More Canon 7D Test Vids

More Canon 7D Test Vids

I am loving this camera! It's so handy for pre-production - working out camera moves, finding placement and lens choice, working out blocking, etc. Nevermind the fact that it also shoots incredibly high quality raw stills and acceptable quality video. 

I'm trying to figure out if we can use the 7D for a time lapse shot on an upcoming job. I did this first time lapse test in medium quality jpeg just to get a feel for the process. I shot it out of my bedroom window in Brooklyn, NY from 10PM to 10AM. 1 frame per minute, Aperture Priority, f/4, ISO 400. I kept the white balance in Auto and I think for the next test I'll set it around 5000k and shoot in the large Raw file. There is an enormous amount of color temperature difference in available light between nighttime and daytime. At night in the city, it's orange with hard green spikes as street lights have a very low CRI. It then gets very, very cool as daylight approaches but the sun has not yet risen. As the sun appears and sunlight hits the color temp is in the 2800-3400k zone and then cools back off to between 5000-6000k once the sun has fully risen. These numbers are obviously crude approximations but you get the idea. Obviously with Raw, you can control these color temps and find an ideal setting for each time period. Or you can just find one setting that looks great for them all. I'm going to try 5000 Kelvin for my next one. I'm having fun with this and can easily see how it could become an obsession.   

Canon 7D Time Lapse Test 1 from Ben Cain / Negative Spaces on Vimeo.

Quick and Easy Transcoding

Quick and Easy Transcoding

I'm not a post guy. Never have been. But as the workflow has moved from film to tape and tape to data, I've had to learn far more about post production then I ever thought I would need to. Especially now as I'm often working as a video engineer, I need to know every single technical detail of the codecs and formats I'm working with and how they will make their way through the post production food chain. 

As for transcoding, or turning one file format into another, this is something I've found myself doing more than ever now that I've added the Canon 7D to my ever expanding gear pile... it's a sickness I tell you. I've found that in working with the 7D footage, I prefer to transcode to Apple ProRes from Canon's crummy, inter-frame, H.264 based codec. ProRes is Intra-frame, is well supported with all my hardware and software, and makes for a very robust and faithful image.

There's the sloooooooow way of transcoding - opening FCP, making a ProRes 422 timeline, dropping the Canon clip in there, not changing the settings when prompted, and then exporting. OR there's the quick and painless way of doing it, in a batch no less, that Jem has so graciously explained on The C47. In this video, he walks you through the process of building custom export settings in Compressor and creating a Droplet which you can use to transcode your Canon media to whatever format you specify simply by dragging the files onto the icon. Faster, easier, smarter. Watch it.

I've been doing quite a lot of this and I've discovered the ratios to be pretty predictable in how your original files expand or shrink depending on which ProRes codec you transcode to. Here are the numbers:

ProRes Proxy: x .75 - .8 of original file size

ProRes LT: x 1.4 - 1.6 of original file size 

ProRes 422: x 2.4 - 2.6 of original file size

ProRes HQ: x 3.75 - 4 of original file size

Very useful in figuring out drive space requirements or how many hard drives to bring to the job.

UPDATE 02/07/10:
Canon has announced the EOS E1 Video Plug-in for Final Cut Pro. It will enable you to bring Canon media directly into FCP via the Log and Transfer tool. When it's released, it will be available here:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/finalcutstudio/ 

Hurl Rigs

Hurl Rigs

A friend of mine, NYC based cinematographer Jon Miller, attended the ICG party at Sundance this year and was kind enough to bring back some images and info. Most of note, Shane Hurlbut, ASC was there showing some of his HDSLR solutions and sharing information with colleagues. I hope Mr. Hurlbut doesn't mind if I relay some of it here. If not, I'll be happy to remove this post immediately.

Here's the Hurl Hardware:

Funky Blue Handles, Z-Finder, Baseplate with 15mm Rods, Remote Focus

Custom Machined Aluminum Cage that looks you can mount just about anything to.

Cage with Handheld Rig, On-board Monitor, FIZ, and V-Mount Battery in the back

Other Hurl advice and tricks:

Use Twixtor for 30p to 24p conversions. I haven't tried this but I've heard from several users this is an excellent, though time intensive solution.  

Use Cineform Neoscene to open up the Canon codec and turn it into a quality video file. There's some very interesting information about this posted here on the Cineform Insider blog.

Another trick he uses to emulate the quality of a film stock is to shoot some 35mm film of an evenly lit gray card that fills the frame. This picks up the grain characteristics and the gray is easily removed in After Effects. This is then composited on the SLR footage which helps to take the curse off the digital. This is actually a fairly old trick and I remember doing this in college though I shot 16 against a white wall and it didn't work nearly as well. The things we do for that film look! I wonder if once digital has really nailed it if people won't suddenly be nostalgic for that crappy old video look.. Makes you wonder. 

In the spirit of sharing information I think this is really fantastic stuff. Mr. Hurlbut seems like a very generous guy and has already contributed a lot to the HDSLR filmmaking community. Looking forward to seeing more of his solutions and inventions. 

UPDATE:

Stuart Allman of Illuma Blog sent me this great post that has more information on the rigs and Shane Hurlbut's advice on using them. Thanks Stuart!