Contacting Canon re: adding 24p pulldown flags
 

Seems like many of us who shoot 24p with the HV20 are frustrated by lack of pulldown removal in all the major NLE's, apparently due to Canon's failure to include the necessary flags. I have already contacted Canon about the issue but I think if enough of us complain, they'll fix it (hopefully a firmware update to our existing cameras)

Believe or it not we got Canon to recall one of their EOS still camera lenses this way last year. Many of us had problems with the newly released 70-300 IS. We sent it in for service and all Canon would say was that is was "within spec". But enough of us wrote, called, emailed and within a year they redesigned the lens and many of us (including me) got our $600 back.

On the HV20 24p issue - two ways to contact Canon:
By phone (in the US) 1-800-828-4040
And by email - start here: https://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/c...&modelid=14869 Tell them you're concerned about the lack of automatic pulldown removal on 24p files with the major video editing software programs due to Canon's failure to include flags. Suggest a firmware update. Then send the same email here: dv@cits.canon.com

I'm telling you, if enough of us complain they will change it - but we have to keep at it.

Link not working ???

The address is: https://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/c...&modelid=14869

I just sent an E-mail as well.

Sent mine in. How many people did it take with that EOS recall for Canon to listen?

They just got mine.

Sent mine in ...

I am no where near the expert that you guys are, and to be honest have not even started to play with 24p yet, but I figure, with any luck, if my contribution now can make things easier for me in the future ... I'll jump on board :)

Can't say how many people exactly but what happened was Canon's position for many months was "the lens was within spec". It didn't look like they were going to do anything about it. Their general response was "it's a consumer lens" so the specs aren't as high as our pro lenses. But clearly there was a problem and we were all seeing it. More and more of us starting discussing the issue on-line in the various Canon still camera forums and then as we started calling and sending the lens in for repair, one day Canon was like "we see there's a problem but we don't have a fix." Several more months passed and they finally announced they had redesigned the lens. People got their old lenses replaced/repaired. In the meantime, those of us who didn't want to wait called Canon USA HQ in Lake Succes, NY and got our money back - even though in my case for instance it had been like 6 or 8 months since I had purchased the lens (from B&H BTW, not Canon directly.) But the whole point is, if we had quit when we first got their response that it was a consumer lens and within the Canon specs for the lens, we'd still be stuck with a problem.

I'm no engineer, but I think the problem with pulldown flags in the HV20 can be solved by a simple firmware update. I suspect the original thinking was, well it's a consumer cam and most people don't edit their footage anyway. But if they realize enough of us want this, why not just make the change.

The other thing we did with the lens situation was call/email the regional Canon service centers. There's one in Irvine, Calif., another in New Jersey and one in Chicago and Hawaii (check the back page of the owners manual - there are also two in Canada.) I think flooding them with calls and emails was instrumental in getting that lens recalled.

Wait.... what's the issue exactly?

I have the V1U and most NLE's have yet to recognize it, but CineForm (and a lot of other tools can do the Inverse Telecine / Pulldown Removal process). Is this not the case with the HV20?

I considered the HV20 as a b-roll camera for it's 24P so if they ignored doing something crucial I'd love to know more about the issue.

I expect all the new updates to NLEs (aside from Vegas which already supports this) will support the V1U's 24P mode, so what makes Canon users think that they won't support the HV20's 24P mode?

From what I can tell, Sony includes the flags in V1U files. Canon doesn't. Vegas 7 for instance can't do pulldown on the HV20 files, while apparently it works fine with the V1U. So... that's the problem. Also from what I gather, Cineform doesn't rely on flags for doing its pulldown removal...

Sent via the form and email address!

Sent mine as well.

-Steve

Sent, the DVInfo community rises up! The rep even replied that they've received quite a few of these requests today.

We're more powerful than we think... :-)

My response back was much more generic..

They said that Canon USA has made no announcements regarding the development or release
of a firmware update related to the issue described. Oh well, at least it's on file. Hopefully with enough of us asking, they'll take it seriously.

--Steve

I just sent them an email.

Seems a shame to have a 24p camera and no easy way to edit the footage! Hopefully they will jump on it.

A cause worth joining! I sent 2 emails and still have my righteous indignation, you can't beat that.

Great idea!!! I sent an email just now as well..

Woo Hoo!!! Power to the people!

Poor Nick, I think he's the only one answering email today. At least we have one guy who sees the volume. 8-)

lol, I got a response from Nick also. We are keeping him busy.

Nick responded to my email to.. Good ole Nick...

Guess I'm the only one that Nick didn't reply to. I got a much more canned response from Chris!

Steve

I'm going to send off an email shortly. Seems i'm NOW a HV20 owner and all (new born, a few hours old!). LOL

I am but one person. Now with added +1 for power. ;)

i have yet to buy an HV20 but very intrested in it for the image quality thinking of buying one this week perhaps but i really hate the 24p pulldown issue i have no proplem with this with my dvx100b ofcourse vegas 6 user here but what i wanted to ask was if its CANON proplem to fix how do they fix this i hear the word firmware fixing does this mean i would have to return my camera back to CANON to fix it and they add software to make it so they look for the pull down ?????

Canon sent me a survey link for their customer service and I filled it out generally postive, but left it that the issue was not resolved. We'll see what happens.

I just sent my email & filled out that form.

If this works, maybe we should request a complete manual mode next (with shutter & aperture info displayed on the screen).

can anyone tell me about what firmware upgrade would men if i bought the HV20 will i have to give the camera back to CANON for the upgrade and they send it back

Marty - chill... :-) I don't have my owners manual in front of me but I believe what you do is download the firmware update to your mini-SD card (the one you use for still photos on the HV20 - ain't got one? $20 for a 1GB card at Buy.com), put the card in the camera and it does the firmware update automatically.

thanx peter one question how would i down load the firmware on to the sd card ?

You'd need a card reader for your computer. Download the HV20 update to your computer and copy to the SD card. The Mini (and Micro) SD cards come with their own adapter so a regular, full size SD reader can hold them. Many PC's these days come with a built-in card reader or you can get a USB one for under $20.

As indicated above, I did the email thing, too. But to those of you who are up on 24p, I have a few Q's:

1. The HV20 capture 24p, laying it into a 60i stream. When I play it back on my HD TV through component (haven't done HDMI yet.) I seem to be getting the effect of 24p. I assume that is because the camera is doing the pulldown (if that is even the proper term.) Can someone explain it better ?

2. IIf I capture to my system, and play the resulting capture on Window Media player, I also get a clean play back that appears to have that same 24 frame look

So what benefit will I get from having 24p pulldown removal. Is it smaller size, playability on other players, easier playing....

Yep, that's the pull-down at work. What you're seeing on the TV is a 24p frame split into 3 fields (odd-even-odd for 3/60th of a second), then the next 24p frame split into 2 fields (even-odd for 2/60ths), then the subsequent frame split into 3 fields (even-odd-even), then a frame of 2 fields, etc. So there is a little stutter to the cadence, similar to that you might notice on a Hollywood film played on a TV, especially during rolling credits.

Current versions of most computer players such as WMP and QT will play clips at their native frame rate, so a 24p program ought not to have that slight stutter. And the file size will be smaller since there isn't repeat information -- the two identical odd fields in the "3" part of the 3:2 pulldown -- plus progressive frames are more efficient to compress.

Chris, I'm no expert on the matter myself but try this. When viewing your material try to pause randomly and examine what the picture looks like. If you see, what a lot of people are calling "ghosting" (where you get double images on top of each other etc) then that is probably an indication that the pulldown was not removed. You are still getting the 24p cadence when watching but those extra frames need to be removed for your NLE (or any other video software) to recognize it as 24p. I have used Cineform HDLink with my footage and compared the before and after and those are the differences that jump out at me. With Cineform (or anything else that can remove the pulldown) whenever I pause the video it is smooth all the way through.

This explains it really well.

If I understand things correctly ...

As you can see in the example, with the pulldown, one of the frames (in the example it is frame C) gets completely "lost". By adding the pull down flags, an application would then be able to know what frame it is on (A, B, C or D) and put all full progressive frames back together.

As it is now, the HV20 does not add the flags, therefore people have to guess where in the pull down process the selected video is if they want the pure progressive frames. To boot, every time a new video clip is started, the HV20 may start on a different frame, so for each and every clip of video, the guess work has to happen again and again ... what a pain!

Am I making sense? If people want to add corrections, or feel they can do a better job, feel free to jump in ...

It was also asked what some of the benefits were for removing the pulldown. As per the link above it states:

Benefits of reverse telecine include high-quality non-interlaced display on compatible display devices and the elimination of redundant data for compression purposes.

I think what Chris is saying is that his video already has that 24P look...what else is he supposed visually see in his video after removing pulldown?

I had the same question at first. When I first used the HV20 I edited in Vegas just like normal and rendered the final product. It had a 24P cadence and looked good. But what I saw in the picture was "ghosting" every now and then whenever there was movement. I thought it had something to do with the issues of HDV. After a while it just irritated me and I eventually learned about "pulldown". I then tried Cineform (which I heard could remove the pulldown...and at that time I didn't know what pulldown was) and what I noticed was the video looked the same but without that horrible "ghosting" effect. I did a side by side comparison and realized that the software actually pulled out those extra frames and got rid of the problem.

I know we are all saying the same thing but I also at first did not know what to visually look for when removing pulldown (besides deinterlacing the video). I can now watch anyones video and determine whether or not their 24P footage was correctly reverse telecined.

Hopefully this petition to Canon pans out so that they will add the flags to the 24p footage in the cam. That way we could edit within Vegas like normal and properly remove the pulldown during rendering.

I guess this is how the DVX works...similar to the HV20 but it incorporates flags in the footage....which is no problem for any NLE (that supports pulldown removal) to work with.

I started a new thread on this but I am wondering if the new 7.0e update to Vegas which was updated on May 1 will properly handle the pulldown issue?

-Jonathan

That's a good question. I know it does not handle Panasonic's AVCHD format (only Sony cams). But in regards to the HV20 I think it's more of a Canon problem. If they (Canon) allowed the use of flags in the video the this would be a non-issue within Vegas.

I thought their new update was to support AVCHD. I just hoped it would also solve the HV20 thing as well.