7D Help? 720p 50fps footage becomes grainy when uploading from Canon 7D to Macbook Pro

[Gavros88]

Hi folks,

I'm currently trying to shoot a short with my friend's Canon 7D, to be edited on his Macbook Pro in Final Cut Pro. We're using a f1.8 50mm AF lense, and we're shooting on 720p at 50fps. We've shot footage on three SanDisk Extreme 8GB 60Mbps CompactFlash cards worth of footage (now all full!). The footage looks great when played back on the Canon 7D; sharp, nice colours, and no grain or noise.

However, we've had severe problems exporting this footage onto my mate's Macbook Pro. It doesn't have a card reader, so we've tried two different methods. The first was by using the cable provided with the Canon 7D and transferring the files over via the software provided. The second was by using a USB card reader which plugged directly into a USB port.

Using both of these methods, the footage has gained a significant amount of grain, the frame rate looks higher, the footage plays with jumps and is "jerky", and the colours are slightly off. This is mostly noticeable in the scenes shot in lower light settings, but those appear fine on the camera screen, and as I say, this problem is universal across all of our footage. The footage has appeared this way in QuickTime, VLC Player and Final Cut Pro. We can get footage into FCP as we downloaded the plug-in from Canon's website.

I really wouldn't want to go back to shoot the whole thing again! It's taken a lot of time and effort (and money) to get so far with the film as it is, though obviously we're having to suspend filming until we find a solution.

Does anyone know what may be causing this, and know a solution? As I say, the footage looks fine when played back on the Canon 7D, so if anyone knows a way to get the footage off that'd be great.

Many thanks in advance!

 

[TooTallTim]

What ISO were you shooting at? Transferring footage doesn't just magically add grain. You won't see the noise/grain on the LCD as it is tiny, go by te fact that anything over 640 ISO will start giving you some digital noise.

 

[Exact]

Put the cards in the reader, then in the Log & Transfer window of FCP (using the latest 1.1 plugin) right click on the columns and add the following columns to the display:

• Aperture
• Shutter Speed
• ISO
• Lens
• Focal Length

This is going to reassure you that you shot it with reasonable settings. If you didn't then there is not much you can do other than play with Neat Video to try to recover as best you can.

If all the EXIF data (for want of a better term) is fine then you have to look at how it's being played on the MBP (regardless of the player). In Quicktime check the movie inspector and check that it's being imported at the correct size & frame rate. Also, check you are displaying (and playing) it at the correct size (and not up/downscaling).

My MBP display can be a little noisier than my 30" Cinema display, so also try viewing on other monitors.

That's enough to get started. Once you have the EXIF data that could answer a lot of questions....

 

[life4eva]

So a 3.0" screen is representative of what something will look like on a screen that is larger? This thread actually makes no sense.


First and foremost transferring data from your camera to your computer does not do anything to the footage, all you are doing is copying the files from your cameras card to the computers hard drive.

If you have grain it's because you were working at high iso levels and not having your scene properly lit/exposed.

Welcome to digital film making :thumbup:

 

[markblasco]

If you are finding your footage to be jumpy, that is likely due to your computer not being able to process and play back the video smoothly. The files that come from these cameras are not very good on the computer, so if you are not transcoding them to something else, that could explain the jumpy playback.

 

[Gavros88]

Hi folks!

Apologies for the severely delayed reply. I just wanted to give an extremely belated thank you to all of you; you were all absolutely correct.

The problem was indeed a combination of the ISO settings being too high (3200 in places!), alongside an inability of my editing computer to run the H.264 codec.

Sadly, we've had to reshoot the vast majority of this film from the ground-up. Lesson has well and truly been learned. On the plus side; I really do love the quality of the upgraded footage!

Welcome to digital film making :thumbup:

Indeed! Thanks for the heads up

It's my first foray into the world of D-SLR filmmaking, for a short named 'Fatal Attractions'. I already made a couple of crucial mistakes, but I'm very much enjoying the learning curve. Here's hoping the finished product will be worth it.