Average POTN user 5dmk2 video to share workflow (i put it on smugmug)

[Super-Nicko]

FIRST EXPERIENCES AND PROCESSES used for making a HD 5D2 video - VIDEO link at end of post...

OK!

So this is by no means perfect. This isnt about making a film - nor about being the best thing in the world.

Ive been used to working with DV footage and i dont make films. I shoot stuff i like and put a DVD together to show family and friends - usually a christmas video or someones birthday etc. Im that guy in the family who has the cameras - you know the guy - hes as much you as he is me!

I try to keep my shots short and to the point - steady, etc etc.

If you read my first impressions from another thread (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=621186), you will see im still trying to figuire out a fast easy workflow for the average punter - as in want to get this footage, stitch it together, add a few fades and pump it out to bluray or in my case - DVD as i have no bluray player nor full HD TV (dont know why - ive got every other techy toy) OR stick it on the web for friends and family.

So as part of that thread i wanted to bump out a vid for you lot to show some shots with various lenses - but the only thing ive done is 10min long and christmas family stuff - which i thought was a bit too personal to broadcast to the world.

So yesterday i visited my folks who are housesitting a nice place on the river in Perth, WA (BICTON) and thought id do what an average user would do - with photography in mind - trying to adapt to more set shots for video as the 5d2 suits it more.

So i took a heap of clips - a few here and there over a few hours of the scenery and my family and a few bits 'n pieces - as I or you would do while just taking shots at events. Ended up about 1.6GB of video.

(MY PC - Quad CORE Q9450 2.66GHz - overclocked to 3.2GHz stable, 64bit VISTA Ultimate, 8gig ram, ATi 4870 video card - Antec gaming case(lots of airflow) - 2x 640gig HDD, 200g HDD, not in raid.)

Now the hard bit - editing. OK so its not hard - ive toyed with ULEAD, COREL VIDEOSTUDIO 11.5 - just as an easy throw together - it crashes on my PC sooo much its stupid... with lots of saves i get through quite easily but it drives ya nutz. Tried VEGAS PRO (which was a full featured demo) but i just dont know how to work it. As i said i wanted EASY and FAST for the mostpart... if i wanted to make a motion picture id go to school and learn how to do that. I think theres alot of people out there who are like me -

So i can put together an easy flick using videostudio - but i used to use ADOBE premiere pro v7.0 - its old! it doesnt do HD.. so i downloaded CS3 version... which operates the same in basic format - but it isnt a basic editor. It is stable though.

So i put together this clip using premiere pro CS3 - added a few fades - ripped out the audio as it was windy and no good, added a mp3 track.

Now to output. (adobe media encoder) - when outputting to DVD you can only choose PAL or NTSC - so PAL has more lines of resolution and is what we use over here in AUS - but less FPS - which is 25. All our players do NTSC but you lose horizontal lines of resolution but pick up 29.something FPS. I know nothing about this - except that i must drop the frames somewhere. So both NTSC and PAL outputs look good on DVD on SD televisions. Better than my DV handycam but it still isnt HD is it... and i dont have HD so i dont know what im missing out on yet.:)

Now to push it out for web... who can host this stuff??? VIMEO with limits... SMUGMUG :) yeah thats the stuff - so i trailed a PRO account - as my std account doesnt do video - i think ill be upgrading - starting with medium account which does DVD quality movies (the pro does 5min HD and 10min DVD quality - but is limited to 512MB)

They use H.264 encoding - which is MP4 - and adobe and the other HD software suites can do this... so i thought to pre encode it ready for upload. Smugmug uses 720p for their HD footage (its 720pix high by 1280 wide) and in export i can select 30fps.

I did it - it doesnt playback niceley on my PC for some reason (using quicktime to view it - but it does playback well on smugmug. Took about 30min to upload this 200mb clip. Did a 480mb version as i was unhappy with the conversion - but it didnt seem to work... maybe it was over the limit once recieved at the other end.

I wanted to tell you all this as its been trial and error for me. I dont know about codecs etc. I dont know what format to use for viewing on the web... either way these files are big. Editing takes time, encoding takes time, uploading takes time, and i must have pushed these files out 5 times per edit just to try different settings.

Im still not happy with the output file - youll see it on the link - the blacks look sh!tty and compressed but instead of waiting till i mastered it i thought id share my trial and error with you, rather than waiting to post the polished version. Then i can get your advice on improving workflow - and you can take from this what you will. I think smugmug converts the file again - although i do see similar results in the converted file on my pc. The originals are MUCH cleaner - but we are talking about converting 1.6GB of data down to 200 meg for sharing on the internet - something's gotta give.

Ok so the first 1:30min is with 100-400 - most of it at 400mm on tripod. at 1min i pulled the zoom from 400 to 100. i didnt know i was going to do this - its jerky but i wanted to try it anyways.

about 1:45min is with the 24-105. (circ polariser attached)

about 2:00min is 100 macro and a bottle of corona (vibration at 2:10 is wind - i didnt spend much time setting this shot up..)

2:35 24-105 is my wife (pregnant with baby #2) and son in foreground - neices playing the boardgame

3:30 onwards is 17-40 -My dad holding 5d 70-200 4IS and my Mum (closest) mucking around. Alot of this is getting sun flare with the setting sun. I wanted to try everything so wasnt shy of seeing what would happen looking into the sun

What do i need? a panning handle on my 488rc2 head hehe :) its hard to pan smoothly with this head. All shots were tripod mounted.

What else? i think some better conversions.. ill let you know if i suss the 480meg version out and upload it to see if its better.

So what you see is about 20 min of taking videos, about 20 min of CS3 editing, about 30min i think of encoding, 30min of uploading and 5 min of final footage.

If it were to dvd, the encode all thats required and a 3min burn to disc.

Please dont flame me for my poor understanding of video technique or process or terminology... i just like to make 'lil vids :)

LINK:

http://nicholascadd.smugmug.com/gallery/6957101_a3Nww#445427043_SuJck

Feel free to comment - everyone can learn a thing or 2 more -

Kind regards,
Nick

[Super-Nicko]

did the link to vid work?

[JIMography]

I clicked the link above which took me to the page, but no video. What am I doing wrong?

[Ducky 2.0T]

I clicked the link above which took me to the page, but no video. What am I doing wrong?

Click the picture for the video to start or try this link..

http://nicholascadd.smugmug.com/gallery/6957101_a3Nww#445427043_SuJck-A-LB

It worked for me. Might be a plug-in issue for others.

Comments: Good stuff for a first time. I've never done any video work and I look forward to it, should I pick up a 5dmkII. It will be the extent that I want to do, short clips here and there.

Do you have any shots from where you were filming. What functionality do you have whilst filming, can you adjust the settings etc?

[JIMography]

Click the picture for the video to start or try this link..

http://nicholascadd.smugmug.com/gallery/6957101_a3Nww#445427043_SuJck-A-LB



I see no picture, however, when i move my pointer across the page, the pointer changes to a hand, I click there, still nothing.

What plug in would I need?

[Super-Nicko]

Umm not 100% sure... i know it works on my screen -

you need to enable cookies i think and use Internet Explorer 6 or above...

I started using smugmug a long time ago so i cant remember what plug ins it installed...

[smcclelland]

Works fine for me, looks quite nice too.

Only thing I noticed was some artifacts which looks to have come from the compression/export stage. H264 is your best lossless codec to use, it takes a little playing with to get it down but it provides the best quality. I usually drop all my video stuff out in H264 using multiple passes, yeah it takes a hell of a lot longer but it's worth it imo.

Good stuff, how's the panning motion? I've got some ideas for motorsports/automotive stuff that I'm eager to test the 5DMk2 with :)

[Super-Nicko]

glad to know im on the right track... thanks for having a look - thought it may help out some others like me... this was more about the process rather than the actual footage.. there is no thin DOF footage in this clip and what not...

yeah the artifacts are not pretty... esp the big blocky look in the blacks - ill have to keep playing - any tips on encoding would be good and appreciated.

What do you use your output files for ? burn to bluray? or for net? or for viewing on your PC??

Panning - not so good - i have a feeling it will suffer in a pan to track a target... as in 'jaggies' or that dropped frame look... i just did a quick pan test out the back... i will convert and post...

i can prob file share somehow the original direct from camera footage of the pan - its only about 50mb

[tonylong]

Nice demo!

The 5D2 is not the end-all-be-all of video, but it definitely sets a bar for what can be done. Thanks for putting the work into this!

[smcclelland]

Encoding's tough, the H264 codec is pretty smart but it can be a pain in the ass if it's not bang on for a lot of things.

I output my files for a few things, any CG work I do gets cut to a demo reel which goes to the web and to DVD so I usually output two different file settings. Web streaming I keep medium -> high and basically drop the sound compression to the lowest possible without it sounding like an 8-bit nintendo track. For my DVD reel which gets sent to employers/clients I crank it to full, no audio compression and do multiple passes which surprisingly can take a few hours for 2 minutes of footage - did this once on a flight to Scotland and man was it ever rushed! -

Yeah, I figured there would be some jaggies involved which was pretty much where I decided I'd use the video for more of the 'out of turn blend into focus' shot or some nice slow motion entrance/exits.

How do you find the data throughput? I shot some footage over christmas with my girlfriend's fathers 5DMk2 using an 8gb Ultra II and a 8gb cheapo Transcend and didn't seem to notice any frame loss or stuttering. Reason I ask is the lovely chaps at the local camera store seem to think that everyone falls for the 'latest is greatest' and I've heard them plug only the ExtremeIV for the 5DMk2 video.

[Super-Nicko]

Well ive read up that if it needs to buffer a live feed it gives a little bucket logo showing it fill up - ive never seen it - and i use a 16GB Extreme 3 card. i havent tried any other cards in it -

i have seen what i think is the occasional stutter or odd frame - i am not sure what it is and i replay the footage a few times to check its in the same spot (to rule out a CPU speed issue on the PC)

Seeing as i havent seen the buffer fill - im assuming it isnt that reason - maybe it is... i would have assumed if the buffer fills then stutter could occur but if it doesnt then there should be no loss of frames.... i thought it could also be the change of lighting conditions with the camera increasing / decreasing iso

i havent located a noticable bad chunk yet but i havent shot all that much with it... will keep you posted.

im trying to upload the panning test now but it seems to be acting up (smugmug uploader..) its only 35mb so will post when its there.

[johnathan]

Thanks for posting the video. I did see some compression artifacts on my end. But you knew that already. The quality of the 100-400 is apparent in this video. Great location. I wish I had video editing knowledge to share but don't.

The video streamed without any hiccup's but have a pretty fast connection here.Happy new year. Johnathan

[dadCameraGuy]

Thanks for the video - adding it to the wiki

[Ocean Blue]

Thanks for posting. The link worked fine for me, but I found even medium definition too much for a circa 2004 PowerBook G4. The iPod/DVD video option worked just fine. This is a processing power issue that I've seen before when trying to view an HD file from Luminous Landscape on my notebook vs. on an eight-core xeon Mac Pro.

The beer bubble segment was entertaining. I think you have screen-saver gold there.

Regards,
Theodore

[Philscbx]

Awesome job!
I've toyed with video, and I agree it's a pain.
I'm about to configure a new tower from Apple to use FCP.
Hope this works with the 5D2.
The little exploring of FCP, where you get dual display of before and after in real time to me seems like a logical process.

I too found out the hard way that any thing added to clip needs to be saved repeatedly, or those hours of changes just vanish to hyperspace.

[Super-Nicko]

Yeah no worries Johnathan, yeah the location is a ripper - i knew that the street where they were house sitting was close to the river but very glad i brought my tripod as it was a seriously lazy mans shooting day out. Step onto balcony and 100 boats cruise past... with the 100-400 i could crop in on a boat at what felt like nearly 1km and read their registration - wow 21MP :) My connection is not so great, for HD i have to pause and wait a bit for it to pre load. Did you mean quality of the 100-400 as a pro or con here? not that i mind - its hard to keep her steady even IS and on a tripod. And ive never loved the IQ from this lens although mediocre lenses is all that Mk2 footage seems to need seeing as it doesnt use 22mp to shoot.

No worries Mitch - seems you have a plethora of good 5d links there! glad i could contribute... do i get a by line on the review to potn link ? hehehe ill have to update those links with you should i upgrade my account or should Andy give me a free account to demonstrate and bring lots of traffic there :) i dont want to privacy and password protect all my personal content only to leave demo stuff on public display on my standard account.. but i like to contribute to the net community and chat about it on here.

Theodore: wow i didnt realise that pc power was required even to view these streamed files... i suppose it makes sense - it sends the file to you and its still proper hd footage needing to be buffered and played - i cant seem to get these H.264 files to play properly on my pc - only once they are uploaded - wierd - as i can view the original files pretty much fine using quicktime player. Hahaha yeah the beer was a corona... my intended shot was as i got it out of the esky it was icy and i wanted to shoot the ice melting - but it was 37degrees (100F) so it kinda didnt last long. And when i opened it it went everywhere!

Final cut pro seems to be the dux nuts of video... man i just cannot afford another toy! hahaha that and im angling for a boat aswell arrgh!

im only using Premiere Pro CS3 now for edits... completely stable and predictable... wish it had a basic mode for lazy editing. (i used to spend 8-12hrs editing clips - i just do not have the time now)

[dryfire]

I think I may have a much cheaper way of doing this, and possibly faster (I transcode TV broadcasts and DVDs etc...). If I'm not mistaken the output is baseline H264 in MOV with PCM audio.

Would someone mind posting a few seconds (or one minute) of untouched output somewhere for download so I can confirm this?

[Super-Nicko]

http://www.sendspace.com/file/wnydn7

for those who want a small snippet of HD video - just one of the scenes from my lil short - about 100mb - dryfitre wanted a straight from camera file so here it is...

[dryfire]

The video quality is better than most camcorders I've seen, but if you look at the trees in the background (upper right) you'll notice a lot of "swimming" blocks. It looks like there's a major shift every time an I-frame (Independent frame) comes up. A similar effect happens with the trees in the first video posted and looks kind of like the trees are jumping. It could be the focus is changing very rapidly, but it happens in fairly regular intervals and doesn't actually look more focused in my eyes.

There is also a large amount of chroma noise/artifacting in the middle part of the water that I don't really know a reliable way of dealing with, but I doubt most people would notice as it's relatively stationary.

I have a small clip that was encoded at 5 Mbps (about 1/4th the original bitrate). I did a little bit of denoising and added a short fade in, but it still looks pretty bad. Tweaking saturation and similar things is fairly easy and fast, but I'd rather not mess with that at this stage.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/zirbjy

Do NOT use Quicktime to play back this file unless you have the pro version as it may play incorrectly, if at all. Use the Combined Community Codec Pack (http://cccp-project.net/) (CCCP, free and open source) or CoreAVC Pro (http://www.coreavc.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=4&id=21&Itemid=59) ($15) with a direct show enable player like Media player classic (included in CCCP), windows media player or Zoomplayer (included in CCCP) to play this file. If you prefer a stand-alone solution VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html)can be used with or without installing.

I used x264 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X264)to encode this file with filtering done in avisynth (http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page). Once you have everything set up and filters picked out the process can be pretty much automated (minus picking scene cuts and adding fades). Furthermore it is possible to stitch together, or append, files once they have been encoded without re-encoding them.

All of the software I used for this is free and open source. I was hoping to get a lot more done today; I will try to find or start writing up a simple guide tomorrow if anyone is interested.

http://forum.doom9.org/ is a great place to learn about encoding, but I do not know how newbie friendly it is.

[cr44]

Bravo! Very nice work. I enjoyed it. Makes me want to pull out my DVX and go shoot. Thank you!

[Super-Nicko]

gee dryfire... thats quite a compression - from 101mb to 12mb... looks good though!

the green boat in the foreground is where the focus was on and the camera was not touched in this sequence. So focus was not adjusted. I do see that 'shift' you speak of... i shot alot of this into the sun (it was getting low on the horizon ) so i know that could explain a bit of the glare factor - although that doesnt influence compression straight from the camera... i have learned more about the shooting modes now too so i can easier influence and keep track of the paramaters used (aperture, iso etc) - i dare say into sun this would have chosen the smallest aperture - which couldnt have helped with IQ.

i can see the chroma noise you speak of in the original - it probably wasnt a very nice file to give you - i should maybe give you something a little cleaner and consistent with a standard light... the noise is less evident in your compressed format - if i can see it at all.

I have grabbed the original 100mb file and your 12mb file and sent it to smugmug to see how they go with it on the auto upload so i will see how it comes out in the wash so to speak... would be really nice to be sending files 12% of original size to smugmug to be viewed by my family etc. rather than 800 mb for 5mins. They are uploading as we speak and ive put them into a new folder called boat test - i made sure you got a name credit there - nothing worse than plagiarism :)

Cheers for that... is avisynth compatable with vista 64? i had a quick read up... seems like it may be something a little over my head in my limited available time to learn it...

what is the dimensions of the video you encoded?

[Super-Nicko]

dryfire - how would one encode using x264? would it appear as an option in say premiere pro cs3 once you download the codec ? or does it need to be fed through a different program... ie make a clip of combined videos and spit it out as video.xxx (which format?) and then encode using x264..?

you can tell im new at this :)

[dryfire]

Lol, I'm happy you liked the name. I believe Avisynth is compatible with every version of windows starting from windows 2000 . It may look complicated, but the amount of stuff you'll need to do is fairly minimal. Avisynth is a professional grade frame server and can do a lot of things 95% of people do not need to do. A lot of people use it without even knowing.

Once I come up with a filtering pattern I like for the source the work is pretty much automated. It is even possible to do a lot of basic video editing (cuts, fades, typesetting, etc..) with avisynth by only editing a few lines of code or by using megui. I plan to format such a script as a guide for those who don't have or want to buy CS2/3/4.

The resolution for that clip is 1280x720 at a frame rate of 30fps (the original frame rate). Something I forgot to mention earlier is that the 5D appears to capture 30 unique frames per second, not 24 with a duplicate every 5 frames.

The easiest way to encode with x264 that I know of is using megui (http://sourceforge.net/projects/megui). You can find some information about it here (http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/Main_Page) and a guide here (http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/MeGUI_H.264_Conversion_Guide_page1.html).

When you're done, I'd suggest using a lossless codec like lagarith (http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html) to output from premiere (make sure your output is in the YV12 colorspace). Once that's done simply drag and drop the file into megui and select a profile from the drop box--something like "x264: 2-pass HQ." Then under tools select "Bitrate Calculator" and enter your desired filesize or desired bitrate and hit apply. After that hit "Enqueue." Go the the Queue tab and hit start.

I'm sure there are faster ways, but I don't keep up with front ends. I've been doing this type of work for 4 years and I much prefer methods that give me as much control as possible.

Do you know how smugmug handles encoding? It may be possible to format your videos so they don't actually re-encode your work as I'm pretty sure they don't use very good/time intensive settings.

[Super-Nicko]

Cheers dryfire - do you have a real name? Ill dig a little deeper into your suggested links... judging by the lack of interest by other partys im either on my own in what im up to or they havent realised they will want this information later on...

I sent both files to smugmug... you can see them side by side - even if this information helps people share movies at hi res i figuire the conversation cant hurt... i cannot see too much difference in the converted smugmug files... i tell you what tho... sending 12mb is much preferred to sending 100mb :)

this is as much info as i lazily found about smugmug encoding

http://www.smugmug.com/help/video-sharing

im sure if i asked they would fill us in more on it --- ANDY Care to chime in? or one of your staff? your x264 converted files seemed to easily upload and be available fairly quickly... and as mentioned comparable to the conversion done on a 100mb file... maybe your conversion is same or similar to the one used there... would make sense for smugmug to not be tucking 100mb 20sec files away in its server...

looking forward to more playin with my new toy...

keep us posted..

nicko

PPS: I just sent smugmug a help query and link to this thread - will keep you posted if they have some more information regarding more detailed encoding requirements (if that information is available to the public of course)

[Leonard Wong]

You look like you've dived head first into the AVCHD video thing with the camera. Kudos to you. I'm not a video expert, but I have picked up a few things here and there with owning a Canon HV20, so I'll try to help share my experiences with you.

1) If you want to use audio, I suggest picking up a shotgun mic such as the Rode VideoMic. It mounts in your camera's hotshoe. Unfortunately, it does require its own power source (batteries) and it you'll need to plug the audio into the 5D Mk II mic input. That should dramatically improve your audio.

2) With regards to the encoding, are you looking to push 720 or 1080? Keep in mind that 1920x1080 is 2.25x the pixel count of 1280x720. And 1280x720 is 2.6x the pixel count of typical DVD quality (NTSC 720x480). I convert DVDs to H.264 and I'm pretty satisfied with a bit rate of 1500 kpbs. It comes out to be 1.5 hours = 1GB file. For 720P content, 1500 is just too low. I would say in my personal experience with transcoding H.264, I'd stay around 2000-4500. I'm not sure if you used multi-pass encoding, but if didn't you should and that should help make the video a bit better.

3) For remote playing on your television.. assuming you have a 720P or 1080 TV, you have several options. If your TV has an RGB or DVI/HDMI input, then you can try to plug your computer directly into your TV. Some RGB interfaces on TVs are picky, so this may not work 100%. DVI/HDMI is much easier for computers to interface with TVs directly. Your computer will just need to support DVI out and your TV will need to have an HDMI in. I'm not sure where you can pick up the cables from in Perth, but in the US these cables can be purchase relatively inexpensively at http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10231&cs_id=1023104&p_id=2661&seq=1&format=2

If you didn't want to go through this hassle, you can also use an Xbox 360 or Sony PS3 for HD playback. With the Xbox 360, if you have XP Media Center edition or Vista Ultimate, this will work out of the box with HomePNP. With the Sony PS3, you'll need install software that will support DNLA. Both the Xbox and PS3 will play H.264 (AVCHD) videos directly from your computer (once you get everything configured.)

If you want to use iTunes to sync video, you can go the AppleTV format. However, AppleTV only supports up to 720 video.

[dryfire]

Note there are some restrictions on what the PS3 and Xbox 360 will play. I'm unfamiliar with the 360 but the PS3 will only play High Profile Level 4.1 AVC or lower. This limits you to 9 reference frames and some other things. Most good front ends will let you pick your profile and level.

For things like the iPod I think the restriction is something like main profile level 2.1, but with a screen that tiny I'd just use one click converter.

Super-Nicko : My first name is Marc. All of my online cohorts know me as dryfire.

[docwalker]

Nicko, I am one of the video geeks at SmugMug. I was looking through the help desk inbox and saw your email. I have been a member here at POTN for a while but never really posted. Now that I work for SmugMug, I guess I better start pulling my weight.

So, what are the requirements? The stock answer is pretty much any AVI, MOV, MPG type movie will upload. There are a ton of other formats that are accepted but the key is the codecs. We have a list here: http://www.dgrin.com/forumdisplay.php?f=46 (http:///www.dgrin.com/forumdisplay.php?f=46)

The 5D MkII codecs should be ok as I have not heard any reports of problems with it. But other cameras may need to be converted before upload. I use MPEG StreamClip from Squared5.com anytime I need to convert a customers video. It works well.

What settings do I use? h.264 with AAC audio. I do all of my editing in Final Cut Studio 2 and export out using h.264.

We are currently supporting 720p. But, We are working in beta testing right now on full 1080p support. Please take a look here for more info on that: http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2008/11/30/first-1080p-video-from-canons-new-5d-mkii-amazing/

I am available if you have any questions. I also moderate the video support forum on Dgrin. There are some great SmugMug video related threads there that might answer any other questions that you may have.

--Doc

[tonylong]

Doc, thanks from a whole lot of us for your involvment! This whole dang 5D2 thing is going to grow into something big, and we need the infrastructure support (or at least some helpful input:))!

[Super-Nicko]

You look like you've dived head first into the AVCHD video thing with the camera. Kudos to you. I'm not a video expert, but I have picked up a few things here and there with owning a Canon HV20, so I'll try to help share my experiences with you.

1) If you want to use audio, I suggest picking up a shotgun mic such as the Rode VideoMic. It mounts in your camera's hotshoe. Unfortunately, it does require its own power source (batteries) and it you'll need to plug the audio into the 5D Mk II mic input. That should dramatically improve your audio.

2) With regards to the encoding, are you looking to push 720 or 1080? Keep in mind that 1920x1080 is 2.25x the pixel count of 1280x720. And 1280x720 is 2.6x the pixel count of typical DVD quality (NTSC 720x480). I convert DVDs to H.264 and I'm pretty satisfied with a bit rate of 1500 kpbs. It comes out to be 1.5 hours = 1GB file. For 720P content, 1500 is just too low. I would say in my personal experience with transcoding H.264, I'd stay around 2000-4500. I'm not sure if you used multi-pass encoding, but if didn't you should and that should help make the video a bit better.

3) For remote playing on your television.. assuming you have a 720P or 1080 TV, you have several options. If your TV has an RGB or DVI/HDMI input, then you can try to plug your computer directly into your TV. Some RGB interfaces on TVs are picky, so this may not work 100%. DVI/HDMI is much easier for computers to interface with TVs directly. Your computer will just need to support DVI out and your TV will need to have an HDMI in. I'm not sure where you can pick up the cables from in Perth, but in the US these cables can be purchase relatively inexpensively at http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10231&cs_id=1023104&p_id=2661&seq=1&format=2

If you didn't want to go through this hassle, you can also use an Xbox 360 or Sony PS3 for HD playback. With the Xbox 360, if you have XP Media Center edition or Vista Ultimate, this will work out of the box with HomePNP. With the Sony PS3, you'll need install software that will support DNLA. Both the Xbox and PS3 will play H.264 (AVCHD) videos directly from your computer (once you get everything configured.)

If you want to use iTunes to sync video, you can go the AppleTV format. However, AppleTV only supports up to 720 video.


Thankyou Leonard for taking the time to post and help out me and im sure others out there in the same boat... im about to go hunting for shotgun mic prices on the net now :)

Ive just encoded a vid of my christmas stuff - carved it down to a more interesting 6min instead of 10 boring mins... sharing it with family on smugmug so set it to come in under 500mb with 2 passes... these outputted files play terribly on my pc - they look great once uploaded to smugmug tho - smooth, so im going to look for another player and see if its quicktime thats the culprit... i mean the file size is alot smaller than the originals but plays at what looks like 15fps as a mp4 - the originals play fine as standalone files straight off the camera... wierd

thanks for the size and bitrate advice... im amazed how nice the files look even with quite heavy encoding and relativeley small output files...

i have a crap (good 4 years ago) rear pro as my main telly and a sd 42"plasma as well so im all out of good display options... best is convert to dvd and watch... its still nice :) And after buying a Wii not too long ago - no chance for another toy haha - thanks for the tip tho - im sure others will be quite interested.... would be nice to access the files direct...

And thanks Doc again for popping into our forum as per my email request... always efficient you smugmug lot... Thanks also for the beta fullHD test account...

all my new video posts to smugmug are now also available in true fullHD for those using a 1080p monitor ;) old ones are as is...

[johnathan]

"Yeah no worries Johnathan, yeah the location is a ripper - i knew that the street where they were house sitting was close to the river but very glad i brought my tripod as it was a seriously lazy mans shooting day out. Step onto balcony and 100 boats cruise past... with the 100-400 i could crop in on a boat at what felt like nearly 1km and read their registration - wow 21MP My connection is not so great, for HD i have to pause and wait a bit for it to pre load. Did you mean quality of the 100-400 as a pro or con here? not that i mind - its hard to keep her steady even IS and on a tripod. And ive never loved the IQ from this lens although mediocre lenses is all that Mk2 footage seems to need seeing as it doesnt use 22mp to shoot."

I ment that The 100-400 L looked good in the video.Have you tried the micro lens adjustment . I have read that that really makes the 100-400 IQ very sharp. I would love to have the 5DII but not in the budget for now. Johnathan

[Super-Nicko]

hey johnathan,

yeah its definantly better iq on the 5d2 after microadjust!! i do find it to be less contrasty and saturated than other lenses but for what it does its fine... i think ill shoot avalon airshow with the 100-400 and 5d2 and see what i get...

Cheers - nicko

[Super-Nicko]

Heres a tip i just discovered for PC USERS...

use windows media player to view your edited h.264 files... i get no jitter...

[osv]

the nero showtime player is video accelerated, so it works great for playing big h.264 video files, same thing for the coreavc pro mentioned earlier.

for h.264 encoding, the nero encoder is one of the best.

[Super-Nicko]

cool dude thanks for that - will give it a shot...

does nero software do the encoding? - what would you output from say cs3 over to nero for encoding?

[red hot sheep]

Are there any good websites / video tutorials on Premiere Pro? I got it as part of the production premium suite and have no idea where to start!

[Super-Nicko]

i cant help ya there sorry - i havent used them...

lotsof trial and error got me there in a time when i didnt have a house kids and a business to run... couldnt do it now tho!

[osv]

will cs3 work with the canon h.264 stuff? afaik, it won't smart render avchd, i think that you need cs4 for that.

nero is basically a bunch of programs that are all put together under one roof, so you can do all kinds of stuff with it... the editing software is very rudimentary, it has a horrible interface, as compared to cs3.

but the nero encoding software is xlnt, i'd rate it better than cs4, which uses the mainconcept h.264 encoder... although the latter is very good in its own right... it's the kind of a situation where you could throw some more bitrate at the mainconcept encoder, and you'd have a hard time telling the results from the nero encoder.

it would be interesting to see if nero can smart render this 5d footage, it's a lot less complex than avchd, canon jacked the bitrate way up to increase the picture quality.

if you are editing on a pc, be aware of the quicktime gamma problem: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/canon-eos-5d-mk-ii-hd/140058-new-workaround-quicktime-h264-problem.html

[harrysimpson]

So Nick,
Great thread here....and you are not alone!! I did one or two short clips but ran into the ol jerky playback using Quicktime - Bought Quicktime Pro and converted the .MOV into .AVI which does a re-encode i think.But the resultant .AVI played smoothly. I too use Windows VISTA and have a pro SmugMug account and I too am a total novice at video processing (Though years ago I used a video capture device to record segments of video and put together with transition). So i'm looking for the best "bang for the buck" processing workflow from the 5D Mk2 videos. Are any of you on Flickr? I posted a short clip on Vimeo here http://www.vimeo.com/2766516 Cookbook style advice is what I need....since I generaly don't know wtf i'm doing........ ;-)
Thanks
Harry

[harrysimpson]

Hope this thread doesn't die. Just getting interesting.....Shot another clip and converting to "for the Web" from QuickTimePro produced a neat file with all the pieces in to folder....and it plays without jerk but i'm sure the quality is degraded over how i could've processed it. Anyone try Corel's video app on Windows OS?

[Super-Nicko]

sorry dudes ive been out of the loop for a while....

harry - did you leave IS on in your clip? i shot a gig in bad light the other night - i might have to put on a small clip too.. good stuff :)

if i get a min i can give you 'cookbook' advice for CS3 basic editing but unless you wanna give that a shot - the advice would be useless on other software...

regards
nicko

[harrysimpson]

Thanks Nick but I'm looking for a non-CS solution. Been looking at and using a trail version of Pinnacle Studio 12 Plus......thing is it won't accept the strait from the camera .MOV files as clips for the mivie making....and It downrezzes the whole deal in producing the final movie product.....
Frustrated!!
Seems like one of these PC movie editing software companies would step up to the plate and say hey we can handle your 5D Mk2 movie editing jobs and do it well.....
But nothing!
argh
Harry:shock:

[harrysimpson]

Also another good resource for confusion....;-)
http://www.cinema5d.com

[smacafee]

Just today I figured out a way to edit video using Vegas Movie Studio 9 on my moderately old/not very new at all computer (which can barely play 720p in h.264 format)

I'll make a lower resolution version of the video (640x360) with the same file name as the original, then use that in Vegas to cut and edit the video. When it comes time to make a high quality final product, I'll replace the low res version with the original video and render using that.

For people on slow computers, I suspect this is one of the best ways to deal with a computer that can't play 1080p.

[Canonised]

Hi
I discovered this freeware - http://www.erightsoft.net/SUPER.html#Dnload

It converts the 5D2 MOV files into various formats including WMV etc. So you can edit them in MS Movie Maker.

Cheers!

[Super-Nicko]

cool canonised...

just to update... id say all my links to vid are dead... i was on trail for smugmug pro and havent ponied up the dosh not that its out of beta... will do sometime i suppose when ive got the time to actuall play with all my toys :)