Canon XH A1 for shooting pro music videos?

[solaar]

Hi video fellas,

 

musician on the keys so please have some patience

 

We're about to kick off an album project and for 2-3 tracks we're planning on shooting videos. Although the budget is basically "there" it's most certainly not unlimited. While I'm not a total newbie at shooting in DV, editing in Premiere and After Effects etc, I never had the pleasure to get my hands on some proper camcorder gear. I've also been involved in music video shootings before and we have mates who are knowledgable enough but not equipped enough to pull such a project off the hook. We're basically trying to get around dishing out thousands for outsourcing and end up empty handed, except for a nice DV/DVD.

 

I took a longer look at the Canon XH A1 and it seems to be a quite capable machine at a 'reasonable' price. That brings me to the first question - can a camcorder at 4000 US$ really yield a pro result (which normally only gear in the 5 digit price range can offer)? Try to envision the film-like quality on most videos shown on MTV.

 

I know the differences (roughly) of interlaced vs progressive. I always deinterlace my DV videos made on an old JVC point-and-shoot DV. While it takes away from that sterile newscast/Eastenders 50i look (which I can't stand), the quality is as it can be expected... gritty and lacking plenty of detail and depth. That's why I'm looking into camcorders with true progressive capabilities. The Canon seems to be the most serious candidate so far in the sub-5000 US$ range.

 

EDIT: I forgot my second question - most US versions of the progressive camcorders feature 60i and 24p modes whereas the EU models only have 50i and 25p. Assuming the same HD resolution (?), wouldn't it be better to get a US model, also since 24p is a tiny bit more like film than 25p? As for interlaced, I would have always opted for the EU versions in the old PAL vs NTSC days but with HD isn't the US better off now with their 30 frames/sec?

 

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

cheers

[riktor]

2 things about a music video you should keep in mind if your looking for that filmic real mtv look, 24p ( guess 25p will work) and good color grading. So the 24 or 25 progressive will make the video look more like film as far as the movement goes, then the color garding or correction will make sure that the nasty rgb colors from a camcorder will look like a film scan thats been graded. You can shoot HD if you want but remeber that HD even at 720 needs a decent machine to get a realtime feedback.

[solaar]

All right, cheers mate.

 

You just kicked one new question loose though -

when you do 720 on an HD machine (which I don't even know if the Canon XH A1 is capable of) do you get some sort of 'higher density' picture, in terms of more pixels per frame? If so that would increase the file size considerably, wouldn't it? I've read the 3 Canon CCDs have 1.67 effective megapixel. I understand as much as you don't multiply the megapixel by the number of CCDs (the end result will always be 1.67 for the frame) but when you shoot at 720 will the 1.67 remain the same, just with more ppi, or will it be truncated by 50% (HD on the Canon is 1440x1080), leaving me with the same resolution as some consumer point-and-shoot?

 

Also if 1440x1080 is true 16:9 widescreen, as stated by Canon, how can 720x540 (PAL) be 4:3?

 

There are quite a few things left which I still don't get my head around...

[Nosifer]

All right, cheers mate.

 

You just kicked one new question loose though -

when you do 720 on an HD machine (which I don't even know if the Canon XH A1 is capable of) do you get some sort of 'higher density' picture, in terms of more pixels per frame? If so that would increase the file size considerably, wouldn't it? I've read the 3 Canon CCDs have 1.67 effective megapixel. I understand as much as you don't multiply the megapixel by the number of CCDs (the end result will always be 1.67 for the frame) but when you shoot at 720 will the 1.67 remain the same, just with more ppi, or will it be truncated by 50% (HD on the Canon is 1440x1080), leaving me with the same resolution as some consumer point-and-shoot?

 

Also if 1440x1080 is true 16:9 widescreen, as stated by Canon, how can 720x540 (PAL) be 4:3?

 

There are quite a few things left which I still don't get my head around...

 

You may want to check out Panasonic's HVX200. I own one and all I can say is that it's the best investment, at roughly around $5k, for any low budget production seeking that "filmic" look...although you will never achieve that look with any video camera, you can however get pretty close. The HVX200 offers a plethora of features only available on higher priced cameras such as variable frame rates, like those slow-mo shots on MTV? you'll get that with HVX200, cinegamma, the usual offerings of 1080i and 720P ect. Unlike Sony, JVC, and Canon the HVX uses it's own compression codec DVCPro HD giving you 100mbs data rate vs. 25mbs on HDV, also a 4:2:2 color sampling vs. 4:2:0 on HDV enabling you to do greenscreens and compositing work with "one click" in certain apps such as After Effects.

 

Unfortunately with such a high data rate you can not record on tape like you would with HDV. Fortunately, Panasonic's P2 cards solve that problem. No more dropped frames and hours of switching out tapes during batch capture. Anyhow I'm starting to sound like a Panasonic salesman...check out the HVX and do your own comparision.

 

As for that question regarding 1440X1080... technically it's 4:3 recorded on tape. But HDV uses a "wide pixel" compression method so that when you are in your own NLE you can "stretch" the footage to 16:9 aspect using presets. Usually 1080i footage shot on HDV is 1440X1080 (1920X1080 stretched) and 720P is 1280X720 which is the right size but only JVC offers 720 on HDV.

 

Yeah anyway, Canon camera bodies always look prettier compared to the rest of them out there...I still have my XL-1...

[solaar]

Cheers for the reply mate!

 

The HVX200 is tempting indeed. I just saw a promo video made on it and it does look very much like what I'm after.

 

The problem is though that it will eventually blow our budget taking into account all the options you need for a seamless session. The HDD recorder alone will break the bank in light of the fact that a P2 card with a decent capacity is still prohibitively expensive. We would need at least two P2 cards or else it would interrupt the flow too much fiddling with transfers to cheaper media in the middle of a session. As we're not 100% confident yet in deciding on location which takes were good and which can be deleted, at this point I would still opt for a cheaper recording medium with a higher capacity.

 

I especially like the Leica lens on the HVX200, better than the Canon, but then again at that price it's surprising it's a fixed one.