My Canon 7D workflow PDF Print E-mail

Canon 7D martin beekPeople have been asking for my 7D workflow – i even seem to refer to it myself in one article; while being non existant at the moment… ;-)
So here it is!  Not much of a spectacular thing, but this is the route i usually follow.

  • Shoot on 7D 1080, shutter 1/50th on 25 fps
  • Read movies from camera and store on backup HD
  • Use MPEG StreamClip (freeware) and it’s batch functionality to add all 7D clips to it’s batchlist and convert all these babies to Quicktime Movie : Apple ProRes codec -> convert all and save to project folder or “converted” folder on backup HD. Do NOT enable any scaling or deinterlacing options in this program, just set the Quality slider to 100% if it’s not already at that.
  • Use FCP to edit as usual, set project/renderer to ProRes or ProRes-HQ (bit over the top maybe…)

To convert to SD (PAL):

  • Export to self contained Quicktime movie in FCP, just same codec: ProRes or ProResHQ, save to HD
  • Drag the resulting file onto the MPEG StreamClip surface
  • Convert to Quicktime movie: Apple Prores. Set quality to 100%, check all the scaling checkboxes (“better scaling algorithm” stuff) un-check the deinterlacing checkbox(es)
  • Set movie size to custom: 1024×576 (this is 16:9 PAL SD)
  • Convert / save
  • Optional beauty pass: reload into FCP and apply the Regrain filter (freeware plugin) with settings Amount:50 Treshold: 50. This sharpens the overall picture with a fine and sophisticated “unsharp mask” method. Re render, re export or send to compressor for DVD use.

An example of a clip that has been sharpened using the Regrain technique can be found here: http://youtube.com/marvelsfilm - the first clip; press the HD button for best Q if your PC/connection can handle it. You’ll see that also the non-HD clip already looks pretty good. Clip is postprocessed using the workflow above, with the slight difference that the resolution used is 1280×720.

Cheers!
Martin