Few T2i Questions

ramsaur

ramsaur

Veteran
I'm still learning with all the DSLR cameras. But I have a friend who got one and I believe he doesn't know how to use it as much as I do. Anyways I've googled all my questions and no luck, so asking here. So go easy on me as I'm not 100% familiar with all this yet. Getting there.

1. We shot some footage in 1080p HD at 30fps, when done put the SD card in computer, dragged and dropped, opened footage to view and it looked like it was SD and not HD. Would this be because the footage comes to H.264? Does it need to be compressed to Apple Pro Res (HQ) for the footage to look HD? I learned about a program called MPEG Stream Clip and codec called AVID HD DNxHD and seemed to help the footage out. Let me know if I'm on the right track and the reason why we're not seeing that it is in HD.

2. I always thought when you shoot at 60fps then view your footage that you will actually see it play in slow motion? Without going to your editing program to edit it to slow mo. Am I right or is there something big I'm missing here?

That's the main 2 questions I have for now. #1 is the more important question I'd like answered. Thanks!
 
ramsaur said:
1. We shot some footage in 1080p HD at 30fps, when done put the SD card in computer, dragged and dropped, opened footage to view and it looked like it was SD and not HD. Would this be because the footage comes to H.264? Does it need to be compressed to Apple Pro Res (HQ) for the footage to look HD? I learned about a program called MPEG Stream Clip and codec called AVID HD DNxHD and seemed to help the footage out. Let me know if I'm on the right track and the reason why we're not seeing that it is in HD.
Click to expand...
You must've misunderstood something. Here's an extremely easy way to verify that the native files recorded on the SD card are indeed 1080p HD: Open the file browser (Finder on Mac, Explorer on Windows) and navigate to the SD card. Double-click on any of the QuickTime files. QuickTime player will launch, with the file open in the active window. It should fill your entire screen (which would prove that it's 1080p), but if not, try changing the view size to full size.

2. I always thought when you shoot at 60fps then view your footage that you will actually see it play in slow motion? Without going to your editing program to edit it to slow mo. Am I right or is there something big I'm missing here?
Click to expand...
No. The 720p 60 fps standard records and plays the footage at 60 fps. That means that the motion is normal speed. The playback speed is embedded within the video file, and it's very trivial to change. The best tool to use is Cinema Tools, which comes with Final Cut Pro. In Cinema Tools, you can do a "batch conform" on all of the clips in a folder in order to change their playback speeds to whatever arbitrary rate that you want. So if you conform 60 fps footage to 23.98 fps, then it will be slow motion. Make sense?
 
Just get VLC player. It's leaps ahead the dull Quicktime player.
When you open the video file with VLC, go to Tools, Media Information, then click on the Codec details tab. There you will find the information you're after.

As for playing the files slo mo, use the left double arrows button next to the time line in VLC, click on that twice, and you can view your 60fps at 30fps.

Cheers
 
Thanks, sounds good. One more question related to my 1st question.
checking it to be at 1080p, it does pull out to be 1080p. So first half answered. I might just be our eyes, but I'm thinking when we see SD'ish footage from shooting at 1080p HD the reason we think we don't see HD is because that's what RAW footage actually looks like.

Would it be better if I posted one of the videos we shot, of what I'm talking about here?
 
ramsaur said:
Thanks, sounds good. One more question related to my 1st question.
checking it to be at 1080p, it does pull out to be 1080p. So first half answered. I might just be our eyes, but I'm thinking when we see SD'ish footage from shooting at 1080p HD the reason we think we don't see HD is because that's what RAW footage actually looks like.

Would it be better if I posted one of the videos we shot, of what I'm talking about here?
Click to expand...
No, it's because the video mode only resolves about 720p or less of detail, or maybe the lens was slightly out of focus. Raw footage is the best that the material can possibly look, detail-wise, unless you apply sharpening in post.
 
okay that's what I thought. I suppose some color would make it look good.

so this video: http://vimeo.com/9699574
guy said it's ungraded and you can tell that's HD. I'm assuming because the image was flattened and the ProRes he converted to.

EDIT: and is it true.. I've read many forum boards saying that the footage needs to be converted to ProRes or MPEG Stream Clip with codec called AVID HD DNxHD
 
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