5D and FCP

[Bob Dix]

You may be better shooting at sRAW1 or sRAW2 depending on the level of magnification you need for weddings 24 ” x 20 ” enlargements may need RAW and then convert.We do not use a card reader and go straight from the 5D mark II to My Pictures, but, as we use sRAW2 for High Definition video production they download from a Sandisk Extreme Pro 48Mbs CF Card in 20 secs ie. about 90 images and full high definiton H264 mov files and that is on a Pentium 4 in a PC.

At any level of recorded pixels the images and video are stunning.

Enjoy the camera.

If you do just DVD’s the image quality will suffer, try blu-ray?Ie.,for HD.Ps. You can go SD @ 640 x480 but, what a waste of the camera’s potential. The H264 mov files 1920 x 1080 can cause the timeline to come to a hault or move very slowly, we convert to Cineform HD avi and then edit. If you use CS5 premiere Pro I believe you will not have a problem. Use a very fast CF card 48 Mbs or more>

Freelance Imaging & Video
AUSTRALIA

[Bill Davis]

Your workflow is unnecessarily complicated.

Install the Canon EOS utility that came with the 5dMk ii.

Tether your camera to your computer via USB with FCP running and use the EOS utility to bring your video files directly into an FCP timeline. It does the ProRes 422 transcoding on the fly and takes a WHOLE lot less time than anything else.

If you’re unsure if your timeline settings are going to be correct – open a fresh FCP project and drop some of the video files into it’s timeline or into the Browser and FCP will ask you if you want to confom the new timeline to the footage type. Say YES and you’re ready to edit without a problem.

That’s it.

[Michael Sacci]

[Bill Davis] “Tether your camera to your computer via USB with FCP running and use the EOS utility to bring your video files directly into an FCP timeline.”

I would not recommend this at all. For one you will never have your raw files, they are your negatives, your tapes. Always copy them to a a HD with folder structure as it is on the card. Then do the Log and Transfer in FCP. That way there is a backup of the clips and you would normally want them on separate drives. You do not want to be working with the only copy of your media. This is rule #1 for tapeless workflows.

As a rule of thumb, your sequence settings should always match your clips, so if you want to edit as 24p you need to shoot that way. If you shoot 30p you need to edit with a 30p timeline.

To speed transfer to ProRes clips there is a new program by Red Giant and it will do multiple clips at the same time. How ever many processors you have it will transcode that number of clips. So with an 8-core the process will be basically 8x as fast if you have at least 8 clips to transcode.

[Mitch Ives]

[Michael Sacci] “I would not recommend this at all. For one you will never have your raw files, they are your negatives, your tapes. Always copy them to a a HD with folder structure as it is on the card. Then do the Log and Transfer in FCP. That way there is a backup of the clips and you would normally want them on separate drives. You do not want to be working with the only copy of your media. This is rule #1 for tapeless workflows. “

I agree with your comment on the importance of archiving, but if you’ve figured out how to get Log & Transfer to bring in files copied from a card to a HD, using the same structure, then I’d love to hear how you do it, because it has never worked here. In fact the EOS plugin docs tell you that you can’t do it that way. Up until recently, you had two choices, use the camera so the EOS plugin can see the files, or make a disc image of the card. That can then be copied to a HD, where Log & Capture can see it.

Making disc images is a nightmare… it takes forever and makes archiving longer with a 5D than with P2 or any other digital format we work with. Fortunately, Red Giant Grinder came along, where they tell me you can use Log & Capture to bring in files copied to a HD using the same file structure as the card.

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com
http://www.insightproductions.com

[Dane Silzle]

Ok here’s a cheep sure-fire tool MPEG Streamclip you can
download for FREE at https://www.squared5.com.

here’s what you do for 30p footage

1)download/install this program to your Mac
2)USE A CARD READER (connected to your USB port)save you footage to a folder.
3)3 open MPEG Streamclip goto , LIST/Batch List/add files, direct it to footage folder, chose(highlight all your files)/ Export to Quicktime /select your destination
(make a target folder). In Movie Exporter pulldown to Apple ProRes 422LT (in FCP 7) or use ProRes 422 (the bottom one) type in your desired frame rate 29.97(if NTSC) uncheck interlaced scaling and make sure you have the right resolution checked (1920×1080) and click on the “To Batch” button, your batch will be waiting
click go and wala…new files are being conformer.. depending on how many and how long your movies are will determine how long it takes. It’s pretty fast.
Note: keep you batch down to 10 movies at a time.

Good luck have fun..(invoice is in the mail..LOL)

Dane
drppost

GH1(13), 7D,T2i
Lomo PL mount, Zeiss ZF, Nikkor F, Canon L

Mac Pro 8Core 18Gig
10.5.8
Decklink HDExtreme 7.6.3
HDone
Macbookpro
Matro MX0 mini

[John-michael Trojan]

in order to use EOS utility after copying to a harddrive you just need to take both folders from the camera. Most people don’t copy the MISC folder, hence why the tools fail. I’ve even re-created the correct structure from scratch and been successful.

best,

John-Michael

[Dane Silzle]

Hi John-Micheal,

I guess I need to clairify:

This is a very fast and accurate way to conform Canon h.264 MPEGS to ProRes422
and does not in any way involve Canon Software.

here’s what you do for 30p footage

1)download/install this program to your Mac
Meaning ” MPEG Sreamclip”
2)USE A CARD READER (connected to your USB port)save you footage to a folder.
By Footage I mean FOOTAGE/ .MOV files… Not None footage.

I was just trying to share a sure-true and proven process to a forum member or members.
This is a Process I started using a Year ago and in-fact one that Philip Bloom give Tutorial on.

So this is an option to using the Canon Software and possibly faster.

Dane

[Kris Merkel]

All of these suggestions work to some degree and each will be more comfortable to certain workflows. I third what Michael said about copying your media. I haven’t used Grinder yet but my workflow is as follows:

– Record media on card
– create disk image of the card through FCP log and transfer
– Archive copy of disk image to perm. storage
– batch clips using L&T from working copy of disk image

Very few steps involved. It does take a while to create the .img, but I use multiple cards

[Michael Sacci]

I have never made a disc image, not one time. I use the same method of my T2i footage as I do for P2.

Each card Dump goes into its own folder, each fold has a unique name that becomes the REEL name within FCP. The Card is then just copied into the folder with the exact structure as the card, only the Volume level is not copied.

Open up FCP, Log and Transfer and point it to those folders and there are the clips, every time. You can even do real logging with comments, choice which if any audio tracks come in. The added benefit is you now have timecode, which is needed if you ever need to reconnect media down the road.

You must have the Canon EOS plugin installed and if you have the T2i there is a mod you can do that takes a minute that makes those clips compatible.

Grinder and Streamclip are both good work flows, Grinder is a no brainer if you need to use proxies and give a client or producer, BITC of all the footage.

[Bouke Vahl]

Besides Grinder, there is also my offload tool, conveniently called ‘offloader’
It makes a backup of the card to HD, and can do transcoding as well.
Two advantages over Grinder:
– it DOES use the timecode from the THM files (or shoot date if the THM is not present)
– it is donationware. (Meaning, pay as much as you think it’s worth)

It can also use multiple cores, you can do as many simultanious conversions as you like.
However, i’ve never done a speedtest. The idea is that you have your laptop on the shoot doing the work, so when you get home, everything is done. This way the actual speed does not really matter…
But since it’s a normal QT export, and you can choose how much you want to stress the processor (depends on what else you want to do with it while it is converting), i guess it’s equally fast as Grinder.

Download here:
https://www.videotoolshed.com/product/15/offloader/3

Bouke

https://www.videotoolshed.com/
smart tools for video pros