The Canon XL H1 is a mighty fine camera.  http://www.usa.canon.com/app/html/XLH1/index.shtml

And many of my clients seem to be gravitating toward it.

Back several years ago when I was working more in “production” per se, I was very impressed with the image quality and price of the HDV format.  The big challenge though at that time seemed to be the time code issue.  One couldn’t easily set the time code, and there was the issue that time code would reset to “00:00:00:00″ if there were any break in the taping.  That break in ascending time code was a “killer” in my opinion since those in heavy production and post-production need the ability to redigitize the footage for the final “high-rez” on-line edit. 

But that can better be addressed these days with the HDV cameras, (see Chris Vazquez’ article: http://tinyurl.com/nyva5k ) and secondly, with digital storage space for editing systems becoming so inexpensive, there is less need to first digitize the footage in low-rez and then go back and re-digitize in high rez.  So, with that being the case, having contiguous ascending timecode on the source tapes becomes less critical.

However, there remains another frustrating aspect with the HDV format for those of us in the media replication business.  While there is some compatibility between various brands of the format, we have found that when Canon HDV tapes are played in a Sony or JVC HDV deck, the HDV signal may not be outputted.

We have been looking for a standalone Canon playback deck, but have been unsuccessful.  Everything we researched pointed us back to having to use the deck in the Canon camera for any playback.  The  problem with that has been that many of our clients don’t have easy access to the camera after the shoot.  Either the tapes were sent to them or the cameraperson was a free-lancer and has moved on.

“There has to be a solution,” I thought.  So I did some searching on the web, and with the help of Video Labs engineer Rodney Hammond, we realized that the smaller Canon HDV camcorders aimed at consumers are still capable of playing the HDV tapes shot with the higher-end HL1 and outputting a signal that maintains the signal quality. 

So we bought one of those consumer-oriented camcorders, the Canon HV20, and sure enough, this setup works: http://tinyurl.com/lu8dpp

We’ve already had a steady stream of clients come in wanting to transfer anywhere from one to several Canon HDV tapes either to another tape format or into their laptops equipped with Final Cut Pro.

So, if you find yourself with some Canon HDV tapes and no easy way to play them back, give me a ring.  I’m confident we can solve your dilemma. 

Contact David Ryan: 301-217-0000 x104  dryan@videolabs.net