I seriously doubt Canon will move away from 1/3" imaging chips either, but if they did go with HF-S like CMOS chips, they could pretty much kick the competition (from Panny's HMC150 and the new Sony AVC cams) to the curb, in terms of low light performance and recorded image detail (as well as throw a bone to the shallow DOF crowd), and wind up with a camcorder that could be quite viable in the marketplace for even half a decade perhaps (and they do tend to prefer introducing only a very few prosumer camcorders every so seldom, yet ones that remain competitive in the marketplace for a number of years).

Maybe it's my eyes playing tricks on me, but looking at that mock-up again, I'd swear it looks just a little bit longer than the XH-A1/G1. My goodness, could that perhaps mean a longer lens to accommodate slightly bigger imaging chips?

Canon is definitely conservative. They never put out a prosumer camcorder that relies on anything even remotely science-fiction like, like trying to pixel shift progressive CCDs beyond belief, or test out a radical design that winds up yielding split screen issues, or come out with some new recording media that basically relies on technology that is still a few years away from being affordable (like gawd awful expensive, thoroughly non-standard flash memory cards, along with recording images encoded using a high bitrate codec, no less - yielding a whopping 10 minutes of recording time on a single card, or something nutty like that, that in order to have enough cards to store even an hour of footage without dumping the contents off to another device, cost enough at the time, that you might have needed to apply for a second mortgage).

That said, Canon always seems to offer up some innovation, that while it might perhaps break a convention, does not stress proven technology, but offers some sort of genuine real-world benefit.

Last time around, rather than get cute with CCD design, they simply used a pretty conventional approach (interlaced 1440x1080 CCDs) and delivered BOTH excellent interlaced AND excellent progressive recorded images - both, not just one, a bit sharper than any other camcorder, anywhere near it's class at the time. They innovated by breaking with the HDV spec, and recorded 24p images as natively progressive encoded images - clearly stepping a bit outside the formal HDV spec, but not exactly stressing proven technology at all. The end result was generally a pretty nice (and useful) improvement over what was being offered by other manufacturers at the time.

I'm going to make a prediction, as to what I think is the single most likely (conservative, yet effective) innovation Canon might offer up with their next new prosumer camcorder.

I think we may see Canon offer AVC encoded images, recorded to SDHC cards, but stepping outside the AVCHD spec a little by offering an option of 32Mbps encoding. That would really make a lot of sense, coming from Canon. It's not radically science fiction-like by any stretch of the imagination, doesn't stress technology significantly, and doesn't rely on anything particularly expensive, but would offer a real-world benefit, that is indeed a genuine improvement on what is currently being offered by any other manufacturer.

32GB Class-6 SDHC cards are quite reasonably priced nowadays (reasonably close to $100) and capable of storing almost exactly 2 hours of footage encoded at 32Mbps. Class-6 cards, by specification, would offer a minimum of 16Mbps sustained writing speed bandwidth headroom. (The SDHC spec calls for Class-6 cards to be capable of a minimum sustained writing speed of 6MB/second, which is 48Mb/second or 48Mbps).

Offering 32Mbps AVC encoding as an option, would offer image compression quality rivaling Panasonic's AVC-Intra, especially the 50Mbps flavor (for most typical footage), without requiring non-standard, expensive recording media. It would probably result in about the same kind of software incompatibilities as 24F "HDV" did - and essentially just as easy to fix. It would be innovative, in the real-world useful sense, and breaking a bit with convention, but not radical by any means.

Do you think it will have SD recording option?

That's a good question. Canon's consumer AVCHD camcorders don't offer an SD recording option. However, the newest VIXIA models announced recently at CES have an interesting in-camera HD to SD downconvert feature, which works in real-time playback, and offers a choice of making 9mbps or 3mbps standard definition copy of the selected HD material. If the new "XF" model (or whatever it's called) doesn't actually offer an SD recording option, here's hoping that it'll at least incorporate the same in-camera HD-to-SD downconvert function that the consumer camcorders have.

I suppose recording SD might make sense for some purpose, but I can't really think of any.

If the final destination is SD, you still get better quality by shooting HD with an HD cam, when it is downscaled properly. Even if the camera won't downcovert footage to SD, it's not particularly difficult to do (and do it very well) with any reasonably modern PC (using free software).

Who manufactures those 1/2.6" CMOS chips in Canon's HF-S camcorders?

Imagine Haiti for example. If you work for a news agency or a news broadcast channel and the most important thing is to deliver your footage ASAP you better record in SD. It takes less to import and you are going to compress it a lot to be able to send it through a bad internet connection or a Bgan satellite. I don't know if CNN or FOX are recording in HD in breaking news situations but most other channels don't.

Hence the importance of the news SD modes in the EX1R or the NX5 for guys like me.

That's certainly not something I thought of.

What Chris mentioned, about the consumer camcorders having the ability to downconvert in-camera to 9Mbps or 3Mbps SD would be a whale of a lot more practical for what you describe, than having an HD camcorder that can also shoot standard definition DV (like the HDV cams). DV encoded standard def footage is no less bandwidth consuming than HDV or AVCHD.

Actually, AVCHD encoded HD footage can be recorded using a lot less bandwidth than DV too. When I first got a HMC40, the biggest SDHC card I had at the time was an 8GB card. I needed to shoot something for a couple hours continuously though, so I knocked the recording quality down to the lowest setting - 1440x1080i60 at like 6Mbps, if I recall correctly, and the resulting footage was at least as good as anything recorded in standard definition. It was very low motion footage though.

Canon manufactures their own CMOS sensors.

Canon missed out on the CCD market -- they have to outsource those. However, interestingly enough, they
make the machines that make CCD sensors (mask aligners are part of their semiconductor equipment division).

Especially since Canon manufactures their own CMOS imaging chips, and do not manufacture CCDs, it sure seems to me that it might constitute a fairly foolish decision to go with CCDs in this new camcorder, and Canon doesn't tend to do foolish much.

At least since the introduction of the HV20, Canon's CMOS imaging chips have performed quite admirably in their consumer camcorders. It was pretty tough to complain about the performance of the HV20's imager almost three years ago (still is) and just as tough to complain about the performance of the imaging chips going into today's HF-S series camcorders. They perform quite well in low light conditions (especially shooting progressive images), and resolve detail quite nicely. Personally, I've never seen anything akin to what I would call a serious problem stemming from rolling shutter issues, with footage out of my HV20 (even in relatively high motion footage).

Sony has proven that CMOS imagers are now at least acceptable, if not exactly universally embraced with unbridled enthusiasm, to most customers in the low-end prosumer HD camcorder marketplace (despite a vocal minority who just won't get near a CMOS chip for love nor money, no doubt fearing they might instantly turn to jello - and probably a lot of those same folks would not buy a camcorder which does not clearly say Panasonic on it anyway, and likely only grudgingly accept the utter blasphemy of employing interframe compression in the HMC150, for that matter).

Very likely, Canon will not be introducing an entirely newly designed prosumer camcorder again for a number of years, so whatever imaging chips they do choose to put in this new camcorder (and I'm sure they don't take the decision lightly) will probably be going into a pretty significant number of the camcorders that Canon ships out for a long to come. Presumably, they would have a healthier profit margin on imaging chips they manufacture themselves, rather than on outsourced chips.

Canon does remarkably well at cranking both high quality interlaced and high quality progressive images out of interlaced CCDs. If they do go with a CCD that they can get the same image detail out of, with the new imaging block, as they get out of the imaging block in their current prosumer HDV camcorders, but with better light sensitivity and less noise, that would be competitive, at least for the moment. I do think it's entirely possible they could quickly fall behind the pack, as far as recorded image detail, especially for progressive HD formats, in perhaps even considerably less than just a year if Panasonic were to introduce a "new" AVCHD camcorder that's basically an HMC150, but employing the chips they currently use in the HPX300 (seemingly an easy thing to do, one would think) rather than the low res CCDs.

I've got to think, that if Canon does go with CCDs, they may inadvertently inspire Panasonic to come out with a version of the HMC150, using the HPX300 chips, a lot sooner than they might otherwise (if ever). If Canon goes with CMOS, the HMC150 remains the only AVCHD cam in it's class using CCDs (and as such, probably hang onto a significant market share for awhile). If Canon goes with CCDs, it's probably a reasonably safe bet that they will best the image detail recorded by the HMC150 (not exactly a tough challenge really), and perhaps leave the HMC150 with few (if any) significant advantages to compete with in the marketplace (aside from Panny's rather notably loyal core following), especially if Canon makes their new cam as infinitely customizable, with image acquisition presets, as their current prosumer HDV camcorders (which would seem awfully likely) and perhaps copying such nice little extras as the waveform monitoring. That could certainly inspire Panasonic to introduce a "new" alternative to the HMC150 in rather short order (presumably requiring little, if any, R&D time to bring it to market). Should that happen, and Panasonic go so far as to yank the HMC150 off the market (doesn't seem likely, but it's not entirely unimaginable either), that would almost assuredly leave Canon at the bottom of the heap, and rather quickly, for recording image detail in the 1080 line progressive formats. (1080i60 probably would not be difficult, but I don't know how they could achieve a solid 800 lines of recorded detail, in the 1080 line progressive formats, with a reasonably low cost imaging block built around reasonably orthodox CCDs - would be a fairly slick trick.)

Maybe Canon can achieve more with a low cost imaging block, built around fairly orthodox CCDs, than seems real likely to me (wouldn't shock me tho), but whatever they decide, I seriously doubt they will risk getting backed right into a low res corner (except perhaps for the LCD and viewfinder!), especially almost from the get-go.

It will indeed be sad news if Canon is going to provide only fixed-lens camcorders in it's future pro line.

For me, Resolution is something I am not concerned about at all for the new cams. Think about it, Canon has always had the highest resolution against its competition in its class every time they released new major models. Its a trend with their video and still camera lines that I don't see stopping.

They said completely new designed CCD sensor block. Who knows what new things this sensor block will be able to do (and remember, still no confirmation on actual size).

And they will definitely come out with an interchangeable lens camera, there is no evidence otherwise.

Just to clarify, this is what Canon USA told Michael at CES. In other words, he's not referencing my article, he's referring to an actual conversation that took place before I published it (wrote most of it in Dec. but didn't publish until this week).

As pointed out elsewhere, Red's sold something on the order of 7,000 Red Ones, in the nearly two and a half years it's been on the market. So that's 7,000 in 29 months, or a round figure of maybe 250 per month.

To put that in perspective, according to Genyosha's Japan Camera Trade News... when Canon introduced the EOS 50D, they targeted production at 100,000 units. PER MONTH. The Nikon D90 was targeted to sell 120,000 units per month.

The little PowerShot A1000 -- 300,000 units per month. The Casio Exilim EX-Z300? 300,000 units per month.

Video is a tiny, tiny market compared to stills. And professional video is a tiny tiny subset of the video market. So yeah, having video on a stills camera makes it more flexible, but you shouldn't go thinking that it's any big priority or it's opening up vast new markets. And yes, we are all clamoring for a large-sensor professional video camera, but ... we are not the tail that wags that dog!

I've been trying to get this point across for years. Not an easy thing to do with this audience!

Just because they can make their own CMOS doesn't mean it's free. You could easily have a situation where it's faster and less expensive for them to outsource the CCD block from some other supplier than it is to R&D, design, and build a CMOS block of their own (R&D because they've never done a three-chip CMOS block before).

Barry,

Thanks for those numbers! I've had a number of conversations with people who think that prosumer video is on the same volume level as DSLRs. It's been 100% clear to me that photos are for most everybody, and video is for the few.

While I don't disagree with your overall point, do we have sales figures for the HF10 - HFS21 family? I wouldn't have thought THAT was 'tiny' ....

The way Canon goes about it, with prosumer video camcorders, I've got to think they make a few bucks on them. They only introduce a new model every once in awhile. Once the R&D costs are covered, they've got to have a pretty nice margin on them. The parts in an XH-A1, for example, can't cost anywhere near $3k, to manufacture on any reasonably large scale.

And how many Flip video cameras do you think they sell a month?

There's not a lot of people going to step up to spend 25-50K on a camera rig, obviously!

You can see, it's appropriate to consider market size, and I GUARANTEE the mahufacturers consider that VERY carefully before launching or even spending a development dime on a product. To say that it's not possible or economical to produce a product with a given feature set because of the potential sales figures isn't relevant IMO - it the price were right, I wouldn't mind having a RED inthe closet, how many others here would buy one if it were priced "right"?? Everyone please put your hands down...

The real question becomes what current state of the art technology and manufacturing capability can offer, at a given price point, with the expected market. Basic economics will tell you... cheap/inexpensive stuff sells more quantity, and you make it up on volume, high end/expensive/difficult to produce stuff has to make more per unit to keep ROI feasible.

What's being missed is that video is being democratized/commoditized RIGHT NOW, gear that was UNTHINKABLE even 5 years ago is ow available at a "reasonable" price, and we're still complaining about how we want more! Meanwhile people are USING their flip to make movies and enjoy the "toys"...

I'm sure WHATEVER CAnon/Sony/et.al. release this year will be "better" than "last years model", maybe there will be some total surprises or whatever, but there's cool new toys, isn't that ENOUGH???

For some people, I guess it'll never be enough.

Oh well... I look forward to see what Canon will be bringing to the table.

No doubt there is a market for a 35mm sized sensor video camera, it's entirely another matter if all the people will be satisfied with the cost of such a camera, which would be higher that the current DSLR cameras.

With video cameras and I suspect with stills cameras, the smaller the sensor the bigger the market.

Oh well looks like EX1 R sales are gonna go up, 25 mbps AVCHD..... nothing mind bending after all this time, how long ago was it that Canon released the XLH1..... 5 years ago! In that time Sony have come from Z1, Z7, EX1, Z5, EX3, EX1r, plus the nxcam or whatever the new one is.....

Well to be fair, in the same amount of time Canon has gone through the XL H1A, XL H1S, XH A1S and XHG1S... for a total of seven cameras (three XL H models and four XH models) from Sep. 2005 to Nov. 2008, so it's not like they haven't been doing anything.

Full bore 24Mbps AVCHD compression image quality and 35Mbps XDCAM EX compression image quality are really quite comparable.

Okay, I was probably a little unfair but the A1/G1/A1s/G1s are all pretty similar... but yes I'm sure they have been busy, I can't imagine the whole Canon R&D team just flogging facebook day in day out ; )

Jonathan-

It could be noted with Sony....they tend to have somewhat of a shotgun approach to cameras.....they put many out and "see what sticks". I remember 2 years ago, walking by the Sony booth at NAB and seeing the EX-3.....3 months after the EX-1 came out! I knew there was going to be a few EX-1 owners that would not be happy.

Jim Martin
FilmTools

I can agree with Jonathan's sentiment though. I really appreciate what Sony did with the EX-1/3. They are the only maker who put 1/2" imagers in their cameras and full raster at that.

The onslaught of 1/3" imaging chip cameras seems like it will never end.

From my point of view, if JVC or Canon would embrace 1/2" chips they could differentiate their cameras from the 1/3" sea of offerings. But I know it is a technical hurdle as well.

Wow. Those are eye opening numbers Barry. Thank you.

Now I don't feel so bad about my 7D purchase. I was afraid that Canon would release the actual camera I really wanted and I'd have to explain why I want to buy yet another camera.

But Robert, you are so ..er....pursuasive (sp)......

Jim

I bet the soon to be only four models of 3-1/3" imaging chip prosumer AVCHD camcorders (assuming Canon's actually is - which isn't really confirmed yet) will pretty much dominate the marketplace in a fairly short time. I'll be surprised if sales of new HDV camcorders don't start dropping off quite fast now. Of course, Sony will probably have something like an NX7U (w/interchangeable lens) shipping in just a few months, making it five models, and of course Canon will presumably have an XL version of their new cam out in the near future too.

They COULD be, but it's not necessarily so. Defining the codec and data rate only defines the bitstream and how to decode the signal - it doesn't define the coder. And all coders are far from equal, all manufacturers have their own designs and hardly surprisingly technology is improving.

AVC-HD has the capability to be something like twice as efficient as MPEG2 - but the earliest coders didn't come anywhere close to that. I expect the cameras about to be released to be better, how much better remains to be seen.

What I'm waiting for is a smaller NXCAM, something to more rival the JVC HM100.

From what Barry Green has written, it sure sounds like the image quality of Panasonic's AVCHD compression is right on par with XDCAM EX.

What my eyes tell me, looking at the images I get out of the HMC40, would tend to confirm that. It's unmistakeably better than HDV. The first time I shot a little 1080p24 with the HMC40, I was amazed. My first thought was, dang, this would probably cut with EX1 footage quite nicely.

Take a hard look at the HMC40. The image quality it can record is stunning (and it's no consumer-like lightweight for manual control either).

But a 1/2" chip will always out perform a 1/3" chip with regards to low light which we all know is a big problem with a lot of these cams. The Ex1 if you would pull a 4:2:2 HD signal straight from the HD SDI and captured into a nano flash compared to an equivalent Panny 1/3" cam I reckon the picture quality in a low light situation would be dramatic. Would be good test if someone has access to all necessary equip.
Plus 1/2" give a great depth of field, not super slim like a 35mm sensor but better than a 1/3" sensor.

It would make sense to redesign it to from 1440 to 1920 since it probably won't be recording in a format w/ anamorphic pixels. As I think about this more, I doubt Canon will abandon 1/3" in their pro line, esp. if they will be coming out with an interchangeable lens model. There is simply too much demand for 1/3".

AVCHD at that bitrate might look like XDCAM during playback but certainly won't work the same through the postproduction workflow. Streamlined production is all about workflow, process, and interoperability. That's one thing that Sony has done well in this business.

That depends on your workflow. If you transcode to an intermediate (like Cineform's), there's no serious difference. Editing natively, the gap in performance (speed) between AVC and MPEG-2 will be closing pretty rapidly (as future generations of CPUs roll out and software support improves).

I would still agree with Jad, after serious grading and effects the XDCAM codec will be more robust

High bit rate AVCHD is more diffcult to work with in post b/c the codec is very computationally intensive, but I can think of no reason why it would be less gradeable in post.

XDCAM EX has a MUCH more established workflow that will make working with it considerably easier. But that doesn't mean it's visually superior or can be pushed more when being graded.