Where's the XL2 footage?
 

By this time, I would have thought that there would be alot more XL2 footage on the internet. Why isn't anyone(With the exception of a few people like Barry Goyette) posting footage?

I expect it will be a while before we start seeing more footage shot with the XL2, and there are several reasons for this.

I feel the XL2 mainly completes with other 24P cameras in it's class... (which really means the DVX100 by Panasonic) and for existing XL1 or XL1s owners one must really evaluate other advantages of going XL2.

Consider the market for 24P cams which has been saturated by the release of the DVX100 which has been out for well over a year now. Anyone who likely wanted 24P now owns a DVX and isn't about to trade it in for the XL2 which not only costs more, but would require a significant reinvestment to be made towards accessories, possibly filters, lenses, etc..

The customer base Canon lost due to the delayed release of a 24P prosumer camera will require a tough sell to bring back. The difference between the XL2 and DVX is subtle in my opinion - not night and day so what would it really take now for someone to leave the DVX for the XL2? Maybe the 800k pixel XL2 PAL version, but you'd only see the serious film makers exploring that route. And where does Sony fit in? It looks like Sony will skip the 24P era all together and get straight into HD which will surely offer 30P and 60i - but not 24P.

Another reason you won't see a load of XL2 footage online is because not everyone who buys an XL2 belongs to an online forum or community - and what's to say these people would even have the time or space to post footage?

The release of the XL2 is a very different situation when comparing it to the DVX and because there won't be as much of an explosion or hype surrounding the release of a camera like it this time around, we could be waiting a while to see something that really shows the XL2 kicks unfortunately (and sadly).

At the time of this writing I've owned the XL2 for just about a week now and have not been able to shoot anything worthwhile with it yet to post. But when I do, I will. I just don't feel like shooting cars in a parking lot or cars driving through an intersection (no offense to anyone) and would prefer to get some dolly movement, stimulating visuals or acting to really show the limits that the XL2 can be pushed to.

I was actually suppose to post some footage of the XL2 using the mini35 in the P+S Technik section but found out I can not connect the XL2 to our XL1s configured mini35 without an upgrade kit from ZGC or P+S Technik. The saga continues...

^ Same. I've owned the camera for over 2 weeks and have shot a couple of leaves... I'm making a short that will be out sometime next month but until then...

matt

http://digitalinterference.net
Http://MattMcDermitt.com
info@mattmcdermitt.com

Dennis Hingsberg, that was an excellent summation and I agree with you 100% right down the line there. Very well said. Many thanks,

You can find a handful of XL2 clips filmed in 24p here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/cgi-bin/DVX2/YaBB.pl?board=XL2

I've put about a minute's worth at http://homepage.mac.com/ajdel/FileSharing5.html. It's 201 Mbytes of 16:9, 30p, manual exposure control with shutterspeed of 1/30, the stock lens and white balance set before every (well, almost every) shot with an Expodisk. I've got some sunlight shots as well as some more difficult lighting situations so you can get an idea of how it performs in various conditions. No post processing i.e. the clips were just concatenated in FCP and saved as a Quicktime file. Don't forget to check that the High Quality bit is set in your QT viewer (or open it with an editor) before looking at it.

A.J.

Darn A.J. those colors sure look great! For that matter all the footage looks great! What did you have the gama set to? That looks soooo much different than what I see from our XL1s. Thanks for putting it up there definitely worth the download time.

Richard
2K-Plus
Atlanta


<<<-- Originally posted by A. J. deLange : I've put about a minute's worth at http://homepage.mac.com/ajdel/FileSharing5.html. It's 201 Mbytes of 16:9, 30p,..............A.J. -->>>

When I start to download it says it is a .gen file. What is that? Or do we just rename it .mov when its done?

Again no offense to anyone's efforts here, but I think what we are all dying to see (well, at least I am...) are "production efforts" not "test shot efforts".

Most of those links contain edited point and shoot "reality" clips that don't have much of a production element behind them. A dog running around, people climbing stairs, cars driving around, etc..

Don't get me wrong, it's always great to see initial results from a new camera without having to leave your house.. especially one that offers a higher quality 16:9 mode... but now I just want MORE, I want Charles Papert to pick one up, choose a location and work his magic with a few HMI pars and Gyoury's on some amazing talent... maybe with the mini35 attached, OMG I'm going nuts just thinking about it!

But until then I guess we'll just have to wait until more productions use the XL2 and then share the footage with us!

Richard: All the settings (including gamma) are the camera default settings.

Marty: Don't know! it's a Quick Time file which requires Quick Time player (www.apple.com/quicktime/download - PC or Mac) to view. You shouldn't have to rename.

A.J.

I downloaded it and it had a .gen extension. I renamed it to .mov and it played.

That footage is great. It's nice to be reminded of what greatimages the camera puts out.


Also, I never knew Virginia looked so much like Central America.

Thanks A. J.

Thanks, A.J. ... very helpful!

--Ralph

I imported the footage into Final Cut and watched it on a broadcast monitor. I noticed that there were plenty of distracting red channel "jaggies" in the red propellors at the beginning and at the end in the night footage. Is this an inherent property of the camera or a DV compression issue?

Yes. I noticed the red channel "jaggies" too. But I think it is a DV compression issue, since I shot a test with a DVX100A 6 months ago, and there was this one guy with extremely red shirt. There was exactly the same kind of jagginess with those shots too.

So I think it's not a XL2 issue, but an annoying DV compression artifacts. I don't remember if the jagginess was there in my interlaced material...

The extra noise in the footage posted by A. J. deLange could be the fact that a 1/30th shutter speed was used for 30P instead of 1/60th, as 1/30th increases the sensitivity to light and therefore would probably introduce some noise/grain.

When I started playing around with the 24P mode on my new XL2 I noticed the default shutter speed was always set to 1/24th - so now I always change it to 1/48th for a better image.

Can anyone explain why Canon would default their camera settings this way? I can't figure it out...

The red jaggies on the DVX are pretty well documented on adam wilts site. So far I haven't seen much of them on my xl2, and while they occasionally are visible on the computer screen...I have never seen them appear when viewed on my HD set or SD monitors/tvs that I'm using.

Until I saw A.J.'s stuff I was under the impression that they would be less of an issue with the xl2...now I'm not so sure.



Barry

I think the jaggies on the pinwheels are indeed compression artifacts. They seem to be present in the other colors as well but certainly are most noticeable in the reds. I don't know if this is the reason or not but those reds colors are saturated enough that the chroma magnitude is greater than 100 (as seen on the FCP vector scope).

As for the noise I think the explanation is that it was dark enough that a gain up of 12 dB was required to get reasonable brightness on tape. This raises the noise floor 12 dB relative to 0 dB gain (which setting I always hold fixed) - enough to make it quite noticeable especially in those parts of the clip where most of the histogram is below 50 IRE.

All the shutter speeds were 1/30. I'm not sure I understand how a faster shutter speed would improve the situation. To me 30p means that the whole CCD is read 30 times a second (and that separation into 2 sub frames is then done for DV 60i encoding on to tape). During the exposure time the noise level is integrated as is the signal. As integration time increases the signal to noise ratio increases as the square root of the integration factor. Thus doubling exposure (integration time) would improve SNR by 1.5 dB. What am I missing?

A.J.

By the way, thanks AJ for posting the footage. What are your impressions of the camera?

Maybe the shutter speed does not contribute to the fact the images look noisy, but from the playing around I've done with our XL2 I have only seen that amount of noise when shooting well over +3dB. I usually shoot in the Manual setting and keep my gain between -3dB and 0dB.

As for Mark's original post "Where's the XL2 footage", I just uploaded some on this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=33417

Filming stars with Xl2
 

I pushed the Xl2 to its limits and checked whether one is able to film stars with the camcorder. Suddenly, for my surprise, I recognized the Dipper in the viewfinder. The footage can be downloaded from

http://www.luontovideo.net/XL2-lens-test.html

Be aware, couple of the stars of the Dipper were behind the trees, and that's why they are not visible or they are blinking.

Settings: Shutter 1/6s, gain +18db, black=stretch, NR=high

Lauri

I was out of the house early one morning last week...still dark...I had the camera on progressive at 12db probably 1/30 sec...I was not trying to see stars, but I was surprised to see several show up on the footage, brighter ones for sure...but still a nice surprise.

Barry

Impressions
 

What are my impressions of the XL2? Definitely not a quantum leap wrt the XL1s but definitely a better camera. At first I couldn't handle the darn thing. It isn't a great design ergonomically and while the shoulder pad may actually ride over your shoulder there is no weight on it because the lens is so heavy. It's probably worth trying the dual battery thing just to see if getting some weight back there will allow it to ride on the shoulder. I find myself supporting it by the wrist strap and the protrusion which mounts the iris control. Since I always shoot manual my hand has to be there anyway but at first I found this very clumsy. Like a new rifle, a new camera feels clumsy and not as good as the old one in so many ways and I didn't think the results were that much better than the XL1s to the point that I considered returning it. So I took it to Mexico for a week where it was my constant companion (anything you value should be your constant companion in Mexico) and found that just like the new rifle, once you have carried it for a while it becomes a part of you.

What I do like about it very much is the 16:9 aspect ratio. I just like that aspect ratio and that is why I bought the camera - that and the true 30p. The video definitely looks good on a computer screen and on a TV set but I haven't done any resolution chart tests to see if the pictures are really sharper than the XL1s or not. What I don't like is the ergonomics and I'm not sure the SNR is that great even in relatively bright light. I'm also not sure the AIS is up to snuff. I cannot hold it at 20X unless I adjust my footing and it is dead calm. I almost suspect that the servo loop bw is too high on the particular S/N I have and wonder if anyone else has experienced similar problems. I know part of it was a learning curve issue because I'm better with it now than out of the box but I'm still not good at long focal lengths.

Bottom line: I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it highly to anyone who needs or wants to change lenses (the ability to put my old Nikkors on it is another big plus for me) but I don't think that all XL1s owners need to sell their XL1s's and buy an XL2. I'm not a pro and I have no experience with the DV100X so I can't compare to it (or any other high end gear).

One more tidbit: While in Mexico I visted the Arbol de Tule. This is the world's largest tree - 45m in circumferance. I was told that I could not take the XL2 inside the fence which surrounds the tree (this is the basis of the town's economy - there is a permanent police presence there) because large video cameras produce emanations which harm the tree. Small ones do not. Prospective buyers may want to consider this.

A.J.

A.J.,

Thanks for the footage. I am downloading it right now.

All the other footage on the net has been compressed to MPEG4 or MPEG2. I have been waiting for some native DV footage and that is what yours appears to be. Looking forward to using 16:9 in FCP for the first time.

Greg

Going back to the red fringing, I have been a DVX owner for about a year, and this is something that tends to pop up every now and then. At first it was a problem, as I found no way to get rid of it, but then I discovered a cool little effect in vegas that gets rid of it. I think it is available also for FCP and Avid, but I'm not sure about Premiere. You can see some of the results here.

http://www.stefweb.net/chromatest.jpg

This footage was taken in the worst of conditions, really red lighting and not a lot of it, about equal to my living room. I shot with 6db gain and 1/24 shutter speed in 24p, iris wide open. This is definatly something that is fixable, and while it is true that it doesn't always show up on an interlaced television, if your ever transfering to film, or showing on a progressive scan television, it is much more obvious. Hope this helps.

stefan...

Nice trick...thanks for turning us on to it.

barry

Oh, by the way, the filter is called "chroma blur" in vegas, but it might be called something else in other NLE's

Also, make sure that you look at the jpg at 100%, I noticed that some web browsers tend to scale the image to fit the screen, but it seems to get rid of the good looking effect.

I guess I'd like to know if there is an equivalent "chroma blur" tool for Adobe After Effects or Premiere. I'd hat to have to buy vegas just to correct this issue when it arises.

Thanks,

The "red" problem is a known issue with a lot of camera's out there,
I first noticed it on my XL1S. I agree it is a compression issue
since the chroma blur fixes it basically. I've never seen it on a
TV set with my DV footage (probably due to the way a TV works
and has a lower resolution) and also transcoding to MPEG2 for
DVD fixed this issue for me as well.

There's some new footage in this post that was shot with the XL2 and mini35 adapter. The film is by Eric MacIver.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=32951