XH Custom Presets Download Library (copy)
 

Here are eighteen downloadable Custom Preset files for the Canon XH A1 and G1 camcorders. All of these have been converted from the CP files that were submitted to our XL H1 Custom Presets Download Library by your fellow DV Info Net members; however, I haven't had a chance to compare them side by side yet (that is, the same CP files between XL and XH cams). So they might wind up getting tweaked a little, or even a lot... the main thing is, here's something to go on for now. Please be sure to submit your own Custom Preset files and help the library grow.

First, grab the Excel spreadsheet with all of the Custom Preset file info. It's called XH-CPF-20061204. Then get the eighteen .CPF files and copy them to an SD card in a folder called PRESET. Insert the card into your camera and you're good to go. The procedure for calling up the presets is detailed in your operator's manual on page 81. Updated, per Howard's post below.

Here are the Custom Preset file names and what they do:

PRESET01.CPF "FACTORY" is simply the Canon factory default settings.
PRESET02.CPF "AC PREF1" is Alister Chapman's prefered general setup.
PRESET03.CPF "AVG FILM" is designed to emulate an average film stock, best used with 24F / 25F.
PRESET04.CPF "5248FILM" is supposed to emulate Kodak 5248 film stock, best used with 24F / 25F.
PRESET05.CPF "LOWLT12" is for shooting in low light with 12db gain.
PRESET06.CPF "OPTICONT" is for optimum latitude, similar to AC PREF1.
PRESET07.CPF "5296FILM" should be like Kodak 5296 film stock, best used with 24F / 25F.
PRESET08.CPF "TERRA1" is a soft unsharpened image, shadows retain detail without looking washed out.
PRESET09.CPF "TERRA2" is like TERRA1 but sharper, with coring turned down to keep noise levels at bay.
PRESET10.CPF "DISJECTA" most resembles the colors Steven Dempsey used with his Panasonic DVX100.
PRESET11.CPF "B&WJECTA" is B&W with detail in darks without blowing out lights, no diagonal stair-stepping.
PRESET12.CPF "NOMAGENT" negates the Magenta bias that some Canon owners detect in factory settings.
PRESET13.CPF "OUTSIDEN" gives the Canon a neutral image outdoors while managing bright whites.
PRESET14.CPF "OLEGWARM" is warm and saturated and film-like when combined with Skin Detail: Middle.
PRESET15.CPF "DVXMATCH" closely matches the Panasonic DVX100 at WB of 3200K; also try Knee: Auto.
PRESET16.CPF "EOSPHOTO" is optimized for Canon EOS photo lenses; much brighter with more contrast.
PRESET17.CPF "NATURALO" closely resembles natural outdoor colors, requiring minimum correction.
PRESET18.CPF "PANALOOK" is Steven Dempsey's preffered setting which accurately emulates the DVX100.

These sample pics are just a quick and dirty set that I made up just to put something up here quickly... the subject is a test photo from DSC Labs. What I really should do is to prepare some live-image samples from outdoor shots, because most of these presets are tailored for outdoor use. For now however, these test images will give you a frame of reference. And they're named after their respective Custom Preset names.

Loading Chris Presets
 

I copied all of the presets to my memory card but could not retrieve any of them while following the instructions on page 81 of the manual. Indeed the left hand column item card to camera was greyed out.

After wrestling with this problem for an hour or so, I recreated one of the presets using the excel chart and saved it. When I looked at the card on my desktop, I realized that the camera had created a folder called PRESET and had saved my "new" preset into that folder. Under customize presets the icon card to camera was now active and my "new" preset was available. I then copied all of these presets into this PRESET folder and all of the presets were immediately recognized by the camera as described on page 81 of the manual.

I hope this helps if there is anyone else out there who didn't have any saved presets and therefore had no PRESET folder on the SD memory card into which Chris' presets could be copied. Simply create a folder with this name and copy the presets into it.

Thanks, Chris for all of these presets. I look forward to comments and suggestions by others and I will be trying these presets both indoors and outside to see what impact they have on my images.

Jay Stebbins sent me an email suggesting a link to this Canon USA Guide to Custom Presets:

http://downloads.canon.com/cpr/softw...Presets_v2.pdf

It's intended for the XL H1 and we've passed this around in our H1 forum before. I just had not thought of posting it here as well, so thanks to Jay for the tip. It's useful for A1 folks who are not familiar with the concept of custom presets. All of those A1 owners who are not already familiar with Canon HDV in general can learn a lot by browsing our XL H1 forum, because a lot of the H1 feature set is duplicated in the A1 and G1. Just be sure to come back to this forum if you have any A1 questions that come out of what you're reading on our H1 board.

Our H1 forum is located at http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=101

Lots of helpful info including the Custom Presets white paper and other articles may be found on the Canon XL H1 mini-site, see this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=69784

Hope this helps,

As part of the familiarisation process with my new A1, I went out today and shot some footage. As a reference for myself, I shot a few seconds of the same subject using the 18 custom presets adapted by Chris from the H1 download library. In case anyone else is interested, I thought I'd post a short clip showing the differences between the presets on video as opposed to stills.

Richard

http://www.jaegercat.com/~richard/CustomPresets.wmv

I need to remove this file because the downloads are using up most of the bandwidth on my wife's server space. Will try to find an alternative if it is still of interest.

Richard

Richard,
Chris Hurd has a server space to upload clips,
Please email to Chris, he'll give provide you with details, as to where FTP files.
Best regards, Oleg Kalyan.

Yes indeed, plenty of server space here at DV Info Net. I'll have Richard's clip online shortly...

Chris, the word obstreperous has far too much of a perjorative conatation to describe your gentle enforcement of Corinthian values here at dvi :-)

I've spent now about 2 hours sitting with the A1 tethered to a Dell 2407FPW monitor (via component in) checking out the presets. This is an efficient way to tweak presets as the results are immediately visible, and the differences between presets a lot more dramatic than the camera LCD would suggest. There is at least one of the presets in the collection with NR enabled and this was immediately noticeable along with some detail loss in this preset. The fact that you can toggle shooting data off/on the external display is a nice little feature on the A1.

Dennis (apologies for asking a question outside the purview of this thread),
I am desperately trying to find a monitor suitable for exactly the use you describe, but I see that the Dell is only PC compatible. Do you know of a similar one that is mac compatible?

Larry, I'm sure one of the mods will move this over to the monitoring thread, but basically that 2407 monitor will work just fine on your Mac using the DVI standard input.

Thanks Dennis. Much appreciated.

Chris, just curious - why are all the pictures you posted in this thread so dark?

Great Stuff!
 

These custom presets are just the type of support I want from a forum- many thanks. I am new to the A1 and this is a great way to really learn about all the parameters in a practical way.
Chris- I really would like to see Richard's video. Any news on that?

I'm in the dark on this
 

Gang,
I'm a bit confused by the sample photos. All seem a shade on the dark side. Is this due to the smaller colour gamut of video?

As I see it, the images should look more like:
http://dsclabs-ca.intelex.ca/store.php?category_id=14

Cheers Dave

I agree. I always thought they seemed on the dark side, but thought it might be my monitor on this netbox, but then someone else mentioned it as well, & now you :)

Bill

XH Custom Presets - camera does not see presets?
 

Hello Chris,
The presets you posted cannot be seen by my XHA1. I have followed your instruction (ie I used the presets folder that was on the memory card when I initialized it) to house your presets that I downloaded. I then put the card in the camera but the card to icon symbol is constantly grayed out?
Hence I have yet to look at any presets of yours. Have I missed something ? I assume I can go via Mac in all of this with SD multi card reader. All other preset activity in camera is fine except anything being read off the card by the camera.

Any advice help very much appreciated !

Thnks graham

Dell 2405 monitor
 

I have the slightly older version of the Dell 24" flat panel monitor. It works as an external XH-A1 monitor without having the need to be connected to any computer. Just plug it into the wall outlet. I use it with my I-mac with the mini DVI adapter I bought at the Apple store.

I could use it connected to my XP box as well, at the same time, by pressing the button that switches the input from d-sub to dvi-d to s-video to composite to component.

By the way, the monitor power supply makes a very high pitched whine when it has been on for awhile. You don't hear it unless you are in a very quite area. Still.....

Richard Hunter's preset movie
 

Did this get posted somewhere?

[QUOTE=Graham Westfield]
I had same problem, even following Howards advice on page one. In the end I just manually created the presets in the camera and when ran out of room copied them to SD card. I then did the same with the rest etc, overriding the ones on the camera until eventually I had all of them on the SD card. All seems to work then! Now I can pick & choose which ones to copy over to camera. Long way of going about it but all good fun getting to know your camera.

G

Graham - this probably isn't your problem, but when I first tried to use the presets I created a folder on the memory card called "Presets" which didn't work - the correct name is the singular "Preset". Might help?

Must be in all caps: PRESET

I will have to admit I must have done it wrong. Even though I went around it the very long way I decided still to try the original instructions again & it does work. Maybe I didn't originally have the folder name in uppercase, who knows!

G

PRESET heaven !
 

Thankyou 'everyone' for you contributions! Yes it is meant to read PRESET and not presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . Heaven !

G

As some of you guys know, after having tested the A1 for a couple of weeks I am now giving the fixed Sony V1E another chance. Putting its own problems aside, I love its vivid colours and sharp look without too much EE. Hence the question: did anyone succeede to aproximate that kind of picture with an XH preset? If so, could you please post the settings?

If somebody did try but couldn't do it, please share your experience as well...TIA!

New Dvx Look Preset
 

I've created this and it will probably need work. It looked pretty good right next to my DVX. I'm calling it DISDVX__

I may do additional work on it.

Thanks for submitting this Steven,

I'll get it worked into the Excel spread sheet tonight hopefully. And I believe there are several other presets floating around in other threads that need to be gathered up and included here.

Close match to Sony HC1 Preset
 

I've had a few email requests for the preset I used to match closely to the Sony HC1. Thought I'd share it here if anyone is interested.

Note, all I did was make a color chart with sample paint chips on a black poster board and previewed it on a monitor via both A1 and HC1 by switching back and forth till the appeared the same. Of course the A1 kicks butt on details and other aspects, but the colors appear similar.

Sony HC1 settings were Camera Color: +2 Camera Sharpness: +2

Working on a low light preset now...

http://www.jcdv.com/PRESET/PRESET20.CPF
I called it HC1day

has anyone attempted to make a PRESET to match a Sony PD170 (PD150, VX2100, VX2000 etc) ??

I'll be doing a 2 camera with one, and I want to make the XHA1 look as close as possible

i'm going to try to upload a preset using the DVinfo uploader.

the title is MEMORY, we're using it for a flashback scene. it's basically a yellow bleach bypass, for those of you familiar with Juan Diaz' bleach bypass, his is very blue-green, we were looking for something different. it looks really cool if you blow out the highlights a bit....

eureka, seems like it worked....

hey preset junkies!

here's a reference movie that i made yesterday. it includes images of the 18 presets, plus the 3 factory presets, plus 2 bonus presets (juan diaz' bleach bypass and his cine set-up, you'll hear me calling it "cinejuan"). setups for juan's presets are at this link:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...=bleach+bypass

in the movie, i call juan's presets, PRESET19 and PRESET20, fyi...

and to link to the reference movie:

http://www.planetestudios.com/specialsituation.html

it's an H.264 file, so you need to have Quicktime 7 loaded to view it. also, it's 97MB, a big file because i didn't want to downgrade it much, so it may take time to load.

i don't have an image of my own MEMORY preset because i compressed this before i tweaked it into being, and that's enough mad scientist experimenting for one day, gotta work, too....

for those who care, my studio overlooks the National Guard Armory, which is why i shot these particular images. out-of-the-window camera testing....

I just got my A1 today and these forum user custom presets are a godsend, esp. Bleach Bypass and CineJuan, although I like Panalook a lot as well. Thanks Meryam for the preview test footage, I found it very helpful in figuring out which presets were "cool" or not--for my purposes, anyway. ;-)

Color Saturation Preset
 

Could anyone please lend a hand as how to get vibrant saturated colors with the A-1?

Try my Panalook preset (preset #18). The colors are pretty vibrant. You can see an example here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=88560

Re: Color Saturation Preset
 

Your clip looks really nice Steven.

I shoot primarily in bright sunlight, and love the brilliant colors and contrast of my old Sony HC-1. I like the A-1's higher quality, but even with the color gain and RGB gains cranked all the way up to 50, it really doesn't seem to make much difference. Colors still look rather flat. Here's a short comparison clip to illustrate: http://californiabeachfeet.com/image...emos/A1HC1.wmv The A-1 was set to the Panalook preset with the ND filter at 1/32.

Has anyone else managed to match the saturated Sony look with an A-1 preset, or am I just resigned to more time in post production?

Tad, your real issue is not the preset you are using. The color information is there already, you just need to make a small levels adjustment in post.

From the footage you posted, I took a look at your A1 footage in Premiere and noticed that there is a lot of information missing from the black end of the spectrum. By adjusting the blacks so they are richer, all of your colors take on a much richer tone and can easily compare to the sony. Try it for yourself.

PRESET22 CaBeach
 

Thanks for the tips Steve, Felix Theissen for the XH editor, and to this great forum for the wealth of info. Finally managed to get pretty close to the sharp saturated contrasty look I'm after with some additional camera adjustments, and a few post tweaks in Vegas. I call this preset CaBeach: http://californiabeachfeet.com/image...s/PRESET22.CPF
And here's a short clip of what it looks like after a little post black level, saturation, and luminance boost: http://californiabeachfeet.com/image...os/CaBeach.wmv
Maybe needs a little more fine tuning.

Thanks Tad for your preset and beautiful clips! This proves my point that only tweaking the A1 to the extremes can replicate the saturated and sharp look of the Sony.

Tad, that's definitely closer to what you were looking for. I have a few words of caution:

1. Cranking things like sharpening and coring is going to compromise the quality of your picture rather than enhance it. Once you go over 0 sharpening, for instance, the camera is artificially enhancing the edges of your subjects and if you have to downrez to SD, this is going to cause you a lot of line twittering and possibly edge ghosting similar to chromatic abberation.

2. Cranking the color all the way up is going to increase the chances that colors like red will vibrate because the codec can't handle the intensity.

3. Cranking the pedestal and setup all the way into the negative zone will destroy any detail in the black end of the tonal scale. In other words, anything that is in shadow will be totally black with no info. If it were me, I would set the pedestal and setup to 0 and then apply a levels control in post. That would still give you the same look if you wished but would also give you more flexibility if you needed to draw information out of the black (so to speak).

Anyway, I am looking at your preset and working on a variation that will still give you the vivid colors but with less of a hit on quality.

Steven,

When you do get your variation on Tad
s preset finished (it looks like a goodpossibility),
would you put in an Excel format?
Then us mac folks can access it.

Thanks Tad and Steven,

David