GL / XM assorted posts, 2003

[Jeff Donald]

I posted a reply in your other thread here.

[Alan Van Vliet]

Douglass Trumball used a filming techique called Showscan (I think it was on 70 mm) in which shooting was done at 1/60 of a second. The effects were almost surrealistic.

Motion at 1/60 appeared to be "slower" than when shot at higher speeds of 1/90, 1/120. etc.

1/60 of a second seems to work well in frame mode. I am curious as to whether or not it well present well in normal mode compared to the speeds a still photographer would use. (1/500 to 1/1000), particularly when looking for quality, sharpness and the ability to get high quality slow motion.

Any thoughts???

Thanks in advance,

Al

[Steve Iacono]

cuz 1/60 is a slower shutter speed than 1/90 , 1/120 etc

[Josh Ray]

I'm thinking of purchasing a battery off eBay. It says its compatible with the GL1 and XL1 but doesn't list the GL2. Will it still work?

[Jean-Philippe Archibald]

Yes, GL and XL series share the same type of battery. Any of the BP-xx batteries (or equivalents) will work on your GL2.

[Scott Gold]

Hey all,
I'm going to shoot a short video for a manufacturing company. They want a 1-2 minute video showing the various things they do and build at the facility. The video will only be shown in a streaming format on their website. Using my trusty GL2, what settings should I shoot in? I was thinking 16:9, Frame mode, and 1/60th sec. Any advice or tips would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks

Scott

[Ken Tanaka]

The issue is less about camera settings than it is about how the piece is composed, how well it is lit, how well your control contrast and how carefully you control camera and subject movement. "Streaming" is actually all about compression and trying to avoid distortion caused by mistakes in the above attributes.

[Ryan McCrary]

I'm getting a wide angle for my gl2 for Christmas.

I know the wd-58 is about the best, but I don't know if it's wide enough. It says it has to barrel distortion, but what about when it gets super close? I want a wide angle, that at extreme close ups fisheyes.

I can get a .5 or .3 but am concerned they may look too fisheye all the time and be sickening. Any advice?

I mostly film climbing, where the lens is no more than 2 feet away from the person, and the regular lens doesn't fit much in the frame. Thanks for any help.

-Ryan

[Yow Siang]

the entire shoot for this wedding is done with a vitacom 0.5mm om a xm2.
http://www.hemadeus.com/marceulindra

[Mark Newhouse]

In streaming, that is the key. The irony is that in streaming video, the less movement you have, the better. Of course you can't avoid all movement, and you wouldn't want to.

The way compression works is that it analyzes the frames for changes, and only modifies the pixels that have changed from one frame to the next. Every so many frames it redraws the entire frame.

This is the keyframe, and their frequency can be set in the compression settings. More keyframes means smoother video, but at the cost of a larger file size. In streaming this translates to needing more bandwidth to see the stream.

So, in addition to avoiding unnecessary movement, you also want to avoid overly busy backgrounds (where even a slight change in the background could cause a total frame redraw). Camera movement is the culprit here.

If you do a multi camera shoot, or edit the footage prior to compressing for streaming, you'll want to avoid dissolves and wipes. Straight cuts will serve you and the compression better than the fancy editing.

In summary:

- Carefully control camera and subject movement
- Keep backgrounds simple - all one color if possible
- use straight cuts when editing

[Craig Hollenback]

Is the amount and quality of image stabilzation the same with both cameras? Thanks, Craig Hollenback

[Chris Hurd]

The Optical Image Stabilization in the XL1/XL1S is a different type than the GL1/GL2. However, you cannot perceive any visual difference between them in the video. Hope this helps,

[Steve Withers]

My GL2 now only plays back JVC tapes. After using Maxell for a month I switched to JVC because I couldn't find Maxell tapes in bulk (which I needed at the time) and I've been using JVC tapes since, so it's been about 5 months.

So anyway, I put in an old tape that I would like to review, and it doesn't play. Well it plays, but the camera thinks it's blank. I know there's info on the tapes (I actually labeled them) I put in another older Maxell tape, same thing happens. And another, same thing.

So I put back in a new JVC tape which I had just played yesterday without problems, and it doesn't play either. After a few minutes, however, footage starts to appear. It looks like this

After awhile that goes away, and I can play back the tape normally. So I tried a Maxell tape again. The whole process repeats. I can't get any type of tape other than JVC to play on the camera.

Funny thing is, the camera just had its heads cleaned (or so Canon told me when I sent it in for repairs.) so I'm baffled at what could be causing this. Any ideas?

[Trond Saetre]

You should use a cleaning tape before you change to another brand of tape.

That might be the reason your Maxell doesn't work.

If that doesn't work, it is problably time for a new service.

Change of tape brands has been discussed in many threads here, so you might do a search to find more useful info.

[Frank Granovski]

Yes, the pic shows the typical results of dirty heads.

http://www.dvfreak.com/tape.htm