Canon 5d mkii video processing

Hi there,

I have been having some issues with processing videos taken with my Canon 5d mkii. Granted I have not had huge experiences in dealing with HD video, infact this is my first time.

I tried Adobe Premiere .. really don't like it, not easy to use and not great end results.

Sony Vegas seems to suit me better. It has a nice option to create a new project that is for 'online HD' Trouble is .. if I have a raw video of 400mb .. it ends up rendering it to over 20GB .. which is just insane. I am obviously doing something wrong. For the most part right now I just want to be able to share my video online in HD. Maybe down the line if i get a bit more serious or better at it I will try my had a TV quality.

Can anyone point me in the right direction to get online HD video ready for upload?

I don't see why Vegas shouldn't do a good job of it, i also expect te file to be smaller than the original version.

Any advice or direction on how to get what I want end result wise very welcome!

Hi Giles

Congrats on getting a D5, should have myself a 7D very soon.

Here is what I do with the raw clips.

Using my PC laptop.

Import the raw clips to the EDIUS bin and then right click on them and convert to Canopus HQ codec.

400mb clip will end up like a couple gigs once converted but not 20?

Then edit away in real time.

Once finished, render timeline out to say 1280/720 QT H.264 @ 3-5mbps and load up to youtube or vimeo.

Abit lower then go 960/540 @3mbps.

The clips should look great.

Wags

What you need is Cineform's Neoscene to transcode the .mov for Vegas to work. Check your settings too. It'd be easier if you gave us what settings you are set for. Some people want to do uncompressed 444... and those files are big than the average AVC

I will try and work out what the settings are .. but in Vegas it's an auto choice of Online Video HD ... there is an option to auto upload to youtube .. but that doesn't end up being either HD .. or filling the whole video area, very crap.

Oh and I really don't want to buy any new software, but if others are way better then maybe i will

To fill the video area, upload the video as 1920/1080 or 1280/720 or 960/540 or 480/270.

Giles go and download MPEG Streamclip and convert the clips to something Vegas can edit if you dont want to buy Cineforms plugin.

www.squared5.com

I don't have any issues editing .. i simply drag and drop the .mov file to the library and then the timeline and I can do what i like frame by frame etc .. not that my editing is that advanced.

my issue is exporting for HD web upload. I don't understand why a 400mb clip when exported specifically using vegas' HD online video comes out over 20gb .. it's crazy .. if i have some time tomorrow I will try slapping in your settings above manually and see what happens.

I am either dumb or this HD video for web thing is not as simple as it should be!

I may just break down and get the HD flip .. lol never use the video function on my 5d!!

Cineform should come with Vegas 9. It's obviously your settings that are screwy so you need to be more specific with what you need. I haven't used Vegas in a while so I think Nick will probably be the better person to ask than me.

Giles, try asking your Vegas-specific questions on the official Vegas forum. People there are extremely knowledgeable and helpful.

Ok this is what I get from the property area.

Audio: 48,000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo, PCM Uncompressed.

Video: 29.97 fps, 1920x1080, Upper field first.

Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.000, using Sony YUV codec. OpenDML compatible.

The problem I think i was this, i choose the file properties to be Sony Vegas' Internet video, which may be made more for self hosting or older style video. I changed the video type to HDV (1280x720 29fps) and am trying the upload to youtube option to see what happens this time .. I think it will be an improvement, then I just need to work out how to render for upload to tubemogul or vimeo for example.

Will post what I learn incase I have anything useful for dummies just like me. this video stuff .. there's way too many things to get right!

Upload to Youtube did not work well!

this is what happens on every attempt so far .. a black frame around the video

Giles, just google encoding Vegas X with Youtube. That should give you the best settings around. I do remember Vegas having a Pro and normal version. Depending on which one you have, it may be limited.

Drew, let's just say i am trialing (cough) Vegas Platinum 9.0 which i think is the best they have.

I just managed to convert into an .avi file to work in full screen in youtube, still no HD option.

I am rendering and uploading a .wmv version 1280x720 30fps .. blah blah blah hoping this works with an HD.

I have so far got the original 400mb video rendered as 50mb .. which seems about right to me for a 1.5minute video.

will see if the .wmv is any better. (rendered as 85mb in default setting, size is not the issue now trying to find best quality)

oh look we only embed in 4:3 here .. oh well .. worked that out as well

forgot to mention .. the video is still processing on youtube so maybe the HD option will become available and the instant version is SD, trying the wmv anyway.

OK finished processing and HD is now working .. wohoo .. i got somewhere .. no to see if wmv is better quality once uploaded.

second HD upload .. this time in a wmv format .. i don't think it is as good as the avi format ... but it's marginal as the video is shockingly bad in the first place!

Now I am getting to grips with getting a better output I need to put together some better input, it's a really steep learning curve for me as I have always tried to keep video as simple as I can hence I loved the flip video camera i bought.

I may in the end upgrade to the HD next year when the new versions come out, but it would be nice to pump out some decent video from my 5d and then be able to know what I am doing when processing it.

Wags .. thanks for the settings you posted, that is what pointed me in the right directions, I now just need to fine tune it. I think I need some better video to do that with though.

Should thank Drew to . i googled wags ideas with yours and found some nice Vegas specific items .. none exactly what I wanted but very much the right direction!

So warning to all .. Vegas may have an 'Internet HD video' option for a should be easy render format option .. but it really is not worth trying. Secondly .. the upload to Youtube .. I still haven't had a great result with that, it may be possible but best results came from uploading after render to local pc first.

Haven't used the 5D myself but have had long discussions with Ken Stone on the workflow. Because the 5D shoots in 30fps and not 29.97 the frame rate and codec must be changed and transcoded. The workflow is a bit backwards in terms of working in FCP. Look for Ken's article on Compressor in this Sundays' article release on his site, www.kenstone.net.....if you don't feel like reading the whole thing, scroll down to the section on droplets where Ken walks you through both functions in Compressor. Once the frame rate and codec are changed, you are good to go in FC Pro. Wow, that rhymes!

Steve

Giles, glad to see you are getting it sorted out

Cannot watch the clip as the Sat connection here is too slow.

Yes, its always best to have complete control of you output settings compared to just clicking on a button that may say something like make video for youtube etc.

Even mess around with the keyframing rates. 25pal go for a keyframe every 250 frames in the QT settings, video will be smoother in playback.

I feel that generally wmv files will give out a softer image than a QT H.264 ones.

Wish I had my camera now...o well not long to wait..

Giles, Platinum is a version of Vegas Movie Studio, which is the mickey mouse version. Vegas Pro is the more fully-featured one they have, and 9.0c is the current version. I'm still on 8.0c because 9.0a/9.0b had a number of issues, and there haven't been enough new features in 9 to warrant an upgrade in my personal case.

The Sony YUV codec is not very compressed at all. File size is bigger than Cineform AVI for example, which is a low-compression codec intended for editing. Sony YUV is really not intended for uploading to YouTube etc..

In Vegas Pro 9 there are YouTube upload templates. There is an SD one and an HD one. I'm pretty sure they are using the Sony AVC (H.264) codec so in Vegas Pro you find them in the list of templates (file > render as > save as type > sony AVC > ...). I don't know if they are also in Movie Studio. HOWEVER, since a week or two ago, YouTube are doing 1080p so if you've got a decent connection then you want to be uploading 1080p to them. The Vegas Pro YouTube HD template is 720p. If you choose to go for 1080p you'll probably want to double the bitrate from the 720p template.

When you encode in Vegas, make sure you have a deinterlace method set in the project properties before you render. I tend to use "blend". If you don't have a deinterlace method set then you can get crappy results if there is any resizing going on.

If you want to try Vegas Pro 9, do yourself a favour and download the free trial which (as I recall) is fully functional. They have fixed a lot of stuff recently in the 9.0b and 9.0c versions so a "cough" version may well bring you trouble.

There are better formats for uploading to YouTube which can be reached by frameserving to Megui or Virtualdub and using third party open source codecs (my old SD method is here and my more recent 720p method is halfway down this thread). But they're very convoluted really. You can probably just achieve the same by throwing a bit more bitrate at the standard Vegas templates.

Thanks Nick ... will throw your advice into my processing when I try to give it another go over the weekend.

It is a fun learning curve and will be great to know at the end I can shoot some good quality video and share it with people. Then I will just be after content!