Reformatting Canon 60D H.264 Compressed Footage?

[John Locke]

Hi DVInfo Community!

Long time no talk. I've been on a hiatus from video work for awhile, and so consequently I'm dealing with something new that I need your input on the best way to handle.

I shot some footage on my company's 60D camera, and since it was my first time to use it, to be honest I didn't even think to check whether the footage was raw or being compressed with H.264.

So not aware of the compression, I edited together my clip and went to output it, and I got the tell-tale washed out look that is a sure sign of double H.264 compression.

Any advice out there on how to remedy this? Is there a way to reformat the footage before bringing it into FCS that you recommend? Or can I possibly avoid the washed out look through an alternate codec? Or am I sunk?

Thanks for any help.

[Bruce Foreman]

I don't fully understand your problem. I have the 60D (as well as a 7D and T3i), I've never shot anything with them but 1920x1080p video which is H.264 compressed as it goes on the SDHC media card.

I take those MOV (H.264 compressed) files and put them direct on the timeline in Avid Pinnacle Studio 15, edit, and then my choices are: Render to DVD in either Standard Def (720x480) or in HD (I don't have a Blu-ray burner but can put about 20 minutes of Blu-ray compliant video on a conventional DVD which will play back on most BD players).

Or I can render to a variety of HD and SD computer file formats which can be viewed in HD on a computer monitor or on an HD TV through a media player.

But there is no "extra" H.264 compression.

My suggestion would be for you to bring the clips back into the editor, re-edit, and see if your software will then let you render direct to the final delivery format. Sounds like you're editing on a Mac so I have no idea what kind of workflow you have to use.

Good luck

[John Stakes]

Hi John,

What I would recommend is converting your source footage into ProRes 422, and then replacing the clips on your timeline. I think this will yield much better results as FCP to my knowledge doesn't play nice with H.264.

JS

[John Locke]

Thanks, Bruce. The problem is when I go to output a compressed video from FCS which compresses it, so I'm compressing already compressed footage, and H.264 is notorious for going pale. Apparently this is more of an FCS problem.

I found this info from Vincent Laforet. Converting that H.264 footage… Vincent Laforet's Blog and then thanks to that information, I downloaded the FREE Mpeg Streamclick and am following this brief tutorial Chris Fenwick's Custom Tutorials - Home - Tutorial - Converting 5D and 7DMovies .

It's looking good so far...I've converted about half of the footage so far to ProRes 422. I'll let you know how the final result looks.

[John Locke]

Thanks, John. You posted while I was typing my response!

[John Locke]

Mpeg StreamClick worked fine. Worth a try.