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Canon 7D H264s: Codecs and green keying
I’m working with 7D 1080p footage of actors in front of a green screen. Normally when working with H264s, I convert to ProRes LT or ProRes for a stress free editing workflow.
This time, I will need to take the footage into AE to pull keys and I’m worried about color shifts, data loss, noise, and other things that could make the keying harder/messy.
I converted the H264 to ProRes Lt, ProRes, ProRes HQ, FCP Uncompressed 10bit, Apple Animation and Apple XDCAM EX (since the B camera is an EX1). Brought them all into after effects and found that the orginal H264 was brighter than all of them. XDCAM EX and Animation had crushed the blacks, but the prores family had nearly the same blacks as the H264 but the mids were lowered.
On further inspection, the ProRes family and FCP 10bit looked the same and were a solid black screen when compared using a Difference composite mode.
So really what I want to know is… When going from H264 into an editing/compositing codec, is there a right codec? If everything is darker than the source file, is the source file the problem or is it the conversions?
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3 Replies
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The difference in color between the H264 or the ProRes family is due to Mpeg Streamclip. Compressor conversions were perfect.
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If I were doing effects work I’d pick ProRes 4444 which is the only format other than Animation to have an alpha channel. Also most VFX folks prefer to receive source footage as image sequences- TIF, TGA, Cineon or DPX typically.
Noah
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Update: The color shift was cause by Mpeg Streamclip. Compressor and FCP log and transfer (just got the plug in) showed no differences in picture from the original h264
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