Ideal format for editing

marcel-vossen wrote on 3/1/2009, 1:04 AM

Hi guys,

I've been searching but havent found my answer yet, I got some hints from people that my habit of using WMV for editing is not a very bright idea because its got quality losses and because its probably crashing my entire software.

What would you all recommend to prerender the material in if you have Canon EOS 5D mark II material that is MOV format , 30 frames/second and 1920x1080?

Thanks for your help!

Comments

DGates wrote on 3/1/2009, 1:17 AM

Encode the MOV's to AVI. You will see MUCH better quality than using WMV's.

Jim H wrote on 3/1/2009, 3:07 AM

Dude,

For best results I think you need to get rid of that point and shoot camera of yours. In fact, just send it to me and I'll hold it for you while you think about buying a proper video camera. Yes, that's it... I'll hold it for you because that's the kind of guy I am. :)

Seriously, I'd love to see what you're producing with that baby as far as video goes. My nephew picked up the Nikon D90 and I was not impressed with the video. Difficulty focusing during a location shoot rules it out for anything but very controlled applications where it can produce some fine images albeit 780p. Your camera, on the other hand, is in a slightly different league. How are you liking it?

Robert W wrote on 3/1/2009, 3:37 AM

Others may disagree with me, but I would recommend staying in the original shooting format.

However, if you are looking for a format purely for easy editing, then you could render to a intermediate and then use the replace function to put the original source files back in place before the final render. If you are using HD material, then I would recommend rendering to the corresponding MPEG 2 HDV mode, as Vegas handles these fairly well. Take care to make sure that the aspect ratio, frame rate, field type and resolutions match. Others may suggest Cineform, but I have never had much luck with this format. It has a higher disk space cost than HDV, and HDV is a perfectly reasonable rough editing format.

marcel-vossen wrote on 3/1/2009, 3:37 AM

Hehe, yeah I'll toss it in the bin. :)

The camera is absolutely cool, the video it produces is awesome, but it has some very annoying limitations because it still remains a photocamera. You can't get around manually focussing the thing which makes it more a camera for using on a tripod in still shots. And then there is the shutter changing ´feature´ which makes the video hang for a split second as soon as that happens. You can get around it by locking the exposure but you have to deal with it constantly. I also have an HV30 which I also like a lot,but its completely blown away by the EOS 5D when you shoot with both at the same occasion.

You might wanna watch the canon demo movies here:

http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=2326

And that is at 1/4 of the actual quality...

You gotta have your set of lenses though, as you can see :)

marcel-vossen wrote on 3/1/2009, 3:46 AM

@Robert

"Others may disagree with me, but I would recommend staying in the original shooting format."

If only that were possible, these MOV files are terribly slow and crash my Vegas...but then again, almost anything I do crashes it, so I gotta re-install Vista 32 bits I suppose, I can't imagine anyone else learned to work with a system like this, it's like walkin through a minefield where you have to remember where the mines are...

blink3times wrote on 3/1/2009, 4:22 AM

"My nephew picked up the Nikon D90 and I was not impressed with the video"

The Canon and the Nikon are worlds apart as far as the video is concerned. The Canon shoots some pretty incredible footage and you don't have the same focusing issues the either. You can do some pretty wild stuff with the 35mm lenses too.

I've said this before.... I would not be at all surprised to see this Canon technology float its way into the vid cam industry.

marcel-vossen wrote on 3/1/2009, 4:58 AM

Yeah if i could only find a way to edit this stuff without it being extremely slow in preview or Vegas crashing on me ... :(

craftech wrote on 3/1/2009, 5:24 AM

There are two good freeware programs that will convert .mov to other formats so that you can edit it. The most logical format would be .avi

Rad Video Tools will convert your .mov files to uncompressed .avi by default, but you can change that if you like.

SUPER @ will convert anything to anything.

Again, both are free.

John

farss wrote on 3/1/2009, 5:57 AM

The Sony YUV codec you already have is pretty much lossless. File sizes are BIG and you would likely need to consider two disk in RAID 0. Hardly expensive these days.

The Cineform codecs are very good, file size is reasonable and CPU load is small. For 1920x1080 NeoHD you do have to pay.

The other alternative that you already have is the XDCAM 35mbps codec. Better than HDV.

Bob.

John_Cline wrote on 3/1/2009, 6:16 AM

FYI, Cineform's Neo Scene will do full 1920x1080 for $129. Works great in Vegas and everything else.

marcel-vossen wrote on 3/1/2009, 6:57 AM

What exactly would you buy for $129? Just a codec you install in Vegas or something? All these file formats are really confusing me, how about one format for all hardware devices and all software that is terribly fast, very small and without loss of quality, wouldnt that be a great idea? LOL

blink3times wrote on 3/1/2009, 7:36 AM

You get the codec installed to Vegas AND an external converter. You use the external converter to convert to your avi intermediate which is then imported to vegas

There's a trial period available... give it a try.

xberk wrote on 3/1/2009, 9:00 AM

I'd try SUPER to convert to AVI. There is a lot to learn about doing this but it is worthwhile. In the end, it's all about the Codec. Not many on this forum are using your camera and don't have your problem. You need to solve this. Here's one possible (I'm not really sure if it applies to you but its close).

Canon 5D

Here's where to download SUPER for free (bottom of the page)

Super

Byron K wrote on 3/1/2009, 12:01 PM

A member in the VMS forum uses proxy editing for large quicktime files.
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/12/12/proxy-editing-with-sony-vegas/

Here's the thread:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=12&MessageID=633933

Maybe this can work for you?

I was seriously looking at the Mark II also. Great features and especially the 1080 quality video in a high end DSLR.

If you have time, it would be interesting to hear the pros/cons from your perspective so far.

-bK

marcel-vossen wrote on 3/1/2009, 1:26 PM

Thanks everybody for your answers.

I do use a proxy script called Proxy Stream that can be added in Vegas 8.0c as a script in the menu. From there you can choose to render proxyfiles with Vegas and afterwards replace them with the real ones with the switch command. The problem for me was that most of the time this script also crashes in my Vegas, depending on which format I choose to render to, but I might have to do that from 8.1 , which is a lot more stable as far as I have discovered.