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

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, 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.sm​ugmug.com …101_a3Nww#44542​7043_SuJck

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

Kind regards,
Nick

did the link to vid work?

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

JIMography wrote in post #6974803
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.sm​ugmug.com …3Nww#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?

Ducky 2.0T wrote in post #6974828
Click the picture for the video to start or try this link..

http://nicholascadd.sm​ugmug.com …3Nww#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?

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...

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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

Thanks for the video - adding it to the wiki

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

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.