My 7D Editing Workflow

There's so many people it seems that are having trouble editing their 7D/5D files.
Most people are trying to edit the raw MOV. files, I don't know of many systems that could do that smoothly!

So I'm going to run through my workflow and advise you on what works well when editing with the 7D/5D.

Before I start, here's what hardware and software I'm running, it's nothing special, but certainly isn't the minimum spec's you're going need...

-Canon EOS 7D

-Intel Q6600 2.6GHz Quad-Core
-4GB DDR2 RAM
-NVIDIA 8600GT 512MB GPU
-Seagate 7200rpm hardrives

-Windows 7 HP
-Sony Vegas Pro 9.0
-Cineform Neo Scene avi. Codec

A quad-core isn't the minimum, a decent dual-core will do fine.
2 GB is just about enough
Most intergrated NVIDIA/ATI GPU's are powerful enough, try and get an 8600GT
You don't need 10,000 rpm hardrives, but try and use a 7200 as primary

Windows XP SP2 or better (I'm not going to reccomend Vista though )
Mac OSX .5 or better
I'm going to reccomend either Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut (the cheap versions will be fine)
You will need to transcode your footage, I reccomend Cineform.

Okay, let's run through my workflow!

1. I captured the video at 60fps @ 720p NTSC on the camera.
I've just copied my raw video files off the CF card, and are in an organized and easy to access folder.
The files should be mov. and open with quicktime (or WMP in windows 7)
Once I've got my files in place, I can close the window, but make note of it's location.

2. Now I'm going to open Cineform Neoscene, which I will use to convert the big hard to edit MOV files into avi. (for Windows) or MOV Prores (Mac)
The editing program will run much more smoothly with these files.

3. Go to the 'convert' tab, and click 'select files' to find your movie clips.

4. Select and open the files you want to convert.

5. Go to 'Prefs' and make sure quality is set to 'high' if you want to retain 1080p.
Select 'deinterlace' for the output format if you recorded at an interlaced format (i)... otherwise tick 'maintain source frame format'
Finally 'browse' for a folder where you want the converted files to be saved, and tick 'use target directory for converted files' to do so.

6.. Select all the files you want to convert in the Cineform window (so they are blue), and click 'start'

7. Once the files have been succesfully converted, right click on the converted clips, and click 'containing folder'. There in your designated folder will be the Cineform avi./Prores files.

I now have my clips ready to be editied.

8. Open Sony Vegas Pro

9. Go to 'file' > 'import' > 'media'

You actually don't need a graphics card at all with that workflow. And if you get a graphics card, make sure it supports hardware h264, and stream or cuda processing.

And several parts of your posts are wrong:
1) 550d/7d don't use 60i ever, they have 30fps (1080p) or 60fps (720p) no such thing as interlaced 720progressive
2) don't allow the program to deinterlace, the video is progressive to begin with, it'll just screw things up by trying to conform 60fps progressive to 60i to 30p.
3) It is often faster and cheaper to use mpeg2, but cineform does have advantages (like mac support, where the tried and tested mpeg2 does not)

-I use MPEG Streamclip to convert to AVI prior to using Sony Vegas P9. VERY fast conversion and the quality doesn't seem to be lost. It's a free program unlike Cineform and others and works great!

-I then import using my HDV-720 24p project setup and let it go from there.

-Render out as Sony AVC (MP4).

For whatever reason it takes me about 3 attempts either using youtube or vimeo for my video to upload to 100%. Not sure why I always have this issue but I just keep canceling the upload until I get a 100% finalize.

Basroil, nice sig ! I feel the same about some people with MACs and their attitude. /rant

haknslash wrote in post #9605067
For whatever reason it takes me about 3 attempts either using youtube or vimeo for my video to upload to 100%. Not sure why I always have this issue but I just keep canceling the upload until I get a 100% finalize.

Try using 3 b frames max, no pyramid. and lc-aac at 128kbps. Youtube doesn't like more b frames, since their encoders aren't based on the google video project (x264 based).

Thanks for the tip and I'll try it on my next project!

basroil wrote in post #9604737
You actually don't need a graphics card at all with that workflow. And if you get a graphics card, make sure it supports hardware h264, and stream or cuda processing.

And several parts of your posts are wrong:
1) 550d/7d don't use 60i ever, they have 30fps (1080p) or 60fps (720p) no such thing as interlaced 720progressive
2) don't allow the program to deinterlace, the video is progressive to begin with, it'll just screw things up by trying to conform 60fps progressive to 60i to 30p.
3) It is often faster and cheaper to use mpeg2, but cineform does have advantages (like mac support, where the tried and tested mpeg2 does not)

How odd, I read 60fps on the 7D was interlaced, silly mistake. Sorry about that!

Well anyway, Like I said.. if the source is progressive keep it that way when transcoding

haknslash wrote in post #9605067
-I use MPEG Streamclip to convert to AVI prior to using Sony Vegas P9. VERY fast conversion and the quality doesn't seem to be lost. It's a free program unlike Cineform and others and works great!

Yep, streamclip is a good solution too. I just didn't have much luck when using it

Great posts guys thanks allot!

I suggest replacing that one picture "deinterlace" check box bc that will throw ppl off.

beware of hard drive space. a 4gb .mov can turn into about 10gb .avi neoscene codec.

Trey T wrote in post #9665532
I suggest replacing that one picture "deinterlace" check box bc that will throw ppl off.

beware of hard drive space. a 4gb .mov can turn into about 10gb .avi neoscene codec.

Good idea, Done

Yeah cineform avi's are pretty hefty unfortunatly

does vegas pro 9 have a built in converter?

what's an alternative to neoscene?

haknslash wrote in post #9605067
-I use MPEG Streamclip to convert to AVI prior to using Sony Vegas P9. VERY fast conversion and the quality doesn't seem to be lost. It's a free program unlike Cineform and others and works great!

Anyone have any suggestions what codec works best when converting to AVI with Mpeg Streamclip? I've been using Apple Photo Jpeg at 100% quality and the files are massive (5DII). This would be for editing in Vegas Movie Studio 9.

I'm also doing the trial of Neoscene. I like the results, but I haven't determined if I need or not.

My bro uses mpeg streamclip and convert to mjpeg and he doesn't like coloring it. The color information does not retain well w/ the mjpeg. He uses Sony Vegas.

neoscene is about 100bucks for two computers. Worth the money and I have use it on a dell xps 13" laptop core 2 dual @ ~2.5ghz. I edit w/ two cameras and no problem.

neoscene and plural eyes are the two essential software to be bought, only ~200bucks total.

Chris215 wrote in post #9673571
does vegas pro 9 have a built in converter?

what's an alternative to neoscene?

Sony Vegas has various built in codecs (including 3rd party ones) that will render to avi.

I had problems with all of the files with the 7D footage to be honest, either issues with image quality or issues with how smoothly they could be edited once brough into Vegas again.

It's certainly a solution, especially for quick jobs, but If you're going to do a lot of HD editing, I'd reccomend getting another codec.

Also one problem with rendering a load of clips is you end up with one long clip which isn't ideal when trying to find something. (maybe there's a way to get over this I'm not sure...)

-Intel Q6600 2.6GHz Quad-Core

Isn't it 2.4ghz stock? Or do you mean OC'd