MPEG Streamclip on PC, Premiere Pro

What is in the "Color Levels" box behind where you've selected your DNx bit rate... It has options for 709 and RGB.

I'd also like to see a WFM output for the two clips. But it appears (just as with my 5D footage) that the 7D is giving you cRGB and the DNxHD conversion in Mpeg Streamclip is shifting it to sRGB which for it's broadcast application is correct.
 
You know what, it looks like it's doing the same thing as my quicktime player.

If i open my 7D file in quicktime, and bring the screen to half size, then it gives me a hazier/lower contrast image, the second i maximize the screen, it gives me the same image as what premiere pro cs3 gives.

It seems as though something about the original quicktime file shifts gamma depending on the way the file is being processed, and once in premiere pro, it brings it to the contrast side. Where as in mpeg streamclip, it looks like it's locking the hazier image that quicktime player brings.

Honestly, no biggie, just means i have a flatter image that i can play around with in post, but i am noticing a lower amount of macro blocking with the 10 bit/large file size workflow.
 
Ok, so sounds as if the behavior is not unique to Mpeg Streamclip. I forget, are you on a Mac or PC?

And it's good to hear you are seeing less blocking. I'd expect that.
 
on PC, can't afford the mac route :P

Looks like I'll be putting my 2 TB external to good use now.. Can't imagine shooting a feature with file sizes this large.

20 second clip = 466 mbs , 1 minute = 1398 mbs
a film of an 1h 45m = 121626 mbs which is roughly 1.21 Tbs

with a 6:1 shooting ratio, that's a lovely 8 Terabytes of space required. Amazing.
 
PaPa said:
on PC, can't afford the mac route :P

Looks like I'll be putting my 2 TB external to good use now.. Can't imagine shooting a feature with file sizes this large.

20 second clip = 466 mbs , 1 minute = 1398 mbs
a film of an 1h 45m = 121626 mbs which is roughly 1.21 Tbs

with a 6:1 shooting ratio, that's a lovely 8 Terabytes of space required. Amazing.
Click to expand...

You're doing it wrong.

You are using a bit rate designed to work with film from a film camera and scanned at 4k. Did you notice that Phil Bloom screened his 5D/7D footage for Lucas film with the Proxy variant? That's around 35-45 Mbps. You're working at 175Mbps.

Of course, if you want the 10bit pipeline, then you are going to work with large files. Welcome to the world of professional post. This ain't HDV any more dude.
 
Grr, then what should i be using then? Is there another settings that you would recommend that gives me high quality without file sizes 5X as big through mpeg streamcilp?
 
PerroneFord said:
What is in the "Color Levels" box behind where you've selected your DNx bit rate... It has options for 709 and RGB.

I'd also like to see a WFM output for the two clips. But it appears (just as with my 5D footage) that the 7D is giving you cRGB and the DNxHD conversion in Mpeg Streamclip is shifting it to sRGB which for it's broadcast application is correct.
Click to expand...


Perrone, I set up Streamclip and DNxHD and it all went smooth, but my 10bit conversion is a little darker with less contrast. I tried setting to 709 and RGB which both look the same. In CS4 I have to push the brightness up 10 and contrast 15 to get them to look similar.

Here is one setting. I will test all configurations.

/ 1080p / 25 DNxHD 185 10bit
/ The other settings are 1920x1080 (unscaled)
/ 25fps (I'm Pal)
/ no options checked from frame blending down to Deiterlaced

Am I missing something?
 
DNxHD 115 seems to give a great quality image at 2/3rds the file size as the 10 bit 175 file but the DNxHD 36 loses quite a bit of detail. So i guess ill stick with that one. That sound about right?
 
PaPa said:
DNxHD 115 seems to give a great quality image at 2/3rds the file size as the 10 bit 175 file but the DNxHD 36 loses quite a bit of detail. So i guess ill stick with that one. That sound about right?
Click to expand...

Sounds about right to me. I believe this is why ProRes went with a 45Mbps proxy rate instead of 36Mbps like DNxHD. ProRes is derived from DNxHD so they share very similar traits, but ProRes is always 10bit.
 
ROCKMORE said:
Perrone, I set up Streamclip and DNxHD and it all went smooth, but my 10bit conversion is a little darker with less contrast. I tried setting to 709 and RGB which both look the same. In CS4 I have to push the brightness up 10 and contrast 15 to get them to look similar.

Here is one setting. I will test all configurations.

/ 1080p / 25 DNxHD 185 10bit
/ The other settings are 1920x1080 (unscaled)
/ 25fps (I'm Pal)
/ no options checked from frame blending down to Deiterlaced

Am I missing something?
Click to expand...


Probably not missing anything. What do the scopes say?

Yesterday someone said it MPeg Streamclip and DNxHD made their footage lighter and with less contrast. Today it's more contrast and darker. I think results are greatly dependent on the source, and maybe even how it's viewed. So use the scopes to give a true indication of what's happening.
 
PaPa said:
DNxHD 115 seems to give a great quality image at 2/3rds the file size as the 10 bit 175 file but the DNxHD 36 loses quite a bit of detail. So i guess ill stick with that one. That sound about right?
Click to expand...

You'll also note that the Panasonic cameras that use P2 are recording about 100Mbps. So this DNxHD bitrate nearly mirrors that, and for someone coming from that camera, these files would be nearly equal in size to their sources. Those of us used to the 24Mbps of AVCHD, 25Mbps of DV/HDV, or the 35Mbps of the XDCamEX are the one's seeing significant increases in file size.

Of course those shooting on high end cameras are seeing a massive reduction in file size so this stuff is terrific for them. They are seeing 5:1, 8:1, or even 10:1 reductions.
 
PerroneFord said:
Probably not missing anything. What do the scopes say?

Yesterday someone said it MPeg Streamclip and DNxHD made their footage lighter and with less contrast. Today it's more contrast and darker. I think results are greatly dependent on the source, and maybe even how it's viewed. So use the scopes to give a true indication of what's happening.
Click to expand...

Actually the footage becomes slightly underexposed 1/2 stop with less contrast and seems to shift to the green side.
What I said in my post is that I had to lighten and add contrast to get the image to look similar. It was not close to the original.
When I export footage as uncompressed Quicktime, it's an exact clone regardless of what the original is.
I'll shoot a proper test and post the results
 
ROCKMORE said:
Actually the footage becomes slightly underexposed 1/2 stop with less contrast and seems to shift to the green side.
What I said in my post is that I had to lighten and add contrast to get the image to look similar. It was not close to the original.
When I export footage as uncompressed Quicktime, it's an exact clone regardless of what the original is.
I'll shoot a proper test and post the results
Click to expand...


How are you determining the "original" ?

Premiere clamps values >235 , <16 , so you can lose some highlights, and some shadow detail. When you import native 7D footage in premiere, it converts Y'CbCr=>RGB with SD rec.601 matrix (maps black to 16, white to 235).

The only way that I know of to keep rec.709 (BT.709) HD and the full range is to convert the footage to v210 (uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2), which is not very fun to edit (~20x the size, very slow to edit, need SSD's or RAID0)
 
PDR said:
How are you determining the "original" ?
Click to expand...

I opened the original H-264 in a Quicktime window and opened the DNxHD conversion in a Quicktime window and put them side by side.

Then I imported the 2 files into CS4 and compared them side by side.
 
Gnomon school has you change your Quicktime preferences to safe mode (GDI only) in order to get the gamma shift correct between my PC and their quicktime lessons. Are you guys using DirectX on your video cards? This could be the reason you are having so many problems while I am not.
 
Can I jump in on this and ask something? I've used mpeg streamclip to export DNxHD quicktime file and attempted to import to premiere but it tells me file format not supported. What am I doing wrong?
 
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