Can 5D2 30p turn into decent 24p? You be the judge...
 

I re-timed a few 5D Mk II clips I shot at an outdoor mall at night from 30fps to 24fps through Compressor with its Optical Flow goodness.

I'm shocked by the results. It's far from a perfect solution, but I think one can certainly 'get away with it', as it were, by shooting with this camera and getting a relatively smooth 24p conversion in post that wouldn't draw attention to itself. Yeah, Compressor does render synthetic 'in-between' frames where it needs them, but in motion, (IMO) it basically looks the part.

I shot this with a friend of mine (Natalie) who volunteered to be my guinea pig for the test.

Details:

--5D2
--Nikon 17-35mm, F 2.8
--First shot is 35mm, F 2.8, Second shot is 17mm F2.8 (very nicely wide)
--Basic, not very well adjusted Glidecam stabilizer (need to add weight)
--ISO 1000 locked
--Shutter drifted I think. Mostly is either 1/40 or 1/60 (need to learn the new tricks)
--Converted to ProRes and re-timed in Compressor
--30p original clip provided for reference

Let me know what you guys think: http://homepage.mac.com/mrbarlowelton

Which Glidecam model did you use, and have you since managed to improve the stabilisation?

A couple of weeks ago I took a 5d2 to a Steadicam dealer, but we just couldn't get it balanced. I'm going to look at Glidecam 2000 & 4000 tomorrow, so I'm interested to hear from anyone who's succeeded with a 5d2 on either of these, or indeed any other stabiliser.

Thanks in advance,

Jeremy Nicholl

How to smoothly edit and convert to 24/25fps
 

Please make a sticky about the 24/25 conversion.
My whole documentary project depends on the ability to convert it for European broadcast, 25fps that is. I am located in EU.

Thanks ,
T

Barlow,

how do you set your Nikon 17-35 f2.8 open?
mine 70 200 is closed down to highest F stop, do you put something inside to keep it open at 2.8??

sorry about off topic..

I think it did a pretty good job. I took your original file and ran it through Twixtor 4.5 with fairly default settings - just changed mode from blend to nearest. I like Twixtor a bit better - especially if I wanted to tweak motion blur etc. but the Compressor results are still very good.

direct link
http://www.outsideinthemovie.com/col...fpsTwixtor.mov

folder link
Index of /collab

It was a 4000 with no steady shooter arm and vest. I think you could easily get a 2000 or Steadicam Merlin to balance.

It's really only a matter of turning the frame controls on in the inspector window and in the QT codec window setting a custom 24 frame rate with high quality motion compensation turned on, and everything else set to basic.

Looks like Twixtor did the same thing. Did you have it reduce motion blur? Either way, works for me. Thanks for the sample. :)

Barlow:

Curious about the Christmas tree in background, going purple light to white light. Was the tree actually changing colors in sections, seems to slow to be a rolling shutter issue.

No, not a rolling shutter issue--it was really changing colors in sections at that speed.

It was a manual aperture ring lens. The ONLY way to fly. ;)

No, I just ran with defaults, but Twixtor has motion blur compensation for footage with more or less blur as well as a number of other settings. But from what you posted, Compressor seems to work fine.

Barlow, thank you!

Anyone with a critical view of this video? It would be nice if someone like Graeme Nattress would pop back in and take a look.

I agree with Chris. This looks entirely like Rolling Shutter but slow. See how the color changes before the image updates - unless this was created from the frame convert to 24p. Either way, it caught my attention as distortion.

Also, I noticed the codec said 24p not 23.976 - The VideoCopilot tutorial recommends the NTSC version of 24p @ 23.976 - I wonder if differences will be perceived.

Otherwise, holy cow - the footage is great. I also own the 4000 except I bought the vest and arm for the sled. Any tips on balancing on the 4000?

-C

How exactly did you re-time in compressor? Would love some step by step. thanks!

24p, that "tree" and what you might believe...
 

Michael Schoenfeld here,

Barlow is a close friend of mine - Natalie works for me - and......

The Christmas tree with the blue and white lights, which "cascade down from top to bottom in a segmented fashion" is REAL - NOT, repeat NOT, a post production or shooting problem - that is EXACTLY what that tree's lights do in reality. That yule tree is 500 feet away from where I am typing this right now - trust me.

Barlow edits and shoots projects with me - if he says he converted 30p to 24p with very few, if any artifacts, you can believe him - he knows his stuff.

The "tree" is the "tree" - no "rolling shutter" there - (I'm not saying this camera has no "rolling shutter concerns", but it's not manifesting itself in this "tree" thing.

BTW, Barlow and I both own 5D MKII's now, and the Nikon lenses are really the "only way to fly" - say "APERTURE CONTROL" - really silly move on Canon's part if you ask me; I own about 25 Canon lenses, including almost all the "L glass" primes and zooms up to 200mm, 300 F4, 100-400 F4/5.6. I also still own a 50mm Zeiss ZF, a Nikon 85 F1.4, and a Nikon 200mm F2, all superb on the 5D. Come on Canon, was "manual control" really too much to ask for US$2699.00? I'd have given you $3k for total manual control. Just sick.

The Nikon 17-35 belongs to a friend of ours - stupid me, I sold that lens to him about a year ago! Ah well, I have the 16-35 Canon L and it does do a nice job, IF you can get past the aperture crap.

This camera's video funtionality is really amazing, but very eccentric, much akin to a crazy relative you still invite to your family functions, hoping the intellectual, witty, deeply emotionally satisfying version shows up, not the vulgar, obscene, crass version of the relative.

Someday (soon I hope) Canon will really hit the ball out of the park; 1DsMKIV?

These kludges are interesting and valuable, if not maddening.

All the best,

Michael Schoenfeld

If you shoot in PAL mode, will it produce 25 fps footage? If so, can you really tell the difference between 24 and 25 fps?

I've converted 5mk2 footage in Color, setting project at 25 frame, did all the color correction bringing back shadows, and highlight detail, then sent rendered sequence to FCP...
.... it worked!!

Happy New Year everyone!

I'm no Graeme Nattress, but I've been doing a ton of conversions to 25p using both Episode and Compressor (better results with the latter) as I need 25p for DVD output, among other things.

The video posted here is a little hard to judge, as there's so much going on, but Barlow is right on the money by simply checking "high quality motion compensation" in Compressor. I've been analysing a lot of footage frame by frame, and even at 100% it's very difficult to detect any loss in resolution, and the vast majority of frames have no artifacts due to the process. I won't hesitate to use this method to obtain 25p, even for large screen public viewing.

Oleg, this method only achieves 25p by dropping every 6th frame and retiming the remaining frames to the original duration. The same occurs if you drop 5D footage into a 25p FCP timeline and export it as a quicktime movie.

If you play the resulting footage frame by frame, you'll notice they're in sets of five frames with a slight jump between each set where the 6th frame has been omitted, unlike the method outlined by Barlow in which an entirely new set of evenly spaced frames are created.

Having said that Oleg, your method is super fast, doesn't create any artifacts or lose any resolution, and to be honest, at full speed, unless you're really looking for it, it's hard to notice any frames are missing. For work such as interviews that do not involve fast motion, I'd say this method will do perfectly fine.

for what i've read on the net, Apple's Shake is best for retiming.

I've heard that too Ralf, but Apple stopped developing Shake a while back, and given they're both Apple products, Compressor may be sharing the same technology.

In any case, Compressor does a very very impressive job. Coupled with the gamma solution provided by Color, I'd say anyone running Final Cut Studio can get a pretty good 5D mkII workflow established.

Josh, thank you. Great observation.

If the discussion to be continued, and Compressor does a great job,
does it make sense to convert to a 50 frame a second based footage for a good slow motion if needed and edit everything shot with the camera on a 1080 50P timeline?

Hi Oleg, one downside of using compressor is it takes a loooong time to process the footage, so personally I'll only use it when necessary (presumably creating 50 new frames per second as opposed to 25 will take even longer). 50 fps Prores files are also much larger, so for storage/handling, that's another thing to consider.

Remember when you first exported your footage from a 25p Color project, you didn't realise 1/6th of the frames were missing? I don't think any viewers will notice either. I've shown footage using the simple 'export in 25p timeline' method to several non-techie people and even when I ask them to look for an issue with the frames no one can spot it, unless I play the footage frame by frame.

So my plan is to use this crisp, ultra fast method for fairly stationary shots, and to mix it with footage processed with Compressor when there's a lot of motion involved. Final Cut Pro won't know the difference, and I don't think viewers will either.

Josh, thank you, agree with you!

Thanks for posting this Barlow. Looks pretty convincing to me. While I'd love to see Canon add 24P to the camera, I'm secretly hoping they take the 5D's front-end and mate it up with a proper "video" body with full controls and various frame rates.

That's the hope. Not holdin' my breath on it though.

As much as I like Canon, they're still only going to do what's in their best long-term interests and not necessarily what their users want at the moment.

The techno-drip from any of the major camera manufacturers will be as slow as possible, and the only reason we are seeing HD video from a full-frame DSLR is because Red has somewhat disrupted the market, if only due to hype and perception...not necessarily sales figures.

In the meantime, I think some clever guys will make very interesting films with the 5D MKII.

I don't know this software. You mean Color uses no other than the drop frame technique?

I have a little more faith in Canon. But I'm biting my nails waiting to see what the full package ends up looking like.

It's possible they already made deals with specific vendors for 1/3" or 1/2" CMOS chips and are already committed to that solution for the next generation XL's and can't change course for something more radical. I hope not. Maybe they'll release a limited edition full-frame 5D type camera for professionals, but at a price point that won't bleed their video business but satisfy their high-end constituents. Dunno. It's all up in the air right now.

I am saving my pennies for a 5D though. I've been wanting a high-end DSLR anyway. The DSMC approach RED is taking is making rethink that purchase though. Perhaps a S35 Scarlet?

I guess, in the end, it really depends on how this world economy pans out. Canon could be killing a lot of R&D projects right, for all we know. I have no idea what my next film will be and what budget it will be at.

I guess I'm a bit more agnostic even though I'm a pretty big Canon camera/camcorder fan...but they do work in mysterious ways, don't they? ;)

I just think they have a niche with smaller chip pro-to-prosumer camcorders in the video market and we probably have no idea how difficult it would be for them to turn the ship on a dime and make a powerful hybrid of the full-frame dslr mated to a proper video camera body...and deliver it all at prices that everyone's used to.

And a lot of the people that buy Canon camcorders wouldn't really want to deal with full-frame DOF in reality. It's not easy for event guys, to say the least.

DSMC...I still have my quibbles about the hybridization of the two realms. I just think they're different disciplines that will never fully exist in harmony as equals in one camera.

I think another possible market reality about this newfangled HD video in a full-frame DSLR might be the simple fact that a lot of photographers were quite happy with their 5D's, etc, and now a threshold might've been reached where extra megapixels just isn't as sexy as it used to be--voila!!--half-baked flakey (but exceedingly beautiful) HD video in the new 5D.

Isn't globalization just the s**t?

Color's role is colour-correction. But it comes as part of Final Cut Studio with Compressor - Compressor has all the options you need for high-quality conversions.

Lens Adapter
 

Barlow, just out of curiosity, what adapter are you using to mate Nikon lens to the EOS body?

Thanks,
Michael

I'm not sure about Barlow, but we bought a Fotodiox Pro from ebay, and are happy with the results. The mounting surfaces are metal, and there is a retention mechanism, so the Nikon lens won't rotate off. It was recommended by somebody who claimed to try out a number of adapters, and I'm happy with the purchase.

Fotodiox Adapter - Michael Schoenfeld
 

Hello Jon,

Michael Schoenfeld here,

Barlow and I are using the Fotodiox adapter on three of the four Nikon mount lenses we are using with the 5DMKII - the other one is from Cameraquest (the owner Stephen Gandy is a little "Unique", to say the least).

I just wanted to thank you for all of your hard work to "hack" the settings for manual control!

Barlow and I are trying to do our part to help out - he is quite the analytical mind, as are you.

Thanks again,

Michael Schoenfeld

michael schoenfeld : 801.532.2006

Thanks, Michael,

BTW, nice photos on your site. Portfolios One and Two are especially compelling.

Josh,
In case it is useful to you, Shake was just updated a few weeks back to 4.1.1 - seems there is still life in there and it suggest that there may be a full update at some point soon?
Nick.

trying to view the clip, but it's asking for a password.

i am on a quest to find some sort of workflow for a 24P solution for the 5dmkII. my goal is to shoot my next feature film completely with the 5dmkII, we'll see what comes first... a firmware update or decent workarounds or the scarlet.