Everyone has owned a Swiss Army Knife at one time or another, and, at one time or another, it has probably saved all of our butts. Wouldn’t it be great if you had one for your camera? Well, if you’re the owner of a Canon XL H1 or XL2, your Swiss Army Knife has arrived. Canon’s Console software takes what were already fabulous cameras and brings them up to an entirely new level, making not only remote operation possible but easy, and giving digital filmmakers control over their images in the field that until now was unheard of. And did I mention that Console also turns your PC into a digital video recorder, in either DV or HDV? And while we’re at it, why don’t I mention that the price is set at a low $600. Sounds like a total bargain to me.

Essentially, Console takes all the video adjustment functions buried in the camera menus and brings them out to the computer. A monitor lets you preview your tweaks in real time, and a waveform monitor and vectorscope help you keep your signal legal. And the adjustments you can make are numerous, including overall color gain and individual RGB channel gains, video setup level and master pedestal, sharpness and coring, color matrix tweaking and more. Gamma level, knee settings and black stretch and press are all individually available as well. A really useful feature is the "Variations" panel, where you see thumbnails on the computer screen that preview the effect your tweaks will have before you actually perform them. It’s no overstatement to say that if you can’t find a look you like with this level of control, you’re probably being too picky. And when you do find that elusive look, you can save it on the computer’s hard drive, into the camera’s preset registers, or onto the SD memory card (XL H1 only). Recalling is just as simple, so creating a library of preferred looks is a fairly trivial affair.

If that was all Console did, that would be enough, but you also get control of iris, white balance, zoom and focus (with the fully electronic lenses). Which raises the question: Can Console act as a video control panel for studio-based production? I sure can’t see why not. And for stations wrestling with the desire to go HD in the studio without going broke, this is the control panel you’ve been waiting for. And if you want to record your footage directly to a hard drive, Console will do that, too. Once some low-cost HD-SDI switchers hit the market to take advantage of the XL H1’s HD-SDI output, this should be a no-brainer. Add a Camplex box to provide tally lights, headset and camera power and any small-market station could be good to go in great-looking HD.

As cool as Console is, it isn’t perfect, though many of the small problems relate to the FireWire interface. Most notable is the lag between moving a control slider and the actual adjustment on the camera, which feels like forever but is actually around two seconds. You won’t be doing any real-time focus pulls with Console. Also, the idea of counting on the incredibly fragile 4-pin FireWire connection that exists on all DV/HDV cameras for any production gives me the chills. It’s also a PC-only piece of software, but on the whole, these are nitpicks.

Canon’s revolutionary Console software gives the owners of a $9,000 camera paintbox features found only in top level EFP cameras. At $600, it’s just short of indispensable- just like that Swiss Army Knife in your pocket.