How to manage/successfully compress videos from the 5D Mark 2?

[lanimilbus]

I got a 5D Mark II camera not too long ago which I'm very pleased with for both photo and video. My problem is just managing the videos I take with it once I load them on to the computer. A 3 minute video will be between 700MB and 1GB in size and will crash my computer when I try to play it. I've tried playing them with VLC, Media Player Classic, the DVD player program that came with the computer, nothing will work; it'll load a very blurred still from the video and continue playing with only the sound coming through and eventually crash or cause me to have to do a Ctrl+Alt+Delete to get out of it.

I'd also like to find a way to compress the videos from the original ~900MB .MOV files to Xvid .avi files under 100MB without losing much quality. I downloaded "Free MOV 2 AVI Converter" which successfully made an 800MB .MOV from the Mark 2 into a 20MB .AVI file, but the quality is horrible and incredibly pixelated which defeats the purpose of the high def video. Still, there's got to be some way to do it, I mean high def videos are uploaded to YouTube that are 10 minutes long and since the max upload size for the site is 100MB there's apparently some way to compress these vids without losing all the quality.

I feel like there's some obvious step or tool that I'm missing here that would make this all a lot easier. Any help? Thanks!

[twofruitz]

A 5dmkII requires a new computer; simple as that. If you can't open a 1gb movie; how are you going to be with 21mp RAW images???

I understand this sounds a little unrelated to your question; but your computer seems to be along way from ready for the camera.

[C2S]

I mean high def videos are uploaded to YouTube that are 10 minutes long and since the max upload size for the site is 100MB there's apparently some way to compress these vids without losing all the quality.

That's outdated information, 10 minutes max is correct but the max upload size is actually 2048 MB these days. (although, the "processing" right after the upload is going to reduce the quality, sometimes significantly)

[westernminnguy]

Zoombrowser will play your videos and your computer may be able to handle that. The new Zoombrowser software should have come with your 5D2.

Regarding uploading your video to YouTube. 5D2 video is H.264 MOV files and these can be tricky to convert for the web.

I upload my videos to Vimeo and I have two ways to do that. I can upload my video clip directly to Vimeo as it accepts H.264 MOV files. A 3 minute video is often 700mb or more as you mentioned and can take more than an hour to upload(high speed connection) and be rendered by Vimeo. However, the video is crisp and sharp.

My software for video editing is Photoshop Elements 7.0. The only format that Photoshop Elements will output, that Vimeo accepts is a Windows Media file....but the compression is something else.

A 700mb file can end up 20 mp when it's done and by the time it ends up on Vimeo, it's definitely softer.

There are a lot of folks out there trying to figure out how to edit the 5D2's video(H.264 MOV files) to load up to the web without losing quality. Google 5DMKII and video processing, uploading or whatever to find some suggestions.

Here are links to two such forum conversations:

http://www.vimeo.com/groups/5DMKII/forumthread:2544

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=624302

Best of luck.

:)

[Drozz119]

successfully made an 800MB .MOV from the Mark 2 into a 20MB .AVI file

You were on the right track..

You have to do a "Dual Render".. You have to render the .mov file into a .avi file before you put it into the timeline to start editing.

Any computer(editing software) can handle a 10gb avi file easier than a 1gb .mov file.

The process i use is:
1. Import .mov files into Comp. with Windows explorer.
2. Import .mov file into Sony Vegas timeline
3. File^Render as^ 'save as type' .AVI^ 'template' HD 720 or 1080
4. Once Render is complete, Insert .avi file into timeline (Start editing)

I've tried it both ways.. On a Quad Core 6gb computer, the video would lag(play every 10 frames or so) with the .mov file.

On my laptop (dual core 3 gb) the .avi would play smooth(every frame)

If your going to be editing videos, you should invest in a good editing program. I've tried them all, I think Vegas is the best by far. You can get the 'Vegas Movie Studio Platnum 9' for about $80. It's basically the same as the Vegas Pro ($600) except for a couple features that you won't use just starting out.(unlimited tracks, 5.1 Surround mixing, Blue ray burning etc..)

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope/compare

[Matthew Craggs]

The problem is that you need to transcode the 5D footage before you can edit it. Decompressing the 5Ds native files takes a lot of computing power. You should be able to play them with a current system, but editing is something that I can't even do practically with my Mac Pro.

Also, don't be confused by posts that treat MOV and AVI like anything but a container. It's the codec in which the files were encoded. For example. a h.264 .mov file out of the 5D is near impossible to edit and will crash older systems when viewed. The same file converted to a HDV 1080p30 .mov file can be dropped into iMovie, FInal Cut Express, whatever, and be edited no problem.

Once you transcode the footage, exporting for the web is again, all about the codec. YouTube, Vimeo, etc. all have a Help section with the optimal settings for output.

[Forseti]

See my post here http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=713748

[lanimilbus]

You were on the right track..

You have to do a "Dual Render".. You have to render the .mov file into a .avi file before you put it into the timeline to start editing.

Any computer(editing software) can handle a 10gb avi file easier than a 1gb .mov file.

The process i use is:
1. Import .mov files into Comp. with Windows explorer.
2. Import .mov file into Sony Vegas timeline
3. File^Render as^ 'save as type' .AVI^ 'template' HD 720 or 1080
4. Once Render is complete, Insert .avi file into timeline (Start editing)

I've tried it both ways.. On a Quad Core 6gb computer, the video would lag(play every 10 frames or so) with the .mov file.

On my laptop (dual core 3 gb) the .avi would play smooth(every frame)

If your going to be editing videos, you should invest in a good editing program. I've tried them all, I think Vegas is the best by far. You can get the 'Vegas Movie Studio Platnum 9' for about $80. It's basically the same as the Vegas Pro ($600) except for a couple features that you won't use just starting out.(unlimited tracks, 5.1 Surround mixing, Blue ray burning etc..)

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope/compare

Sorry to respond to this post 8 months late, but unfortunately that's how long it took for me to finally get around to taking another stab at editing the HD videos from my 5D Mark II.

The video I've been experimenting on is a 38 second long .MOV video from my Mark II that's 183MB in size and won't successfully play on any media player on my computer without lagging or freezing. I downloaded the trial version of Sony Vegas Studio Platinum 9 and followed those steps and the .AVI file it created was 4.51GB in size, as opposed to the 183MB original. Not sure how that happened or if that's normal. Anyway, I tried playing that 4.5GB AVI file with various media players and it was even worse than playing the MOV file in that it froze and lagged way more.

I then opened the 4.5GB AVI file in VirtualDub (practically the only video editing software I'm familiar with) and resized it from the original size of 1920x1080 pixels to 960x540 pixels and encoded it with Xvid under the compression settings. This resulted in an AVI file that was 25.2MB in size, as opposed to the 4.5GB input video, and the 25.2MB version plays fine on my computer.

I feel like this process is a little longer than it needs to be, however. VirtualDub can't work with .MOV files so I can't use it to fix the original, but shouldn't there be some way for Sony Vegas to do what VirtualDub does, i.e. making an AVI file that's significantly smaller in file size and plays without issue?

Thanks for the help by the way, even if it took me 8 months to try it :)

[basroil]

Sorry to respond to this post 8 months late, but unfortunately that's how long it took for me to finally get around to taking another stab at editing the HD videos from my 5D Mark II.

The video I've been experimenting on is a 38 second long .MOV video from my Mark II that's 183MB in size and won't successfully play on any media player on my computer without lagging or freezing. I downloaded the trial version of Sony Vegas Studio Platinum 9 and followed those steps and the .AVI file it created was 4.51GB in size, as opposed to the 183MB original. Not sure how that happened or if that's normal. Anyway, I tried playing that 4.5GB AVI file with various media players and it was even worse than playing the MOV file in that it froze and lagged way more.

I then opened the 4.5GB AVI file in VirtualDub (practically the only video editing software I'm familiar with) and resized it from the original size of 1920x1080 pixels to 960x540 pixels and encoded it with Xvid under the compression settings. This resulted in an AVI file that was 25.2MB in size, as opposed to the 4.5GB input video, and the 25.2MB version plays fine on my computer.

I feel like this process is a little longer than it needs to be, however. VirtualDub can't work with .MOV files so I can't use it to fix the original, but shouldn't there be some way for Sony Vegas to do what VirtualDub does, i.e. making an AVI file that's significantly smaller in file size and plays without issue?

Thanks for the help by the way, even if it took me 8 months to try it :)

It's impossible to make a slow computer faster than physically possible. You NEED a core 2 duo 2gh or faster processor to software decode 1080p h264. With other formats (like mpeg2) you might be able to get away with 30-40% less capable computers but you will need more disk space in return for the same quality.

Now, you can resize a file (720p should play fine on any computer made in the last 4 years except netbooks), but then you lose quality. You can lower bitrates, but then you lose quality again. You can drop to a lower profile (from main to baseline), but again you lose quality. If you want to maintain a high level of quality, you need to keep bitrates fairly high, with a main or higher profile and level 4.1 or higher. XVID is ok, but it's been shown to be much worse in terms of quality vs space 3 years ago, now that gap has not only increased in width, but some to include encoding time as well.

If you want to edit video, transcode to mpeg2 or an mpeg/avc intra format (like AVCHD-INTRA, cineform, neoscene, pro-res, etc). The bitrates will be huge, but even slow (by modern standards, not pentium 4 slow) machines should be just barely acceptable.

If you want to store video (primary output or just store for later use), use high profile unrestricted h264, a few (3-6) weighted pyramidal b frames, trellis, CABAC, SATD Exhaustive ME 24, RD refinement on all frames, automatic MV prediction, 8x8 macroblocks, and no less than two passes. It'll let you get away with 25% of the original bitrate and still look exactly the same to most people (like all compression, it's not perfect). Convert the audio to 192kbps AAC and then your 183mb file comes down to a more manageable 50mb file.

EDIT: And just rename to .mp4 and use virtualdubmod and you can use that to edit. No prior transcoding needed.