5D mark II video not full frame?

[egproductions]

I was reading the 5D II manual and it says that the semi transparent area on the left right top and bottom of the frame will not be recorded in movie mode. Does this mean that its not really recording a full frame image?

[smartwombat]

Correct.
I think it means the 35mm full frame 24x36mm is not the same shape as an HD image.
So it doesn't use the top and bottom to make it the right aspect ratio for HD, but uses the full frame when taking stills.

[princigalli]

It uses the full frame as much as possible but because of the slightly different aspect ratio it has to crop a small part at top or bottom.

[zijital]

*whew!

subject heading made my heart skip a beat.

[egproductions]

sorry bout that. I'm relieved also. The manual made it sound like there would be cropping on all four sides, not just two sides to get the proper HD aspect ratio. I understand it not a "full frame" aspect ratio so technically its not full frame but it might as well be called "full frame HD"

[princigalli]

no worry, from left to right it's full frame :)
There is something else about the 5Dm2 frame use that is cause of concern. I can't prove or confirm this, but it looks like the camera does not downsize the image from full resolution to HD resolution. That would require too much processing power 30 times per second. Instead (we are only guessing) the video mode only uses every third pixel. The numbers fit perfectly. I believe this and a few other people suspect this too. The downside of this method is potential aliasing problems that are visible when filming specific subjects. It comes up rarely, but it depends on what you film. I can live with this, but some people are annoyed by the problem. It's much worse on the Nikon D90, it looks like Canon handles it better. Most of my scenes use a wide aperture so there is not much room for aliasing problems.

[Jokerswild]

BTW. I have been reading of two issues on this camera. One is battery drain. One person had his battery drain in the camera overnight to 6%. So far I have had it in the camera for two days and no appreciable drain. The other area of concern was black spots visible around specular highlights. I have not had a chance to test this yet.

[princigalli]

Battery goes faster when video is on but it's not a real issue for me. I only film relatively short scenes and I never saw the battery go al the way down. I don't think it's much worse than a standard HV20 battery.

Black spots, I've never seen any. Because of aliasing tendencies on the video camera I don't use too much sharpening. Apparently the problem is related to sharpening. I'm not sure because I don't experience it yet.

I avoid using Canon lens when filming, I prefer Leica lens for manual control and superior Chromatic Aberration control, which can be a problem even in film model with Canon L series lens.

[StormFactory]

I was reading the 5D II manual and it says that the semi transparent area on the left right top and bottom of the frame will not be recorded in movie mode. Does this mean that its not really recording a full frame image?
Let me address this as I see it. Yes, the image will be cropped. It has to been cropped.

The Canon 5D Mark II produces a Full Frame still image of 5616 x 3744 with the smallest JPEG still being 2784 x 1856

Full HD is only 1920x1080. The image is going to have to be cropped to bring the size down to the Full HD size.

[egproductions]

This post was from a while ago. I have already learned that the HD is a sampling of a full frame image aside from the cropping of the top and bottom in order to convert a 3:2 aspect ratio to a 16:9. No sensor area is cropped from the left or right sides.