Camcorder Test - Riopelle Sculpture - Canon HF200 - Nighttime Tests

[greenmahidol]

hi i cant find where to change to 60i,i saw only 50i standard.

Please help

thnx

[TheCanadianPublic]

@greenmahidol You have a PAL camcorder, not an NTSC camcorder. 50i is the best you can get.

It's pretty silly. These camcorders can support all worldwide standard frame rates. There's no need to lock these camcorder to support only a single region's broadcast standards.

[JackInBlackDawg]

Thanks for the post!

[TheRobertMarshall]

Thank you. This was really helpful.

[sidekike3]

nevermind.....this ain't confusing anymore!

[TheCanadianPublic]

What happened that it was suddenly no longer confusing?

[acorntechnique]

I have to say for a camera of this quality and price it's low light performance is disappointingly poor.

The Samsung H200 range is a 1/3 the price of the Canon and has outstanding low light performance.

What's like in normal daylight shooting?

[sidekike3]

this is madd confusing

[sebastiansz]

is it my laptop fault that the video is little bit choppy, for example @ 04:09 - 4:19 when the cars go by? This segment was shot @ "1/24 shutter and auto exposure at 24p" this is your manual setting or it's some kind of mode? thanks for reply.

Btw. every new camera needs videos like this one! Great video

[TheCanadianPublic]

No, it's not your laptop especially if the 60i and 30p sequences look okay. Converting 24p material to 30p can introduce some frame chopping in the final video if the frame rate conversion isn't done right. That along with deinterlacing are the areas where Sony Vegas (all versions) still has a lot of problems, even with the recent release of version 10.

[Augmen1]

fireworks mode was creepy

haha

[octap79]

I am quite disapointed with the performance in night shots according to this video. I know the quality of the shots in daylight is really good (for the price always),

I dont have prior experience of digital cameras and how they perform in night to judge if this is bad or good comparing to other.

I AM going to buy this...anyway....

[Spright0]

hey i got a canon sd780 is and i recorder during the night time and it's very choppy is there a way to fix this?

[honitsten]

@Spright0 I have the SD960 and it will do the same thing. to fix this increase the shutter speed. Doing so will darken your pictures quite a bit.

[CanadaGradeEh]

Hi, what's P mode? Do you just mean the difference between, say, 30i and 30p?

[TheCanadianPublic]

Nope. The camcorder has different settings controlling the behaviour of shutter speed, exposure and gain. P (full auto), Tv (manual shutter), Ae (manual exposure), Cine (reduced gain), and everything else (snow, cloudy, portrait, sports, night, fireworks...)

[CanadaGradeEh]

So basically what I'm gonna want to work with is Tv, then :P Thanks!

[TheCanadianPublic]

That's it! Tv mode is what locks in the shutter speed during nighttime shoots so that you don't end up with any nasty slide shows! :)

[CanadaGradeEh]

Thanks. I'm sure this knowledge will apply to the HF S10, which I've decided to buy instead since the low-light is better in general. Well, unless I can find a better buy for similar perfomance before then, anyway.

[TakeSomeAdvice]

The Sony HDR-XR520v has better night vision IMO.

Please see below video for proof:

watch?v=MPLs73SfkBk

All I want is something that will shoot well in lower light, NORMAL INDOOR situations.

[CanadaGradeEh]

It's also $400 more. From what I've seen the HF S10/20 is a better buy at a cheaper price still.

[TAJNI2929]

why does the video lag.

is it just on youtube or is it also in windows mediaplayer. i am thinking about buying this camara

[TheCanadianPublic]

It appears to be YouTube, more specifically the Adobe Flash player. The resolution of the uploaded rendered video is 1920 x 1080, and it looks like YouTube is trying to show it in that resolution. If your machine isn't "stupid" fast enough, you might have problems.

I'll make the uploaded file available for download via BitTorrent. The link will be included in the show notes once it's ready.

[TAJNI2929]

glad to hear that it is youtube.

thanks for the info

i have looking at other videos in HD on youtube. thay aperes to do the same thing. adobe FP needs to be updated

byw. my mashine is core i7. so no, it IS fast.

[TheCanadianPublic]

The link to the Torrent file is in the show notes.

[ngvgnDOTcom]

@TAJNI2929 Sometimes it's best to wait until the video is download full in your browser and it might play better.

Or use Firefox with the plugin downloadhelper and download the HD copy right from youtube grab the HD22 copy. And use VLC player and it should play fine. QuickTime needs more power for play back.

[kyrkbymannen]

Which mode do you prefer in lowlight.

I got mine today and i think there is a lot of noice and static in the image whhen shooting in low light!

[TheCanadianPublic]

30p, and Tv mode at 1/30 sec. But if it's REALLY dark, then 24p and Tv mode at 1/24 sec.

[blackeyebattery]

What's the absolute best setting for the highest quality when recording in general? So far I have mine set up to MXP. Which is the highest quality framerate? 60i, PF30 or PF24?

[3312cdfp5674]

so the frame rate sorta is like the ISO on a camera?

lower iso, darker image

higher frame rate, darker image

[TheCanadianPublic]

No, it's closer to the shutter speed. In fact, it's measured exactly the same way.

Changing the ISO on a digital camera (which the Canon HF200 can't do) is akin to using Kodak T-Max P3200 B&W film at different ISO settings. The higher the setting, the grainier the image.

With film, a grainy image can become very artistic. With digital images however, what you have is a mess.

[3312cdfp5674]

in a way, it is because if the frame rate is 60 and you put auto exposure, it will look shittier then a frame rate at 24 put on auto exposure, assuming the shutter and darkness are the same in both

[alterdkyle]

Consumer camcorder's exposure controls usually control the iris and the gain(pretty much ISO) at the same time. It's a little unfortunate.

[TheCanadianPublic]

I've had one individual complain about the lack of depth of field control on consumer camcorders when compared with pro equipment. And he does have a point. How difficult would it have been to include a "full manual" option in today's camcorders where you adjust the shutter speed, exposure and ISO to your liking?

That would be an interesting project: create a firmware version that includes individual auto and manual controls for each and every feature. We'd get outstanding results with that.

[alterdkyle]

Agreed that would be awesome.

[xXConjureOneXx]

Video looks amazing, Love the shot at 4:00

[datalorez]

Does this have an external mic slot? I know it has the boot on top.

Also, is the lense area threaded so that you can play with different lense types? In theory you could probably rig some kind of adaptor, but that would probably kill your warranty.

Great video!

[TheCanadianPublic]

It has both an external mic jack and a standard 37 mm filter thread. You can get an adapter for the boot at DM Accessories if you plan to use a microphone equipped with a standard camera shoe mount.

[deeson1212]

TASK IN PROGRESS DO NOT DISCONNECT THE POWER SOURCE

I am getting this above message with my HF200. Do you get the same message? How to fix it?

[TheCanadianPublic]

Yep. It's just the camcorder closing all open files before powering off. Perfectly normal.

[lti12]

@deeson1212 I get the same thing, I think its normal

[Tristan944]

I just got an HF200, but when I upload my videos they dont look nearly as good on YouTube as the real video. How did you upload your videos? They look very clean. Did you resize, edit, convert to a different file type, etc? Thanks for your help.

[TheCanadianPublic]

Check the show notes. They list the settings I've used to render the video under Sony Vegas.

The settings aren't perfect though. YouTube still gets the occasional "hiccups" with my videos.

[TheKSProduction]

so wut would be the best settings for this camera??

[TheCanadianPublic]

At night, definitely not the "P" mode! Try 1/30 shutter at 30p, and 1/24 shutter at 24p.

Cine mode will darken everything, but you never know. It just might work for you.

[1hemusicus]

How's the battery on this baby?

[TheCanadianPublic]

An hour and a half with the standard battery.

[edalen]

Can you upload the raw MTS file of the Canon HF200 (with HD Quality) to youtube without conversion on a PC?

[TheCanadianPublic]

Theoretically yes. But the files are already so big that you would be limited to only a couple of minutes of footage unless you used one of the low bitrate/high compression settings. And that would produce worse results than simply re-encoding the raw footage on a computer.

[AyaxTelemonio]

How much time you can shot with a 8 gb memory?

[TheCanadianPublic]

In MXP mode (24 Mbps), about 45 minutes. In FXP mode (17 Mbps), about an hour.

The lower settings will start to introduce a few too many compression artifacts. Also, the horizontal resolution will drop from 1920 to 1440 pixels.

[korgpadude]

dont put it on night mode u will get noises, canon hf100 on night is the best HD camera at night

[KjellBrel]

Second, Since I have a PAL unit, 30P and 24P is replaced with 25P (only other option is 50i). In your description you write: "Try alternating between the 1/30 or 1/24 shutter speed in the Cinema mode while recording in 30p or 24p."

Are you saying one can film in 24P with a shutter speed of 1/30?

Again, sorry for being a bonehead.

[TheCanadianPublic]

First, yes the film icon means Cinema Mode. Or Cine Mode. Or whatever. :)

Second, the choice of shutter speeds adjust themselves automatically based on the chosen FPS. That means you'll get 1/24 for 24p, 1/30 for 30p, 1/25 for 25p, 1/50 for 50p, and 1/60 for 60i along with the corresponding adjoining multiples.

Yes, it can be a bit confusing.

[TheCanadianPublic]

And no, you can't choose 1/24 at 30p. It's not a matching multiplier.

[KjellBrel]

Thanks for providing this info!

Sorry for being daft, but I have a couple of things I don't understand.

First, "Cinema mode" is the same thing as "Cine mode", right? When activated the LCD displays a film cell icon in the upper left corner.

[playman350]

Do you know how to encode H.264 on Sony Vegas =P ?

[TheCanadianPublic]

I tried using the H.264 encoder in ffdshow, but the results were butt-ugly. I still need to download and try out a demo version of CoreCodec. This is one case where I may have no other choice but to pay for an extra codec.

Until then, I'll continue to use the original XviD encoder (first search result in Google).

[playman350]

You can encode H.264 with Vegas, you can use MainConcept AVC (which is H.264, meaning iPod uses H.264), or Sony AVC, which, by the way is the format used for Blu-Ray disc.

[TheCanadianPublic]

Unfortunately, the Platinum edition doesn't seem to have the MainConcept AVC option available. Only MPEG2.

I did try the Sony AVC Blu-Ray burn option. It took 30 minutes to render a two minute clip. With XviD however, it only took 16 minutes.

Render and author to DVD? About 12 minutes not including the actual burn.

[lurewars]

So much for the terrible low-light performance of this camera. Awesome footage dude. I knew I'd made the right decision buying this camcorder.

[iusedtoslaymonsters]

blind, it looks horrible

[DODwebdotorg]

Aweseome review and sample of the HF200. Trying desperately to learn everything I can about camcorders as I want to give one to my flatmate for her birthday later this year... but the jungle of data and models and impressions and technologies seems nearly impenetrable! From the last few weeks of an and off searching, the HF200 is really starting to interest me, but until now I was sceptical about its supposedly appalling lowlight performance. Thank you for rectifying that impression!

[fofofik]

i have the hg20 by canon,but the night time i see loads of noise its any change u can help how to get the noise better?

[TheCanadianPublic]

Try a combination of the manual settings and alternate frame rates. 30p, 24p, Tv mode at 30fps, Cinema Mode...

Be aware that the low light performance results from nearly every camcorder review out there can be extremely misleading. Some reviewers will complain about low light performance in environments where even the reviewers themselves have trouble seeing anything! What they REALLY need is a night vision scope!

[GCWatkins170FB]

2:13 lambo iin the left lane

[poprocz]

You noticed that too?

[xXConjureOneXx]

hell yes! you could hear that thing purr as it accelerated too. Nice :]

[StrangeStevie]

Thank for the test. The last bit seemed the best to me, strange tho the cars were a bit stuttery but the people looked ok ?. sometimes it think it might be the Youtube conversion. You want to try and upload something onto Vimeo and do a comparison test, there video seems to be better.

cheers

Steve

[TheCanadianPublic]

For this video, I used the HD-1080i template in Sony Vegas and rendered the final video at 29.97 Hz. The stutter was most likely caused by all the awkward multiple frame rate conversions.

I still have many more tests to do in order to find the right combination of settings, but one thing's for certain. The HF200 definitely can do nighttime shoots as long as one steers clear of the "P" mode, which simply doesn't work properly in low light.