I got the filter, but I have not had a chance to retry that clapboard shot yet, I will and I will then post result.

My shoots have been mostly soft focus w/o need for thin line correction. We are currently shooting a lot of nature and closeups of people, tourism promos. For these type of shots I find the Color softening works great. I don't like to stack filters, and I almost always use ND 6 or 9. But I will try the Tiffen Soft/fx 1 filter and ND9 soon.

I also just got a Fader vari ND, and that is already 2 pieces of glass, it will be interesting to see how that works with Tiffen Soft/fx 1.

Ive seent this in a couple of threads - what does it mean - easy to do in Color?

Thanks,
Fred

Color is a really fantastic color correction/grading program that comes with FinalCut Studio II, Mac only.

I am sure there are Windows programs that do similar adjustments.

The incredible thing about Color is that it is a really inexpensive replacement for grading suites. Used to cost many tens of thousands of dollars.

However a colorist is very specialized profession, and just having the program does not turn you into one. It is a great learning tool, and as you get more experience in it, very useful.

I used to think that Media100 had great color correction, and it does, but Color blows it out of the water.

Cinema tools is also a program, part of FCP suite.

Color
 

Ahhh - thanks. If only they made a FCP version for PC!

Aliasing and beyond
 

Mathieu, what I am talking about is the fact that - in my experience so far, and I would LOVE to be wrong here - MkII is great for internet but unusable for any professional broadcast. What I am getting out on my control monitor via Intensity Pro card is unacceptable for broadcast. Period.

Do not get me wrong, I love idea of having a still camera that can be used fro HD video, to the extent that I actually bought two, but so far I have not been able to get acceptable image outside computer monitor.

I am as the matter of fact quite surprised at the fact that this less then perfect codec is not been discussed more at this forum; we all were furious about lack of manual control, happy to get it, but so few people complained about the codec artifacts which - IMHO - is just not tolerable. And for me, the question of good codec is by far superior to the question of having manual control. Now, I have full manual control over bad image quality.

What I am getting is a sort of schizoid output: great video shoots on my computer becomes ugly beasts on my PAL/HD 1080p control monitor. And guess what - I am in broadcasting. So, unless I find some acceptable manner to maintain great image I have on my computer monitors once I output the footage to external/control monitor, my Canons will be just what they are meanbt to be - great still cameras with NON-broadcast able HD video option.

I have just tried what Olof suggested to do with transfer to Color and apply some blur: no deal. In my case blur makes jugged edges even worse on wide shoots. Portraits done with 200mm lens are in most cases good, as long as any horizontal line does not appear in the shoot.

Again, I am not trying to be offensive to Canon here, I love my MkII and if anyone can point me in direction of solving the artifacts issues I mentioned - I will keep buying him rounds of beer for next two decades! Cheers!

I agree with you and I have stated that mII codec can not handle sharp thin lines and does a very poor job with highly detailed shots. Like lots of leafs and branches in focus. It also does some interesting things with small pinpoint lights (white pinpoint lights can become multicolored and twinkle).

But the mkII really excels in shots that are mostly out of focus (shallow DOF), these are very common shots for me at least. Also shots with a lot of even colors in it are fine.

The low light capabilities of the mkII are outstanding.

I have used mkII footage in broadcast SD commercials, and in bluray DVD and HD-DVD. And it looked fine. No one other than us here at Westside A V Studios would know it was not shot with a "video camera".

As I have stated before it is not a great all around ENG EFP cam, but a special tool and if used correctly produces wonderful broadcast acceptable shots.

Yes Olof...
 

.. quite right. It can do great stuff, but not in the realm of wide angle. With soft focus telephoto lens if fine. Pitty.

Wow, it's nice to see people worried about quality around!

I have seen the worst content-less and quality-less videos on TV. I think there is no use for the term "broadcast" anymore!!! :-(

This is not matter of semantic
 

When you are commissioned by a broadcaster to produce a documentary in HD, believe me term ''broadcast quality'' is very much alive. Want to play with their technicians? You are most welcome to do so! I am not going to challenge them. Because any of those guys can pull out the plug pronouncing your program technically sub par, and you are gone.

Again, I love my MkIIs, but I am reluctant to include footage made with them on my HD timeline due to described artifacts. I agree that contemporary TV programs are usually an insult for intelligent person, but that is not my battle.

image rates
 

i'm also the happy owner of an EX1 and i'm really intersted by the MK2 as a king of "b" camera. But what bothers me is the 30 images/sec. I live in France and we shoot in 25 images down here. So my question is : is it easy to match both rushes, one filmed with the MK2 at 30images and the other from an EX1 at 25 images. Exemple : if i shoot an interview with my EX1 and i want to integrate shots made with the mk2.
Thanks for your answers,
Fred

Fred
 

I can only share my experience. I mostly use MkII for general shots, not intws. If sound is not important in the paricular shoot, I leave the shoot at 30fps, conform frame rate in Cinetools, ignore the sound (as it is slowed down) and use other ambiental sound that I record with propper sound gear.

OK, when I need original sound (last week I've shoot a performance of twirling dervishes in Cairo, using 70-200 lens with soft focus and thus acceptable amount of artifacts I mentioned above) I simply convert the MkII footage in Compressor or MPEG Streamclip to Pro Res HQ, and alter the frame rate to 25. No problem, except for two shoots with movement of the camera that revealed frame drops (because the frames are dropped in the process of converting from 30 to 25 fps). Simply did not use those takes.

Now, I recently made a video spot for a jazz singer friend of mine, in a jazz club, static, her sitting on the high stool, basic jazz trio setup, not much movement. All shoot with EX3 and MkII with 85 lens, full aperture, soft focus. Non frame drop was detectable, perfect sync. That would suggest - you being shooting intws - somewhat similar setup, the person being interviewed will most likely not move too much, so you should not have problem. Just - if I may advice - avoid if at all possible any lines and highly detailed background, to avoid codec artifacts.

Just curious what do you mean by "soft focus"?

Thanks.

Cineform (Neoscene in particular) properly adjusts pitch when converting to 29.97 so there is no audio slow-down you mention. While I am praising their product I will also say it converts very fast and the resulting format is very nice for editing.

Alex
 

By soft focus I mean using telephoto lens at full aperture so that only a small portion of the image is in focus whereas foreground and background are out of focus, blurred. In this way sharp edges are almost eliminated from the image, thus avoiding jugged edges.

Also, in picture style, I use 'Portrait' and reduce contrast to the minimum, helps a bit. Using 'Landscape' with high contrast - nightmare.

Mark

What you do is fine in NTSC lands, not in PAL. Correct me if I am wrong, but Neoscene does not convert from 30 to 25 fps.

True. Neoscene isn't a converter at all. It just slows the 30p by 0.1% so we don't drop frames on a 29.97 timeline. It resamples the audio to match.

The benefit of Neoscene isn't rate conversion. It's that it converts the video to independent frames with wavelet compression, so we can edit quickly, and get lower resolution proxy views as needed on the fly. It's similar to Pro Res, but can be used on any NLE and OS.