intercutting 5D mark 2 and Sony EX1 footage

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Chandler, I just finished cutting a little sizzle reel that had the exact same shooting formats. My workflow was a little different then the one described in your link. It worked for me, but, as always, test for yourself to see what you like best!

We also used 5D footage for inserts/cutaways, so sync sound wasn’t a concern. I received the 30P footage on an HD and converted using compressor. Since the bulk of my material was XDCAM EX 1080p24 (35 MB/s VBR), I wanted to match the 5D footage to that spec.

Initially, I tried converting the frame rate using the “Best (high quality motion compensated)” setting in compressor, but I found this created very objectionable motion artifacts. I ended up using “fastest (nearest frame)” and was much happier with the result. All this does is toss 6 frames out of every 30 to give you 24 fps. Also of importance is that I converted to all the clips initially to 24.00 fps, then did an additional step of opening the files in Cinema Tools and using the “conform” option to change them all to 23.976 fps. Could I have converted directly to 23.976 with the same results in Compressor? Maybe — but I didn’t go so far as to test that. I was happy with this workflow and wanted to get to cutting!

One other point: I converted all the footage to 50 Mb/s CBR … this is a higher data rate then the EX1 footage, but I wanted to minimize generation loss when converting the 5D footage, so I figured the more bits the better.

The resulting footage definitely has some strobe to it. But even the original 30P footage is pretty strobe-y (it looks like it was filmed with a very fast shutter speed — so there is much less motion blur then with footage coming from a film or “proper” video camera). I don’t think my conversion method introduced much more strobing but YMMV. It intercuts reasonably well with the EX1 footage, although I did have to do some color correcting to match.

Hope this helps,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[David Bogie]

Great contribution to the discourse, Matt.
Im glad I don’t have a Canon but our next Nikons will probably shoot video. I’m not looking forward to that.

bogiesan

[Matt Lyon]

Thanks man! Glad my post was useful. Judging by the amount of threads on the subject, these cameras are being adopted incredibly fast. I’m hoping they will improve by leaps and bounds in the next few years.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[C. Kauffman]

Thanks Matt, that’s a big help. I left out one piece of info, I have to deliver this on DVD (I wish this format would just die already!) My editor is concerned we’ll add all sorts of chopiness by bringing the footage down to 23.97 then taking it back up to 29.97 for the NTSC DVD. We were thinking of doing some crazy stuff and putting everything in a 59.97 timeline, if that makes sense.
By the way, anyone have experience with a good noise reduction software? I was shooting with the 5D2 in the waters off of Long Island at night (cold as hell) and had to shoot at iso 6400 which is usable but a bit grainy.

Sony EX1
Canon 5d mark 2
FCP 6.06

[Matt Lyon]

Hi Chandler, I’ve never worked with 59.94 timelines, but my gut says that trying to mix 23.976 and 30P footage (or 29.97 for that matter) on it would cause more problems then it solves. If you are concerned about choppiness, I would do a test! Convert a one minute clip with some fast motion and camera panning and see how it holds up. Alternatively, if you have access to a broadcast monitor and a video output card (like a Kona) that will do downconversion to SD video w/ proper 3:2 pulldown, you can get a good preview of what the motion will look like on an SD DVD. (I presume you are going to burn a 23.976 fps DVD, right?)

I guess the alternative approach would be to convert all your A camera footage to 29.97, and use the “conform” tool in Cinema Tools to change all the 5D footage to 29.97 as well. But that seems pretty labour intensive, no? Unless you lock picture first, isolate the XDCAM footage, and convert. Then assemble it all together on a 29.97 timeline.

As for noise reduction, I don’t have much experience with what’s out there. Have you tried searching the boards? I’d definitely start a new thread though if you don’t turn up anything! But the good news is because you are downconverting to SD for your DVD output, you can probably do some aggressive processing and still maintain a decent resolution. Start with a simple “unsharp mask” in the FCP filters and see how that works.

Hope this helps,

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto