1080 video quality on 5dmk4 and 1dx2 vs competition?

stevelee

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Jack Douglas said:
Another dumb question I guess - do edit panning and zooming movements apply only to still footage?

Jack

Goodness, no, if you mean what I think you do. With still footage you get what is called, for obvious reasons, the "Ken Burns effect." But there is much you can do with video.

I have mentioned in various threads, maybe even this one, my annual video project of shooting after-hours pick-up basketball games during basketball camp on the nearby campus. I have a small but avid audience for the videos, guys outside this area who want to see how the incoming freshmen look playing with/against current and former players, most of whom are now pros in Europe, so they have the summer off and help with camp. (I've seen just one NBA player come back, and the last time he had time to participate, his little brother who was playing at Duke, but now in the NBA, came with him.)

I generally shoot with whatever is my newest camera. Sometimes the camera was so new that I use the project to learn how to use it.

When my iPhone 6s was relatively new, I used it to shoot 4K video. So I am in the stands shooting basketball from, I don't know, 30 or 50 feet away, using a fixed wide-angle lens, and I'm wanting video that shows the plays, not the ambiance of an almost empty arena. I used Final Cut Pro to zoom in and pan, etc., just as I might have done with a camera itself. Even with other cameras, I set the view a little wider than what I want in the final video, because you can't always anticipate who will run where and to whom the ball might be passed. Or there could be a steal. In the case of the iPhone, the extra resolution of the 4K gave me plenty of resolution to produce 1080p or 750p with little or no upsampling. FCP gives you several ways of accomplishing this, some of which I understand and can use, and some of which I've never bothered to learn.
 
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stevelee

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Here's a video from that summer: https://youtu.be/8yq4D62mgDA

One thing I forgot to mention in the message above is rotation. I'm just casually holding the phone in the general direction of the players, so I usually am not holding it quite level. At the beginning of the video you can see where I messed up. Look in the upper right and lower left corners, and you will see black triangles from outside the original frame, showing how much it is rotated. Normally, I would zoom in slightly to eliminate that from view, but it does show you the picture rotation. I do a quick edit, often late at night, so I don't always catch errors like that. My small but faithful audience doesn't care about production values. I posted this at 720p on YouTube, but probably could have got away with 1080p, judging by how well it holds up viewed full screen on my 5K iMac.

Of course you don't need to watch the whole thing to get my point. The second clip, about 0:15, starts with a couple of zooms, all done in software. A few places I zoom out to show a friend's reactions. He would be someone the intended audience would know, if not in person, at least on line. Since I'm sitting with other fans, the phone is picking up a lot of the conversation, not all of which they or I would want to be on the internet; nothing bad or vulgar, but some frank observations and banter between friends not intended for public consumption. I don't want folks to feel they have to edit their conversations when I'm shooting. Since I pick up the sounds of shoes squeaking, etc., I just pull in some sound from an area where no one is talking and lower the volume in the main audio.

(BTW, some of the players in this video ended their college career in Boise, Idaho, last night in a narrow loss to Kentucky in the NCAA tournament.)

The iPhone dealt with color balance better than the G7X II the next summer. They don't turn on the TV lights in the arena, but the regular lights give plenty of illumination to shoot by, just quirky color. Also the sea of empty red seats across the way makes cameras compensate by shifting toward cyan. I don't know that I tried any color correction in this footage. I'm not very good with color grading, as they call it, in FCP. The tools are more like what pros have used. Premiere is more intuitive for old Photoshop hands in that regard. The newest version of FCP supposedly has added some tools, but I haven't tried them. If I use my 6D2 this summer, I'll take a piece of white paper or a gray card with me and try custom white balance. I should have tried that with the G7X II last year, I know now.

Another thing the software can do is analyze a clip for camera shake and do software stabilization. The magnification is increased a bit to accomplish that. It is a lot like what happens in video on the 6D2 when you use in-camera stabilization. There are more arcane things that I don't use, such as rolling shutter compensation.

I think I will shoot 60 fps this year so that slo mo replays can be smoother. I'm not sure how that might affect the look of the regular speed. I know software will throw out every other frame to get the final 30fps, but the shutter speed will still be faster, giving less blur to the motion. Generally people prefer some motion blur, and if it is too sharp, they call it a soap opera effect. And I know my intended audience won't care.

Oh, and a final thing to illustrate zoom in software is that you can show multiple frames at the same time. As an exercise in editing, I took a movement from Bach's B-minor Mass that I sang in and edited in basketball video to fit. It helped that the timing of a 3-point shot from hand to basket fit an element of the music, most obviously illustrated in the sequence starting about 2:11 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5QPFV7QhhQ. Relevant to this question is that as I got toward the end, I had more video I wanted to include than would fit, so for no cinematic reason, but as a learning exercise, I made the video half size and did a four-panel split screen, starting at 3:22.

I think the video was shot with my S120, if anyone is curious. If not that, then probably the S95 I used before I got the S120.
 
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Jack Douglas

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Thanks Steve, that was my concern after looking at the advertised features at:

https://filmora.wondershare.net/video-editor/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5ZeZ-cLx2QIVVWt-Ch1r5AwQEAAYASABEgIEmfD_BwE

"Pan and Zoom
Add panning and zooming movements to still footage."

Seems I somehow linked to the wrong software.

I posed this to Corel regarding their latest Video Studio (I have X9) and the guy didn't know, checked and then said no it couldn't do it. That initialized my confusion and doubts.

For nature and animals I would want what you describe for sure otherwise what's the point. :-[

Jack
 
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Jack Douglas

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Steve, BTW any extra comments and samples such as you just did are really appreciated, especially by someone so clueless as I am at the moment!

I'd prefer to make the correct choice of editing software once and for all especially after wasting money on Corel. I'm guessing 10 yr. old 64 bit quad core Pentium with 6GB Ram is not really adequate??

Jack
 
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ethanz

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I think I understand what you are asking now. In Premiere I can pan and zoom video clips by adjusting the video size/position properties along the time line. With proxies you should be able to edit anything on that computer. A 4K, 23p video file from the 1dx that is 33 seconds long is 2GB. It's proxy is a 1/4 the resolution, so 1024x540 and is only 43MB.
 
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Jack Douglas

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ethanz said:
I think I understand what you are asking now. In Premiere I can pan and zoom video clips by adjusting the video size/position properties along the time line. With proxies you should be able to edit anything on that computer. A 4K, 23p video file from the 1dx that is 33 seconds long is 2GB. It's proxy is a 1/4 the resolution, so 1024x540 and is only 43MB.

Thanks ... so much to keep track of.

Jack
 
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stevelee

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Jack Douglas said:
Steve, BTW any extra comments and samples such as you just did are really appreciated, especially by someone so clueless as I am at the moment!

I'd prefer to make the correct choice of editing software once and for all especially after wasting money on Corel. I'm guessing 10 yr. old 64 bit quad core Pentium with 6GB Ram is not really adequate??

Jack

People used to do a whole lot with much less computing power. You just have to be more patient. Also, newer versions of software will require more resources. I've used Macs since 1987, and while I've had occasion to use PCs, I've never done any graphics or video work on one. I gather that there is feature parity between platforms on the Adobe stuff. But for cheaper alternatives, I am not in position to suggest anything. iMovie comes on Macs, and FCP X costs just $200. I was used to paying $600 every year or two to update my Adobe suite, so paying $50 a month to get the whole shebang wasn't a stretch, even though I resented and resisted the subscription model.

For a point of comparison, I will mention my experience on my now 12-year-old Mac Pro vs. my 3 1/2-year-old iMac. I use FCP X for editing, and then pass off to Compressor to do the final file(s). I wouldn't have to do that, but it gives more options. With the old Mac I'd start the Compressor queue and go to bed. With the iMac I start Compressor and visit the bathroom or get a snack out of the fridge. That would be for videos similar in length to the ones linked above.

I really find that remarkable given how many things it is doing with the original clips, rotating, resizing, cropping, etc., every frame. Compressor puts out finished video files in two or three resolutions, if you tell it to do that, in time comparable to the length of the video, IOW 12 minutes or so for a 10-minute video is not unusual.

So on your PC you can work on a small proxy as ethanz suggests, and then sleep or go out for pizza when the final version is rendered.
 
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Jack Douglas

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ethanz said:
I think I understand what you are asking now. In Premiere I can pan and zoom video clips by adjusting the video size/position properties along the time line. With proxies you should be able to edit anything on that computer. A 4K, 23p video file from the 1dx that is 33 seconds long is 2GB. It's proxy is a 1/4 the resolution, so 1024x540 and is only 43MB.

Thanks guys, again my head is beginning to spin. I've been watching too many gimbal videos too.

Have to laugh at the situation non-Canon users find themselves in relative to the Crane 2 and follow focus - stupid Canon - yeah right! Seems to me Canon is fully supported for good reasons. And then there is DPAF. :)

Jack
 
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Jack Douglas

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Just thought I'd update a bit on the Crane 2. I'd say there is no problem with the 11-24 and the 24-70 F4 of course and only a bit of a problem with the 70-200 2.8 II. If memory serves me correctly, it may not balance at 70 but I only used it at 200 and yes, it was really close by the eye cup; I even removed the slip on rubber. However, one doesn't really need much tilt and panning is no problem.

Now, trying to monitor the LCD is another story and unless I can modify the settings to slow the motors down it's very challenging to drive to a position and stop on target. Unless I can become much more skilled I can't imagine walking around with 200.

Scott, or anyone else - I'm wondering if there is any way to use the gimbal and remote control via CamRanger for greater range?

Jack
 
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ethanz

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Jack Douglas said:
Just thought I'd update a bit on the Crane 2. I'd say there is no problem with the 11-24 and the 24-70 F4 of course and only a bit of a problem with the 70-200 2.8 II. If memory serves me correctly, it may not balance at 70 but I only used it at 200 and yes, it was really close by the eye cup; I even removed the slip on rubber. However, one doesn't really need much tilt and panning is no problem.

Now, trying to monitor the LCD is another story and unless I can modify the settings to slow the motors down it's very challenging to drive to a position and stop on target. Unless I can become much more skilled I can't imagine walking around with 200.

Scott, or anyone else - I'm wondering if there is any way to use the gimbal and remote control via CamRanger for greater range?

Jack

In the manual I did read there is a way to slow the motors down or the sensitivity. Also I think there is a smartphone app (I know you don't have a smartphone) but I have not tried it out yet. Been very busy!
 
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Jack Douglas

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In case you feel lonely in your lack of spare time, I'm keeping you company. My floor tiling of 2015 got injected right in the time frame of my stainless steel deck railing project of 2013 and is now back on track for completion soon (please, please) and the tiling had been interrupted by the granite on the planter project of 2016, which required the construction of a large saw first. Then there is the workshop parging of the shop built prior to all this and the auto restoration put on hold before the workshop construction began. Every project delay requires storage of junk, which just complicates every project.

OK, I'm ready to be consoled ... or scolded for my lack of self control. ;) And some people are bored in retirement!

One question, I lost track of the link to, I think, a location where an earlier copy of Adobe Premier Pro can be purchased and also I'm wondering if it would be compatible with Win 7 or newer moving forward?

Jack
 
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Jack Douglas

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I must apologize for hijacking the thread to some degree way back. Hopefully the direction the thread took was still of some value to the OP. I have just read through pretty much the whole thread and a lot of things are making more sense to me but many more questions are popping up.

Relative to the 1DX2 and shooting 1080, I guess that only makes sense if one wants the 120 fps or is 4K 60 going to be a better choice. To what extent does slow motion in your output depend on this choice? Every question I ask rings as dumb in my mind but I'm asking anyway. No point pretending I know what I don't.

Jack
 
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3dit0r said:
swithdrawn said:
I haven't done scientific tests but owning both the 1DX II and 5D3 (and having used both as my primary cameras at different points) I would say the 1080 quality is the same for both. 1080@60p on the 1DX II is noticeably softer, however. I believe the best 1080 on a Canon DSLR is the Super35 1080 mode on the 1DC.

I shoot 4k on the 1DX II and 5D IV and, in most cases, downsample to 2k/1080p in Davinci. The result is orders of magnitude sharper than the 1080p modes on both cameras and definitely worth the extra step of transcoding.

I agree with this. Just shoot in 4K and then either proxy edit or transcode for best results.
 
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Jack Douglas

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I'm wondering if someone who's been shooting quite a bit of serious video with the 1DX2 would share their idea of the best settings. Comments on using it with the Crane 2 would be a bonus.

One issue I have is that AF goes inactive and it seems I have to regularly reactivate it with my shutter button?? I'm thinking I should dedicate one of the C settings to video but am still a little confused by what settings (AF especially) overlap or don't overlap in going from photos to video.

A comment I have from my limited use of the Crane 2 is that it's really hard to get used to that very light touch slider that controls low and high speed pans or tilts. My thumb almost always moves it to rapid while hardly even noticing the first engagement. I think part of the issue is having a heavy object gripped firmly and having a very light control to manipulate at the same time. It's so small and slippery. I'm not sure if I would prefer a depressed style of controller but for sure I wish it had more and firmer travel.

Jack
 
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Jack Douglas

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Here goes another "dumb" question. I presume I can't do anything with the crane 2 from my Windows 7 computer and must use a phone to set the parameters to suit my liking due to lack of blue tooth??

My wife has the smart phone and says that when she went to download the app it said something about Google play and payment but I'll have to try to verify what's going on myself. With no phone of my own I have reasonable savvy of computer operations but not the phone (I know it seems trivial but there is a learning curve at the beginning) :)

Anyone else find the joystick operation to be backward by default - guess I function like a teeter totter. :-\

Jack
 
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