Breaking the codec. Why the 5D isn't quite ready for primetime

[Mathieu Kassovitz]

Originally Posted by Bill Davis

The next time you shoot something like this, you should actually fire a confetti canon at some point during the scene. And make sure it's multi-color confetti. That way you would actually get even closer to achieving the single "most difficult to compress" shot ever attempted in a digital medium.

Let's see, a forrest of leaves and mottled sunlight working hard to make sure that each and every pixel shifts both color and luminance value between every frame - CHECK. A fast moving central figure constantly in fast motion - CHECK. Now all you need is the confetti.

You BET your result is "BIT STARVED." And you starved it by attempting to feed it a data throughput stream that is WAY TO HUGE to slide down it's gullet, dude.

Seriously, part of the reason that NTSC was so easy to make look decent, was that the resolution was awful and the motion interpolation was marginal at best - particularly since the image was interlaced which further sacrificed picture resolution for better temporal resolution. So SD TV is more like a fast series of impressionist paintings than a series of sharp images. Anyone who's ever tried to pull a still off SD video understands this all too well.

Here's the reality. It's HARDER to get good rapid motion video in high def then it is in standard def. This is because grabbing and processing those big-assed frames that everyone seems to want is a major throughput and storage hassle.

HDTV in 2009 is a series of COMPROMISES. One of those is about rendering fast motion in complex scenes.

The experienced shooter understands this - and writes and blocks scenes to avoid things the camera can't do well. Like this kind of scene.

Take the same girl running - move the camera so that she runs at an shallow angle toward it and/or away from it, with the camera fixed so that the trees and ground cover are STATIC. Push IN for more close ups using the 5dMkii's exceptional depth of field to blur out the background when it's in motion. Use swish pans and fragmented shots to imply speed and progress. All of those will compress a LOT more efficiently than a pan that jiggles every pixel on every frame refresh.

Hope this doesn't sound overly harsh - but you have GOT to understand the nature of how your tools actually work when they get this complex, or you're going to open yourself up to poor results.

Simple as that.

In sum, it works practically the same understanding for 35mm film. Yet less forgiving in certain other aspects, in fact.

[Charles W. Hull]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

Yes, footage went through VirtualDub. Since VDub won't take 5D footage, it was converted to the lossles Lagarith AVI codec.

Cineform AVI (in and out) works well with virtualdub/deshaker. The files are much smaller than with Lagarith, and you can run them directly in the editor timeline.

[Chris Barcellos]

I can confirm that too..

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Charles W. Hull

Cineform AVI (in and out) works well with virtualdub/deshaker. The files are much smaller than with Lagarith, and you can run them directly in the editor timeline.

I'm well aware of the Cineform codec as well as it's benefits (and costs).