Ooh. ; I kinda like what I'm seeing. ; Some of this had already been mentioned earlier, but there were a few surprises.
Let's tabulate the major changes. ; Number one, the existing video modes are changed to drop frame timing. ; Instead of shooting at 30 frames per second it's down to 29.97. ; No biggie for me, but for people interested in professional use it means that the output is compatible with broadcast standards in NTSC countries. ; It does make it slightly easier to deal with the output, video editing packages are usually aimed at broadcast standards and I've run into a few codecs that seem to outright reject being used at 30fps. ; You can just change the frame rate from one to the other, in ten minutes the difference is only 18 frames, but.. aligning with standards is useful. ; Personally I'd have preferred to be left the option to use 30fps, but.. no real harm in going to this.
Number two: 1080p 24 fps mode. ; I don't intend to use it, 30fps is still a lower frame rate than I'd prefer (it's jarring to go from 60i to 30p), but the film geeks will be happy that they can achieve the "film look" of jerky low frame rate video. ; I'll at least try it out to see what all the hubub is about.
Number three: PAL support. ; Nifty for Europeans and others in PAL countries, the 5DmkII becomes a professional level tool in those countries.
Number four: MANUAL AUDIO LEVEL CONTROL! ; This was a welcome surprise. ; I hope that this will include a level meter, otherwise it'll be largely useless, but.. ; yeah, right on Canon.
I'd guess that this would not be a big deal for most of the people here, most of the time I don't expect to be using it myself. ; But it's an option I've been craving, I'm eager to try it out on some live events to see if I can improve the quality any.
And I'll just lump the rest of the changes together. ; Histogram for shooting movies in manual, something I've actually been wishing I had, so nice move there. ; Tv and Av modes for movie shooting, nice again, it was weird having either full manual or full auto modes and nothing in between. ; Audio sampling from 44.1 to 48khz. ; Eh, whatever, maybe that's a little more standards compliant, I'm not sure. ; Slightly higher quality, it'll provide a slightly higher frequency coverage.
And something about a "phenomenon" where communication with the lens is interrupted when the manual lens cleaning function is used being fixed. ; Fair enough, always useful to clean up the bugs.
I was really hoping to see a 720p60 (1280x720 resolution, 60 frames per second) video mode, but no dice there. ; Still I appreciate the surprise appearance of the manual level control. ; Used right it should let me get away from the typical sound of an auto level camcorder, in silent moments it won't jack up the sensitivity making the ambient room noise louder, that sort of thing.
I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. ; I don't expect that they're going to make a habit of adding features to their cameras after release, they must have really been feeling heat from what I still think was their intentional limiting of the video feature set of the mkII.
