Steve Crow
Forum Replies Created
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Your picture profile and camera settings are not part of the issue, in my opinion. Rather, I suspect this has to do more with the other two “legs” of the exposure triangle (shutter speed being the third):
* ISO
* Aperture
both of which impact the amount of light hitting the sensor or the sensitivity of the camera to that light in the case of ISO. Noisy footage usually means that the camera is trying hard to bring out detail in the shadows and is having difficulty – a well exposed image usually doesn’t have noise. Pushing your ISO up “too high” (what too high means varies from camera to camera) definitely can result in a noisy image. (BTW there are “de-noiser” plugins that many people report success with but they can be pricey – you will find some info on them if here on this forum if you do a search I am sure.)
Using auto ISO can be a solution but what if the camera selects a very high ISO because you’ve limited the aperture or have a very fast shutter speed (your shutter speed sounds perfect at 1/50 so don’t change that!)? Better to remain in full manual control of the exposure when difficult lighting decisions need to be made.
So my suggestion is to research what the “usable” ISO range actually is for your camera and then bringing in extra light when it is needed. I get the impression that you wanted a somewhat darker image and that’s where the technical meets the artistic – how to get that look without stressing out your camera. Hope you find some guidance in these thoughts.
Steve Crow
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It certainly does sound to me like the 7D files are corrupt. People on this forum have reported some success and some failures using file recovery software.
Of course, why this happened is the more important issue. I’ve heard of problems like this when camera operators run the camera until it reaches the file size limit/duration limit meaning the file never closes properly and you end up with corrupt data. That’s just one possibility. I’m not saying for certain that’s what’s going on here but certainly the way these files are acting is not normal at all.
Are the cards used in the 7D at least 6X speed?
At this point there’s not a lot of options for you. If the files are indeed corrupted, your only way forward is to try some recovery softwares to see which ones might work for you. Sorry I don’t have any product names to offer but you could try searching through this forum with the keyword corrupt.
Steve Crow
PS: There’s an interesting thread about corrupt 7D movie files using SanDisk cards specifically. Apparently this issue was addressed by Canon in a firmware update around 2012/13 so I’d research what version firmware your 7D has. Definitely do the search on this forum I suggested for more
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Bottom line, you can’t easily get around the 12 minute limitation in that camera – that’s a limitation built into the camera for tax purposes believe it or not. If I am recording an interview, it usually doesn’t matter because all I have to do is stop the recording between questions and then start a new clip, takes just a few seconds.
BUT if you are filming something for which you can’t have breaks, like a long speech, then a DSLR isn’t a great choice. You can film with two and just make sure you the cameras have some overlap so that when one is being reset to start a new clip, the second one is still going. The better option is, of course, to film with a traditional style video camera if the project requires it.
Steve
Steve Crow
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I’m thinking that the flickering has to do with the use of fluorescent lighting and the local power supply.
This issue has been talked about many times in this forum but you may also want to check out the following article which includes a handy calculator:
https://www.red.com/learn/red-101/flicker-free-video-tutorial
“The key is that many types of artificial lighting flicker at twice the rate of the power source. This is most pronounced with fluorescent lighting, but also happens to a lesser extent with incandescent. Common power sources are 50 Hz (in Europe and most of Asia) and 60 Hz (in North America), which cause 100 and 120 pulses of light each second, respectively.
Other than changing the lighting, one has two options for overcoming this problem:
Frame Rates. Choose a frame rate equal to the lighting pulse rate divided by some integer. This is often the simplest option since most corresponding shutter speeds will appear flicker-free.
Shutter Speeds. Choose a shutter speed equal to the lighting pulse rate divided by some integer. This option often isn’t as straightforward, and can constrain one’s ability to control motion blur. On the other hand, this option typically minimizes flicker under a broader range of lighting and power types.
For example, in North America, the standard 24 and 30 fps settings work with most shutter speeds (since 30×4 and 24×5 = 120). “
Using the calculator (and I’m assuming you are filming in a UK location based upon the accent) it suggest a 1/50 shutter speed even though I know you were following the 180 degree rule and so selected 1/60.
The other issue aside from the flickering is that the video is about as interesting as a filmed deposition. It’s not really about the content which in fact could have been interested but the way it was filmed. The subject is placed dead center, with a very bland gray background and there is no b-roll to cover and illustrate what he is saying, perhaps some music or text effects would have helped too. The lack of these actually draws MORE attention to the flickering.
I think the compression is also causing some slight banding in the background but it’s not too bad, perhaps bump up the data rate a bit.
Steve Crow
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Check out this Tascam unit – it may do the trick for you according to the follow-up article:
and
Steve Crow
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I have to suggest the Canon 50mm 1.4 which is capable of beautiful interview shots and is relatively bargain basement priced at $320 or so. Yes a Canon 24-70mm zoom or a Tamron equivalent would be fantastic too but if I had to pick one lens to start off with, I’d go with the 50mm first and then see where the budget left me. In fact, I might just forego the 24-70mm entirely and replace that with a quality 24mm wide prime or something in that range…this is considering you are doing interviews, not sports or situations where you are far away from the subject
You didn’t mention audio costs – that’s one place not to go cheap.
Steve Crow
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Never heard of the slider so I can’t comment – it’s certainly cheaply priced. One thing on the ball head, as a photography type head it’s okay if you never want to pan or tilt WHILE sliding (which is often the case for sure) but for maximum flexibility I’d look instead for a traditional video tripod head with a flat bottom.
I have pretty much the same head you linked to and it’s pretty much useless for my Konova slider – I just don’t like it.
Steve Crow
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Certainly sounds like a corrupted video file and so the only hope I think you have is using recovery software, perhaps a recovery software from a different company, they can’t all be the same.
Just curious, did the video files EVER play correctly? I assume they were okay in the camera but once you copied the footage off the SD card and onto your computer, was the video ever good then or was it bad right away?
Steve Crow
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Yes, H.264 CAN be difficult to edit with as it is really more of a codec used to distribute the final video although many cameras also capture video using this same codec, convenient if you never want to edit OR your editing system, like FCP X, let’s you edit with it easily.
Prior to shifting to FCP X I always first transcoded my camera’s video to ProRes using the free MPEG Streamclip mentioned by Jonathan. I don’t think Express handles H264 well as it’s based on older technology.
Steve Crow
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Yes, I think that’s way too many devices, each one adding a little bit of noise and signal distortion. Keep it simple…Mic (via wireless or wired connection) to Zoom, monitor the Zoom with headphones while recording and sync in post, that’s exactly how most industry pros have been doing it for the past few years.
Steve Crow