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Mixing Sony EX1 and Canon 7D 24P footage
Hey folks,
Shot a project last month starting with a Sony XDCAM EX-1, and we had a Canon 7D on set, so we shot with it as a second camera for coverage. Both were shot 24P (23.98) and both are 1920 x 1080.I have logged and transferred the EX-1 footage, which comes in in its XDCAM EX 1080p24 format. The 7D footage is in its native H264 format.
I’m wondering if the 7D footage should be transcoded via compressor to XDCAM EX 1080p24 format, and then work on the project in an XDCAM timeline?
Or, should I transcode 7D footage to Prores, and also transcode EX1 footage to Prores and work directly in a Prores timeline?
Project is going to be delivery online–compressing to H264 quicktimes. Working in FCP 7. Thanks for any thoughts!
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9 Replies
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[Tony Young] “Or, should I transcode 7D footage to Prores, and also transcode EX1 footage to Prores and work directly in a Prores timeline? “
Yes.
Shane
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Definitive! Thanks!
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Although transcoding both to ProRes is probably the safest and highest-quality method, I’d be curious if people think there are significant problems with only transcoding the H264 stuff to ProRes and putting it in an XDCAM EX timeline with the sequence render settings set to render to ProRes. I’ve done this a couple times in situations where I had a ton of XDCAM EX stuff and only a little bit of H264 stuff, so to transcode both would have taken forever, or where the edit had already begun with XDCAM EX and then the client wanted to add some H264 stuff.
My experience has been that ProRes in an XDCAM EX timeline (again, with sequence settings set to render to ProRes) plays back in real time, doesn’t seem to cause any problems, and doesn’t significantly degrade in quality when you render. My thinking was that where I would normally avoid transcoding material to ProRes and then putting it in a non-native timeline and rendering it, thus introducing another generation of compression, if you’re really rendering to ProRes anyway then perhaps there’s not really such an issue with additional compression from the rendering. I haven’t tested this extensively though, so I’m curious if anyone’s run into problems doing things this way.
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I’ve run into an issue where the ProRes HQ footage looks fine on the XDCAM timeline (both codecs set to 1920×1080-30p), but the exported video has the ProRes portions playback at a faster frame rate. I never did figure out the reason, but I did another ingest using the same codec & settings and it worked fine. It might have something to do with the Blackmagic Design version of the codec.
Other than that issue on the one project, I’ve never had any problems using other formats on the same timeline, even with realtime color correction and over 12 video layers.
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What is the best process of doing this? I exported the 7d clips to ProRes LT through mpeg streamclip, and it was super fast and easy. Is there an easy way to get the ex1 clips to ProRes LT with one step?
Thanks for any help you can give!
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Hi Tony.
I have the exact situation as this post string from last year. I am trying to get set up to edit so I was wondering if you followed the advise and transferred both to prores, or did something else. And how it worked for you and came out. -
Hey Jamey,
Yes, I did transcode both to ProRes and it was problem-free in post. There may be some other options as mentioned above, but this method is basically bullet proof.
If you’re interested in seeing how the footage contrasts, the piece is posted below. The interview was shot with the EX1 (w/ a lens adaptor), and the rest of the visuals were 7D. I don’t think there’s much visual difference and most important–didn’t run into any post-issues.
Best o luck with yours!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fypi6dAJB8E
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Tony, loved the ink video. Looks like the 7D and Sonyex1 worked well together. I’m shooting a Chef project and wanted to use the 7D for all the close up shots of the food prep and the sony for the wider shots of the Chef. I noticed that some of your close ups had very soft backgrounds. Lovely. Cindy
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Thanks! They worked out fine together. I think having similar lenses was key for getting a comparable look. Keeping the sony on wide should work. Break a leg with it!
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