Any problems with 7d outputting to DVD/BLURAY?

Futchibon

Futchibon

Well-known member
I'm probably getting a 7d soon as I LOVE the videos on VIMEO, but are there problems when you try and burn a 7D project to DVD/BLURAY disc? I've heard people complaining about codecs and this and that, and I don't understand a lot of it, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I basically want to know if I buy this camera, will the images hold up on DVD or is it just good for the net?

Thanks a lot and please treat me like a technical dunce!
 
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Any video you download off VIMEO is going to be compressed, hence the noise and artifacts that you saw. I've seen 7D footage on my 52" and it looked stunning.
 
Lowlight/high iso shots are a big difference on Vimeo compared to a bigscreen.
I've seen lots of shots that look great on vimeo ( scaled down) but terrible noisy on a big screen
 
Futchibon said:
I'm probably getting a 7d soon as I LOVE the videos on VIMEO, but are there problems when you try and burn a 7D project to DVD/BLURAY disc? I've heard people complaining about codecs and this and that, and I don't understand a lot of it, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I basically want to know if I buy this camera, will the images hold up on DVD or is it just good for the net?

Thanks a lot and please treat me like a technical dunce!
Click to expand...

Hi Futchibon,

As you no doubt are aware, the 7D is a 1080p camera. That's all good. What you might not know is that is doesn't really resolve all of that detail. In fact, in 1080p mode, it resolves nearly 720p. So what this means for you is that the 7D is not giving you the real resolved detail of a "true" 1080p (of which I'd imagine there are only a few cameras in the world which do...F23, RED ONE, etc.).

The 7D kind of sort of makes up for this by introducing "false detail" - it makes stuff up to enhance the look of the image. A lot of the time this works and effect allows the image quality to look very nice. A lot of the time, however, it falls a bit short and leaves you with aliasing (jagged edges), moire (chromatic abberations), and so on.

In other words - this is a really cheap camera that wasn't really made for the sole purpose of producing HD video. But at the price point, it does a really really nice job of letting us make good looking video and being very creative in terms of lenses, DOF, and lighting.

There is indeed a lot of talk about Codecs, and I really honestly don't see what for. In fact, I think it's pretty simple.

H.264 is what the camera captures in. This is a very compressed codec, which requires a lot of power to edit in real time. Fortunately, we can change the codec virtually without altering the footage to something easier. So, I recommend doing that rather than spending thousands on computer hardware.

If you are using FCP:
1) Shoot and capture to the CF card (H.264)
2) Transcode in MPEG Streamclip or Compressor (ProRes LT)
3) Edit
4) Encode to delivery format (MPEG2 for DVD, MPEG-2, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, or VC-1 for BD)

If you are using Premiere:
1) Shoot and capture to the CF card (H.264)
2) Transcode in MPEG Streamclip or NeoScene (CineForm or DNxHD)
3) Edit
4) Encode to delivery format (MPEG2 for DVD, MPEG-2, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, or VC-1 for BD)


Now, how will it all look?

On the net, I think the 7D shines. The use of further compression on all of the videos means that here, in relatively low resolutions using common distribution methods (youTube, vimeo, etc) the 7D will look far better than many cameras and looks comparable to footage from much more expensive cameras. The simple process of putting it on the web flattens a lot of detail (both desirable and undesirable), so noise isn't noticed quite as much.

On DVD, the 7D is also good. DVD locks you in to a Standard Definition format, meaning that the 7D is actually oversampling. Will the same shots look better than an F23 or RED on the same delivery? Probably not, but you'd have to be really looking close to see the differences.

On Blu-Ray, however, you are now in the realm of "true HD"...which the 7D doesn't really honestly have since it only resolves around 720p. Which is really about what most people are used to seeing anyway. So it will still look good on Blu-Ray, but when viewed at 1080p next to footage from more capable cameras, will manage to look different.

To summarize:

7D: doesn't accurately reproduce every pixel in 1080p, but closer to 720p.

Codecs: Transcode to good intermediary for editing, then to delivery

Delivery: Web looks best, DVD looks good, and Blu-Ray works, but isn't all it could be.
 
Yep, that about covered it.

I would say that people should be aware that most of the HD stuff we see on the silver screen is not 1920x1080 either. And much of broadcast is done at 720p compressed down to barely more bandwidth than a youtube video. So on most TVs, the 7D will look very much like what they are used to seeing from HD broadcast.
 
so all the prosumer cams....ex1/ex3/ hmc150/hxp170...and more pro ones like...mmm hxp300/hpx500 arent true 1080p?
 
jambredz said:
so all the prosumer cams....ex1/ex3/ hmc150/hxp170...and more pro ones like...mmm hxp300/hpx500 arent true 1080p?
Click to expand...

I don't have all of the actual specs for that. I imagine the prosumer cameras run close (700-900) whereas the Pro cameras are probably hitting it pretty close (1000+). Which is to the point - the 7D doesn't really do all that well in comparison to real HD cameras...we already knew that!

Here's a zone plate from the HPX-300:
HPX300QL-MBSW.jpg
 
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jambredz said:
so all the prosumer cams....ex1/ex3/ hmc150/hxp170...and more pro ones like...mmm hxp300/hpx500 arent true 1080p?
Click to expand...
Nope. They all vary. Your next step up would be a Red One and that should do the job easily and then some.
 
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