Action Sequences
 

This may be inherently obvious but I'm going to ask anyway... If we take the raw hdsdi signal out of the xlh1, will we get much better results for action sequences. The long gop compression seems to be the big drawback for fast moving subjects and I suppose I would like to think that as soon as aja or convergent or in fact colorspace get their recording products out then I'll get much better results. Any thoughts are apreciated as I'm kind of getting excited over the ioHD and convergents flash xdr recorder.

I can't give you a detailed answer, because I'll leave that to others (and I don't own the camera), but this is my impression that I got from reading other people's posts:

yes, you'll get better quality, but the quality of the HDV compression of Canon is also VERY good, and you should only go for the HDSDI route if you REALLY need it... For action sequences this could be the case...
Maybe you could rent such a recorder for one day or something?

Now, I'll let others reply with more decent answers...

Well...I guess I'll put my 2 cents worth in here...

Having shot HDV and simultaneously to DVCPRO HD I can tell you this.

The only real differences I saw was in the compression. More compression with the HDV...but as stated before....The H1 does a great job of recording excellent images within the HDV standard.

If you are shooting 24f...you'll have the same issues with action sequences as with film. Fast moving objects will blur. Fast pans will blur. I have done some of this with the H1...and I personally have not seen compression breakup due to HDV or DVCPro HD. The scene is blurry due to the recording setting...not compression. If you go to 60i...it's a different story.

Thanks Kevin, I took some footage out of a chopper recently with, I thought good focus at 50i with 1/100 sec shutter and I think f8. The footage didn't come out as sharp as I would have liked and I thought it was the long gop compression at fault. I would think that given the right circumstances this camera should be able to get great footage in this situation but I have tried it twice and I'm not getting that good a result. If you or anyone has any thoughts on this I would really apreciate it. It could of course be that the camera is handheld but I had the stabilization on both times. The chopper pilot was really experienced as well so I can't blame him.

You'll definitely get a better image recording the HD-SDI signal to something more robust like ProRes.

However, I'll agree with the other posters that Canon's HDV implementation is VERY well done.

"Not sharp" can mean many things. Maybe the focus is off, maybe the shutter speed should be higher, who knows without seeing the image.

Glenn,
If you were shooting at F8 then you might have had a lens issue since the XLH1 standard lens doesn't close down much past F8 and definitely loses sharpness like most lenses when closed down to far.

Helecopter vibration has a *tendency* to jar the camera and
move every pixel with each jolt. HDV does not deal with well
with this situation. Although I have been surprised at how well
Canon's HDV codec does, if given a choice, I would use the HDSDI
out and an off camera recorder with a helecopter.