XF100 first impressions

[peterarcson]

Incredibly well built, amazing picture quality (still dialing the settings), great ergonomics, IR is amazing. The best bang for the buck right now on the market. I am VERY glad I sold my JVC GY-HM100 and bought this one. In comparison HM100, HMC-40 from Panasonic look like amateur versions and can't compare to this one. The amount of adjustments for picture profile is the same as on XF300. Auto ND is kind of hard to get used to, but that is the only draw back I noticed so far. LCD is good enough to get critical focus and WFM is also great of achieving correct exposure. Getting footage into FCP is no problem. Over all a big A for over all grade.

[zagnut]

You just had to rub it in didn't you? Congrats! I'm still curious how it compares to the HMC-150.

[cgbier]

[BMark]

Have you had a chance to use the digital tele-converter in the various modes (1.5, 3, and 6x)? If so, how's the picture quality? I haven't read any comments about this feature yet. I have the HFS100 and with the oversized sensor I don't see any loss in picture quality when I shift into 1.7x tele-converter mode. For me this helps to overcome the limited zoom range.

[cgbier]

I don't know how much more zoom you need, but I do some 130% magnification from an HV30 without much loss in post.

[peterarcson]

You just had to rub it in didn't you? Congrats! I'm still curious how it compares to the HMC-150.

Let's put it this way, I ordered HMC 150 some time ago and returned it after a day. Calling that camera an HD is a friggin joke! The CCD block tops off at whopping 960x540! No wonder the picture is as soft as baby's butt. Actually I had footage better looking from DVX100 and InstantHD.
No, this is 1080 native, no pixel shift bs. It has the same adjustment for picture profile as 300/305 series. But honetly HMC150 would a waste of your money at the moment.

[cgbier]

How does the Canon CMOS hold up against the JVC's CCD in regards to rolling shutter and jello? Any experience with that stuff yet?

[Timbit]

I feel like CG.

[racer-x]

How does the Canon CMOS hold up against the JVC's CCD in regards to rolling shutter and jello? Any experience with that stuff yet?

I would guess that any CMOS sensor camera will suffer this trait, regardless of expense. The slower the shutter speed, the more obvious the "jello effect" will be seen during panning or movement. That's just the nature of the beast.........

[peterarcson]

How does the Canon CMOS hold up against the JVC's CCD in regards to rolling shutter and jello? Any experience with that stuff yet?

Are you comparing to HM100? I used to own HM100 and HD100, which looking back are crap compared to the new XF100. CCD light sensitivity is low compared to CMOS. Rolling shutter issue is way overblown in these cameras. I also owned EX1 and never had an issue with it.

[peterarcson]

Judge the picture yourself:


BTW on the second video there were only four 50W bulbs overhead and 2 in the kitchen, ZERO gain, 1/48 shutter!

[racer-x]

Picture quality seams decent. I'll chalk up the poor compression to your FCP and youtube encoding.

You don't have any fast pans in your shots, so "Rolling Shutter Effect" can't be seen in your examples.

[drapeama]

Picture quality seams decent. I'll chalk up the poor compression to your FCP and youtube encoding.
You don't have any fast pans in your shots, so "Rolling Shutter Effect" can't be seen in your examples.

1) You can always render a small video with a decent encoding and upload it to the hv20.info or another file hosting website, so we'll see it better.
2) Sure if you don't have any fast move in it, then rolling shutter isn't visible. You should render a small clip with some fast movement and do like above.

[peterarcson]

You can download native file there.

[racer-x]

That's not the native file...the MOV is the intermediate your MAC converted the native file to. Man, I hate MACs. It took a while to find a tool on my PC to read your MOV (which is using xd5d codec)........

Anyway the footage looks great. That was an excellent shot.

**Edit**** After taking a frame grab from your MOV, I noticed the frame is not a full 1920 x 1080, but it is slightly letterboxed. I'm assuming this is a MAC thing and has nothing to do with the raw footage. Here is the frame grab:

[peterarcson]

I hate when people fly off the handle and even don't know what they are talking about. Yes it is native file. MOV or .MXF are just containers. The codec is MPEG long GOP 50Mbs XDCAM 422 and it exactly what you are downloading. The reason you had hard time reading the file is because you don't have QT PRO version, which is required.

[zagnut]

I hate when people fly off the handle and even don't know what they are talking about.

Me too!

Yes it is native file. MOV or .MXF are just containers.

Technically it isn't the native file. I'm assuming you chose "native" and used Log & Transfer in FCP, which will just re-wrap the file in a .MOV container. However it isn't an untouched file anymore, hence not technically native. But that's just nitpicking.

The codec is MPEG long GOP 50Mbs XDCAM 422...

You Mac guys will believe anything your computers tell you. It is not XDCAM, despite what your precious Mac tells you. Canon would never license a codec from Sony.

At 1:08 in the video below, Tim Smith of Canon specifically refers to the XF300/305's codec (same as the XF100 and XF105) as, "we're using a whole brand new codec that was developed specifically for this camera by Canon".



Sorry, but I would tend to believe the people that made the camera.

[cgbier]

XDCAM isn't a codec either. It is only the name of a product line. There are (depending on the camera) several codices used. In this case it is MPEG HD422.

[racer-x]

Yes it is native file. MOV or .MXF are just containers.

So are you saying the letterboxing in your MOV is present in the original footage as shot by the camera?

[drapeama]

You Mac guys will believe anything your computers tell you. It is not XDCAM, despite what your precious Mac tells you. Canon would never license a codec from Sony.

Wikipedia XDCAM: XDCAM is a a series of products for video recording using nonlinear media, introduced by Sony in 2003. Four different product lines — the XDCAM SD, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX and XDCAM HD422 — differ in types of encoder used, frame size, container type and in recording media.
So, it's probably close in the specs, but certainly not XDCAM.

So are you saying the letterboxing in your MOV is present in the original footage as shot by the camera?

It's probably more when exporting. But how did that happen if he exported the same resolution as the input? Even when downscaling to 720p. Software thing. I doubt the camera sensor would "crop" the picture directly.

[peterarcson]

**Edit**** After taking a frame grab from your MOV, I noticed the frame is not a full 1920 x 1080, but it is slightly letterboxed. I'm assuming this is a MAC thing and has nothing to do with the raw footage. Here is the frame grab:

Honestly I don't see what you are talking about. The aspect ratio for shooting is 1.75:1. For some reason Canon doesn't have option for straight 16x9 (which is 1.777:1), but has 4:3, 13:9 14:9 and then 1.66, 1.75, 1.85 and 2.35. The footage was exported as 1920x1080. I downloaded my file myself last night and it might be again lack of QTpro on your PC that causes some weird cropping issue. When I looked at properties of the file it clearly shows 1920x1080, so look at the settings of the player you downloaded on your PC. I don't really have the time for this sort of nitpicking crap and pissing war on Mac vs PC. Upon request I downloaded a native file, so you guys can see what the footage looks like. I am not going to spend a lot of time on something I am doing for free. NLE (both CS5 and FCP) will recognize the stream as XDCAM 422. It's simple as this is just a flavor of MPEG2 long GOP 50Mbs 422. That what the native file is. MOV or MXF are just containers. Yes L&T allows you to re-wrap native file, and that what needed to be done, it does the same with XDCAM EX, when it re-wraps MP4 container into MOV. Gee- I am trying to do you guys a favor and as a thank you I am getting piss and moaning of some knowledge lacking complainers.

[peterarcson]

Technically it isn't the native file. I'm assuming you chose "native" and used Log & Transfer in FCP, which will just re-wrap the file in a .MOV container. However it isn't an untouched file anymore, hence not technically native. But that's just nitpicking.
You Mac guys will believe anything your computers tell you. It is not XDCAM, despite what your precious Mac tells you. Canon would never license a codec from Sony.

At 1:08 in the video below, Tim Smith of Canon specifically refers to the XF300/305's codec (same as the XF100 and XF105) as, "we're using a whole brand new codec that was developed specifically for this camera by Canon".

Sorry, but I would tend to believe the people that made the camera.

once again- the stream is MPEG2 Long GOP 50Mbs 422. Now technically which other camera used this codec before? Yes- the answer is Sony XDCAM's 422 (PDW 700 and 800), later Nano started also using the same compression scheme. So any NLE will recognize it as XDCAM 422 50Mbs as this is what was out there so far. There is nothing new about this codec, it has been around for last 4 years and nobody has to license it from Sony, but they have to license it from MPEG LA.

[drapeama]

Peter, do you see these letterboxing black bars in the NLE? Or when you play the native "imported" files?
If no, then the problem might be when exporting the final video, because I'm affraid it's not racer-x's configuration:

[peterarcson]

I don't really know what vimeo does. This is a grab from my original file:

[drapeama]

I don't really know what vimeo does. This is a grab from my original file:

Then the problem is online.
Great picture quality!