7D aliasing - psychiatrist needed?

I have used a 7d and T2i for commercial productions and broadcasts for the last few months and have had great success. DSLR's do have some issues - but most cameras do. I shoot with sharp and fast lenses and have used them hand held, on a tripod, a jib and a slider. I have filmed sports action which can present problems for most cameras. In the end I feel these cameras hold up very well.


Tools are only as good as the craftsmen that use them. These offer a small form factor, low light alternative for some of my projects and are a great option in my production plans.

Everybody has opinions on these cameras, which will only help us all out. We should all keep an open mind which will benefit us all in the end. Slamming DSLR's is pointless, as there are no experts out there, just users that have had good and bad experiences and have learned how or not to use them in the best way.


In the 30 years that I have been producing, directing, shooting and editing I have worked with allot of different cameras and formats and I look forward to using these and other exciting alternatives in the future.

Never say never!
Just keep on trying!
 
Aliasing can be reduced by dialing the sharpness down similiar to the old ex issues with detail, on camera filters soft fx, and there are moire filters now available,
cheers
 
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snp said:
I've seen their work.
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Is that all? You just haven't seen what I've done? Well, that's easy to solve...
Here are a few short films I produced just in the last year or two:
Depth of Phil: 2010 South by Southwest film festival. Shot on a GH1.
Little Mouth To Feed: 2009 Slamdance festival opening-night gala red-carpet event short film
Cold Calls: 2009 Tribeca film festival, Delta fly-in program

That's three films in three of the top ten festivals in the world, in just over a year.

If you'd like more I can supply more. My awards shelf holds an Emmy, several Tellys, multiple Videographer awards, an Aegis, a Summit, a couple of Accolades, an Aurora, three Cinema in Industry awards, and four Emmy nominations, as well as being a 2nd-place winner, finalist, semifinalist and quarterfinalist at multiple national screenwriting competitions.

Or you could always just look at my HVX BootCamp DVDs, Sound for Film & Television, or forthcoming Lighting for Film & Television (shot partly on a 7D), or The DVX DVD, or any of the five books I've written. Or you could look up my IMDB page.

Lots and lots of things you could do, other than just casting aspersions on my character.

Lastly -- on the issue of those whose opinions one should trust -- I don't ask anyone to trust my opinion. I document my tests and show the methodology and the results, so that anyone, anywhere, can exactly replicate the circumstances and see how I came to the conclusions I came to. And if they want to disagree and come to alternate conclusions, well, hey, more power to 'em.
 
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:thumbsup:Barry you need no introduction my friend, you are well accomplished and respected , OH and great name btw,Depth of Phil: i remember Jack writing me and asking if he could use it. lol
very cool! Cheers brother!
 
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I don't know, Seth. Just seems like for every one who asks, there's probably 10 who wonder, so ... every once in a while, the record needs to be set straight again.

And frankly, I think one of my favorite posts of all time was Kholi Hicks's post about how everyone was leaping down my throat about the DSLRs, when I was the guy who just got a DSLR-shot film accepted into SXSW! (and seriously, all credit for that goes to Jack Daniel Stanley, of course).

Earlier in the thread someone had asked if I shoot on DSLRs. So at least that person didn't know about Depth of Phil, or Shady, Texas, or that I used it briefly on our lighting DVD, or that I had spent months intensely dissecting these miraculous tools to find out what they do, how they do it, when they're good, and when they're not...

Anyway, like I say, I'm interested in facts and documentable repeatable results that can then be used by shooters to get better results and avoid problems.
 
Barry_Green said:
There's more where that came from, I keep meaning to coalesce it all into a comprehensive article on how to get the best from these cameras while avoiding their downfalls.
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Barry,

I for one, would love it if you had the time to do this.
 
Fortunately, outbursts are usually limited to applause for the tremendous work Barry performs for the community. It's rather absurd to think he's got some sort of agenda.

In my limited experience with the 7D, I haven't had issues with footage shot in 1080p and then converted to 720p DNxHD with MPEG Streamclip at high quality. It could be the nature of the footage—I can't view the original mov files on my computer so I can't compare. But has it been the experience of others that in-cam 720p is the main minefield? If so, why?
 
I appreciate your feedback Barry. It’s good for all of us to hear what other people are going through. Your advice is to help not to discourage.

Maybe I have had luck on my shoots so far with the Canon’s. Not everything was perfect, but it was the right tool for the job, and I'm happy with what I got this time.

Perhaps part of the problem people are having in judging DSLR footage is their systems media player and or transcoding their footage. My PC workflow is with Avid MC 4, and it handles the files pretty good. Hopefully MC5 and its native support will make life easier. I find that Splash Lite http://mirillis.com/splash.html is a great media player that seems to handle mpeg4 files better then QuickTime or VLC. It plays back smoothly and has much better quality. I have noticed the difference in full HD playback on my quad core system and on a lesser dual core system with an onboard video card.
 
The native MOV files from the 7D can pose issues for people working on PC, no doubt. Im running 8 Cores with 12 gigs of ram. Both in CS4 and CS5, if I'm working in a timeline with a couple of minutes to something larger, it can crash. Seems to be having issues when the clips in the timeline try loading the image of the video ( one frame showing what the video is in the timeline ) and if i expand or move the timeline cursor, then yeah, sometiems it crashes. With the DNxHD footage, that never happens. I just don't think PC likes the MOV file types, but I do prefer the look of the native files versus the flatter DNxHD files. Just tradeoffs I guess.
 
Barry_Green said:
I don't know, Seth. Just seems like for every one who asks, there's probably 10 who wonder, so ... every once in a while, the record needs to be set straight again.
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Haha! I read, enjoy, and immensely rely on your post, seems every thread that asks a good question you come along and give good answers/suggestions, I also own your audio DVD.... but I knew nothing of your work until this moment...

So, thanks!
 
sorry, let me rephrase. It doesn't like the compression and specific encoding of the native 7D files. Thank you for making me correct myself :P
 
PaPa said:
I just don't think PC likes the MOV file types, but I do prefer the look of the native files versus the flatter DNxHD files.
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It actually depends on what application you use to convert to DNxHD. If you use mpegstreamclip or AME, the dynamic range will be clamped. If you use vegas in 32-bit mode, it will not be. The reason is, the applications use a different range when doing their Y'CbCr=>RGB (and back to YUY2) conversion
 
keaten said:
Off topic but... Barry why did you sell your 7d and keep your gh1?
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Because the 7D is the one that made me mad (blew some shots with it), and then the AF100 was announced, and the lens from the GH1 will work directly work with the AF100. And selling a GH1 body-only wouldn't bring much cash, so it didn't make sense to sell it. I figured the GH1 would work as a b-cam to the AF100 easier than a 7D would.
 
Jordan_Sopinsky said:
In my limited experience with the 7D, I haven't had issues with footage shot in 1080p and then converted to 720p DNxHD with MPEG Streamclip at high quality. It could be the nature of the footage—I can't view the original mov files on my computer so I can't compare. But has it been the experience of others that in-cam 720p is the main minefield? If so, why?
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Definitely it's the in-cam 720p. Converting in-cam 1080 down to 720p in post won't hurt the footage, and may in fact help some, by averaging together some of the aliasing artifacts and blending any noise together a bit. And the camera's observable resolution is a tad more than 720p, so converting it to 720p in post won't really give anything up and should, basically, help.

But the in-camera 720p is extremely more prone to aliasing. The way the camera samples and downconverts, the aliasing artifacts are a lot more prevalent in 720p than they are in 1080p. That's why I gave the (perhaps overly aggressive) recommendation that if you want to avoid aliasing, don't use the 720p mode.

Note, I'm not saying "never use the 720p mode", I'm saying "if you want to avoid aliasing, never use the 720p mode." If you want some slow-mo shots, and you're shooting stuff that doesn't have a tendency to exhibit the effects of aliasing (i.e., shallow-DOF shots, locked-down wides, etc) then you can use the 720p mode all you want. It's not very high-res, it's about standard-def res, but it delivers 60p that can be slowed down and, when used in appropriate circumstances, can make for lovely footage.

But it's much, much more prone to exhibit aliasing artifacts.
 
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