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Canon T2i / 7D Editing


Scott Bullock

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Hello,

 

I'm looking to do some experimentation with both of these cameras. Can someone please tell me about editing software for these cameras? Do the cameras come bundled with editing software? What about using Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express? Use the h.264 codec? Transcode for ProRes?

 

Any and all thoughts on how to go about editing footage shot with these cameras is greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!

 

Scott

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Common thinking at present as far as I know is to transcode to prores and then edit in FCP on the mac side, dunno 'bout AVID as I haven't tried 'em in an AVID yet, but I would assume similar. Transcoding isn't necessary... but it does make the actual cutting a lot less processor intensive as it's not needing to decode the [complex] h.264 stream.

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Common thinking at present as far as I know is to transcode to prores and then edit in FCP on the mac side, dunno 'bout AVID as I haven't tried 'em in an AVID yet, but I would assume similar. Transcoding isn't necessary... but it does make the actual cutting a lot less processor intensive as it's not needing to decode the [complex] h.264 stream.

 

Hi Adrian,

 

Thanks for your reply. I'll be editing on a Mac with FCP, so it looks like your idea is a viable one. From reading online, it looks like a lot of people are transcoding to XDCAM, also. ProRes might be a better option, I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure (haven't used the cameras yet, still gathering info) that the 7D and T2i use 4:1:1 color spacing, so I think going to ProRes will convert to 4:2:2 (could be wrong on this).

 

What are you using for transcoding? What works seemlessly with FCP?

 

Thanks again!

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Hey Scott,

I believe the Canons like the XDCam EX is a 4:2:0, and while the XDCam Codec is quite nice and native in FCP, I'd still say go ProRes. Bigger files, yes, but it seems to be a lot less stressful on the computer when cutting (I often transcode my own XDCam selects to ProRes when I'm editing them for better integration in Color). For the transcoding, I just use Compressor and drag them all in and let them batch. Then I'll reimport the files. Painless, though not necessarily always quick.

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AVID will have Media Composer 5 out on June 10th (unofficial NAB announcement). It ingests Canon HDSLR files natively, no transcoding required. It's supposed to make working with the Canons much easier.

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Sorry folks, I'm not getting notifications of replies for some reason (yes, I checked the notifications box).

 

Anyway, thanks for all of the great tips and advice.

 

Does anyone know what the actual resolution of the 7D and T2i is? Is it a true 2K? I'd heard somewhere that it's actually 1K that's upscaled to 1920 X 1080. Is there any truth to that?

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Probably well worth looking at this:

 

http://rarevision.com/5dtorgb/

Let me elaborate. This tool is in development, and therefore is still missing features. That said, if anyone would like to test it, please contact me offline and we'll talk. I developed the tool primarily for VFX work, but since it effectively gives you the highest possible quality image out of the camera, it's useful for any purpose that requires high image quality.

 

Does anyone know what the actual resolution of the 7D and T2i is? Is it a true 2K? I'd heard somewhere that it's actually 1K that's upscaled to 1920 X 1080. Is there any truth to that?

I have read similar claims. However, we don't really know what exactly Canon are doing in the camera. Some down/upscaling tests would probably give us a general idea of how much real resolution there is. I can say that the camera generates a full raster 1920x1088 (yes, that's "1088," not "1080") image for Y, and 960x544 for Cr and Cb (remember, this is YUV 4:2:0). 5DtoRGB chroma interpolates Cr and Cb to 1920x1088 so all three channels have matching dimensions.

post-565-1272178931.jpg

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Guest piyush sharma

why can't we just import footage from 7d card and import it in FCP. why all this mumbo jumbo? FCP support .h264 codec ?

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why can't we just import footage from 7d card and import it in FCP. why all this mumbo jumbo? FCP support .h264 codec ?

 

Because then it would look like the image on the left (above), as opposed to the image on the right. Also, it's not very easy to edit h.264 directly, although many NLEs will make a reasonable stab at it.

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why can't we just import footage from 7d card and import it in FCP. why all this mumbo jumbo? FCP support .h264 codec ?

Apple's built-in H.264 decoder is a general purpose decoder. That means it is designed to do many different things, including playing back 1080p trailers from Apple's website in realtime. Unfortunately, this also means compromises are made on quality for performance reasons.

 

The image on the left is a reasonable attempt by Apple to reconstruct chroma from a 4:2:0 source (i.e. video compressed with H.264). However, it's not as good as it could be because decoding an image using extremely slow double precision math could cause stuttering during playback on some slower machines. There simply isn't enough CPU power to do all these calculations and afford realtime playback, which is one of the main things the Apple decoder was designed to do.

 

Since most programs use the built-in Apple decoder (including FCP, Canon's plugin, MPEG Streamclip, etc.), they all suffer from this problem and there's nothing you can do about it.

 

5DtoRGB doesn't care about realtime playback, so it can use the slowest, highest quality processing possible to deliver the cleanest image. It doesn't use QuickTime at all, and therefore doesn't use Apple's H.264 decoder.

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  • 1 month later...

Hey Scott,

I believe the Canons like the XDCam EX is a 4:2:0, and while the XDCam Codec is quite nice and native in FCP, I'd still say go ProRes. Bigger files, yes, but it seems to be a lot less stressful on the computer when cutting (I often transcode my own XDCam selects to ProRes when I'm editing them for better integration in Color). For the transcoding, I just use Compressor and drag them all in and let them batch. Then I'll reimport the files. Painless, though not necessarily always quick.

Hi adrian, Is compressor off the internet?

Edited by Cristian Carceller
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Hi adrian, Is compressor off the internet?

 

Compressor comes as part of final cut studio.

 

Compressor really does not like the h.264's out my 7d. It takes a very long time to apply settings to the clips and is slow to transcode to prores files.

 

Try this EOS Movie Plugin-E1 much faster to transcode and no need to wait around while compressor thinks about the settings you've applied.

 

Of course it's just using the quicktime conversion which won't be as good as what rarevision's app is doing but still pretty good quality.

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In the PC world Avid Media Composer 5 was released at the end of last week. I've got it up and running on my editing machine and will report back as soon as I get a chance to check out the new AMA feature that handles the Canon files directly on the timeline (no transcoding).

 

Avid didn't warn anyone in advance (to my best knowledge) that MC5 and AMA would require a much stouter computer than transcoded files running on MC4. My dual Xeon HP workstation will be borderline with AMA and I may have to buy a couple of dual core Xeon's to upgrade it to quad core. Just about when I think I've got about the baddest workstation in Dodge City I find out it's yesterday's news. Damn that Moore's Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moores_law

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Does anyone know what the actual resolution of the 7D and T2i is? Is it a true 2K? I'd heard somewhere that it's actually 1K that's upscaled to 1920 X 1080. Is there any truth to that?

 

It's a little over 1K:

http://www.cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?p=47199

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=186334

 

It's not technically "upscaled", more that between all the pixel binning / line skipping to get 18MP down to 2MP, and the h.264 compression, the 4:2:0 color space, etc. that measurable resolution is around 750 lines for a 1080 line recording, the rest of the detail is just moire / aliasing. But that's true for most recordings, the measurable resolution is below the recorded resolution (in fact, that's generally preferable to avoid aliasing... but in this case, that's not the reason for the lower resolution.)

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Very nice, Bill.

 

I wonder how much difference the improved colour resampling would make on the big screen.

 

Thanks, Phil-

 

Much easier to color correct, no banding issues or artifacting to deal with.

Slight benefit in latitude due to the transcoded image being less contrasty and cleaner over all.

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It's a little over 1K:

http://www.cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?p=47199

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=186334

 

It's not technically "upscaled", more that between all the pixel binning / line skipping to get 18MP down to 2MP, and the h.264 compression, the 4:2:0 color space, etc. that measurable resolution is around 750 lines for a 1080 line recording, the rest of the detail is just moire / aliasing. But that's true for most recordings, the measurable resolution is below the recorded resolution (in fact, that's generally preferable to avoid aliasing... but in this case, that's not the reason for the lower resolution.)

 

Thanks for the reply, David. Do you happen to know the reasoning for the lower resolution? Suffice to say, it's a bit disappointed to hear that it's actually a lower resolution than I thought it would be. I'm still getting some amazing images from the camera though. Maybe I'm just overly impressed with the shallow DOF.

 

Thomas, your software is awesome! I'll see if I can't get some sample footage or some grabs posted in the near future.

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Don't be so concerned with resolution. It really doesn't matter, at all.

 

Does it look good to you? Fit what you are using it for? No need to question more than that.

 

I appreciate the comments, Vincent; that philosophy makes a lot of sense to me. Yes, the footage definitely looks good and I wouldn't think twice about using the T2i on an indie feature. In fact, I plan to!

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  • 4 months later...

AVID will have Media Composer 5 out on June 10th (unofficial NAB announcement). It ingests Canon HDSLR files natively, no transcoding required. It's supposed to make working with the Canons much easier.

 

We use Media Composer 5 here with t2i cameras and yes you can import the native files, but we prefer to transcode all our t2i footage to uncompressed DNxHD using Mpeg streamclip. Also that is the only time consuming step, since we link to the footage using AMA, (avid media access) which is instantaneous. The avid workflow is solid for the DSLR.

 

By the way, you can get Media Composer 5 for $295 as a student or educator. Try find Final Cut for that price. :)

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uncompressed DNxHD

One or the other, not both!

I never cease to be amazed how many people assume that the codec-o-the-moment (DNx, prores, red's latest permutation of JPEG-2000) are "uncompressed". Less compressed, sure, but to be honest there are standard def formats that shoot more bitrate than a Canon DSLR.

P

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