Commercial shot with 5D

I shot this commercial (for the web only) last Friday using the Canon 5D. Lenses used were the 35mm 1.4, 50mm 1.4 and 80mm 1.8

Using only natural light and 1 kino 4' bank.

Cut with Sony Vegas using Cineform codec and Firstlight for very minor grading.

YouTube - Snap Recordings "Small Business" commercial from the "Based on a true story" campaign

[Roy Niswanger]

Nice commercial. I've been spending a lot of time scouring this site and others picking up tid-bits here and there. I'm getting a little nervous...I'm doing my first wedding this July for free and I hope to make a good product.

I shoot with a 5DMk2, CaVision sholder/rail rig with a 3X eye loupe and D-Focus FF and a Rode Video Mic. I come from good experience with stills but video is fairly new to me. I too use Cineform Neoscene to convert the .mov into colored corrected .avi and then bring them into Vegas Pro 9.c. I'm curious about your worklflow...

- How do you cut directly in Vegas? Is my method to render all the .mov clips stand-alone with neoscene first and then bring them into Vegas okay?
- Can you describe how you render for web?
- From the short 2 months of testing and playing with video, I've come to realize that short steady shots are far better than ones where you try to move...agree?

Oh and I'll have look up a kino and Firstlight.

Thanks,
Roy

[Martin Guitar]

Thanks Roy,

You are doing it right. Convert all your .MOV with HDLink (i use Neo HD which comes with Firstlight) and then import them in Vegas. I have to say that after trying the beta for Premiere CS5, i would recommend switching over. I am switching myself. Vegas does not allow me to work at full resolution with multiple Cineform streams despite the fact that i have a monster PC. Premiere CS5 let me do anything i want to it and more. *Also in your project properties, make sure you are on 32bit video levels or 8bits, not full range.

For web rendering, i usually output an Mpeg2 using the Blu Ray 1080p 24fps 25mbps stream preset and make sure to click on the audio output. I then mux the audio and video using "tmpgenc" mpeg tools.

An easier way is to render a WMV from their HD templates around 6~8mbps.

Beware of YouTube transcoding when in 1080p, it is flawed. That's why my video is uploaded at 720P. (you wouldn't notice it on full motion video but if you have titles like in my video it resamples the video really BAD.

About moving the camera, i would say move it. As long as you have stabilization, a good tripod on a dolly or a slider. You'll be fine, only if you push in and you're by yourself you will need to practice the 1 man focus pulling method. (it's not fun, it's not funny :)

Hope it helps.

[Roy Niswanger]

Cool, thanks for the help Martin. Got to get used to Vegas first then I'll consider Premier.

-Roy

[Jonathan Gentry]

So you don't use H.264 for web rendering?

[Martin Guitar]

I have had no problems with Mpeg2 for Vimeo and YouTube. WMVs and H.264 are fine too. I found that if the source is pristine, then the host encoder do the best it can for it. YouTube at 1080p is not good from my experience.

You have to check video levels for particular codecs.

Check this article, it explains video levels and colorspace for all codecs. (important for Vegas users)

Color spaces and levels in Sony Vegas 9

After rendering(in Vegas), I play in Media player and make sure the video levels (studioRGB) are ok and then i upload. There are so many ways to do this, i can't say i'm doing what "the norm" is but it works for me and also the mpeg2 method in my previous post allows me to check my videos on my Oppo blu ray player with a USB key and check how people would see it on BD.

[Matthew Roddy]

I haven't used TMPGenc. Which product do you use to bring the video and audio together (I'm guessing that's what "muxing" means)?
TMPGEnc.NET
It's a bit confusing to my addled brain...

Thanks for any advice and insight you can impart!

[Roy Niswanger]

From my 5DMK2 .mov source I do the following:

1. Use Cineform NeoScene to render to .avi (highest quality settings)
2. Bring into Vegas with project settings as such: http://www.motleypixel.com/public/po...s_settings.jpg
3. Use step 4 here to render for Viemo or Youtube: Eugenia's Rants and Thoughts Blog Archive Exporting with Vegas for Vimeo HD

-Roy

[Martin Guitar]

Yes i use "TMPGEnc" to mux the Mpeg2 audio and video streams.

You can use the trial version for 30days and then you can buy it for around $40 i think.

Here are the steps on how to mux Mpeg2 streams using TMPGEnc.

1. When the program start, close / cancel the project wizard.
2. Go to "FILE" >"MPEG TOOLS..."
3. The Mpeg Tools window should open with the "simple multiplex" tab by default.
4. Don't bother with the TYPE, just click the browse button in the video section to select the video file. If you rendered from Vegas, the audio and video have the same name and TMPGEnc will fill in the audio for you automatically.
5. Name the output file to your liking and click "RUN"

You will end up with a nice audio/video Mpeg2 file (with a .mpg extension)

[Roy Niswanger]

FWIW, I’ll chime in with my 5DMK2 work-flow for DVD (C&C welcome as this wasn’t my own thought up way of doing this):

1. Cineform the .mov to .avi
2. Set project properties in Vegas Pro 9.c like this: http://www.motleypixel.com/public/po...properties.jpg
3. Edit the project time line to liking and then render as uncompressed avi using the Lagarith lossless codec: http://www.motleypixel.com/public/po...s_downsize.jpg w/o audio (I render the audio as AC3 dolby digital) and Lags codec is pretty decent I hear and is found here for free: http://lags.leetcode.net/LagarithSetup_1320.exe
4. Then render the same entire project as AC3 Dolby Digital and save the name as the same name of the avi i.e. I would end up with test.avi (full res avi from the above step) and test.ac3 the audio for the clip.
5. Then I load TMPGenc and bring the avi into a project from file and choose the test.ac3 as the audio and then burn as DVD or if I had a BD burner burn as BlueRay.

[Matthew Roddy]

I'm being dense, for sure.
I still don't understand the reasoning here: Is it to create a better/higher quality SD DVD?
I'd have just rendered out the MPEG2 from Vegas and taken that into DVDA.
I don't get the TMPGEnc step yet. I apologize.
What interested me about what you said was putting the file on a USB drive and taking that to my PS3 player and seeing what the resulting HD file would look like. I currently don't have a HD preview monitor for Vegas, so I liked the idea of being able to view my file as if I had rendered it to BD or similar, so I can see what my colors and banding might look like.

So I guess I'm fuzzy on two concepts here in this thread, and I hope you'll bear with me. First, I don't get the whole "Lagarith" workflow. Why not just take your HD timeline, dump it into a SD project and render that out as a MPEG2 + AC3 file for DVDA? I'm guessing "Quality" is the answer, but I'm not sure.
Second, for a HD DVD (not BD), is this what TMPGEnc is for? Why not use Vegas and/or DVDA for that? (I'm still new to HD delivery.) Or is this primarily for "muxing" the audio of MPEG2 + AC3 files so you can have them as one file for alternate delivery (as in USB drives, etc)?

Thanks for the help and info. I'm a'learnin'.

Oh... I apologize for being part of the conversation that is taking this sooo far off topic of your original post. You didn't ask for comments, so I didn't know if that's what you were looking for. Thanks for sharing your work, though. I love seeing other people's video projects.

[Martin Guitar]

TMPGEnc is used to mux(combine) the separated audio and video streams. It is useful(to me) for 2 things.

1. I can upload this HQ file to any online video website (YouTube, Vimeo) at a very high quality.

2. You can copy the file on a USB drive to check colors and contrast and video quality on a pro calibrated HDTV (like a Kuro 151) ~Confirmed to work on a PS3 and OPPO BDP-83

I don't know about Lagarith, i convert to Cineform and stays with Cineform until i need to render to a different delivery format. I also archive all my final projects using Cineform.

I really don't mind if people comment on the commercial. I started the post because i know a lot of people like to see what the camera can do under certain lighting conditions, lenses used etc.. just sharing some images.

[Bill Davis]

Originally Posted by Martin Guitar

I shot this commercial (for the web only) last Friday using the Canon 5D. Lenses used were the 35mm 1.4, 50mm 1.4 and 80mm 1.8

Using only natural light and 1 kino 4' bank.

Cut with Sony Vegas using Cineform codec and Firstlight for very minor grading.

YouTube - Snap Recordings "Small Business" commercial from the "Based on a true story" campaign

Sorry, but if this is intended to be a "REAL" commercial, it is totally incompetently created.

A real "commercial" clocks in to fit a broadcast timeslot which means it MUST fit inside a 30second avail.

You've created a "short promo video." NOT a commercial.

no if's ands or buts.

It's 42 seconds is nearly 1/3 too long to fit in ANY broadcast timeslot.

This is the problem with people who have great tools, but no industry experience and who are unwilling to even crack a book to learn the trade standards of the industry they're working in.

Sorry to be so harsh, but if I'd turned something like this in at ANY point in my career, I'd have damaged my reputation and been laughted out of the office of any AD agency or TV Sales office I'd managed to talk my way in.

Now go and dump a full 12 seconds of your content - and see if your "spot" still holds up and tells the story properly.

That's what commercial producers are paid to do.

[Martin Guitar]

Ouch.

It was not intended for television. If you would have read my post you would have seen the mention "for the web only".

[Roy Niswanger]

Originally Posted by Bill Davis

This is the problem with people who have great tools, but no industry experience and who are unwilling to even crack a book to learn the trade standards of the industry they're working in.

Don't see it as a problem...I'm not a commercial videographer working in this industry...heck I'm not even a semi-pro photographer...pure hobby where now the tools of the trade are available...my goal...to someday make wedding-clients happy with a video I made of their wedding.

I'm an IT System's Engineer trying to have fun with a hobby. I'm think I'm in the right community and forum board...I do own a Canon EOS 5D Mk. II.