Crush problem solved - QT 7.6
 

From Stu:

ProLost: Quicktime 7.6 Fixes 5D Movies

Spread the word: it works! This is a big deal.

Fixes the clipping also. No more need for cumbersome work-arounds.

Yay!

Great news, I can't wait to test this one

Dan

funny, I saw the quicktime update come in today, but delayed installing it due to a massive archiving/copying job I'm enduring... now can't wait for the last 500GB to copy!

Now we just need a easily accessible transcoding app

Yea!

On Tuesday I did a presentation on the 5D Mark II to the local Final Cut Pro group. I shot this footage live in front of the audience and transcoded the "before" clip using QuickTime 7.5.5 in Compressor, it's the one on the right. I upgraded to 7.6 and recompressed today using the same Apple ProRes setting. You can see the "after" on the left. Look at the difference in shadow detail.

Does this help if you use Vegas to edit?

It looks much better than before, on Vegas anyways. Histogram does show gaps though, worries me?! ...Performance still slow.

There's no question that it's completely fixed on my system. It's a "whole" image for the first time - like a new camera. Thanks for a quick response Apple. Now I'm really psyched.

strange, just ran the update and seeing no change here...

But is it stable?
 

I can handle slow, but is it stable? I was never able to get in more then a dozen or so clips before it crashes.

Am I the only one with this problem? I would love to use proxies, but I can never revert back to the originals without crashing.

you're not the only one - I reported the same problem in the original thread I started yesterday. The very first project (Vegas) I tried re-rendering had 30 clips, so when I switched out the proxy files, it simply crashed. I was hoping it might be something limited to my system configuration :(. Oh well, maybe 7.6.1 will come out in 6 months and it will fix it.

The new Quicktime solution is good for a quick fix. It works in Vegas. (I don't know about other NLEs. Sorry.) However, be aware of the following:
* The new Quicktime decoder captures the blacks and whites (yay!), but slightly increases the gamma. Your mid tones will be brighter, and there will be some black stretch.
* The adjustments are done with an 8-bit output. The result is gaps and peaks in the histogram. This could lead to slightly more contouring and quantization error.

Fortunately,
* You can still do the re-wrap trick in Vegas. You still need to do the re-size and re-center thing.
* The re-wrap levels are the same as before - perfect. There are no gaps all the way from 0 to 255.

The Bottom Line:
* Upgrade!
* Feel free to use the MOV file for quick work, especially if you don't plan to color correct.
* Maybe the brighter gamma levels look good, maybe not. It's a judgment call.
* Rewrap to MP4 if you want the best possible quality, don't want the boosted mid-tones, or if you plan to color correct. For color grading, you want all the levels you can get.

I would prefer if the decoded output was more faithful to the camera output, but I'm not complaining. The new decoder gives us a solution for fast turnaround, without the black crush. And we can still re-wrap for best quality.

@Jon,

I can confirm that I'm getting the same results (gamma, mid-tones etc.) as you have, with both Premiere CS3 and Vegas 8.0c. I used the scopes to compare the 5D MKII 2 MOV file to a Cineform AVI file that was converted from the original MOV file.

If you do the rewrap, I made some scripts to make life easier for the re-size and re-center. Check out my post at http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/998409-post21.html