Bruce,

Can you mention a few of your custom settings with cine-mode? Is there a custom setting you tend to use the most (for example, typical daytime dalylight shooting?).

Thanks.

Sure. Press the FUNC button on the LCD then use the joystick to move down to the "filmstrip icon" with the "C" next to it.

Move the joystick to the rightmost icon and press in. Now with the joystick you can cycle through the custom settings. I leave "COL.DEPTH" at 0 and "SHARPNESS", "CONTRAST", and "BRIGHTN." at "+".

This seems to "snap up" the kind of "flat" look Cine mode can have but still leaves a greater dynamic range with no "blown out" highlights".

At night or when using lights (on stands) I may start using TV or SPOTLIGHT modes. The last time I worked filming with lights I used Cine and on most scenes had to monkey around with contrast and gamma adjustments in post.

Some serious testing is in order there.

I guess it all comes down to personal preferences, therefore my settings are:
Colour +
Sharpness normal,
Contrast +
Brightness -
I too hate blown-out highlights, hence the reduction in brightness.
You can see the result of these settings here: Morning on the Garth on Vimeo

Very pretty footage, Robin!

Thanks for the info, Paul! Have not heard of that method yet, so will give it a look! Sounds very nice.

So is anyone actually successfully doing the 2:3:2 pulldown when using 24p? That's the part I don't understand.

I'm out on the road traveling home for the holidays and when my driving shift is over I've been shooting scenery and and trying different settings. 24p looks very interesting but once I get it into vegas it doesn't look like what I was seeing in the camera as is the case with 60i. There is an option (in vegas) to render to a new track but the HD options just say 24p where the SD versions of 24p specifically offer the 2:3:2 pulldown. Very confusing.

Cheers, WB.

Has anyone figured out how to get files back to the HF100 without using the Pixela software? I can get them to the PC just fine but any time I try to use the ImageMixer software it fails and have yet to find another way to get the MTS/M2TS files back on the camera, even with the directory structure in place. Any suggestions?

I take another route. Edit in Pinnacle Studio 12 Plus and render to an HD file, I render to HD WMV most of the time. Then I play this file in a small hardware media player connected to my 42" LCD with HDMI cable. Looks just as good as playing original footage from the HF100 connect to the TV with HDMI.

The media player I use is one of the simplest; WD TV from Western Digital. It has USB inputs and HDMI output. You supply USB mass storage device and cables. Right now I'm playing my edited HD content from "thumb" drives, when I accumulate more files I have an external USB drive I'll move over to the TV and connect to the media player.

Cost of the WD TV often runs $99. Very well worth it.

I'll second Bruce's advice: the WD Media player is a great piece of kit. My HD material looks great from it on my TV, and it's small enough to take with you if you need to show your files elsewhere...

Does the WD Media Player play the MTS/M2TS files natively from the camcorder too? I've always rendered my edit files as either WMVHD or as M2T files that I play through my laptop. Unfortunately they don't look quite as good on the laptop as they do if I burn an HD-DVD. If the WD Media Player could play the raw MTS/M2TS files that might be just the ticket. However, ultimately I would like to know how to put files back on the HF100 either way.

Yes it does - I've just tried it out! I took the card out of the camera and slotted it into an USB adapter which was then plugged into the WD unit. Works like a dream - and great quality...

Excellent. So you don't see ANY quality difference than what the camera gives you? I'll be viewing it on an 80" projector so I'm pretty picky ;)

No quality difference ;-)