7D Poor video quality with 7D.

A

audiojaxs

New member
Hello everyone,

I have been shooting with the 7D for about 6 months; I'm having trouble getting good video.
I shoot with a Tamron AF 17-50mm F/2.8 SP XR Di II VC (Vibration Compensation) Zoom Lens and a standard 50MM canon lens.
The video that I get does not look like the really good video I see others getting with the 7D, I don't know if it's my lenses, camera setting, or compression settings when I export and convert my video.

I take my raw footage which is shot in 1080p at 24fps with a 1/50 shutter speed and convert that with mpeg streamclip to apple pro res.
I edit that footage in FCP and export as a QuickTime movie and it ends up looking like crap--even the raw footage I get looks not as good as what I see online from other 7D users.

I have new macbook pro that has lion and I am unable to add different picture profiles because EOS utility does not work on lion yet, if that is something I could do is there any other work around anyone knows about.

Please, if anyone knows how to help me get video with better quality I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks.

Peace and Happiness,
Matthew
 
Being a seasoned 7D shooter myself, you're gonna need to post some pictures! :) We use mpegstreamclip to go to ProRes as well.

In FCP or QT, write out a still frame of something you don't like.

The footage out of FCP, what are you writing out as?

At least with some stills, we can try and see what is going on during the process.
 
Are you sure it's not the quality of lighting or the production value in the shots that's making the difference? A flat, frontal light on poorly framed talent shot with an Alexa will be less appealing than a nicely lit MCU shot with a 7D. Just airing that out before we dive into the 1's and 0's.
 
Jordan Scott Price said:
Are you sure it's not the quality of lighting or the production value in the shots that's making the difference? A flat, frontal light on poorly framed talent shot with an Alexa will be less appealing than a nicely lit MCU shot with a 7D. Just airing that out before we dive into the 1's and 0's.
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That's why I wanted to see some screen shots.
 
If you really have no idea what it is, it seems more likely it's simply in-experience as a shooter than anything else. No camera will magically make sutff look good. Some cameras can do things that others can't but one still needs to know the principals of cinematography to shoot quality images. I've seen very amateurish stuff shot on REDs, Super 16mm, and even 35mm film. I've seen footage from a 5D or 7D that looks way worse than footage from a DVX100.

If you don't know what your parameters are and you're just blaming the hardware than that's likely the start of your trouble.

P.S. Sorry if this post comes off as condescending or elitist. All filmmaking is a learning process and it's great for those who are new to ask for help and try to improve their footage. The mistake is blaming your equipment when it seems you aren't aware of anything else. It's like someone doing their first oil painting, showing it to people, and saying, "I don't know why this doesn't look as good as Van Gogh. Do you think it's the paints or the brushes?"
 
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Also, just check to see what picture profile you're using. The 'Standard' profile is rather contrasty.

But yeah, we'll need to have some visuals.
 
DON'T use mpegstreamclip! It strips out blacks and whites, leaving you with a contrasty image. Atleast on our system.
 
Yeah, I don't think that MPEG streamclip treats the footage any differently than other transcoding apps.
 
Finnegan said:
Yeah, I don't think that MPEG streamclip treats the footage any differently than other transcoding apps.
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I think it does. But in general, DSLR projects and footage don't deserve the extra time going through compressor. I have found that some scenes are too difficult for Streamclip to render, and so I have had to re-render those files using Compressor.


A scene we rendered using Streamclip, in which their was a lot of movement shot at somewhere between 320-800 iso range, and a quick change from dark to light, Streamclip decided a solid wall of gray was what it should render the scene as. I jumped over to compressor, and it took 3X's as long, but came back looking just like it came out of the camera.

(Additionally, we had been intending to edit the entire short, in H.264, but certain intense transitions would not render out properly, and so we needed to transcode a few of the files into ProRes422.)

But if you don't run into any problems using Mpeg Streamclip, then it hardly matters.
 
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Does is happen with both lenses? The Tamron AF 17-50mm F/2.8 SP XR Di II VC (Vibration Compensation), specifically the Vibration Compensation version, has some really bad reviews out there.
 
audiojaxs said:
I have new macbook pro that has lion and I am unable to add different picture profiles because EOS utility does not work on lion yet, if that is something I could do is there any other work around anyone knows about.
Click to expand...

I've heard the older version of EOS Utility works on Lion. You should be able to upload picture styles if you get the version prior to 2.9
 
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