ALL-I or IPB?

[mabou2]

Hi all,

I read some early reviews of the MK III that suggested the image quality is better with IPB. I'm shooting a TV series in 1080P @ 24fps. The NBC station requires me to provide them with digital masters in Pro-Res 422 1080i. Any thoughts as to whether I would benefit from shooting IPB or should I stick with All-I?

Thanks so much,
Matt

 

[peederj]

There is no perceptible difference between the two encodings that I can detect. Not on moving or still or simple or complex images. The only difference I can find is ALL-I wastes a lot of card space.

What you want to do for broadcast use is get an Atomos Ninja 2 and the new Canon 1.2.1 Clean HDMI firmware for the 5D3. The Ninja 2 will record the HDMI output direct to ProRes in either 1080i or 1080p formats, up to 60i or 30p frame rates. You will have the best quality that way and the files will come out of the Ninja ready to submit and be cut.

http://www.atomos.com

 

[expatinasia]

The NBC station requires me to provide them with digital masters in Pro-Res 422 1080i.

Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but I did not think it was possible to get 422 out of a 5D Mark III or a 1D X?

 

[peederj]

The 1.2.1 clean HDMI out is 8 bit uncompressed 4:2:2 at 1080i60. If you are shooting 24p the Ninja 2 will do the 3:2 pull down for you.

 

[Axilrod]

Yeah I would go with an external recorder if you are trying to get 4:2:2 and need prores files. The only advantage ALL-I has over IPB is that it runs more smoothly in your NLE, it's more "edit-friendly," but so is prores. Aside from that the files are way, way bigger, but there is no discernible difference in image quality, I've tested and tested and wanted ALL-I to be better so badly, but it just isn't. I've shot hundreds of vids in the last year in IPB and haven't had any issues at all.

 

[peederj]

Yes I think a lot of the lore about ALL-I being better had to do with NLEs or post workflows where the rendering of IPB frames wasn't very good. On FCPX you can't tell the difference, but of course FCPX is an all-new state-of-the-art rendering engine (even though many like to think it's still in its launch state feature set).

ALL-I vs. IPB is sort of old news though with clean HDMI and Magic Lantern RAW available. I predict ML will develop further powers (using better internal codecs, higher resolutions, if not higher framerates) for the 5d3 that will even make clean HDMI a nonstarter. Right now in practical use I would use the Ninja 2 with the 1.2.1 firmware, but note, the screen on the Ninja 2 takes about a half second to update the image, which can affect focus pulling a bit. This lag is NOT present for the C100's clean HDMI. The C100 is really the camera I would recommend for video unless you must have stills in the same body.

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

There is no perceptible difference between the two encodings that I can detect. Not on moving or still or simple or complex images. The only difference I can find is ALL-I wastes a lot of card space.

What you want to do for broadcast use is get an Atomos Ninja 2 and the new Canon 1.2.1 Clean HDMI firmware for the 5D3. The Ninja 2 will record the HDMI output direct to ProRes in either 1080i or 1080p formats, up to 60i or 30p frame rates. You will have the best quality that way and the files will come out of the Ninja ready to submit and be cut.

http://www.atomos.com

If the entire frame is in transition then I do see a big difference between All-I Internal/Ninja 2 External vs. IPB Internal. For a static frame there isn't too much difference and IPB internal takes up less space.

(ML RAW video produces radically better quality (unlike using 1.2.1 HMDI out and Ninja 2). However it is a lot rougher to deal with the output and I wouldn't as yet trust it for a TV show since it still has card filled up ungraceful exit bugs which then means complicated file rescues etc. but it will be there soon. Just the RAW workflow is a bit intense compared to the Ninja 2 workflow. One is a breeze and quick to deal with but one produce vastly better quality.)

 

[ckwaller]

My apologies for digging up an older thread, but I have noticed one thing when shooting video with my 5D Mark III and then editing on a Mac/FCP.

At work, all of my video editing is done on a Mac and FCP 7. Normally, I use a Sony HXR-NX5U, which FCP logs and transfers just fine. I'm aware that DSLR footage isn't native to FCP7 and as such, must be transcoded to ProRes for efficient editing. If I can't transcode directly via FCP, I use MPEG Streamclip.

With that said, I recently shot some footage on my 5D3 @ 1080p/24fps/ALL-I. I loaded the footage into MPEG Streamclip (latest build)....and the program promptly crashed. I tried again and got to the export screen, but it crashed again. I then loaded up FCP7 and entered the Log/Transfer menu, to transcode the ALL-I footage to ProRes. Same thing happened-- FCP crashed when trying to bring up the ALL-I footage.

So I went out and reshot the clips, this time in IPB. I brought the 5D3 IPB footage back to my Mac, loaded up MPEG Streamclip and voila: Footage was converted to ProRes MOV files without issue or crashing.

Now, I may be completely oblivious to some work around, or I may be having a "Master of the Obvious" moment, but for FCP/Mac users, I would advise shooting IPB to avoid transcoding headaches.

Of course, if you use Adobe Premiere 5.0/higher (as I do at home on my PC), then all this is bypassed, due to Premiere's native DSLR capabilities .

 

[cayenne]

My apologies for digging up an older thread, but I have noticed one thing when shooting video with my 5D Mark III and then editing on a Mac/FCP.

At work, all of my video editing is done on a Mac and FCP 7. Normally, I use a Sony HXR-NX5U, which FCP logs and transfers just fine. I'm aware that DSLR footage isn't native to FCP7 and as such, must be transcoded to ProRes for efficient editing. If I can't transcode directly via FCP, I use MPEG Streamclip.

With that said, I recently shot some footage on my 5D3 @ 1080p/24fps/ALL-I. I loaded the footage into MPEG Streamclip (latest build)....and the program promptly crashed. I tried again and got to the export screen, but it crashed again. I then loaded up FCP7 and entered the Log/Transfer menu, to transcode the ALL-I footage to ProRes. Same thing happened-- FCP crashed when trying to bring up the ALL-I footage.

So I went out and reshot the clips, this time in IPB. I brought the 5D3 IPB footage back to my Mac, loaded up MPEG Streamclip and voila: Footage was converted to ProRes MOV files without issue or crashing.

Now, I may be completely oblivious to some work around, or I may be having a "Master of the Obvious" moment, but for FCP/Mac users, I would advise shooting IPB to avoid transcoding headaches.

Of course, if you use Adobe Premiere 5.0/higher (as I do at home on my PC), then all this is bypassed, due to Premiere's native DSLR capabilities .

You might consider upgrading to the newer FCPX...it handles the files either way just fine.

I've had no problems with it using FCPX so far...no crashing, and you don't have to bother transcoding if you don't want to....

HTH,

cayenne

 

[Crapking]

If you WERE shooting LOTS of motion (indooor sports, for example) with the 5dIII, what would be your 'ideal' workflow, settings? Output goal is both web viewing and DVD's. I have Premiere PRO already and was debating value of NINJA 2 for HDMI output recording to improve upon my previous attempts (with disappointing results)

http://albums.phanfare.com/isolated/lxc3dJoB/1/6011694

 

[joema]

If you WERE shooting LOTS of motion (indooor sports, for example) with the 5dIII, what would be your 'ideal' workflow, settings? Output goal is both web viewing and DVD's. I have Premiere PRO already... and was debating value of NINJA 2 for HDMI output recording to improve upon my previous attempts...

You might consider 720p/60, which gives smoother motion and good 1/2 speed slo mo. Re encoding (IPB vs All-I vs uncompressed to Ninja vs raw), ML raw is pre-Alpha, so I wouldn't trust it for a production shoot. All-I is theoretically better for motion than IPB, but whether in reality this would be visible at DVD resolution is unclear. Uncompressed HDMI might be better yet, but the issue is can you tell the difference at the final output resolution, and (if so) is the degree of improvement worth it?

I use Premiere Pro CS6 on a 4Ghz Windows machine and have no problem editing either IPB or All-I, without transcoding.

I looked at your videos; if you have access to a 2nd video camera or HDSLR, you could do a two camera shoot with one wide and one hand-held for close-ups. I have cut between a 5D3 and Canon HF G10 camcorder, and it looks OK. Premiere Pro multi-cam editing is much easier than manually cutting. Hand-held essentially requires an optically stabilized lens like a 24-105 f/4 or 70-200 f/2.8 IS II. Otherwise you could try a tripod or monopod.

 

[Axilrod]

My apologies for digging up an older thread, but I have noticed one thing when shooting video with my 5D Mark III and then editing on a Mac/FCP.

At work, all of my video editing is done on a Mac and FCP 7. Normally, I use a Sony HXR-NX5U, which FCP logs and transfers just fine. I'm aware that DSLR footage isn't native to FCP7 and as such, must be transcoded to ProRes for efficient editing. If I can't transcode directly via FCP, I use MPEG Streamclip.

With that said, I recently shot some footage on my 5D3 @ 1080p/24fps/ALL-I. I loaded the footage into MPEG Streamclip (latest build)....and the program promptly crashed. I tried again and got to the export screen, but it crashed again. I then loaded up FCP7 and entered the Log/Transfer menu, to transcode the ALL-I footage to ProRes. Same thing happened-- FCP crashed when trying to bring up the ALL-I footage.

So I went out and reshot the clips, this time in IPB. I brought the 5D3 IPB footage back to my Mac, loaded up MPEG Streamclip and voila: Footage was converted to ProRes MOV files without issue or crashing.

Now, I may be completely oblivious to some work around, or I may be having a "Master of the Obvious" moment, but for FCP/Mac users, I would advise shooting IPB to avoid transcoding headaches.

Of course, if you use Adobe Premiere 5.0/higher (as I do at home on my PC), then all this is bypassed, due to Premiere's native DSLR capabilities .

LOL you don't need to transcode ALL-I, the whole point of shooting ALL-I is that it's more edit-friendly, you should be able to just drop it in and edit. And seriously get off of FCP7, FCPX is 10x better now that it's had a few years of updates. And plus you can edit H.264 whether it be IPB or Prores straight off of the card and skip transcoding all together. Plus it's 64-bit (So you can use much more RAM than the 2.5GB max FCP7 has) and you dont have to waste countless hours waiting on stuff to render. Seriously, people were turned off by it at first, but only because it looked a lot like iMovie, but it's seriously an awesome NLE now. I don't care if you're the best FCP7 user on Earth, no way you could finish the same project in FCP7 faster than I could in FCPX.

 

[cayenne]

My apologies for digging up an older thread, but I have noticed one thing when shooting video with my 5D Mark III and then editing on a Mac/FCP.

At work, all of my video editing is done on a Mac and FCP 7. Normally, I use a Sony HXR-NX5U, which FCP logs and transfers just fine. I'm aware that DSLR footage isn't native to FCP7 and as such, must be transcoded to ProRes for efficient editing. If I can't transcode directly via FCP, I use MPEG Streamclip.

With that said, I recently shot some footage on my 5D3 @ 1080p/24fps/ALL-I. I loaded the footage into MPEG Streamclip (latest build)....and the program promptly crashed. I tried again and got to the export screen, but it crashed again. I then loaded up FCP7 and entered the Log/Transfer menu, to transcode the ALL-I footage to ProRes. Same thing happened-- FCP crashed when trying to bring up the ALL-I footage.

So I went out and reshot the clips, this time in IPB. I brought the 5D3 IPB footage back to my Mac, loaded up MPEG Streamclip and voila: Footage was converted to ProRes MOV files without issue or crashing.

Now, I may be completely oblivious to some work around, or I may be having a "Master of the Obvious" moment, but for FCP/Mac users, I would advise shooting IPB to avoid transcoding headaches.

Of course, if you use Adobe Premiere 5.0/higher (as I do at home on my PC), then all this is bypassed, due to Premiere's native DSLR capabilities .

LOL you don't need to transcode ALL-I, the whole point of shooting ALL-I is that it's more edit-friendly, you should be able to just drop it in and edit. And seriously get off of FCP7, FCPX is 10x better now that it's had a few years of updates. And plus you can edit H.264 whether it be IPB or Prores straight off of the card and skip transcoding all together. Plus it's 64-bit (So you can use much more RAM than the 2.5GB max FCP7 has) and you dont have to waste countless hours waiting on stuff to render. Seriously, people were turned off by it at first, but only because it looked a lot like iMovie, but it's seriously an awesome NLE now. I don't care if you're the best FCP7 user on Earth, no way you could finish the same project in FCP7 faster than I could in FCPX.

I have to ago with Axl here too....if you're going to continue to stay with the mac product, move to FCPX. If you have to stay with the older classic interface, then you really might be best served doing Adobe Premier.

If nothing else, FCPX is now dirt cheap, only about $300...and you can do a 30 day trial for free. I will admit, it is easy for me to say it is easy to learn, since it was my first NLE to ever work with. That being said, I'm about to get Premier and start learning that, and I'm guessing it will take me a bit to get used to that paradigm without the 'magic timeline' I'm so fond of with FCPX.

But either way, you really might look at upgrading to the more modern supported NLE's...either way you go, mac or Adobe.

That being said...my next thing I shoot for FCPX after I finish editing my last shoot...is going to be using IPB and see what difference that makes. I used ALL-I last shoot (currently editing) and found that to get it to work with Davinci Resolve Lite for roundtripping, it worked better if I brought it into FCPX transcoded to proves, to get it to work with Resolve which had been borking for awhile on me....so, I might as well work with the smaller IPB...and I might see if doing that will work with Resolve.

Actually, right now, hoping that Magic Lanter can soon get raw working fully, and the CinemaDMG conversion will work...and I'll start using that to shoot RAW video with the 5D3....and working with that...

cayenne

 

[crazyrunner33]

Actually, right now, hoping that Magic Lanter can soon get raw working fully, and the CinemaDMG conversion will work...and I'll start using that to shoot RAW video with the 5D3....and working with that...

cayenne

The current Magic Lantern RAW is working pretty well as it, plus there is no need to use the CinemaDNG conversion; DaVinci Resolve was updated and now supports the DNG files from MagicLantern's RAW2DNG app.

 

[cayenne]

Actually, right now, hoping that Magic Lanter can soon get raw working fully, and the CinemaDMG conversion will work...and I'll start using that to shoot RAW video with the 5D3....and working with that...

cayenne

The current Magic Lantern RAW is working pretty well as it, plus there is no need to use the CinemaDNG conversion; DaVinci Resolve was updated and now supports the DNG files from MagicLantern's RAW2DNG app.

Yeah, but I can't find a simple, step by step tutorial that will show me how to get the RAW functionality onto the latest ML alpha release.

I've read through forum after forum...and well, it isn't clear enough how to do this without making permanet changes and possibly risking bricking my 5D3....

I"m waiting for the RAW functionality install to become a bit more "prime time".



Cayenne