Canon's Video Achilles' heel

Canon has the best video coverage of any DSLR. Yet it has a genuine Achilles heel in my opinion.

It seems petty I know, but I think its important. Canon offers 1920x1080(30p,25p,24p)​, 1280x720(60p,50p) and VGA. Notice something missing?

Where is the 1280x720(30p,24p). The whole point of 1280x720 for me is half the bandwidth, meaning significant reduction in workflow (download, edit, encode, etc). Yet the 1280x720(60p) has the same bandwidth as 1920x1080(30p).

Will it stop me from buying canon gear, no. Who else has even these modes. In fact Pentax kills Nikon in this area. Canon is still the leader.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the 720p 60fps works wonders for slow motion. I just like options.

davidfig wrote in post #10132753
Canon has the best video coverage of any DSLR. Yet it has a genuine Achilles heel in my opinion.

It seems petty I know, but I think its important. Canon offers 1920x1080(30p,25p,24p)​, 1280x720(60p,50p) and VGA. Notice something missing?

Where is the 1280x720(30p,24p). The whole point of 1280x720 for me is half the bandwidth, meaning significant reduction in workflow (download, edit, encode, etc). Yet the 1280x720(60p) has the same bandwidth as 1920x1080(30p).

Will it stop me from buying canon gear, no. Who else has even these modes. In fact Pentax kills Nikon in this area. Canon is still the leader.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the 720p 60fps works wonders for slow motion. I just like options.

Get a t1i then. It has 720p 30fps. And it's not about 720p 60fps being for slowmo, it's that it requires the same processing as 1080p 30fps. Both are level 4.1 h264, so they can optimize the firmware for level 4.1 processing rather than 4.1, 3.1, and 2 (for vga)

Unfortunately the T1i is limited to essentially 720p.

Don't forget 640x480!

But really, why not just get a larger card and an esata reader? It'll give you space and speed. Hell, the sandisk ultra cards are at about $4.50/gb, which is very, very cheap. And work great for 5dmkii.

Talking about the 5dmkii, we don't even get 720p at all. Not at 60fps or 30fps.

The term "Achilles Heel" is a little strong here, since I do not see this as a flaw that will somehow cause the downfall of Canon in the dSLR video market. It might be an inconvenience, but Canon failing in market due to this lack of a resolution setting like the one you want? Not likely.