, most everything here has always been more expensive and not just by VAT (that's not sellers' fault). Fortunately this seems to be getting better. 15 years ago prices were more like x2. Now it's more like x1.2 (I talk ex-vat).

Now we have the really stupid "we made video modes 30p only" debate. My solution: buy from companies that make products with "25p inside" built-in!!! ;-D

Don't take it too personally my European friends... more than half the world's population live in 25p regions *outside* Europe.

China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, the entire African continent, all of the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, the ex Soviet Asian Republics... the list goes on

Every time I hear what an insult 30p is to the "European market" it brings a smile.

30fps is based on the frame rate for NTSC TV which is the standard for the Americas plus a few other nations (apologies to Japan, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan & Burma:-) The rest of the world is PAL in some variant or other.

Another example of US technological influence is the whole 110V vs. 220/40V thing. I now have several mains adaptors that are auto-sensing auto-switching 110V/220V which is great except they are stupidly built-in to US-style mains plugs so you need an adaptor. Why on earth they weren't made with a two-pin Figure 8 C7 socket so you could plug in a regular mains lead depending on your local variation?

I doubt that Canon really intend to insult their customers but the products are designed in an NTSC 30fps country & their biggest market the US is another 30fps NTSC country. If 28fps or 32fps had been chosen then that would clearly have been insulting to all countries:-) Hey, didn't they just bring out the 500D with 20fps video?:-)

True, but the fact is that the world spins around NTSC.

I'm on PAL land and I see lot of misconceptions even on profesional products. Lot of people thinks most of aspects of NTSC could be extrapolated to PAL resulting in a very bizarre theories, official documents and bas support from certain companies.

Just an example: Matrox Rt.x2 gives PAL output thru DVI at 60Hz.

Sorry, I of course meant every 25p country... We should find a word for it, like pan-indo-euro-25p-asia... ;-DD


;-DDD

You're right Nigel... It seems it's not a matter of insults to customers and tv standards. They're probably just trying to give the best possible feeling of movement to the image and for that purpose, the more fps the better, so we'll probably have a 1Ds Mark IV with AMAZING AND SUPER SMOOTH 40fps!! Well... It IS smoother than 30fps ain't it?

If the rumor is in fact true, we'll have to see what the 24p mode in the 5D looks like. If a couple of months from now we have a 5D with manual controls and 24p (let's hope 25p for PAL countries, not just Europe, lol) with real cinematic motion feeling and the light capabilities and compression quality that it already has, we'll have one of the most perfect independent filmmaking tools till the day for an amazing price.

But don't worry... People will still complain about rolling shutter, aliasing and audio.

I guess the most important thing for Canon to do was stop people from buying Nikon glass.
So now they've done that. Even without releasing the firmware yet. 25p is also important but I don't think it will have the same effect on the Canon's bottom line as the manual controls did. Let's hope they are just saving the announcement for the release of the firmware so they have something else to talk about as well.

Fingers crossed.