first shoot with T2i - need advice

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killmaster

Active member
This is my first digital shoot ever. So I'm stumbling around through this process and realizing how much new stuff there is to know.

I am shooting an instructional DVD on engraving. This last weekend I did a test. I shot the person who is going to be doing the presentation in his engraving studio. I took a light with me but is looked so good without a light and setting the ISO to 800, that I decided to shoot without adding any light to the overhead fluorescents. The image looked really nice on the LCD and the original footage looks really clean. On closer inspection, the image is super grainy and you can clearly see the noise swimming around everywhere. His plaid shirt is moireing like crazy too. There is one shot where I can see a block of wood with narrow carved lines and not only is it moireing, but the lines are broken up into random prismatic colors. Also, I had to crack up the volume to max setting to get a good level. Viewing the ProRes transcoding was yet another surprise.

Here's the setup:

equipment:
T2i
EF-S 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 IS lens (I have an EF 50 f/1.8 II lens but didn't use it, maybe should have)
Transcend class 6 card
Art Professional Mic Tube Preamp
balanced XLR cables
AKG Lavaliere Mic pinned on his shirt
Olympus LS-11 recorder set at PCM 48KHZ 24bit (going to line-in from the pramp)
Huge bank of fluorescent lights overhead and a few stray incandescent lights (took Lowell RIFA light but didn't set it up)

settings:
shooting 1080p30
f/3.5 to f/6.3 at all times
shutter 30
ISO 800
preamp input and output are maxed, needed phantom power for my mic too...
LS-11 at 10 (max) - voice peaking around -6db

Original footage looks just barely acceptable except for the graininess. Overall the image is really soft except in the narrow range where the focus is. Super shallow depth of field I guess.

If I could edit this and export the original as is, it wouldn't be too bad BUT when I run it through my pipeline, it degrades to such a point that it is completely unusable.

Here's the workflow:

1) shot video with above settings, looks ok but sound, though clean, seems low volume
2) transcode to ProRes LT (did a test and there was little difference between this and HQ or regular)
3) edit and send to Compressor and burn a high quality DVD mpeg-2 file which looks completely horrible and has lowish sound
4) export using Compressor to H.264 at 10.3 Mbps
5) DVD Studio Pro refuses the file. Ok, I get it now. I would need to burn a Blu-Ray disc in order to get full 1080p resolution back out.

At this point I'm stuck. Not sure how to eek the most original quality from the image. I can't edit the original .mov files in Final Cut Pro. So here are my final questions:

1) I assume more light will help. (assuming is a kind of question)
2) should I be shooting at ISO less than 800?
3) should I use a sharper lens?
4) My camera shut off twice (not at the 4GB boundary either). The meter told me on several occasions that the camera was struggling to keep up writing data. Do I need a class 10 card instead?
5) Must I transcode to ProRes or can I use ProRres Proxy and substitute with the original files when I export?
6) If I want this to be a hi-def project, how am I supposed to burn it at 1080p? What is the highest resolution I can burn a standard DVD at? What is your worklow (I'm on a mac with Final Cut Studio)

thanks for any hints here...
 
On the T2i, ISO 800 should be your max. Try to stay away from even that high. I shoot primarily with a 7D and I always try to light for ISO 800 or so for my darkest situations. The kit lens as well is not a very sharp lens. It is also a slower lens with a variable aperture. Ideally you should look for an L lens with a constant aperture. But in lower budget situations try looking for primes or keeping an eye on your aperture. When shooting at wider angles, you'll have more room to open your lens and get more light out of it. As far as the SD card goes, check out the Patriot LX series on Amazon. I just bought 2 16gb cards for $40 each, (very good price) and they work excellently with my hacked GH1 (several times the bitrate of the T2i). You can transcode before or after you edit, but Final Cut will be able to playback and edit the prores files quicker because they are not as compressed. I don't know much about exporting to DVD (I always go to the web) so cant help you there!
 
ok, a huge part of the bad looking video is that I changed my setting to HD after I'd already imported the files. This messes with the aspect ratio and my shots were stretched horizontally. I thought Final Cut Pro would recognize the parameters of the first incoming shot that you put on the timeline and adjust accordingly. It does kinda, but requires your project settings be established before you import. hmmm... now everything looks beautiful and even the moireing is greatly reduced.

thanks for the advice twotonepunkkid...
 
Volume seems low?

That's often because you're comparing the audio to finished material where the volume is actually way too high. That debate is for later... for now:

If recording 24-bit audio average levels should be around -20dBFS, with the highest peaks touching -12dBFS. To untrained ears this will sound low (or at least force you to turn up the gain on your monitors in post), but working with digital audio that maintains enough headroom for proper post-production will make your life much much easier.

You wouldn't try to make sure every image you capture is crunched into the top 10% of the imager's range right? You probably don't want to do that with audio either.
 
Regarding burning to DVD with Compressor MPEG-2 encodes:

Make sure you turn on Frame-Controls in compressor and select "better" (linear filtering) or "best" (statistical prediction) for the resizing controls to get the best quality down-scaling.

Otherwise you can also use something like MPEG Streamclip which is free and has quite the down-scaler and see if that improves the quality.

I don't know which version of Compressor you're using, but 3.5 is pretty bad with it's defaults - which cause all sorts of aliasing and overt degradation when the encoding is done without Frame Controls.
 
interesting and great to know. I understand what you are saying and I never thought of it like that before... thanks!

dialing_wand said:
Volume seems low?

That's often because you're comparing the audio to finished material where the volume is actually way too high. That debate is for later... for now:

If recording 24-bit audio average levels should be around -20dBFS, with the highest peaks touching -12dBFS. To untrained ears this will sound low (or at least force you to turn up the gain on your monitors in post), but working with digital audio that maintains enough headroom for proper post-production will make your life much much easier.

You wouldn't try to make sure every image you capture is crunched into the top 10% of the imager's range right? You probably don't want to do that with audio either.
Click to expand...
 
killmaster said:
interesting and great to know. I understand what you are saying and I never thought of it like that before... thanks!
Click to expand...

You're welcome! If I had to pick one filmmaking-related mission to follow through on it would be preaching proper gain-staging to all! ;)
 
Thanks for thinking to tell me about this. When I got your reply, I was actually compressing my sequence, so the settings that are there by default are:

Frame Controls: Automatically selected: Off
the resize filter says "Better (Linear filter)"

I didn't reset anything and I see the Stream Usage says "SD DVD". Should I change that to HD?
It also says Deinterlace = "Fast (Line averaging)" but I'm shoot 1080p so it should not be interlaced to begin with. Do I need to turn that off or change any settings related to interlacing?

here's the output of the inspector listing the default settings of the preset:

Name: MPEG-2 6.2Mbps 2-pass
Description: Fits up to 90 minutes of video with Dolby Digital audio at 192 Kbps or 60 minutes with AIFF audio on a DVD-5
File Extension: m2v
Estimated size: 2.79 GB/hour of source
Type: MPEG-2 video elementary stream
Usage:SD DVD
Video Encoder
Format: M2V
Width and Height: Automatic
Pixel aspect ratio: Default
Crop: None
Padding: None
Frame rate: (100% of source)
Frame Controls: Automatically selected: Off
Start timecode from source
Aspect ratio: Automatic
Selected 16:9
Field dominance: Automatic
Average bit rate: 6.2 (Mbps)
2 Pass VBR enabled
Maximum bit rate: 7.7 (Mbps)
High quality
Best motion estimation
Closed GOP Size: 1/2 second, Structure: IBBP
DVD Studio Pro meta-data enabled



dialing_wand said:
Regarding burning to DVD with Compressor MPEG-2 encodes:

Make sure you turn on Frame-Controls in compressor and select "better" (linear filtering) or "best" (statistical prediction) for the resizing controls to get the best quality down-scaling.

Otherwise you can also use something like MPEG Streamclip which is free and has quite the down-scaler and see if that improves the quality.

I don't know which version of Compressor you're using, but 3.5 is pretty bad with it's defaults - which cause all sorts of aliasing and overt degradation when the encoding is done without Frame Controls.
Click to expand...
 
as far as I can tell the Frame controls are on by default at the "better" setting. And when you apply the preset to the sequence, it changes field dominance to "progressive" so I think I'm good here. thanks a lot dialing_wand!
 
killmaster said:
as far as I can tell the Frame controls are on by default at the "better" setting. And when you apply the preset to the sequence, it changes field dominance to "progressive" so I think I'm good here. thanks a lot dialing_wand!
Click to expand...

You're right. I just took a look at the Compressor manual and downscaling HD material to SD for DVD will automatically setup the frame controls.

However if you're still seeing unacceptable aliasing/quality you may want to bump up the resizing to "best." It can take a while longer for the encode though.
 
thanks again! I just looked at it and its beautiful!

thanks to everyone for you help. I think I'm good to go now... main problem was project settings in Final Cut Pro. Remember to set that BEFORE you import anything.
 
killmaster said:
thanks again! I just looked at it and its beautiful!

thanks to everyone for you help. I think I'm good to go now... main problem was project settings in Final Cut Pro. Remember to set that BEFORE you import anything.
Click to expand...

I'm with you there... I wish that when you change a sequence setting it would adjust all clips accordingly... :(
 
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