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Editing Canon EOS 7D Video with Premiere Pro

jbourke — Fri, 21 May 2010 00:58:39 +0000

The emergence of Canon DSLR video has been a triumph and a struggle for wantabe Steven Speilbergs, me included. The triumph is the undoubted quality of the image, and the creative avenues opened up by the wide variety of lenses available.

The struggle includes the introduction of so much new terminology, so many new ways to be creative and to fail miserably, and the inevitable havoc caused to well established workflows with the introduction of video. This post outlines my efforts to arrive at something resembling a usable workflow for video, using MPEG Streamclip, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Youtube.

Camera Settings

Movie Mode: Depending on whether you have your Canon 7D set to PAL or NTSC, you are normally presented with 3 real options:
- 1080P @23.97 Frames/Second or “24P”: This is the Movie Pro’s choice for the supposed cinematic look.
- 1080P @25 Frames/Second for PAL or 30 Frames/Second for NTSC
- 720P @50 Frames/Second for PAL or 60 Frames/Second for NTSC. This is the setting I use. Why? Mainly because it is the best balance between good quality and acceptable file size. Also, converting, editing, playing back HD clips takes a lot of processing power, which not everyone has.
Shutter Speed: For best results Canon recommends a shutter speed between 1/ to 1/125 of a second. Click here for more.
Aperture: One of the great benefits of Canon DSLR video is the ability to use fast lenses, so this is very much a creative decision.
ISO: For lowest noise, this excellent article from Marvels Films suggest using one of 160, 320, 640, 1250, 3200.
Highlight Tone Priority: The interwebs suggest leaving HTP off to reduce banding in the movie files, as mentioned in this forum.
Noise Reduction: With moving images, noise isn’t the same issue it is for photo’s. This can be turned off.
White Balance: As with photography, try and set this before shooting. Saves pain later.
Image Stabilization: Some seem to imply that using image stabilization helps reduce jitter / flicker in your movies… BUT if you are using the inbuilt mic, you can hear the lens motor all the time!
Picture Style: After seeing this Youtube video, I was using the Canon Neutral style to preserve shadow and highlight detail, as in the movie at the top of this post. More seasoned Movie Pro’s employ custom Picture Styles, as excellently outlined in this video:

Shooting

Shooting video with a Canon 7D brings with it a number of ergonomic challenges, which many companies have sought to address with Finders, Follow Focus, Matte Boxes, Contact Rigs. These can all add up, but if you have the money to spend, get a load of this:

Canon EOS 1D Mk IV in a Zacuto Cross Fire Z-DCF3

If you are not in this category, and are improvising with their existing photographic supports and techniques, as I am, then I can share the following:

Shoot more, shorter clips than fewer longer ones. Camera shake, noise, etc. will be less noticeable in your final edited movie as the viewer will have less time to notice erratic movement on screen.
If you plan on changing zoom, or focus, then you better be using a tripod or monopod, as it looks wobbly as hell if you try and do it hand held.
A lot of sites recommend manual focus, mostly for the creative cinematic effect of bring a scene into focus, but if you are shooting handheld, I would go for a larger F-stop with focus at infinity. This is especially important if you are shooting moving objects.
Aperture Priority, Time Priority are completely ignored when shooting video. They become Program Mode, where you adjust exposure using Exposure Compensation. If you are dealing with erratic lighting or have a creative goal in mind, Full Manual is the way to go.
The built in Mic in the Canon 7D is fairly poor, and just “loves” the wind! I nearly always overlay my movie clips with music for this reason.

Transcoding

Ah yes, now to the heart of some of the difficulties. If you think the range of photographic file formats was complicated, wait till you get a load of movie file formats! You’ve got containers, codecs, compression settings, frame rates, dimensions, associated sound formats, sampling rates… it goes on and on. Let’s start with a couple of definitions from Wikipedia:

A video codec is a device or software that enables video compression and/or decompression for digital video.

And

A container or wrapper format is a meta-file format whose specification describes how data and metadata are stored.

My knowledge is very far from indepth at this stage, but the reason why Canon 5D Mk II and 7D movie editing has preoccupied many people on the web is that the file format chosen by Canon (using the H.264 codec in a Quicktime MOV container) is a great balance between quality and size for playback but terrible for editing.

The reason for this is the video compression used, which utilizes Groups of Pictures, where only every 15th frame of the movie is a complete frame, and the intermediary frames are calculated based on differences from this complete frame. As you scrub forward and backwards in your editing software, searching for clips to extract, your CPU needs to work overtime to calculate and re-calculate movie frames as you make edits. Some editing programs do this better than others, with Sony Vegas, AVID Media Composer, and Pinnacle Studio coming in for mention. Try scrubbing through Canon 7D movie footage in Adobe Premiere Pro and you will think that your CPU’s are going to melt!

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 is meant to be a vast improvement in this area, implementing native support for Canon DSLR movie footage. This improvement is enabled by a move to 64Bit, a new rendering engine called Mercury, and support for real time rendering on a number of high end nVidia CUDA enabled graphics cards.

While I have vastly simplified this explanation, you can now get some idea why movie files like this are so hard to edit, so the approach taken by most people is to transcode or convert the out-of-the-camera movie files to a format which is less CPU intensive to work with. The three main approaches that I have read about are:

Convert to ProRes which is a Codec supplied by Apple as part of Final Cut Studio. Which means you need to buy Final Cut Studio. And a Mac. $$$$
Convert to Neoscene which is a Codec supplied by Cineform. This Codec is compatible with Adobe Premiere Pro, but it does cost US$129.
Convert to DNxHD supplied by AVID which many in would consider to be the leader in HD Video Editing. The basic Codec can be downloaded for free here. You need to also get a copy of the free MPEG Streamclip from Squared 5 to accomplish the conversion.

The availability of a trial download of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, which brings with it greater native support for DSLR video and much improved performance during playback and editing, allowed me to compare editing performance as can be seen in the following sequence of screenshots:

Processing RAW Canon EOS 7D video in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. In the clip properties, you can see the different coloured frame types (i.e. the full frames and the differences). Simply playing the clip results in excessive CPU utilization.

Processing 10Bit AVID DNxHD video in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Even converting to this codec does not bring much of a saving in CPU utilization, although you can see that all frames are now full frames.

Processing 8Bit 50% Quality AVID DNxHD in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Dropping the quality level even further still doesn't show great improvements, but it does help.

Processing RAW Canon EOS 7D video in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. Now we see an improvement, which is especially good considering that it is using only the software version of the Mercury Engine, and the trial doesn't include the native DSLR codecs due to licensing reasons.

I am unable to show Cineform Neoscene as my trial had expired and I don’t plan on purchasing it after seeing what Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 can do. Pending an upgrade, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 is still my day-2-day video editor, and I chose the last, free option of AVID DNxHD and MPEG Streamclip. After installing these to components, here is how to go about performing the transcode:

File, Open 7D file.
File, Export to Quicktime.
Choose AVID DNxHD.
Click Options button beside the AVID DNxHD choice, which brings up a confusing looking dialog window. There is a bug in the layout.
Set Color levels RGB.
Click the tiny sliver of a box at the bottom of the window, and a drop down box will appear, allowing you to select the bit rate for DNxHD. As I demonstrated with the screenshots above, you may need to experiment to see what works best for your editing workflow, but ensure you pick the same resolution and framerate as the source clip.
Hover over the Uncompressed selection and the OK button will appear. This is another bug. Click OK.
Set quality to 100% (again this is something to be experimented with).
Uncheck Interlaced Scaling.
Ensure that “1920×1080 unscaled” is selected (or the relevant unscaled resolution for your source clip).
Click “Make Movie”

Setting AVID DNxHD options in MPEG Streamclip. Note that the drop down list for resolution and frame rate settings hang awkwardly from the messed up dialog window.

Other MPEG Streamclip "Export to Quicktime" settings, in particular frame size is unscaled and interlace scaling and video are unchecked.

Editing

I tested the waters with a number of video editors, including:

Microsoft Windows Live Video (I can’t believe that I am even admitting this, but it worked fine!)
Pinnacle Studio HD (based on the advice from this Photoframd Blog post)
Premiere Elements 7

As I stated at the beginning, and alluded too at a number of other points, I eventually settled on Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, which I am lucky enough to have as part of the Adobe Master Collection. No point having all that professional software if I don’t use it! For me, the easiest way to learn this product is to watch a number of the excellent tutorial series on Youtube, such as this one from OrlyHoodTV:

I won’t go into great detail here about the editing process, as that in itself would make up a very very long post, but will make the observations:

When creating a new project in Premiere Pro you will need to create a new preset based on the nature of the video files you will be using, i.e. you shot 24p
I am still tiptoeing creatively when it comes to editing, using simple standard Cross Dissolves / Dips to Black
I am not using any external sound recording, and the Mic on the Canon 7D just loves background noise and wind, so I mostly overlay music on the clips
If you have imported a lot of media, some of which you have trimmed, others you haven’t used at all, creating a new “Trimmed” project at the end and deleting the original is a great way of conserving disk space.

Exporting

I am not really churning out sufficiently long (or sufficiently high quality for that matter) videos to want to create DVD’s or BluRays… currently. When it comes to exporting, I typically have the following two targets in mind:

Web Video: mainly Youtube, but for a more professional feel I am also looking at Vimeo.
iPhone / iPod Touch: My iPhone is my Photoalbum, my Slide Collection, my primary method of physically sharing with those around me.

Once you are done in Premiere with your edits, you need to render or export your project for the appropriate destination. I am not familiar with your version of Premiere Pro but these are the general settings I use, much of which is based on the guidance from this Youtube and this Vimeo support page :

Originals: the fewer re-encodings or transcodings between original file and Youtube the better
Aspect Ratio: don’t change the aspect ratio if possible
Resolution & Framerate: again, don’t change the resolution or framerate
TV Standard: I am not sure whether this has a major bearing, but if you shot in PAL you should export in PAL (same for NTSC)
Containers & Formats: While Youtube and Vimeo both support a wide variety of import formats, sticking with H264 in a MP4 container seems to be the best option

Finally

So that’s it, my longest, most involved blog post to date. Writing this has helped me collect together the various snippets of knowledge required to produce something approximating a quality video.

Hopefully it will be useful to all of you as well.

For further reading, please visit:

Canon Digital Learning Center: Harnessing the Power of the EOS 7D’s Video System
Philip Bloom: Articles about DSLR Video
Cinema5D: Originally created for 5D, but relevant to 7D as well
Planet5D: 5D and 7D News
DVINFO: Canon 7D Video Forum
Vimeo: Canon 7D Group

End Of An Era – Selling My 20D

jbourke — Tue, 04 May 2010 13:03:32 +0000

We Had Some Great Adventures!

Ah, my first DSLR, a Canon 20D, it is time to part company. I will miss it, but the truth is I have not used it since I got my 7D. So it is up on eBay now, to be recycled into something new and shiny! Check it out here.

UPDATE: Sold and dispatched.

New Gallery – Rome

jbourke — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 01:43:59 +0000

Towards The Light - Tourists shoot the Pantheon Oculus

Slowly but surely I am sorting and sifting my way through my back catalog of images. This new gallery features some of my favorite shots from a two week trip to Rome in 2007. During that time, we really got a feel for this wonderful city, and especially it’s food!

This collection features images from the Vatican Museum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, St. Peters Basilica, and the Coliseum. If you are visiting Rome, here are some tips I would offer:

Don’t fill everyday with museums and sightseeing. One of the best ways of getting under the skin of this city is sitting in cafes, or in a Piazza, and watching the world go by.
Skip the restaurants on the Piazza’s, especially on the Piazza Novona and the Campo Di Fiori. While the food may be good, it will be overpriced. Search down the side streets for the small local trattorias where the locals go.
Walk or use public transport. Rome is easy to get around by anything other than car!
The Vatican museum is worth a full day on its own.
A tripod will not be welcome in the Vatican, nor will you be able to take pictures in the Sistine Chapel (though many do).

While the gallery contains some of my favorite images, I have posted additional images in my Flickr Set:

All images taken with a Canon 20D, and post processed in Adobe Lightroom.

My Top Three Adobe Creative Suite 5 Features

jbourke — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:45:46 +0000

What’s In The Box?

So Adobe has announced Creative Suite 5. There have already been some amazing preview video’s, but, as always with Adobe products, there will be the debate whether to upgrade or not. I am lucky enough to have Adobe Master Collection CS4, but here are the top three features which will probably push me down the upgrade path…

Content Aware Fill in Photoshop CS5

Ok, I’ll admit it, I am terrible at retouching photo’s, and I would imagine that I am not alone. Good behind the camera, but don’t have the time to master this exacting skill. For us, Adobe has introduced Content Aware Fill. I could explain it, but it’s simpler to see it in action:

Native Support For Canon 5D MkII / 7D Movies In Premiere Pro

Let me tell you, editing video from a Canon DSLR in Premiere CS4 is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. The main issue being Canon’s file format choice for DSLR video, good for size and playback, bad for editing on a Non Linear Editor (i.e. Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas, Avid, etc.). Because of the type of compression used, Premiere Pro has to work hard to extrapolate image data when you try and “scrub” through your clips. The normal resolution is to trans-code the files to another format, usually at additional cost for additional codecs (Neoscene, I am pointing at you!). Combined with a new, GPU accelerated, playback engine called Mercury, native support for Canon formats should make the whole editing process a lot less labor intensive:

Ability To Create / Edit Wordpress Sites in Dreamweaver

As I am the jack of all trades (and more than likely master of none) when it comes to the design and maintenance of this website, I am especially looking forward to the ability to create, edit, and maintain WordPress sites within Dreamweaver CS5. Up to now, I have been reluctant to dive in and learn proficiently the HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript necessary to perform this task, but this feature should allow me a greater understanding of how a typical WordPress template hangs together.

Bonus Features

Some of the other Creative Suite 5 features which caught my eye:

Lens correction in Photoshop CS5 (as against PTlens)
HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5 (as against Photomatix Pro)
64Bit across all applications

DSLR Video – Welcome to the Future

jbourke — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:53:12 +0000

“The Last 3 Minutes” From Shane Hurlbut, ASC from Shane Hurlbut, ASC on Vimeo.

After watching this video, all I can say is:

Wow!

My Canon 7D can also shoot High Definition 24P video, though coming from a photography background, I am struggling to catch up. New formats, new tools, new challenges (i.e. have you tried to edit Canon 7D footage in Premiere Pro? That is a major challenge for another post…) and new creative decisions.

Then you see a video like this, and realize that even with all the right tools, you still have a mountain to climb The video capabilities on the current Canon 5D MkII and 7D are so strong that even the season finale of House MD was filmed completely on one.

Repost – Duke Special @ Dolans

jbourke — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:28:22 +0000

The eccentric Duke Special now features as a new gallery on JonathanBourke.Com. This is a repost of an earlier Flickr based Gallery as I slowly migrate my portfolio content to my own website. In this gallery, I try to capture the eccentricity, the motion, and the colour of Dukes’ performance at Dolans that night. Some of the images could be perceived as being blurred… but for me this accurately reflects the feeling of the gig.

Back when I originally posted this I said:

Duke Special wowed the midweek crowds at Dolans Warehouse in Limerick on Tuesday 9th of December. This time he had his band with him, and the percussionist, “Temperance Society”, entranced people with clattering, banging, shaking, twisting, roaring, scraping, and more. He was brilliant. It was a poignant night for Mary and I, as it will be our last concert in Dolans for some time…

In some ways, “Temperance Society” stole the show, using everything from pots and pans, assorted sticks and whatnot to create an eclectic sound. From Wikipedia:

He is most often accompanied by percussionist “Temperance Society” Chip Bailey, who plays cheese graters and egg whisks, a Stumpf fiddle and a Shirdi drone box, as well as the more typical drums and cymbals.

One Lens Every Photographer Should Own

jbourke — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:45:12 +0000

One Lens Every Photographer Should Own; a Fast 50!

Digital Photography School (DPS) suggests Three Lenses Every Photographer Should Own. Great article. Except…

Where is the fast lens? The fast 50? Nifty 50?

I know the article mentions a 50mm F2.8 as a macro lens, but what I am referring too is a F1.8 or better. I own the Canon EF 50mm F1.4, and it is my pride an joy. It makes nearly any setting look great.

Dark venue; bring out the fast F1.4
Cluttered backgroud; got to love the bokeh* of F1.4
Travelling light; yep, the F1.4
Stuck in a rut; the F1.4 again!

While it has it’s detractors, the Canon 50mm F1.4 is my go too lens for most of my concert and portrait photography. Here are some of my favorites:

The fast 50 can be an unforgiving beast though, it is possible to focus on the tip of a mans nose and have his eyes blurred. I remain to this day unsatisfied by this next shot of the artist Duke Special, lit only by the match, yet just the slightest touch out of focus:

A fast 50mm used to be sold as standard with all SLR’s in the past, as it was representative of the natural breath of vision. Nowadays photography this maxim from Robert Capa is rarely considered:

If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.

Cheap, slow consumer zoom lenses fill this slot, depriving new SLR owners of a truly challenging and rewarding photography experience.

Do yourself a favor… buy Canons cheapest lens, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8, and open up a world of possibilities.

* Bokeh, from Wikipedia:

…is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light.” Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting— “good” or “bad” bokeh, respectively. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. Photographers sometimes deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions… The term comes from the Japanese word boke (暈け or ボケ), which means “blur” or “haze”, or boke-aji (ボケ味), the “blur quality”. The Japanese term boke is also used in the sense of a mental haze or senility.

Jack L @ Dolans Warehouse in Limerick

jbourke — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:48:57 +0000

Jack L @ Dolans Warehouse in Limerick

In the continuing voyage of discovery that is sorting my photo collection comes another gallery. This time it is Jack L performing at Dolans Warehouse in Limerick on various dates in 2008.

Jack Lukeman (or Jack L) is pretty much unique amongst the artists I have seen perform… he can hold a venue on the power of his voice alone. I must have seen him perform 10 times now; he certainly ranks as one of my favorites. Check out his music at www.jacklukeman.com.

New Gallery – Jack L Returns To Dolans

jbourke — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:21:08 +0000

Jack L @ Dolans

On October 17th, Jack L made a triumphant return with his new album “Burn On” to Dolans Warehouse in Limerick. Of course I was there to grab a few shots…

While I took over 100 shots, I have whittled them down to a more manageable 20 or so. I particularly like the deep, low key, blue man shots. Again, all shots were taken with a Canon EOS 20D with 50mm F1.4, mostly at either 800 or 1600 ISO. Check them out on Flickr, or click on the thumbnails below:

A great concert as always, all the more so when you see how much the band are enjoying themselves. They looked to be getting a real buzz from the crowd. That said, could the muppets who talk and make noise and show disrespect please fuck off! Why do ye bother going… at least ye eventually shut up when Jack came out on his own at the end to play “Rooftop Lullaby”.

Also, Jack, consider this a standing request for:

The Man Who Couldn’t Cry
So Far Gone
Don’t Fall In Love

New Gallery – Munster V Glasgow Warriors at Thomond Park

jbourke — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:51:45 +0000

ROG lines up a penalty for Munster against the Glasgow Warriors

“To the Brave and Faithful, Nothing is impossible”

Munster Rugby made a winning return at Thomond Park last Saturday night after it’s reconstruction. What a beautiful stadium! Still a few issues to sort out (need more score boards, screens, and the sound system needs tuning), but there was a huge crowd and great atmosphere, as the boys beat the Glasgow Warriors in the Magners league to start a new era of “Fortress Thomond”.

See more photo’s after the break…

All photo’s were taken with a Canon EOS 20D at either ISO 800 or 1600. I used two lenses, a Canon EF 70-300IS and a Sigma 12-24HSM. I manage (and upload to Flickr) with Adobe Lightroom.

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