I'm remastering a film that was shot in HDV on the Canon XL-H1. The camera still looks good even today when it's handled correctly. The film was shot using the Cine2 gamma curve as well as the Cine2 color matrix. The official Canon documentation that I've found online using the wayback machine as well as the manual itself states that Cine2 is designed to better transfer to film. The issue I'm having is that there is virtually no documentation online which provides the actual technical information regarding the gamma curve or the color matrix specifications. The manual provides a very basic comparison chart for the gamma curve against Cine1 and Normal, however, there is no math or comparison offered against Cineon log curve. Also, the official manual for the camera states that the Cine color matrix setting is as follows: "The [CINE] setting produces a wider range of colors which may appear to have a low saturation level when viewed on a TV." I had to use the Wayback Machine to find all of the original press releases and ads for this product from Canon, and even the official brochure that was shared at NAB says that Cine2 color matrix and curve is specifically designed to better transfer to film. - As a colorist, all of this language very clearly indicates that the Cine2 color matrix is not, in fact, the same as Rec.709. OR, was there a slight mixup at marketing and product manual publishing that got confused and conflated the upgrade from Rec.601 or the miniDV world was now being upgraded to Rec.709 in the HDV world so therefore there were "more colors". I'm personally hoping that the color matrix Cine2 uses some slightly wider color gamut which is proprietary and Canon is willing to offer a 3D LUT which users can use to properly transform Cine2 to Rec.709. I'd like to say I've done my due diligence on the color science end of this project but there is NO technical information about this camera online. Thank you!
