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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 :)

RED one vs Canon 5D Mark 2

What nonsense

What nonsense

This whole thread is trash Canon never aimed this camera at the same market as Red stating at its Photokina launch that it was aimed at wedding photographers (unless wedding photographers have bought Red!)
Its like comparing a flat panel TV to a photoframe get real and talk about serious cinematography issues.
 
Have you Seen Vincent's short?

Have you Seen Vincent's short?

Nova Invicta said:
This whole thread is trash Canon never aimed this camera at the same market as Red stating at its Photokina launch that it was aimed at wedding photographers (unless wedding photographers have bought Red!)
Its like comparing a flat panel TV to a photoframe get real and talk about serious cinematography issues.
Click to expand...

That short made him a celebrity DP and is in line with many professional cinematography materials out there. Look-even Red gave him a camera for the surfing shot....
The wedding video on the other hand is pretty lame except for the shallow DOF and could be easily bettered by a camcorder. Just my opinion BTW...
Jacek Zakowicz, Optitek
 
filmmaker's gang said:
holy cow.. are you sure you bought the same camera model as me?.. :) :)
Click to expand...

Nope, but I'll provide you with sample footage illustrating these issues, if you like (and, no, this was just a real world test shoot not designed in any way to test any particular ability of the camera).:wink:
 
MosesMa said:
Where the 5Dii fits is for "doing serious photography" - as in "wow, what a beautiful sunset", "so this is Antelope Canyon", "babe, don't move, the light is perfect on your back".
Click to expand...
Actually, I'd like to add one more situation where a 5Dii would make sense. In the 12/08 issue of Videography magazine, Danny Boyle was interviewed (you know, Slumdog?), and says in the article, "We also used a Canon stills camera, which takes 12 frames a second. If people see a still camera, they don't think it is recording live action... Anthony would look like a tourist from Denmark who was wandering around the slums, but actually what he was doing was filming."

That's actually a very good point. I once shot a rave, and used a Panasonic SD-1 I got in Tokyo before it was released in the US, to shoot while in the crowd. Using a small camera makes some impossible shots possible.
 
very good point. Imagine shooting something in your average city centre? Imagine the costs of going to the city council and saying. I want to shoot some street scenes, how much will that cost?

Now imagine doing that with a dslr.

But for any production with multiple values the m11 is not sufficient for overall production. It is extremely limited. Just because one DOP got support from canon and shot something that utilises the advantage of the canon does not make this an ideal camera for standalone at all unless of course you have an extremely limited budget in which you will add the sacrifice to the long list of other sacrifices you have to make in that situation and change your production to suit the needs of the camera.

The sweet spot with this camera is travel videography (lightweight, web release etc..), possibly arial, crash cam, 24hour shoots, Street scenes, verite low budget grungy etc...
 
Audio Sync

Audio Sync

Here's the Canon EOS 5D MK2 audio sync issue or problem.

Last Wednesday I used my two 5D MkII's in a 3 camera music video shoot. The third camera was a Sony PMW-EX1. Audio was recorded on two additional devices. One audio recording device was an Edirol R4 Pro. The other audio recording setup was a Tascam USB Interface to a MacBook Pro.

The Sony Camera, Edirol, and Tascam/MacBook Pro devices all synced sound perfectly over the full duration of the shoot (just over 20 minutes). To clarify - once the different sources are sync'd quickly and easily to the slate clap on the waveform at the beginning of the shoot they all stayed perfectly in sync for the rest of the video.

Both Canon cameras audio and video sync'd perfectly to each other but drifted significantly from the other 3 devices even over a 3 minute segment. That is a very serious problem for me and one that introduces significant post-production trouble and expense.

This issue was so unexpected (I haven't run into this in years of working with a range of equipment) that I performed 3 subsequent tests to confirm that the 5D MkII's run too fast. The results from the tests show both of my 5D Mark II's run about 14 frames too fast in 10 minutes. Audio that is 1 full frame out of sync is noticeable on sharp sounds causing an echo. Audio that is 2 or 3 frames out of sync causes echo on any sound and looks odd in terms of lip sync.

That the two Canon cameras audio sync'd OK to each other tells me that the cameras can be calibrated to a standard. Evidently they are just calibrated to an incorrect standard.

Anybody else experience this? Does anybody really know if this is likely a chip issue or a firmware issue? Does anyone know an easy, reliable way to get the clips to conform to the standard without time-consuming constant tweaking?

I contacted Canon tech support and the girl there wasn't too concerned. She said: There is no fix and that the 5d isn't really a video camera so what did I expect? Nice!
 
It seems like it's because the 5D mk2 runs at 30 fps instead of the 29.97 fps that the broadcast cameras are running at. Are you using FCP? Try using Cinema Tools to 'Conform' the 5D footage to 29.97 from 30. That might fix the drift.
 
Michael White said:
Here's the Canon EOS 5D MK2 audio sync issue or problem.

Last Wednesday I used my two 5D MkII's in a 3 camera music video shoot. The third camera was a Sony PMW-EX1. Audio was recorded on two additional devices. One audio recording device was an Edirol R4 Pro. The other audio recording setup was a Tascam USB Interface to a MacBook Pro.

The Sony Camera, Edirol, and Tascam/MacBook Pro devices all synced sound perfectly over the full duration of the shoot (just over 20 minutes). To clarify - once the different sources are sync'd quickly and easily to the slate clap on the waveform at the beginning of the shoot they all stayed perfectly in sync for the rest of the video.

Both Canon cameras audio and video sync'd perfectly to each other but drifted significantly from the other 3 devices even over a 3 minute segment. That is a very serious problem for me and one that introduces significant post-production trouble and expense.

This issue was so unexpected (I haven't run into this in years of working with a range of equipment) that I performed 3 subsequent tests to confirm that the 5D MkII's run too fast. The results from the tests show both of my 5D Mark II's run about 14 frames too fast in 10 minutes. Audio that is 1 full frame out of sync is noticeable on sharp sounds causing an echo. Audio that is 2 or 3 frames out of sync causes echo on any sound and looks odd in terms of lip sync.

That the two Canon cameras audio sync'd OK to each other tells me that the cameras can be calibrated to a standard. Evidently they are just calibrated to an incorrect standard.

Anybody else experience this? Does anybody really know if this is likely a chip issue or a firmware issue? Does anyone know an easy, reliable way to get the clips to conform to the standard without time-consuming constant tweaking?

I contacted Canon tech support and the girl there wasn't too concerned. She said: There is no fix and that the 5d isn't really a video camera so what did I expect? Nice!
Click to expand...

LOL, gotta love such helpful tech support.

I have shot only two real video tests with my 5D, and neither included much audio, nor was I recording to any other device (audio or video), so I've had no experience trying to sync to different devices.

But perhaps one starting point for the investigation, it seems to me, is the fact that the 5D purports to shoot at the odd frame rate of 30 (even) fps instead of normal NTSC 29.97. That raises a host of related questions:

What frame rate is your project, and how does your NLE handle frame rate conversions? (I know next to nothing about this, only that some software supposedly does a better job than others in handling this conversion).

Did you frame rate convert your 5D files before editing (e.g., with a Cineform intermediate)?

Do the video frames from the Sony and Canons stay perfectly in sync at all points or do they drift together and apart over time?

I'd suggest a controlled pitch test using the canon and another reliable audio recorder of a sustained tone (holding a note down on an organ type patch or simple sine wav on a synthesizer or digital keyboard would be ideal) and compare the waveforms. Listen for presence or absence of "beating" upon simultaneous playback of the two files, which indicates a very slight frequency difference even though the tones are nominally the same pitch. It might be helpful in this test to also experiment with the playback speed controls of one or the other files to see if you can eliminate the drift (Vegas lets you control playback speed in the media properties window for a particular file).

I would be mainly interested in finding out if the sync issues wax and wane, as in some kind of imperfection with the interleaving, or whether they are always cumulative and always worsening as the file gets longer with the 5D always getting "ahead" of the other sources and sounding ever so slightly higher in pitch. The latter, it seems to me, might simply indicate that the 5D is really recording and meant to be played back at 29.97 instead of the 30.00 that the literature indicates and that the media flags are telling the NLE to utilize. 29.97 makes a heck of a lot more sense than 30.00, and if that's the "problem", it wouldn't be the first outright mistake in Canon literature about technical aspects of the 5D Mark II.
 
Kenn Michael said:
It seems like it's because the 5D mk2 runs at 30 fps instead of the 29.97 fps that the broadcast cameras are running at. Are you using FCP? Try using Cinema Tools to 'Conform' the 5D footage to 29.97 from 30. That might fix the drift.
Click to expand...

LOL, I wish your post had posted before I started my long-winded treatment of the same issue.
 
Michael White said:
I contacted Canon tech support and the girl there wasn't too concerned. She said: There is no fix and that the 5d isn't really a video camera so what did I expect? Nice!
Click to expand...

Any one of you could get any usefull info from tech support or Canon insider (not speaking CEO that happens only with RED) ?

We still are stuck with no 25p support and this is major drawback not to use the 5D MKII for a video shoot in most country of the world.

How could we get in touch with them?

Patrick
 
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