[Pete Burger]

You can open the .thm files with almost any Exif-Viewer. It’ll give you all available info.

hth

[Pete Burger]

Follow Steve’s advice: H.264 is a bad format for editing and HDV is not much better.
Transcode all of your footage into an i-frame codec like Cineform (which is a great codec for editing) or – if you don’t want to spend any money, use AVIDs free DNxHD codec (with the appropriate codec settings).

I’ve been working with DNxHD and Premiere and After Effects quite a time now, and it works perfectly.

There’s just one downside of DNxHD: the transcoded files need a lot of hdd space.

Hope this helps!

[Pete Burger]

Well, it depends largely on the picture… I don’t think there’s a perfect setting that works with most footage.

I don’t work with FCP, so I don’t know the FCP default settings, but starting with the defaults and playing around with threshold and radius might give you good results.

My approach is as follows:

Unsharp mask has three sliders: strenght, radius and threshold.

When using that filter, first step for me is to set the strenght very high (default in Premiere is 50%, so I set it to about 150% or even higher), just to see more clearly, which parts of the picture are affected by the settings.

Threshold defines, “when” the filter attacks, in terms of “how dark or bright must a pixel be to be affected”. Lower values create more extreme results.

Radius defines how “far” the darkening or brightening goes. Higher values create more extreme results.

After tweaking threshold and radius, I reduce the strenght back to what looks good to me (something between 20%-50% in many cases).

So, you can create very subtle effects or even very extreme effects with halos and stuff…

Hope this helps!

[Pete Burger]

To add:

Converting does not automatically mean losing quality. If you transcode to a lossless codec like ProRes, Cineform or DNxHD all picture information is preserved.

The only thing that might change in the transcoding process is gamma, but that can be tweaked in post with no effort and no loss in picture quality.

[Pete Burger]

[Adam Ridley] “I will end up getting a Canon thou, I really want to try out magic lantern.”

You might know that, but just to be sure:

There are Magic Lantern versions for the 5DMkII, the 550D (T2i) and very early versions for the 60D.

To my knowledge, there’s no Version for the 600D (yet).

Got the T2i myself, running Magic Lantern. It’s an amazing piece of software. So many handy features, that my T2i almost feels like a camcorder 😉

[Pete Burger]

Hi, Casey!

The way DSLR cameras reduce picture size from those huge image-sensors to comparatively small HD size is by skipping information, which raises or even creates artifacts like moiré. Letting the camera sharpen those pictures internally, boosts these problems by raising local contrast (darkening dark edges and brightening bright edges).

So dialing the sharpening down, will help to reduce picture artifacts.

Reintrudcing sharpness is just as easy as applying a sharpness filter in post. Some guys (myself included) rather use the “unsharp mask” filter than “sharpness”, since it gives you more possibilities to fine-tune, but that’s just a matter of personal taste.

Sharpness filters in an NLE do the same thing as the ones inside your camera, but you can adjust the intensity to your needs and likings or even use masks to apply the sharpness to parts of the image.

Hope this helps!

[Pete Burger]

SanDisk Class 6 should do just fine, but if you absolutely want to go shure get class 10 cards. Quite a lot of people I know had minor problems with class 6 cards (camera stops recording sometimes due to writing speed/full camera buffer).
Also, after copying your files to your hdd, don’t just delete your videos from the card, but format the card with your camera. Seems to be the safest option to maintain constant writing speed during recording (experienced that myself).

[Pete Burger]

Most people would agree to reduce the internal camera sharpening of your Canon to absolute minimum to reduce moiré a bit. You can reintroduce sharpness (if at all needed) in post.

[Pete Burger]

Glad, if I helped!

[Pete Burger]

To my knowledge, there’s no way of convincing the camera not to shut off the LCD, when plugging in an HDMI cable.