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Shooting workflow Canon 7D HDMI out > Matrox MXO2 > FCP7
I wanted to pick your collective brains a bit about a shooting workflow. I’d like to be able to shoot with the Canon 7D, capture to its own CF card while simultaneously outputting via HDMI to a MacBook Pro, transcoding in realtime to ProRes422, so that the director can watch the footage in realtime on the Mac (as the only external monitor) and also watch the footage later-on, while the DP is setting up the next shot, without having to occupy the camera. It would also give us a realtime backup and save time by not having to transcode to ProRes422 later on for editing.
The workflow I’ve come up with so far is this:
7D HDMI > Matrox MX02 Mini > Matrox PCIe card (realtime transcode to ProRes 422) > MacBook Pro > FCP
Sounds tidy… I wonder if any of you have experience with this type of setup. I believe the monitor on the 7D goes out when the HDMI out is connected. If so, can the HDMI out be split off to both the Mac and a small camera mounted external monitor? Also, what is the format and frame size that is spit out of the HDMI output? The folks at Matrox seem to think that the setup will work but they didn’t back up those assumptions with real world experience. Syndicate.se had some kind of convoluted software/Mac & PC setup (which I believe is discontinued). I’ve read that the frame size is not standard out of the HDMI output (1620×910).
Even if the footage is not transcoded in realtime to ProRes 422, that’s fine (H.264 mov files).
Any thoughts? Any other similar real-world working setups?
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7 Replies
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Now I believe i have read somewhere that the HDMI out resolution while recording is only 480 but it will do 1080 on play back.
You should definitely test this out before you jump into things.
**Hindsight is always 1080p**
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Unfortunately, the output of the 7D (or any Canon DSLR) is unusable for editing. it is the wrong aspect ratio and has marker information that you can’t turn off.
ALso, recording both HDMI and internally to CF is not possible as the HDMI output will turn off when you hit record.
At this point, It’s a still camera.
Jeremy
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What they said. When you press record, the HDMI signal then becomes an SD signal. But another issue is that as soon as you connect HDMI out of the camera, the LCD goes away. The display now goes down the HDMI spigot to the external monitor. This is designed so you can output to an HDMI monitor on set. But when you press record, it switches to SD.
And if you DON’T press record…you get the LCD display via HDMI, not a full, CLEAN signal. YOu get the display information, and those grey bars on the top and bottom. I tried all of this. Even the HDMI out to a KiPro…won’t work. Not clean. Not yet.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Bummer… seems like a no-brainer to output a clean signal simultaneously via HDMI and probably not too difficult to do from a design-perspective but there you go…
Thanks for your thoughts.
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[Julio Alvarez] “Bummer… seems like a no-brainer to output a clean signal simultaneously via HDMI and probably not too difficult to do from a design-perspective but there you go… “
It’s a still camera, not a video camera. The heat generated from this process hobbles the camera. I take it you’ve never been a shoot where the camera shuts down due to overheating in video mode? It’s pretty awesome. It’s not a no brainer, I am sure they thought of it, it’s just that since this is a still camera, video considerations and engineering is not needed. Monitoring stills and monitoring video are two totally different worlds. 1 picture every 3(?) or more seconds vs 24-30 pictures a second.
Does it take some decent images, yeah maybe, but as a production tool it is very very limited.
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Gonna have to wait for the AF-100.
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group
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