Hi Editors:

                  I picked up one of these "tiny" Canon TX -1 Hybrid digital cameras. This little (I mean really small folks) camera does something which knocked me right out of my chair ! This digital camera does HD 720 30p video in standard Microsoft AVI files as MJEPEGS. The audio is 44.1Khz 16 bit with manual overide and wind filter engageable. It records on SD, SDHC and MMCplus cards. I was curious to see if the files would import and edit in AXP as a 720 30p project and it does ! I just stick the sd card into an inexpensive USB 2 card reader, right click in my AXP project bin, select import, and in it comes and is immediately plyable ! I can even author back out to SD DVD or HD DVD with Sorensen and DVDit (Stuff bundled with AXP). (HD DVD and Blue Ray need higher DVDit) The footage is unbelieveably stunning with this device which resembles something from a James Bond spy movie. The device has a rather sophisticated on board computer (And I do mean sophisticated - See 161 page instruction book to fly it). With Avid it looks like footage I get from networks shot in 720p 30. I'm serious ! It's nice to know that AXP does not require you to transcode your time line sequence to export it to Squeeze or direct import into DVDit 6. I'm editing another 1080 HDV project which reqires you go that extra step of trancoding, but with a 720p AVI file this step is unnecessary. With a camera which is half the size of your hand that does stunning HD video, then I think documentary, surveilance, crime scene, wedding video, and music video shooting is going to change in our industry. When I get handed a freakin small- solid state chip to edit instead of a tape, then I know things are changing in our industry !

Good info! Thanks for sharing.

"When I get handed a freakin small- solid state chip to edit instead of a tape, then I know things are changing in our industry ! "

A small solid state 2GB chip that only cost $40.00 and not $4000.00 (Panasonic) I just had a look at the camera on the B&H website, glad to hear it can do everything advertised  and at a nice price. I look forward to getting one and trying it out. Thanks for the heads up!

Steve

scocklin:

"When I get handed a freakin small- solid state chip to edit instead of a tape, then I know things are changing in our industry ! "A small solid state 2GB chip that only cost $40.00 and not $4000.00 (Panasonic) I just had a look at the camera on the B&H website, glad to hear it can do everything advertised  and at a nice price. I look forward to getting one and trying it out. Thanks for the heads up! Steve

....Steve, this device looks like a toy or some kind of swiss made miniature tape recorder, but what it shoots is definitely not the amature hour ! I mean it's 720 30p quality is holy molly - Wow ! When you tweak it in AXP, then I will defy anyone to tell me the difference between this little "toy," and anything else ! It even has digital makeup ! I normally dismiss these "consumer" features as useless gimmicks, but not on this device ! The skin tone lightening or darkening is freakin shocking and the purely manual mode of custom color saturation, hue, contrast, sharpening and RGB mix is causing me a temporary loss of bladder control ! It takes a heck of a long time just to discover where these infitely detailed menus are actually located, but once you do, this device seems to begin to transform itself into a serious piece of equipment which no longer matches the market to which it is directed at. AXP has a very nice compatibility with the TX 1, which allows you to subtly tweak the footage to the point of matching it to other footage. I paid way too much for it here in Canada, but I understand there are some on line resellers in the US who are retailing it for as low as $459.00 ! I paid $649.00 Canadian plus tax up here which topped it out to $740.00 Canadian. Still, it's worth every penny of that. I can see future editing jobs from my digi-independent underground clients shooting whole docs with it.

Hi Editors:

                    I posted a Windows Media 720p 30 Video clip of beautiful tulips in my neighbor's garden in the Beta Videos section under the Classwork/Academic section to give you folks an example of what this camera shoots. I'm not sure I like the color correction AXP applied to the clip (?). The colors now look very accurate, but a trifle cold. With a little manual tweaking it should look perfect though. Go to http://www.avid.com/exchange/files/21/classworkacademic/default.aspx .

How does it fare in low light environments? How about microphone input? Tried it with any fast motion to see how the codec handles it?

Thanks for posting some sample footage. Very Interesting

jawpaul:

How does it fare in low light environments? How about microphone input? Tried it with any fast motion to see how the codec handles it? Thanks for posting some sample footage. Very Interesting

...In low light it is somewhat noisy, but you can tell Canon has employed a patent image processing technology (Digic III) to remove tons of noise. I find it slightly noisy in low light, but not as noisy as comparable consumer video cameras of more money. The noise issue in low light settings can somewhat be alleviated by throwing the camera into manual mode and tweaking it. Importing it into AXP and tweaking it there also seems to greatly improve the look of low light situations. The mid light and daylight and rainy day results are prestine, perfect, and spectacular ! There are no issues with noise at twilight either. I have never considered ever using a digital camera, like one of these power shots for anything other than a simple point and shoot, but this one's different folks ! (No I'm not getting anything from the company for saying this !) There is no microphone input, and this is a tragedy, but not as bad a tragedy as I had earlier thought. The wind blow rumble characteristics are better from the start. If you find there is too much rumble, then you can switch to manual mode, turn down the audio gain, and further, you can engage a wind filter, which seems to do the trick. Regarding your question about fast motion, I'm not a swish pan sort of film maker, but I have not noticed any undesireable stroboscopic chracteristics. You should but are not compelled to use Class Six ultra fast SD cards to make it work at 720p 30 fps. I have been using a regular Sandisk 2.0 GB SD card and all is well as far as I can tell.

Hmm, I wonder how long it is until someone figures out a way to mod this thing for an external input?

It looks interesting. Looks to a great for an indie film-maker for a low budget production.

Sort of coincidentally. I d'know - this thing looks like a bubble gum camera to me. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/technology/07pogue.html?ref=technology

I came across this thread while looking into SD/SDHC cameras for our students, as a replacement for the troublesome DV/HDV cameras we have. Will Media Composer 3.0 also import the TX-1 files directly? What other SD/SDHC cameras provide a workable file format for MC to use?

Currently we have 3 Sony HDV cameras (two HDR-HC3s and one HDR-HC9) which produce very nice quality, but far too many capture problems due to tape problems in HDV mode, so we generally shoot in DV mode, which seems to help. But 2 of these units now have dead firewire ports (one is under warranty at least). Our other camera is a Canon XL-1s, which also has a dead firewire port. Between these DV tape issues, HDV long GOP headaches, and now firewire problems, I'm wondering if we'd be better off with some cheaper SDHC cameras. We don't need HD for most of our work - they're just student projects. I don't want HDD cameras, as we need to be able to quickly remove student footage before passing the camera to another student, so SDHC seems the best replacement for tape at this point.

Any feedback or info welcome!

Thanks.

 

 

Laptopeditor:

Hi Editors:

                    I posted a Windows Media 720p 30 Video clip of beautiful tulips in my neighbor's garden in the Beta Videos section under the Classwork/Academic section to give you folks an example of what this camera shoots. I'm not sure I like the color correction AXP applied to the clip (?). The colors now look very accurate, but a trifle cold. With a little manual tweaking it should look perfect though. Go to http://www.avid.com/exchange/files/21/classworkacademic/default.aspx .

Hey, this link does not seem to work.

Try this one:

http://community.avid.com/media/g/classworkacademic/default.aspx

Yeah,  I think Canon is working very hard on the video capabilities of their still cameras.

Have you guys seen this short film, footage entirely taken with the video capabilities of the new Canon 5D Mark II?

Laptopeditor:

I'm not sure I like the color correction AXP applied to the clip (?)

Color Correction is not an "automatic" thing, so I'm not sure what you mean by this comment.  Are you implying that XpressPro did something to the colors when it was imported or are you saying that you slapped an "auto correct" onto the footage without further adjustments and are disappointed with those results? 

In almost every instance of Color Correction I've done there is always need for adjustments to make things look right.

Hi editors. This is an old post I made last year. I'm surprised it got revived, but there you go. Yes I like the TX-1 for stunning 720p 30 HD shooting. However, this camera is not good in low light situations. As long as you shoot in daylight or well let situations and use the maximum quality setting for video (There are two), then you will be quite surprised with what you get. The sound quality is pretty good as well, with manual and automatic settings and a wind cut filter built in. The built in mics are no good whatsoever if you have any kind of wind situation. I found that even when you use the wind cut filter in a windy situation, the resulting audio is terrible. Obviously, for a quick sit down interview or as a run and gun camera, this is an ideal instrument. I shot a whole half hour pilot episode for my web Tv series Please Stand By with the TX-1. You can go check out our pilot episode here.