kye

@Inazuma My guess is that if you didn't use the TRRS cable then the phone wouldn't have 'seen' the microphone and wouldn't have used it - instead using the internal microphones as you suggested.  This is the cable @Don Kotlos mentioned here: http://www.rode.com/accessories/sc7 but any good quality alternative should also work.  I've used this setup and it works well.

@Kisaha is correct that the Rode VideoMicro is a good mic but is pretty wide.

As others have said, the general sound quality advice definitely applies here in terms of getting the mics close and providing appropriate wind protection (dead cats).  If you want to get the Rode mic close you could just mount the mic / phone combination somewhere close-by, or run an extension cable, but if you're going to do that beware of interference.  Running long cables without interference is the main reason why pros use balanced audio connections (XLRs) - for short runs it normally doesn't matter.

To expand on the reference that @Kisaha made to my comments in another thread, I mentioned that putting dead-cat style wind mufflers on internal microphones can be very effective if done correctly, however there are a few things to keep in mind.  I've seen reviews of products similar to the one Kisaha linked to and they are mixed - some work ok and others are terrible.  The best results I've seen were DIY and turned massive wind noise (from someone using the internal microphones on a point-and-shoot camera while riding a skateboard at perhaps 20mph into a decent headwind) where no dialog was audible into the same situation having audible but subdued wind noise.  This is a huge difference, thus my comment about it in the other thread, however it may or may not work for your situation and I've seen most DIY solutions of this type fail almost completely.

I would recommend buying an adapter cable for the Rode mic and then doing as many tests as is required to confirm that you're getting the best audio out of the equipment you have, and only then working out what other equipment you might need.  Preparation and knowledge of your equipment and basic techniques is absolutely critical, which is why pros can reliably get good results even with modest equipment.

38 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

Haha me too about the kids birthday. What better place to test a camera then a place where nothing is planned or controlled haha!

That's every shoot for me!

38 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

by 3 inputs I mean the mini XLR in the camera and then 2 XLRs on the adapter-box. Those two would go into the cam via 3.5mm stereo jack sending input 1 on left and input 2 on right. You'd effectively have 3 mono tracks. Of course that's assuming you can record that input as stereo on a single track... looking here, maybe that's not possible.

Ideally, you can change 'CHANNEL 2 SOURCE' to be 3.5mm Stereo - Stereo. I guess we'll see at release.

ooh, that's interesting.  effectively multi-channel audio.

With those codecs I guess it's not going to really be a big deal in terms of writing more data to the card!!

10 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

for those times you need to film a kid's birthday in 4k60p RAW

LOL..  

I'm not sure if that was specifically aimed at me, but it's pretty funny, and if I end up with this camera then it's totally something I would do!!

10 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

On the subject of audio, with two separate inputs, I was recently pondering an XLR box like this. It could be a fun way to add more mics that other cameras, even higher end ones, can't actually do. With this you'd techinically have 3 separate phantom power inputs.

I think I missed a specification or something..  does the camera have three inputs?

10 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

That's my thoughts too, stick some fluff over them and have them as 'usable' mics

Apart from those crazy YouTubers, another use for these might be recording on camera audio for use with those automatic audio syncing functions that editing software seems to have these days.. If the audio in-camera was too omnidirectional or had too much wind or handling noise then it might not be able to sync but potentially a bit more quality might save some work in post.

I'm not sure how useful this is to film-makers who care enough about audio to record to a separate recorder, but maybe it's a thing?  
Time is definitely money, but it might also facilitate audio syncs to be fast enough for on-set review, potentially being part of the feedback loop to the creative teams.  I've read articles about productions that shot test footage, roughly graded it, and then turned that into a LUT so that the rough 'look' of the film could be seen on set (and applied to a large monitor) giving the crew a better idea of how well things were working artistically.

Maybe @IronFilm has seen sets like this where the audio is roughly mixed on set for review during the shoot?

2 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

With so much attention from Grant Petty being put on the audio options, and with 4 mics built into the camera, what are people expecting from it regarding wind noise?

My experience with most cameras of this kind of size and shape is wind is very disturbing and renders the (usually not very good anyway) internal mics totally useless for outdoor use, even as scratch audio. Looking at it, I'm starting to think that positioning the microphones next to the lens mount, instead of the usual places like the top left corner or in front of the hot shoe, might help shelter them from the wind. 

That on top of the fact that all exposure controls are on the touchscreen means there probably won't be much handling noise while operating the camera. Although maybe if you're adjusting focus, the mics are more likely to pick that up?

In terms of these mics being usable for "real world" situations, I'd be more concerned about handling noise and directionality (isolation of what you're pointing the camera at) than wind noise.  Handling noise might be a reason for them being so large - if there was a suspension mechanism in there of some kind.  The capsules likely to be in there are quite small so I suspect something interesting is going on in there

The reason I'm less worried about wind noise is that I've seen YouTubers (the ultimate "real world" shooters!) put fluff over in-camera microphones with quite amazing results in some cases, so it might be something that can be retrofitted pretty simply.  Considering the location they might not get in the way much either.

35 minutes ago, Django said:

you might wanna hold up until photokina in september where Canon is expected to announce a high-end (FF) mirrorless. i have a feeling they might get video specs right this time.

I will be..  partly due to the rumours of impending releases (gold at the end of the rainbow) but also due to there being no good options that seem to suit my (very particular) needs at the moment!!

36 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

I got rid of the xc10. Too problematic. I went for the mark iii because it hit a lot of bullet points for me and ML works perfectly with it. Canon really cripples their cameras on purpose and the 5D before raw proved that to me @kye

The XC10 is almost perfect for me, if only it had a faster lens (and the AF to keep up with the resulting shallower DOF).

9 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

@kye what are you shooting with now bro?

Two setups:

• Canon 700D / ML raw and SD card hack / Sigma 18-35
• Canon XC10

My problem is that the 700D with ML is unreliable, the 700D without ML isn't good enough image quality, the XC10 looks flat, and the AF on both isn't the best.  I was hoping that a Canon DSLR with DPAF might be 'good enough' IQ, but it seems not.

6 hours ago, Django said:

Canons best 1080p is on it's C line.  Even the lowly 24Mbps from the C100 blows away in sharpness/detail any Canon DSLR with twice the bitrate. That's cuz of internal downscaling from a 4k sensor.

Awesome, thanks..  So, 4K downscaling + 24Mbps = nice image.  This means that the 50Mbps bit-rate isn't fundamentally flawed.

I'd also suggest that YT videos are pretty low bitrate when they go from YT to the viewer so that's a second point of reference for bit-rate.

I'm not sure if all H264 encoding is of the same quality, so maybe there is some other limitation to the codec other than bitrate.

4 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

I think its the codec and in camera processing making the image so soft. ML Raw is such a huge jump in quality it has to be the codec & image processing 

Agreed.

I'm skeptical that there's a huge difference between H264 encoders (other than the bitrate) and a quick google didn't reveal lots of people comparing encoders so it doesn't appear to be a thing (happy to be proven wrong though!).  

This would leave the 'processing' step, which could contain who-know-what!

3 hours ago, Django said:

the codec isn't helping but it's more than that.. cuz recording to prores externally stills gives out a soft image. the upscaling seems to be the main culprit.

someone in this thread claimed: 

5D3 uses large group pixel bins of 5x5, resulting a 1152x648 RAW bayer, which then gets upscaled to 1080p, that's why it has about 600-700 lines of resolution

 

Interesting - I'll have a read of that thread, thanks.

I am pretty sure that my 700D upscales from 1.7K to 1.9K.  I've directly compared Canon stock 1080 vs ML compressed 1080 at both 1x quality mode and 3x quality mode vs 1.7K RAW upscaled in Resolve 14 and there wasn't enormous differences in terms of detail, just that the detail was smeared in the compressed versions.

The question about the quality of the external feed is whether it is just upscaled or if the bad processing is also applied?  There will be processing applied (colour science for example) so it depends on what else is in the processing apart from that.

2 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

@Django the Canon 5D mark iii is for sure 3x3 pixel binning. I recall reading an article from a canon engineer saying that they didn’t aim to increase the megapixels over the Canon 5D mark ii because with 3x3 pixel binning scales to 1080p without skipping lines. Pixel binning works by combining neighboring pixels and 22.3 with their 3x3 binning equates a 1080p 2mp image.

5760 x 3840 divided by 3x3 = 1920 x 1280 3:2 aspect ratio. The 200 pixels get cropped out for 1920 x 1080 video

What seems to be happening with Canon RAW video in magic lantern is bypassing a lot of the elements that equate the Canon soft resolution. 

Agreed.

Considering that the >22.3MP models aren't magically better I think we can conclude that the upscaling isn't the main issue, and that it's the processing that gets applied.  Combined with the C-line cameras not seeming to suffer these issues, I'd suggest that the poor processing is either a function of the hardware in DSLRs or a deliberate choice in software, perhaps to protect their C-line products.

Regardless, this means that unless they deliberately change this, that 4K seems to be the only likely solution for getting good 1080 out of these cameras (by recording 4K and downscaling to 1080).  Unfortunately this isn't likely to happen soon IMO, considering how slow they've been to introduce it, and considering the awful RS on the M50, which combined with this article from Andrew suggests that it's more of a fundamental problem.

Bummer.  Looks like I'm not only up for a new camera, but also have to change to a new lens system.

3 hours ago, scotchtape said:

I'm going to post about after market batteries as well as over heating.  My A7III overheats after 1hr straight full frame 4K recording indoors.  Checked YT and there's 4 other videos about it.  

I'm very interested in this.  The A7III is very high on my list right now, but I live in Australia and need something that will be reliable in up to 40degC / 104degF in full sunlight.  I've had my iPhone 8 overheat while shooting before which isn't a widely encountered problem in the northern hemisphere.

30 minutes ago, tyger11 said:

I don't think it would take that long for them to roll out a good selection of EF-M lenses, considering how many mirrorless lens patents they've filed over the years since the original EOS M camera came out - they just haven't manufactured them. I think the EF and EF-S lineup is much larger than is actually necessary (well, pro EAF-S lenses don't exist). A full lineup of primes from 20mm to 85mm at f/2 apertures, and 100 to 135 f/2.8 would be fine. 200mm+ at f4, and 2.8 for the zoom trinity are for pros, really. The big problem with rolling out a new lens lineup is that it'll actually be TWO lens lineups for mirrorless - APS-C and Full Frame. That's what would wind up taking a while, I suspect. They've never come out with a true pro-level APS-C lens, though the 17-55 f/2.8 IS is close.

Maybe a small selection will be announced with an appropriate camera when (if!) the time comes

30 minutes ago, tyger11 said:

I think the possibility of a 1.5" sensor XC20 with EF-M mount would be pretty great, especially with 40k60p, DPAF and CRL at high bitrates would be pretty killer - some competition for the GH5.

But for the price, nobody is going to compete with the Pocket 4K, unless you need good AF.

The Pocket 2 will be an absolute killer even if it only has half the features promised, but it depends on what particular features your style of film-making requires.  The lineup of cameras is getting better and better but each still has significant flaws - there is no perfect camera unfortunately (or if there is - please let me in on the secret!!)

Damn, was hoping those cameras with enough pixels would be one destructive processing step less (which they might well be) and that it would be one of the ones that did the most damage (which it sounds like it isn't).

So, about the Pocket 2 then....

1 hour ago, tyger11 said:

Too bad about the lens selection, but that may change soon-ish if Canon really does jump head-first into the mirrorless market.

I also liked my EF-M 11-24 lens, back when I had it. It had IS, and was by far the best EF-M lens with IS.

There's no doubt that Canons huge lens catalog helps to keep customers from changing systems, and we definitely live in a time of ecosystems.

If they did decide to jump head-first into the mirrorless market how long would it take for them to build up a decent lens selection?  It would be interesting to know how long it took them to build previous lens systems - I'm assuming they happened slowly and steadily but I could be wrong.

Considering how important lenses are, it could be a huge factor in their business model in coming times, and if the rumours about an ILC XC20 eventuate then they'll need to have a decent collection for it.  Maybe that's why the first two had fixed lenses - they weren't ready to unveil their masterpiece EOS-M lens lineup!!  (Here's hoping!!)

4 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

And this is why the form factor itself is silly. They want to position it as a cinema camera but they have arbitrarily decided that it NEEDS to be so small that it can't include tech that would add minimal size that would be worth it for added features / functionality. 

I see your point, but the counter-argument is flexibility.  Specifically, the flexibility that comes from modularity.

Since John Brawley kindly shared the BM Micro Cinema Camera / BM Video Assist rig he uses handheld it got me thinking about cameras from a more modular perspective.  If they added an audio interface then it would be easier, but it would also be another point where people might not like the choice they made - was it good enough? was it too big?  is it now too heavy for drone usage?  what if you don't record audio in-camera?

It's flexibility vs the efficiency of including everything.

I have a theory about why Canon video quality is typically bad, and which models may be better than others.

We know from Magic Lantern that Canon uses every third pixel across the sensor to get 1920 x 1080.  The problem is that for most of their cameras there aren't quite enough pixels.

For my 18MP 700D, which is 5184x3456 that means the 3x3 resolution is 1728x1152 which cropped to 16:9 is 1728x972.  This then needs to be upscaled 111.11% to get 1920.  
We all know that upscaling video is not a nice thing to do, so despite Canon probably applying sharpening before compressing it, the recipe of RAW video -> upscaled -> processed -> compressed isn't a recipe for success!  
I suspect the combination of upscaling combined with the heavy ~56Mbps compression is the culprit as upscaling tends to soften detail and compression tends to crunch things that aren't sharp.  We know that sharp images can still survive a 50Mbps codec, and my ML RAW experiments seem to indicate that 1728x1152 isn't fundamentally terrible if treated nicely.

This leads me to question what the right recipe is.
If we start with 1920 and work backwards, we get 1920*3 = 5760.  This is how wide the sensor has to be for a 3x3 reduction to not need upscaling.  If the sensor is 3:2 then we need 5760x3840 which is 22.21MP.

Therefore, my theory is that all the Canon cameras with resolutions above 22.3MP should have superior 1080p quality.

According to this comparison table this would mean that the 5DIII, 5D4, 5DS, 6DII, 77D, 80D, 750D, 760D, 800D, 2000D, 200D, M3, M5, M6, M50 and M100 are the potential winners.

Does people's experience of these cameras back this up?

Of course, if any of the <22.3MP cameras took a higher resolution reading of the sensor and downscaled it then they would produce a nice 1080 image, but I don't know if any Canon DSLRs work in this way?

On 21/07/2017 at 8:54 PM, andrgl said:

Lots of pseudo bullshit in this thread...

Short and simple:

• YouTube reencodes EVERY (valid) file you upload.
• Uploading in 4K and above triggers YouTube to make VP9 (higher quality) streams almost immediately. (This is the key thing here as the MP4 stream is absolutely shit, turning your footage into macroblocking smears.)
• You don't have a corporate or partner account, your videos will always suffer from poor bitrate. 

Good summary.

I can verify the first two because I did some extensive tests...  anyone interested can read about them here (with bonus amusing comments!):

On 25/05/2018 at 10:05 AM, heathergillum said:

YouTube supports MP4 and AVI format, you'd better convert your video for YouTube uploads with a converter.

No need to convert if YT accepts your file format, every re-encode loses quality - like photocopying a photocopy of a photocopy...

Nice video Andrew - your work?

It definitely has a distinctive aesthetic, with the combination of distorted bokeh and chromatic aberration, which the emphasised colours in the video played up.

The lightweight combination of the M50 and C-mount lenses would be prone to camera shake (and the last shot shows some) so pairing the setup with some kind of folding stabiliser might yield benefits.  I shoot primarily hand-held and in my research have come upon a lot of products and some are quite innovative.

2 hours ago, kaylee said:

one word: laserdisc

that guy looks so cool!!!  look at his collar!

4 hours ago, John Brawley said:

I know plenty that feel IBIS is almost as good as a gimbal and therefore can be used in place of a dolly for tracking shots. 

As as opposed to me in a car tracking someone, the example I gave.

Thats two different types of tracking shots. 

I shoot almost exclusively hand-held and IS is wonderful, but you are right that it doesn't replace a dolly or slider for camera moves.

IS only smooths out camera rotation, not camera movement.  Which is why I try and do a dolly shot by hand it looks terrible because instead of the foreground moving smoothly in front of the background the two planes move around shakily in relation to each other because I can't move the camera at a fixed speed horizontally, and I can't eliminate me moving it vertically!

I think this is one of the key reasons that all the cool kids on YouTube shooting hand-held always use slow motion for their shallow depth-of-field B-Roll shots because when you slow things down you also slow down their jerky camera movement.

3 hours ago, Liam said:

Maybe an alright alternative?

A travelling filmmaker passed through here a little while ago with his merch and made a decent haul and has a good following from it. Not sure how he gets a "gig" though.

Logistics? Arts festivals? Flea markets? Is it pretty pointless since there's Vimeo?

Was he selling the DVDs?  or using the DVDs as a business card for getting film-making work?

In the eyes of business owners who might hire someone being able to "make a DVD" might be completely different to "upload a video" (which their kids can do).  Perhaps similar to having a big and professional looking camera...

27 minutes ago, DaveAltizer said:

The speed booster and the C-Mount lenses came in today! The speed booster is fishy. Using my all manual CONTAX Zeiss, the image displayed on the M50 is super choppy. Almost like the video card in the camera cant handle it or something. Really weird. But when I put an actual EF lens with electronic contacts on it, it works fine. I assume this has something to do with my Leitax mount CONTAX glass. 

When those lenses are mounted do they touch any electrical contacts that connect to the camera?

It sounds to me like the camera might be frantically trying to talk to the lens and it's interfering with the cameras ability to function smoothly.  Perhaps a bit of sticky-tape over any pins or contacts might stop it?  It may not work but is cheap and worth a try

Or, maybe there's a mode in the camera for shooting without a lens?  Also worth trying perhaps.

On 23/05/2018 at 5:49 AM, Don Kotlos said:

That being said, even if a lens does not resolve the 4K resolution, it can still create a very nice filmic image since you won't notice any aliasing artifacts and there is going to be a gradual decrease in amplitude of the higher spatial frequencies.  

Isn't the technical term "optical low pass filter" ??? 

Just like the early days of Microsoft...  it's not a bug - it's a FEATURE!

5 hours ago, Grumble said:

The problem hasn't been so much in the delay but in the massive lack of communication, which despite the rather sporadic updates and all the complaints about communication it never seems to improve.

Communication is a pretty typical weakness for the kind of people that are capable of designing a product.  It's also something people avoid if they feel guilty about not keeping to schedule or having to admit there are problems that you haven't managed to overcome yet.

Which is why it's rare to mistake the engineering department for the marketing department, or vice versa.  

There are exceptions of course..  

I remember when I used to work it IT tech support there was a joke.  "What's the first thing you do when the server goes down?"  "Take the phone off the hook.  You can't fix the problem while answering the phone....".  Of course, with social media you don't have to talk to people individually, but it was pretty indicative of the culture.

My impression was that kickstarter and similar sites were all high-risk medium-reward investments, because you're betting that the people involved can get a product through a complete development and release cycle, which is no small feat.  
IIRC, in his review of the Digital Bolex Philip Bloom mentioned that despite the success of the product and the demand for other variants from customers that the process had been so difficult that the people who made it declined to repeat it.  

My take on it is that the vast majority of people that start a campaign like this have genuine intentions, and they fail because of their inability to solve the hundred squillion issues that are involved, rather than having sinister intentions.  There are lots of companies that release products with significant flaws, and many that work away for months/years on products that never see the light of day (and we might never know even existed), so if they can't do it reliably then a few enthusiasts attempting simply makes success improbable.

It's a real pity because a $1000+ device that we all regularly upgrade every year or three that is exactly the right size and shape would make a brilliant monitor.

I guess there's a chance that it will eventuate, but with each passing month I think the odds reduce.

4 hours ago, Nathan Gabriel said:

I think you're right to emphasize incredibly low budget films. Given the amount of excitement that the gx85 generated on this forum I think a lot of people here work on productions well below a $50k budget. Casey Neistat is a great name drop for a situation D filmmaker because his work is definitely cinematic, whatever that means. His frequent user of time lapse allows him to inject high quality images, in terms of MP and dynamic range, into his vlog. I also think there are many situation D/C filmmakers who are not vloggers. I have a friend who primary produces music videos. While he likes to control everything, he often works with artists who have limited availability and don't have the patience or control of actual actors. Because of these and other factors he adopts a situation D style of filming. Likewise in some documentary settings I've felt that using a larger camera or additional lighting would have really changed the behavior of the people I was filming.

With respect to situation A, I think it's easy to find examples of people working with budgets less than $50k. The classic example is Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi, which was shot on a $7000 budget. My favorite director, Maya Deren worked with relatively small budgets. Both of these directors shot film rather than digital, but these are very dated references. Personally I still get the impression that most indie situation A folks prefer film over digital, but I'm also fairly out of the game at this point. @IronFilm made a good point because the second I hear someone's shooting digital on a budget I assume they are in situation D/C, but they may very well be in situation A from your perspective. I like the idea of developing different categories of filmmakers' needs, but the more I think about it, it seems impossible. Maybe we can make relative assessments such as: person 1 works more in situation A-like settings than person 2. These relativistic claims could be made without committing to person 1 being considered a situation A filmmaker in all contexts... Have you ever read Wittgenstein? Trying to reduce a concept or phenomenon to a set of necessary and sufficient conditions is almost always problematic.

I've really got to find a way to write shorter responses. Sorry again.

My reference to $5M was actually about camera equipment, and was around the point that anyone using a >$5M camera setup would think of the entire DSLR revolution in the same way that this board seems to talk about vloggers..  basically as spoilt whiney teenagers 

You're right that the situations I describe don't have anything to do with budget.  You can shoot in a highly controlled environment with a phone, a couple of desk lamps and a wired lav mic if you wanted to.  On low budget films as soon as you don't pay people minimum wage you can get away with spending almost nothing (except lots of social capital!).  I co-produced films at $2K and $5K that were absolutely situation A with months of pre-production, >20 cast/crew, and one of them had >10,000 person-hours in it (I didn't estimate the other).

I understand that my post is a huge simplification, but I think the principle stands.

As someone who shoots at the C/D end of things its amusing/frustrating when I mention a challenge I have in shooting my home videos and the reply is to add crew (take extra people on my holiday), to multiply the weight of my rig by three (or more!), or to get my family to repeat parts of the holiday over and over until I get a shot with the right lighting!  

This topic is an attempt to get people to understand that there is a huge variety in film-making outside of the niches they seem to live in.

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

Nope, not even high end productions in my country get shot on film. 

Indie? Forget about it!

I was going to say this!  Film is too slow for most commercial shoots, and for indie it is too expensive!!!

I think I heard somewhere that it's cheaper to rent a RED than to shoot on film these days?