Download seven mixed XH G1 clips provided by Kaku Ito
 

Note: download and save files to your local drive first before viewing. These are raw Mpeg transport streams that are best viewed on an HDTV. Shot descriptions provided by Kaku Ito.

XH G1 24 frame stone ornament focus in/out size:78.5MB. This is 1080/24F footage of a Japanese ornament made out of stone and the rain drops are dripping into the water and splashing. 1/48 shutter speed. The cam is close to still and focus goes in and out. Night time but single video light from the top.

XH G1 24 frame panning of Buds size: 49.5MB. This is 1080/24F footage of a couple of buds in my balcony panning from one to another. Shot at night with single video light from the top. 1/48 shutter speed, Out of focus to focused and panned to the other bud.

XH G1 24 frame stone ornament panning with water drips size: 61.6MB. This is 1080/24F footage of a Japanese ornament made out of stone and the rain drops are dripping into the water and splashing. 1/48 shutter speed. The cam is panned from right to left. Night time but single video light from the top.

XH G1 1080/60i stone ornament, drips splashing, panning size: 52.6MB. This is 1080/60i footage of rain drops dripping into the stone ornament but panning. Shutter speed 1/60, night time but single video light from the top.

XH G1 1080/60i drips splashing into water on ornament size: 49.5MB. This is 1080/60i footage of rain drops dripping into water in the ornament. Shutter speed 1/120 to slow it down and convert it to progressive (maybe), night time but single video light from the top.

XH G1 1080/60i drips splashing into water closeup size: 48.3MB. This is 1080/60i footage of rain drops dripping into shallow pool of water. Shutter speed 1/120 to slow it
down and convert it to progressive (maybe), night time but single video light from the top.

XH G1 1080/60i Buds, Spiderweb. raining size: 51.9MB. This is 1080/60i footage of the buds but little more focus on the spider web and the dews. Raining a little harder. Shutter speed 1/60, night time but single video light from the top.

By the way I think this is just the first batch of clips... knowing Kaku, there might be more later this weekend.

Thanks Chris and Thanks Kaku. I have watched a few and they indeed look very H1ish. I'm hoping to see some wider shots down the road as that is the end of the lens where I see a lot of abberations on the H1. Plus a sharp wide shot always looks hot and is a good chance to see how well the lens resolves details.

what is required to open the .m2t files?

Try the VLC media player, a free download from VideoLan:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Joseph

Try: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Thank you Kaku for uploading these clips. I hope you'll provide us with some wide shots to test the lens.

I really like the natural colours this camera renders. Being H1ish is no bad thing and if Canon has reduced the CA that the H1 lens had then this camera could be a real winner, for me anyway.

TT

What a great tease! I can't wait to see what you can do when shoot in the light.

thanks for the link, guys. the footage looks great!

now, i may have an untrained eye, but this looks extremely close to the quality of the bicycle footage shown a little while ago by an hvx200. i wish i could remember who posted it, but i am currious to know what anyone who has seen both thinks of the comparison???

for me, not knowing a tremendous amount about the technical side of DV, the A1/G1 seems like the pic for an indie filmaker- seeing as how the overall cost would be relatively lower than the hvx. the P2 technology is great, but the cards, the firestore, the costs outside of the camera seem to build as high as the camera itself?

For someone looking for a "high-quality" image to facilitate, rather than overcome, the story trying to be told, this new canon series seems like the way to go for me.

Learning lots from all of you. Can't wait to hear more....

Clips
 

Kaku,

Were these taken from the HD-SDI out or are they transfers from the HDV tapes?

This camera will be at least as good, or better, than the H1, in many ways. The only thing I want to see (and I mean ONLY), is if Canon has addressed the CA issues of the H1 lens and got it right this time. Being that the 3CCDs are the same and that (basically) so is the lens, I am very conservative on my hopeful optimism at this point, not to say, distrustful.

These clips look great but in no way can they display how bad or contained CA issues are. Dim subjects with low contrast are positively THE BEST CASE SCENARIO to conceal visible CA issues. We need exterior full-wide and full-tele, brightly lid/ high contract objects, clips. That's the real test.

First, a big THANK YOU Kaku! I mean it! I hope you are getting some deserved sleep! I am so grateful to see some honest 60i.

Comments about the footage:

This camera can't do daylight! Ha! (kidding). As a current Z1U owner, my opinion is that the video noise level has been reduced. Whether because the clip is SDI or not I can't say, but it is very clean. Even in this challenging low light and falling rain, I am really encouraged. The 60i video is smooth and natural, nicely detailed.

While I don't own canon video gear, I do own the Canon 13mp DSLR 5D, and "L" glass. The best "L" lenses in addition to ULD lens elements also have fluorite lens elements, including the XH-A1/G1 HDV camcorder. That is very encouraging at this price point, and alleviates any lingering doubts that the chromatic abberations would remain to any worrisome degree. The Sony Z1U has CA, but I find the purple fringing preferable to the red/green fringing more typically associated with Canon lenses, (by me at least).

So it's not much to go on, but the 1080i60 reality look is what I'm after, and I'm really encouraged that the XH-A1/G1 will deliver the bacon. Would love to see what this cam can do in daylight. The competition for me is the Sony V1U, and it sounds really promising, at times it sounds a little "too" promising, but I think it will deliver the goods also. The compelling features of the Canon for me compared to the V1U are:

1.) 1440 x 1080 native panels
2.) Smooth, judder free 60i HDV
3.) Fluorite Lens
4.) fast focus with IR focus assist
5.) Lower price!

The compelling features of the Sony V1U for me are:

1.) Sony colors, skin tones, latitude
2.) smaller and lighter
3.) clean, noise free video (in the Z1U at least) and decent low light
4.) noise free gain
5.) Convenience features (don't underestimate the flip shade, flip screen), they do matter!

A higher gamma adjusted of one of the clips above reveals major vertical banding under low light... Looks almost as good (or bad) as my HV10... what a dissapointment... :(

Let's hope this was shot with gain all the way up... :( still... when will we move on off these CCD/ CMOS shortcomings???... these same issues have been going now for almost 2 decades now... seems astonishing that can't move past the same technical deficiencies no matter the new products out...

http://216.127.51.88/_downloads/banding.bmp

I'm also curious to know whether or not these are HD-SDI or from the HDV tape. I'm hoping hdv. If not would it be possible to get some hdv tape footage up for those of that want the A1?

Also is some daylight footage of the city or something possible?

Sorry if I am missing something but since these are .m2t files doesn't that almost confirm this is HDV footage? I mean, if Kaku had captured this stuff via sdi to a higher quality codec, why would he go through the trouble to recompress it to HDV?

99% sure you are getting the raw .m2t files from the tape/firestore/whatever.

Hey your right I didn't notice that. Damn I need to get my head straight - or get some sleep.

Thanks again Kaku. I watched these on my laptop (1920x1080) and I must say, I'm extremely impressed with the detail. To my eyes, the footage looks really clean too. I can't wait to have some time to pull these into after effects and see how far I can push this stuff around.

Anyway, thank you Kaku!

www.philipwilliams.com

Chris, thanks again for taking the time and bandwidth to host Kaku's early clips. We reallly appreciate it.

Peter,

maybe others see this, but I can't. I've pulled in the 60i clips into premiere pro, bumped the gamma high, and can't see any vertical banding (except the rain... :) ). I aso can't see it in the BMP frame grab you posted - which, btw, was scaled down to 1280x768 from a source size of 1440x1080, so not sure whether that may have played a role. can you highlight in the frame grab where you're seeing the vertical banding? I'm really curious about this.

anyone else see this?

I can't seem to get them to work on my computer.

What I'm interested in is a comparison between the 1080 60i mode and the 24F mode; if anybody has watched those two and can make a reasoned judgement, let me know. I'm assuming 24F loses a little resolution, but I'd like to know if it's insignificant or what.

I coundn't see any banding.

I did scale it down to make the image smaller. As you scale or resample down an image it also softens it a bit so, it becomes overall less sharp. It makes details (such as banding) less noticable. I have highlighted some of the areas such as the top left area where you see a red leaf that is out of focus. If you can't notice alternate darker vertical stripes, then the better I guess. Make sure you look at the image in full screen res, not as a smaller window. I am very sensitive to the matter (just as CA issues) that always kept me away from buying an H1. I am assuming (hoping) these clips from the HX were shot with the gain on high, so under normal lighting these will not show.

I am however more worried to see clear CA issues already on some of these first HX clips around some bright water drops and small reflections spots. I fear the problem will be the same as on the H1, which for me, has always been unacceptable. Of course, once we have some outdoor clips available from the HX, we'll then see for sure how that goes.

The quality of the optics of the H1 is not on pair with typical Canon products and I have been most surprised with the majority of users not being sensitive to the unsurpassable CA issues on it that make the camera complete unusable to me. Because the lens of the HX series is basically the same (and so are the 3CCDs used) I can only fear the worse, though I am hoping for the best. I am seriously worried about the integrity of the HXs design that, if based on the H1, will again be flawed beyond the limits of acceptability.

I am a Canon fan. I love Canon products and like their philosophy on them taking their time before launching a new product to then usually coming up with something top notch. The H1 has never been such a product, though, most get so enlightened by the camera's fabulous resolution that they don't seem to look past that. Just about every shot I see coming from it is basically unbearable to watch and I cannot understand on a 9 grand piece of equipment, how this can be a tolerable issue. This is not a "mild" problem. This a "on-your-face" optical/prism/CCD related matter. Not even sub $1500 HD consumer cameras (like Canon's own new HV10 that I own and am overall most happy with) and sub $500 DV cams show a fraction of the CA issues the H1 has (at least with the 20x lens).

Screengrabs from the H1 below.

PS - Oh and please, let's not perceive any of these views as "politically correct or that can negatively affect" the sales of the camera. With these informative blogs (I think) we all hope manufacturers take notice on these comments as contructive feedback for them to hopefuly improve their designs and offers. Everything I own (video and Photography) has the name Canon on it and I am proud of it. I only want to keep watching my historial of Canon purchases to grow alongside the great product most of the time, they make. The H1 is NOT one of them and I have been patiently awaiting for a performance step up product from them. I am (really) hoping the A1 is that product.

I don't see the banding either.

Most likely because these are not unsurpassable chromatic abberation issues, but rather they are the surpassable shortcomings of chroma sampling schemes of less than 4:2:2. Not surprisingly, some people mistake this for chromatic abberation. For an explanation of what it *really* is, see A.J. deLange's excellent summation here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost....2&postcount=44 which includes tips for getting around this issue.

In fact this will be one major advantage of the XH (not HX) G1 over the A1... its 4:2:2 SDI output will go a long way toward reducing this particular effect (and I'm not saying there isn't any CA present in the XL H1's stock 20x lens -- there is a slight bit, but no worse than any other HD lens in its price range). What I am saying is that the frame blow-ups posted above are exhibiting the HDV format's inherent chroma undersampling effect, not chromatic abberation.

Peter - I think I see what you're talking about, but it was only evident by loading the image into photoshop and blowing it up to 200-300%. I wonder if it's just a side effect of the MPEG compression. it wasn't visible (at least to me) when I watched the clips at 100% or when I went frame-by-frame at 100%.

Peter - I couldn't agree more.

I understand about this not necessarily being CA, but in the H1 videos I've seen, the high contrast fringing is very evident - distractingly so to me. I'm anxiously awaiting well-lit scenes to judge whether Canon addressed this in the XH, or whether they took the electronics from the XL as-is and the "problem" is still visible. I haven't noticed this issue as much on the Sony side (FX1/Z1 and the new V1), but I wonder whether the lower sensor resolution masks the issue for them. I also haven't noticed it in the HV10 footage I've seen (which has a 1920x1080 sensor that scales to 1440x1080 for writing to tape), so hopefully the fringing is being addressed in the XH. If the XH looks great, I'll keep my pre-order. If the XH looks like the XL, I may reconsider. Looking forward to seeing new footage from Kaku.

also, as a test for anyone that has access to a G1, it would be great to see a snippet of footage captured out the SDI port versus written to HDV tape - that would more definitively narrow the source of the issue (and maybe convert A1 orders to G1 orders).

My Z1U will show CA when zoomed in, but it's more of a purple fringing than the red/green characteristic of the Canon. I think the A1/G1 is going to show less of it due to its use of fluorite glass.

It was mentioned somewhere else, but did you notice the nice bokeh?

Brent, like you, my hopes are high. I have my camera on pre-order with B&H (an A1) and am very excited about the end of the month's hopeful ship date!

My (very limited) experience with FX1/Z1 and the new V1, proved me CA issues were not nearly as bad as on the H1. On the HV10 (that I own), CA basically never shows unless in overexposed, backlit or extreme contrasty situations (the HV10 has an absolutely fabulous lens). Kudos Canon!

I know of the limitations of the HDV format that Chris (very correctly) pointed out. However, the bottom line is that what happens on the H1 is not an HDV related bottleneck issue but clearly a CCD/ optical design flaw. I venture to say its mostly an optical problem as it shows worse on full aperture/full telephoto settings.

Canon usually is on the top-of-the-line mark as far as optics and cameras in general are concerned. My old Canon 1014 Electronic Super8 camera still works and has a lens that is a dream (even for today's standards). My mature Canon AE Program 35m/m camera and lenses are as superb as ever. My much beloved 10 year old Canon Optura (that shoots Progressive Scan) is still a Rolls Royce of miniDV cams. My adored XL-1 is still an amazing piece of DV equipment with optics that are outstanding. And of course, my Canon EOS 1Ds-Mk-II and (few) Canon EF/USM Lenses cannot be beat in the world of digital photography. All of the above are spectacular products with stellar optics to match. The XL-H1 is not in the same league. It is a visually disappointing HD camera showing unacceptable levels of chromatic aberrations that are totally distracting from the content no matter how good it is. If some insist those are technically not chromatic aberrations but something else, the fact of the matter is, optically, it looks worse that $300 budget DV cameras you can buy at Costco and CircuitCity.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that the HXs will be worth of the Canon's crown as the fantastic brand it typically is. Canon has had enough time to improve the shortcomings of the H1 and hopefully, even with the HXs using most of the same internal image capture components, our eyes will ultimately be pleased with content not distracted by smeared corner off-colors (call it CA or whatever else...)

Kaku, we are all in suspense here... is the sun shinning on your side of the world yet for some quick outdoors clips? :)

But it _is_ chromatic aberration. The red and green are clearly divergerging in the images. Look at the sail in the bottom of the three thumbnails and the trees in the image above. This is straight forward CA and bucket loads of it.

The chromatic undersampling effect would surely be visible throughout the zoom range of the lens when shooting high contrast verticals and in any case would be a contants thickness i.e a couple of pixels. Which it isn't. Chromatic undersampling does not adequately describe what is being shown in the images or what is seen in practise.

The problem with the H1 lens is that the CA is more visible the at the wider fields of view which tends to be the most used end in my experience.

Its worth saying that when zoomed in slightly the CA issues fall off and in the lens' sweet spot the images from the H1 are simply stunning. I am hoping that Canon have optimised the XH lens further and have reduced the CA or loaded the CA on the extreme of the telephoto range rather than the wide angle.

TT

If we accept that it is CA in the clips from H1, can we redirect our observations back to Kaku's G1 clips? CA in the H1 has been discussed many times in the H1 forums, speculating and posting pictures about it here isn't germaine.

I don't think that we can accept that it is CA in the clips from H1, but thanks Tom, you are quite right that this subject is far off the topic of this particular thread -- which is supposed to be feedback regarding what Kaku has provided for us so far.

I think it's an important subject on its on that deserves to stand as a separate thread, so I might pull these replies out and set them apart as a separate topic. Suffice to say that there is obviously some apparenht confusion here about what does or does not constitute chromatic abberation and what does or does not constitute chromatic abberation the chroma subsampling effect.

Showing frame blow-ups of HDV recorded to a DV cassette is one thing. 4:2:2 SDI output is something else entirely, as is the camera's still photo mode processed in a non-video color space by the DIGIC DSP. A conclusive determination can be made only by examining identical material from *all* of the available output options provided by the camera.

Kaku my friend... show us some nice scenery at daylight!

The part of the color blur at an edge caused by undersampling (and other electronic effects of which there are several) should be constant throughout the zoom range ceteris paribus but the lens definitely does play a part in the equation and it can't be decoupled from the electronics because the only way we have to measure the lens is as part of a system which includes the electronics. Thus when I measure the CA for this lens I'm not measuring the CA of the lens but the CA of the lens plus antialiasing filter, prism, CCD and electronics combined. To do the lens alone it would have to be coupled to a sensor with CA smaller than the lens by an amount such that the contribution of the measurement system is insignificant compared to that of the lens being measured.

Let's review what CA is. The glass in the lens has refractive index which depends on color. Thus your 20X lens zoomed all the way out has 20X magnification for green light, something like 19.99X magnification for blue light and 20.01X magnification for red light (or conversely depending on whether it is over or under corrected at 20X). Thus the red image is larger than the green image and an edge near the periphery of the picture will show a blue or yellow fringe on the central side of the edge and a red or cyan fringe on the side of the edge away from the center. This is lateral CA. Different refractive indices also mean different focal lengths so that the red, green and blue images focus on different planes. This results in loss of contrast and sharpness of the image.

Spot checks on the 20X stock lens show quite reasonable lateral CA (on the order of a pixel or a little more) at the edges of the picture. Remember that if the "CA" is seen at the center of a picture (such as in the sailboat example) it isn't CA because lateral CA is non existent in the center of the picture (as the sail is more or less vertical it is the center with respect to left and right that is of significance). Some of the things which have been called CA in the past are artifacts of undersampling, artifacts caused by gamma correction before matrixing, and sharpening and there are doubtless others.

Some things to remember: if it is always on one side of the picture (i.e. blue fringe to the right of edges irrespective of whether they are in the right, center of left of the picture it isn't CA. If it appears in the middle of the picture it isn't CA. If it is a brightness halo rather than a color halo it isn't CA.

As an example look at http://www.pbase.com/agamid/image/68205956 which is an image of the black box in the upper right hand corner of an ISO 12233 chart taken with the Canon stock 20X lens. The "chromatic aberration" is quite clear. Except that it isn't chromatic aberration. The next image (hit next) shows the black box at the opposite side of the ISO chart. The fringing is on the same side so it is one of the other artifacts which are responsible. The third picture in this sequence shows what happens to the lower left block if I "fix" the "chromatic aberration" on the upper right block.

I encourage all who fear the CA of Canon lenses is out of control to do a search on CA on the web. There are several sites that show good examples of CA. Also the newer versions of applications like PhotoShop are incorporating capabilites to reduce CA which are excellent tools for getting insight into what CA looks like by putting CA into a picture which doesn't have much. These programs simply shrink or expand the red and/or blue channels radially according to how much the operator dials in and thus can be used to put CA into a picture for study purposes. I highly recommend spending some time doing this.

Thanks a ton, A.J. -- your post gives us the material we need in order to have a FAQ-style "sticky" which explains what's really going on here. Much appreciated,

Great explanation of CA. Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge.

Right, I had mentioned the same earlier on. But that's for the world of still digital photography only. Photoshop doesn't touch AVI or MT2 footage. Even if converted as Filmstrips, Photoshop wouldn't touch them as only under the RAW file format can those corrections be applied... not to mention it would (literally) take days to render just a few minutes of footage from HD frame grabs, even if one could.

So in practical terms, the question is what's out there that is equivalent to the CA correction capabilities of RAW files in Photoshop in the world of video? Are there any NLEs, stand-along applications or plug-ins that specifically tackle the task of correcting CA from video footage?... Photoshop is certainly not the answer.

I suggest you watch Disjecta's walking_pier.m2t and you can clearly see blue/cyan fringing on contrasty parts of the image on the left and right of the screen. The blue image is indeed larger than the green and red. The red/magenta fringe is on the inner sides of the contrasty images hence the red is the smaller image.

I have no doubt that lower chroma resolution and edge sharpening does "enhance" the appearance of the CA but what is being seen is CA and not as a result of digital processing of the captured image. The thickness of the fringes increases towards the periphery of the image which cannot be explained by your conjecture. Not to mention the fringes are complementary in colour as would be expected from CA and not low chroma resolution problems issues.

I am certainly not a measurebator but when I see a conjecture that is clearly wrong IMHO I am trying to point that out so this doesn't become another in a long line of interent myths. This is not an attack on the camera.

If Canon have improved the XH lens achromat performance then my name is on one. It will be interesting to see Kaku Ito's other clips.

Try http://www.riverrockstudios.com/rive...cheapLens.html

If you use FCP download the demo. You'll find that it can reduce the CA seen in some H1 images.

TT

Thanks Tony. I am on PCs but will geta Mac to try out the demo anyway. And I totally agree with you on your observations regarding the CA issues on the H1. I have seen lots of footage where chroma bleeding is off over 15 pixels left and right of the contraints of the luminance area. I have no clue how people can stand looking at it or how Canon released optics under such ridiculous bad performance. I am expecting a miracle on the HXs and am very hopeful things will look better than this.

Dunno if any of you guys have checked this out on an HDTV yet... but these clips are stellar for a quick out and about.

This pretty much signifies, to me, that they're only going to get better and better. And have pretty much sold me on my camera purchase.

Thanks, Kaku, for pioneering yet again.

I did view them on a 50 inch DLP HDTV, and was impressed. Of course it's not much to go on at this point but the video noise is low, the bokeh and DOF are good, seems to have all the fine detail, smooth and judder free and has the proper white balance. Just need to see more of the same under daylight lighting.

I didn't mean to imply that PhotoShop is a viable way to fix CA in video but rather that it is a tool that interested people can use to induce lateral CA into an image so that they can see what it really looks like in the hopes that they will stop blaming the lens for artifacts which are better blamed on other parts of the system. PhotoShop can also be used to test whether something you think is CA is really CA (the CA correction tool is not limited to camera raw files). If you can fix it in PS with the CA tool then it is CA. If you can't it's something else. PS can also be used to test for CA by switching between the red, green and blue channels. If there is radial motion when switching between channels then it is probably CA. Confirm by trying to fix it using the CA tool.

Now the H1 stock lens does show CA but nothing like 15 pixels worth in a normally functioning lens. In fact the maximum CA plus the effects of chroma band limiting shouldn't total 15 pixel's worth (more like 2-3 for the chroma band limiting and 1 - 2 for the CA). If a camera shows fringing that wide it is doubtless because something is wrong with it such as a misaligned CCD or prism. It is also possible, of course, that a lens element has shifted resulting in abnormally high CA. A camera showing that much fringing should go back to Canon, with its lens, for a checkout or at least another lens should be tried with it.

Just ran some CA checks on an image from another poster. They came in, as do the spot checks on my XLH1 at less than 1 pixel. This means that the random choices of zoom, aperture and focus that he used and I used in images of mine yielded CAs at that level. This does not mean that I have tested every combination of aperture zoom and focus distance (nor am I likely to - I have a day job).