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I've shot the same footage in SD (DVX) and HD with downconvert. No comparison. I stripped my DVX and moved everything over to the HD camera. Rendering will take more time, but I'm willing to wait.
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Since I have not been able to compare I will find out soon enough I guess and also might have to reconsider my opinion on SD camera's. |
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sorry to say but it makes my old vx2100/pd170 footage look quite ..er..sad!
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After more then 1.5 year, I can only confirm that the A1 is an excellent camera. It's not surely not the swiss knife for a Steven Spielberg, but a perfect companion for every advanced amateur and, I assume, small pro performing production work.
In a volatile environment, there's probably no issue at all with tapeless workflow. In any situation where there is a more profound desire to keep footage available over the years: in a tape-oriented workflow there's one VERY BIG ADVANTAGE: you have the original copy of your footage instead. I can recapture footage from tapes of 10 years old (recently did so), flawness, no issues, immediately. In a tapeless workflow, how are you going to accomplish the same? Via back-up tapes (again tapes, thus?). This is not only a very expensive solution (surely for an amateur, paying with already a leg to buy a camera) both hardware and software - after some years over change of systems you will probably discover it's impossible to read the back-up tape format. Also copies to disks and disks and disks is... at the end of the day unworkable. To my feeling... there is always too much focus on tech-specs, and I can understand technology must evolve, but in many cases, it is more the commercial story that is pushed. Sometimes a bit too hard. AVCHD is a bit this type of story - it was there before you could even buy a decent NLE to edit it. More than once I've seen very creative people making impressive short movies with incredibly cheap camera's, while others fail to produce any acceptable shot with a prosumer cam. Keep that in mind, it's more important than any discussion about a slightly higher bit-rate or more advanced codec. Whatever choice you make. |
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But your logic here doesn't fly to me. What difference is there in the person who acquires on tape or backs up to tape when the march of progress is what we are considering. I have no more problem reading in VHS, or miniDV tapes now than I did 5 years ago. Fifty years from now I won't be able to read either. We'll be able to say the same thing then about bluray, XDCam, DCVAM, DVCProHD tape, etc. My primary workflow now is truly tapeless end to end, and I love it. Acquire on Firestore or SxS, ingest, edit, deliver on DVD/Blu-Ray, archive to DVD/BluRay. Not everyone can do it, but releasing myself from the bounds of both codec AND tape format has been VERY liberating. Part of the reason solid state recording is so wonderful is that it prevents locking you into ANY codec OR proprietary format. |
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But for the non-pro, let us say advanced amateur/consumer, it's a different story. No tapes, thus you don't have a fallback copy. Any crash will kill your footage instantaneously if you don't make a copy, because, ofcourse you will always reuse your memory cards. How many of this type of consumers have a real tape-driven archive system in their PC? Or will even save copies from their PC HDD to terrabits of secondary/archive HDD's? In my case, for the time being, I appreciate to have a DV/HDV tape archive. I know it sounds a bit old fashioned, but at least, I'm sure I can restore whatever I want, even over a few years. Ofcourse, then end is predictable, I understand. But this is basically true for ANY digital system or storage standard. |
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BUT, there is nothing saying that the consumer can't make a tape backup of their materials. I have a shelf-full of mini-DV and fullsize DV or DVCam tapes of archived materials. I just had to reingest a short from 2003. I had it on full-size DV. But, I think today, the better choice is to archive to something like Blu-Ray. At least that is what we have gone to instead of full-size DV. The 25/50GB it offers is a nice size to back off materials. I view it like optical tape. But it's not susceptible to water damage, warping, mildew, magnetic fields (like those unshielded speakers in so many NLE arrangements), etc. |
I went to a store a few day's ago that had one xh-a1 in stock and they let me look at it and try it out, now the camera was lying unprotected on a shelf in the store and I'm a bit worried that if i'd buy it they sell me the display model.
Since I don't want a used camera that has been collecting dust, is there a way to check the hours it has been running on a XH-A1? |
Dear Noa,
Sorry, no, the XH A1 does not have an "hours" meter. I doubt that they recorded much, if at all. |
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I would like to thank everybody for taking the time to reply as it has really helped me in making a choice. |
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<EDIT>Never mind, looks like you beat me to it ;) |
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A store must have a model on display but it could be in their shelf for a month and tested by several customers, I don't understand why they still sell those at full price, the camera I saw was not protected in any way from dust. It's like when you buy a car, you can make a testdrive but they sell those cars at a reduced cost after a while, I would expect the same for a camera actually. |
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