5D MkII: Life after conversion, what to do?
 

I'm having problems with editing my 5D footage that I have converted to ProRes 422 and am editing in FCP 6. I have Canon XHA1 HDV footage on the same timeline. The 5D stuff keeps skipping and is not smooth, and the render time is long.

I was told that the skipping might be happening b/c I do not have a RAID drive and my ProRes 422 HQ files won't run smoothly without a RAID. But there are not other ProRes codecs in Compressor that I can see. Or, does the choppiness have something to do with my mixed source timeline? Or is there SOMETHING I can do to fix this problem?

Looking forward to hearing from anyone who can help! Thanks!

Nil

What speed of computer are you using? What drives are you using? How are they connected? Firewire? SATA?

You can try using ProRes, instead of ProRes HQ. You probably won't tell the difference. But if you're system is choking on ProRes HQ, I'm not too hopeful for other flavors of it.

-steev

Yeah you can easily edit HDV through slower drives, but once you get to ProRes or XDCAM, etc, you are going to need at least internal SATA drives, and if its not going to be an internal drive connected through SATA, then you will need a RAID.

Should also mention hot swap external SATA drives connected to a SATA->PCI-E Card.

I'd say you don't need RAID for ProRes, unless you're doing multicam editing.

ProRes HQ is around 18MB/sec. I can easily single track edit that on firewire drives.

Computer might be the issue but I'm editing on a Macbook Pro 2.4 with no issues. I use Firewire Drives for editing have have no issues editing with Pro Rez, you might want get a good firewire had drive, I use the Western Digital MyBooks and they do fine, I also just bought a higher end one with firewire 800.

From what I understand you can edit with the normal Pro Rez codec no problem in lost of quality, when I first started editing I was using the Pro Rez HQ and things still worked ok.

So you do not need a raid drive just get a good firewire one.

I'm also using Pro-Res (standard and HQ) on a macbook with firewire 800 drives, non-raid, with no problems, even the small bus powered ones (actually only tried standard on those).

if you're not editing on a 30fps (I.e. you're editing on 29.97p) timeline, you'll get those issues.

^^^^^Yep^^^^^ This is what I was thinking the problem is as well.

I have notised this skipping as well.

It is definitely a 29.97 / 30 fps issue.

Use Cinema Tools or equivalent to conform to 29.97 before importing into NLE and you will not have the skipping problem.

Or a mismatch timeline/footage codec.
With Prores footage you need to work at a Prores timeline.
Please check timeline settings.

What does the 5D record? 30p or 29.97p?

Without any doubt 30p. There are a number of threads out there that claim 29.97. They are absolutely not correct. I have personally tested it.

The upcoming firmware will add 23.976 and 25p. I'm optimistic that 30p will be replaced with 29.97. I only know of one person who wants both 29.97 and 30p, but I doubt that Canon will provide both in order to minimize customer confusion.

The big question is whether the 5D2 will get 720p at 50 and 59.94. I've heard a rumor that "the 5D Mark II will get the same frame rates as the 7D", but I'm not willing to put money on it. I think that if they can do it, they will for consistency across the lineup, but I don't know that it's possible.

We will see...

Thanks Jon. I'd love 29.97. It would be great if it would record at higher frame rates too. Doesn't the 7D do 50 fps? That would be nice.

Yes, the 7D does 50 fps and 59.94 fps, but only at 720p.

I'm also hoping for the feature on the 5D2. I don't use slow motion often, but it would be nice to have.

The one thing that kind of bums me out is that you can't use 720p at 30p (or 29.97). There's some of us out here that would take advantage of that for certain everyday shooting opportunities (sometimes 1080p can be overkill but 480p 4x3 pretty much never cuts it). I've got my fingers crossed we get all of the frame rates of the 7D on the 5D2 next year, and with some extra luck, maybe 29.97 at 720 too (although I'm not holding my breath for that one). The other thing I like about 720p is that it boils down to a nice even multiple at 640x360 for certain online multimedia uses, but I digress...