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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Transcoding/Editing Options for 5D2....

Tom Lowe

Tom Lowe

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I notice that when I drop the 5D II's 1080p H.264 clips into a 30p timeline (or 24p timeline with the clips interpreted at 24p) in Premiere, they do not scrub well. Very choppy/stuttery. I remember reading that H.264 is supposed to be a nightmare in NLEs... something about the clips not being frame accurate?

Anyway, I used HDLink to transcode the clips to Cineform 30p and wow, they work great in the timeline now! All hail Cineform!

Out of curiosity, what are some other options for conveniently transcoding H.264 to work well in an NLE? Could I just batch them through AE (Adobe Bridge?) into JPEG2000 or Photo-JPEG or something?

Thanks.
 
David, if you guys play your cards right, you might be able to sell a lot of software to 5D2 owners, once they figure out that dropping these MOVs directly into a timeline is not a good option.

If you need a camera or clips, let me know. I'm happy to help. :)
 
Since the 1080p has so many nasty artifacts, the first thing I will be doing with my 5d2 clips is converting them to 720p. Ideally it would be a 10-bit 4:2:2 codec, but if you don't have Cineform, another option is MPEG I-frame only, like what Premiere does for preview renders.
 
Daniel Browning said:
Since the 1080p has so many nasty artifacts, the first thing I will be doing with my 5d2 clips is converting them to 720p. Ideally it would be a 10-bit 4:2:2 codec, but if you don't have Cineform, another option is MPEG I-frame only, like what Premiere does for preview renders.
Click to expand...

Apparently you are not here looking over my shoulder at these beautiful 1080p 5D2 clips.
 
Tom said:
Apparently you are not here looking over my shoulder at these beautiful 1080p 5D2 clips.
Click to expand...

Most people find aliasing artifacts to be highly desirable. A lot of television has terrible (and I mean *bad*) aliasing, moire, and other artifacts. All the local news stations have it so bad that I have to wash my eyes out with soap after watching the news. (And that's not even counting their interlace twitter!)

Even photographers, most of them, think aliasing is desirable. They call it "sharpness", "crunchy", or "3-D", but it's just false detail.

Downsampling to 720p isn't going to fix anything, but it will help attenuate the very highest frequency aliasing artifacts (along with the real detail), although the contamination will persist as a contributor to the final image.
 
Where there is a will to capture beautiful images, there is a way.
 
Waiting patiently for some motion from you Tom. Can't wait to see what you conjure up.
 
I'm on PC, so Pro Res is not an option.

The trick transcoding to P-JPEG @ 95% works great. I have not tried to batch a bunch of clips yet, but I'm sure it can be done.

Cineform also works great.

I shot some extreme low-light stuff last night, and unfortunately there was a lot of chroma noise. The problem is, the camera will automatically ramp up the ISO all the way to 6400, whether you like it or not. What would be nice is some kind of ability to red line the ISO, so it could not go above 1600 or 3200, for example.

Honestly, I still have not figured out how to even SEE what ISO or f/stop are being used during filming movies.

BTW, what is the best way to remove chroma and/or luma noise in quicktime clips inside AE without buying plugins? I am so used to working with RAW files that I have never used AE to reduce noise in regular clips.
 
Tom said:
BTW, what is the best way to remove chroma and/or luma noise in quicktime clips inside AE without buying plugins?
Click to expand...

You might try the "Remove Grain" Effect. Also a gaussian blur may help. The "Neat Video" plugin has a free demo, that one is my favorite.
 
Tom

Newtek's speededit has proven itself in my tests with 5dmk2 raw footage. It handles it natively too. :) If you do try it, be sure to either lower contrast a bit or check the non ITU-whatever color checkbox in the layer properties menu. It'll unlock the extra dynamic range the clips have that most softwares just clip away. Btw, I can seriously vouch for Neatvideo. Just make sure to capture some pure noise clips and it'll do magic.
 
Btw, if you have lots of drive space, you can try transcoding to HuffYUV. It's free, lossless and weighs in at around half what uncompressed would.
 
With neatvideo, I see that there are plugins for both AE and Premiere Pro. These are different software? You have to choose one or the other?

Seems to me I would just get the Premiere Pro version, then I would not have to deal with AE in most situations.

BTW, I have been fooling around timewarp (pixel motion) in AE and some of the results are decent on 5D footage. It's obviously helpful to have the camera locked off for that type of effect to work.
 
From Tom ... " Honestly, I still have not figured out how to even SEE what ISO or f/stop are being used during filming movies."

Hey Tom...I found out that if you press the shutter release to the first point while shooting a movie, it (if you have the info button set to read out at the bottom of the frame) shows the ISO, etc that the camera has set. Also, I set the display to EXP SIM in the movie setting menu , then I can toggle the info button to show a Histogram (either luma or RGB...you set up the preference in the menu) to help determine exposure. Even though the camera sets the exposure, you can over/under it with the wheel, and the histogram helps set that.

Larry
 
Ah, nice find on that shutter press thing and exp sim. I just tried it and it works.

I got the Nikon lens adapter and tried my little trick with the Sigma 28-300: I set the iris manually to f/22 and then aimed the camera at a bright light source. Then I can AE lock exposure with the * button and lock ISO at like 200 or 400 or 640, whatever I want just by moving the camera around until it finds a good ISO. At this point, you can open the iris all the way up and the exposure is very nice, and the ISO will not add chroma noise.. problem solved! The only issue is that this Sigma lens's iris ring is quite difficult to reach and adjust on the 5D body. Maybe we could make some kind of clamp with a lever to make it easier?

I'm gonna shoot some long lens stuff down at the beach today.
 
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