Mixing 5D 1080P @29.97 & 7D & 720P @60P

[Eric Jurgenson]

I’d edit with a 720P60 sequence. Downconversion should simply be a matter of resizing, since 1080P 29.97 simply repeats every frame when converting to 720P60 (actually 59.94). You could also edit in 720P30, but 720P60 is the broadcast standard, and you would be dropping frames from your 720P60 source material, which could add some flicker to that source. (This would be less evident on the 1080P30 material due to more motion blur when shot with a 30 frame shutter).

[Joe Lloyd]

Thanks Eric,

Would you use MPEG streamclip or similar, or is it fine to just put the 1080P on the timeline and scale to footage?

Cheers
Joe

Curbsyde Productions

Australia Inside Out – April 1, 2010.

[Eric Jurgenson]

Why transcode when you can edit natively – especially if you have a CS5 system with GPU acceleration, which will give you real time high quality scaling. If you have to render, Adobe’s MPEG2 I frame render codec is very good quality. If your software predates CS4, you could try using DVCPRO HD as your render codec; also very good quality.

[Norman Greenwood]

I know this thread has been dead for a month or so, but I viewed it and had to add something to it for any others that may come across it…

Eric is right as far as how you should have your sequence settings, but you should DEFINITELY TRANSCODE to a different codec. You can look this up or ask any person in the Canon 5D filmmaking forums (that has experience with a Canon 5DMKII workflow) and they will tell you the same.

Premiere Pro CS5 & FCP 7 (I assume FCP X too) can all edit your footage natively, but doing so excludes extra quality that is compressed that you could get from transcoding the footage. For Premiere Pro I would suggest something with an AVI container. For FCP use ProRes 422.

I use NeoScene which transcodes your 5DMKII footage to AVI or MOV depending on your OS. It changes the chroma-subsampling to 4:2:2 from 4:2:0, and moves you color bit-depth from 8 to 10 (4x the color information of 8-bit!). If you plan on doing professional color correction, this software is worth every penny!

Check out the 5DMKII footage done through NeoScene on YouTube, or where ever you can. I bought the codec and have used it for every project since. The amount of visual information that is “enabled” is just remarkable!

Also, unrelated to this issue, if you do own a 5DMKII or 7D, check out the technicolor cinestyle color profile, and the Magic Lantern Firmware (to boost your sound and bit rate quality).