Canon 5D Mark II HD Short Video

Hello All,

Just released DiveFilm HD Podcast episode 31 which is a cool short film shot by Backscatter's Jim Decker and Russ Sanoian on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR.

This podcast video has been converted in Final Cut Pro to ProResHQ, edited, then compressed using Compressor to AppleTV spec for the HD podcast. The original footage is Canon's variant of long-GOP H.264 1920x1080 30p at 40 Mbits/sec. The encoded podcast is H.264 1280x720 24p at 5 Mbits/sec. Compressed file size is 93 MB.

Checking out the video via iTunes helps support the podcast continuing to be "Featured" at iTunes. But you can also access the video via the hd podcast xml.

I am just so impressed by the HD footage possible with this DSLR, I'm fighting hard not to take the leap to this cam! Really love what I'm seeing both uw and topside with this cam...

Enjoy!

Mary Lynn

Oh, my! Looks amazing. Temptation............

I see what you mean ML

Steve

Great colours... do you know what lenses he was using Mary? A couple of the shots looks super wide / fisheye?

They were using a 15mm fisheye and a 100mm macro for those shots. That's one of the really compelling aspects of shooting HD video with a high end DSLR--the great lenses that can be used! Of course, that also restricts potential subjects based on your lens selection for a particular dive--what still shooters have always faced.

For me, it's just so cool to see great underwater fisheye HD video, and the shallow depth-of-field macro and medium shots--imaging that I'm more accustomed to seeing only in stills or high end feature films--but from a DSLR!

And for poorer visibility dives, shooting in closer to wrecks and other wide-angle subjects with 15mm fisheye makes for a very good image!

I really like the imaging possibilities!

But there's definitely a learning curve for those of us who are accustomed to shooting video on video cams...

ML

Nice vid... Its still going to probably cost well over £6000 (UK prices) for that kit without including lights and accessories... I'd wait for 'Scarlet' myself...

Dive safe

DeanB

Mary Lynn

Very cool, and I am getting close to pulling the trigger myself (actually in the process)

Quick question, and a bit OT, have you seen any footage dropped to DVD @29.97 and how well Final Cut Studio handled the conversion?

Very cool, and I am getting close to pulling the trigger myself (actually in the process)

Excellent--looking very much forward to seeing what you do with the new cam, and getting your reports!

On the topic of DVDs, if you are referring to Standard Def DVDs, while I have not yet authored a SD DVD from 5D footage, my experience over the years making SD DVDs from various HD source formats is 'Quality In, Quality Out" and use a good compressor! (Although it's always tragic to have to downconvert beautiful HD footage for SD DVDs...)

There are a number of different workflows for editing 5D footage in Final Cut Pro (including Lynda.com's that involves transcoding to DVCPRO HD). And there are rumors that the next version of Final Cut Pro may support editing the 5D's H.264 footage natively. (You can already import into FCP, do hard cuts, and export self-contained QT movies without losing any image quality; but adding any text, filters or transitions drops the data rate and quality substantially.)

My suggestion for a good Mac workflow for the time being would be to transcode the 5D footage to ProRes or ProResHQ for editing, then use a high quality SD MPEG-2 pre-set in Compressor for encoding, author in DVD Studio Pro. Give it a go when you can, and let us know what you learn!

Mary Lynn

Thanks for posting Mary-Lynn

I must agree that the quality of video we are seeing from 5D2 is astounding. I was initially not too optimistic of getting great results underwater but the firmware upgrade made all the difference and the stuff ( wide angle anyway) that I have been recording looks sooo good when played back on HDTV.

My problem is that I am still very challenged at editing and converting so for now it is just straight playback from the camera. But thanks for your tip about the next version of Final Cut pro. Seems worthwile to wait for that.

Hi Andre,

Thank you for writing! This cam is definitely a game-changer. For those of us more accustomed to shooting with video cams and editing, the learning curve has more to do with using DSLR cams and lenses. For folks coming from the still photo world, the curve will be more in the video editing. But I am so thrilled to be seeing the beginnings of this digital imaging convergence!

If you are on a Mac and just starting out editing, you can also currently edit the 5D footage in the latest version of iMovie. (iMove is really easy to learn, has great tutorial videos and help menu.) The results will look really good for many purposes, the main downside being that iMovie converts the footage to Apple Intermediate Codec to work with it, which is not a really high quality codec. But it's good enough to start learning with....

In fact, the very first time I saw 5D HD footage was in an iMovie-edited 960x540 Quicktime movie export, and what I saw just knocked my socks off! That's when I knew something was up with this new DSLR!

That said, when you're ready to tackle the curve, editing the 5D footage in higher end formats and editing programs will really pay off for you.

Looking very much forward to seeing your work in the future!

Mary Lynn

Excellent--looking very much forward to seeing what you do with the new cam, and getting your reports!

 

 

On the topic of DVDs, if you are referring to Standard Def DVDs

Thanks for the info, I usually follow the same general workflow, sounds like the 30P goes to 29.97 okay?

But please do not respond, I am mad at you and currently no longer speaking with you click here to find out why I am mad

Hello everyone

Hey Mary, long time no hear..... I downloaded the 93 meg clip and played it full screen on my 17 inch laptop here no probs.

Certainly looks good, exposure jumps abit and might be abit hard to keep the camera steady in those SLR housings.

Yes they will be allot easy to travel with that's for sure.

Any chance of getting some raw footage to play with here?

I got a server you can load it to.

Cheers

Paul

Hey Paul!

Great to hear from you! It's good to be back playing on the forum--missed you all!

Let me forward this to Backscatter's Jim Decker and Russ Sanoian and see what they can do about getting some raw footage to you to play with in Edius!

Then please report back on what you discover!?

Some of the topside stuff folks are doing with this cam is really cool, too...

The exposure changes in the DiveFilm HD podcast are manual changes (I'm pretty sure) the shooters are making on the fly.

Mary Lynn

Hey Paul,

There are a few manual exposure changes in this clip. The entire clip was shot with manual exposure mode. The goal was to show this as raw as possible, and I wasn't as concerned about a few imperfections that I would normally edit out. On some shots I was using a tripod, and the macro shot was done with Sunray 2000 lights. The system handled very well in wide angle with the 15mm. A tripod with the 100mm is mandatory.

For the workflow I converted to ProRes HQ then added the titles and exported as ProRes before sending off to Mary Lynn. I had to go this route rather than editing in H264 because the bit rate would drop down to 33 as I stitched clips together, and 9 when I added titles.

I have found that the clip looks much better on my HDTV than on my computer screen.

On another note, you guys here in the video forum don't usually see me too much as I am usually over in the DSLR forum, but now shooting with this camera, I do not see myself doing much stills in the near future...

Best regards,

Jim

Hi Wagsy,

I am hosting three Original Clips on my Homepage:

http://www.belowthesurface.de/media/movies...II/MVI_2491.MOV

http://www.belowthesurface.de/media/movies...II/MVI_2492.MOV

http://www.belowthesurface.de/media/movies...II/MVI_2493.MOV

NO underwater footage!

EDIT: copy/paste bug corrected!

Hi Wagsy,

 

I am hosting three Original Clips on my Homepage:

http://www.belowthesurface.de/media/movi…II/MVI_2491.MOV

http://www.belowthesurface.de/media/movi…II/MVI_2492.MOV

http://www.belowthesurface.de/media/movi…II/MVI_2493.MOV

 

NO underwater footage!

For some reason the links are not working, seems between "/media/" to "/MV_2491.MOV" (all three) is just "movi...II" and getting garbled.

Sorry! Now it should work!

Sorry! Now it should work!

Cool - it works Thanks.

Hello

All interesting stuff indeed and now you have manual controls.

Downloaded those raw clips from Christian's there, thank you

They played full screen very nice.

Drop them on the EDIUS timeline, only got 1920/1080 25p or 50i, seem to make no difference though the raw clips nearly played real time.

30P is not a Blue ray spec speed anyhow.

Right clicked on them and converted them to Canopus HQ about 1.1 in the conversation speed here on my 2.5 Ghz PC Bookpro.

Also converted to the lossless Canopus codec they both then edit much easier but file sizes went to from 60meg to 200meg and 500 megs.

Its amazing that you can edit this stuff on a $1800 AUD PC laptop.

I remember my Matrox RT 2000 was a two card set that had to be installed to get real time mini DV edits.

Looking forward to playing with some longer clips.

How many minutes of video can it shoot before the cards full?

How many minutes of video can it shoot before the cards full?

It is limited to 29 Minutes 59 Seconds a clip or 4 Gigs per clip, whichever comes first from what I have been reading. (I have not yet tested that though)