Mixing HPX 300 footage with Canon 5D footage

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Dgross Pro

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Any suggestions on using HPX 300 footage and the Canon 5D footage together in FCP 7.
I have a shoot coming up where we will be combining the two. We will shoot both in 1920x1080 at 30p. I know there that there is a timing issue as far as the 30 frames between the two. Also, any suggestions on getting the two systems looks to match so that they will cut together. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks
 
I did a rather extensive shoot for a client last year with a 300 as the A cam and a 7D as the B cam. look matching was handled in post. With the A cam I was shooting 1080 AVC I and the 7D was shooting 1080 as well. The AVC I codec gives you a lot of flexibility in post, much more so than the h.264 canon footage so with some tweaks in color getting footage to line up was not too much of a problem.

Obviously this assumes we took care to get something of similar look for each camera as a starting point, but I'd have to say we didn't even belabor that very much.
 
As long as you get a neutral, well-exposed image from both, you should be able to grade them to match, as Mark said. I usually white balance to a white or gray card with the HPX and then dial in the Kelvin reading on the 7D so they match.

If you have the new firmware on the 5D, it'll shoot 29.97fps just like the HPX, so that won't be a problem.

Other than that, it's just good to be mindful of the strengths and weaknesses of each (which tend to be complementary to each other anyway) when choosing what to shoot. The HPX300 has deep depth of field, but very little aliasing, so it may be better to use it for a wide shot, (where DOF will be deep anyway) while using the 5D for closeups (where aliasing is less noticeable and shallow DOF is more desirable). Using both of them for the same types of shots will only highlight the differences between them.

If you're finishing in 1080, the softness of the 5D (roughly 720p resolution, even when shooting 1080) will be noticeable compared to the fairly sharp HPX image. You may want to consider finishing in 720p to level the playing field a bit, if you can
 
On my particular shoot we used a PS mini 35 lens adapter for some of the HPX stuff, stock lens for other scenes. The client was extremely happy with the result, but unfortunately I don't think I am able to share in this case.
 
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