Mix footage from dslr and camcorder

[gerlos]

Hello everyone,
I'm quite new to video. I'm asked to film a friend's of mine wedding, and I'd like to use my Canon 550D (aka T2i) DSLR and a Panasonic HDC-HS700 camcorder. I'd like to use both cameras to get footage from two different angles.

I'm thinking of "syncing" WB between the two cameras setting custom WB on a grey card at the start of every take.

My problem is that my DSLR does 1080/24p or 1080/25p videos, while the camcorder does 1080/50i or 1080/50p videos. Actually that panasonic camcorder has a "cinema mode", but I found it troublesome to use, since once I set manual exposure/iris I have to exit from "cinema mode" to go back to automatic settings.

Since 50 fps is two times faster than 25 fps, can I convert camcorder footage to this setting?

I'd like to get "film look" (so 24 fps and 1/48 s of exposure), but I guess I'll have to stick with 25 fps... is it right?

Any suggestion about workflow? I'm going to use Final Cut Pro X to work on my footage.

regards
gerlos

[smrpix]

Use 25p on the t21, 50i or 50p on the camcorder. FCPX will have no trouble combining them. Try to use a slate at the beginning of each take, or at least a handclap for sync.

There's much more to a filmic look than the frame rate. 25p is close enough.

[Richard_G]

25p and 50i are effectively the same. 25 complete frames per second compared with 50 pairs of interlaced fields giving 25 frames. As said, sync using the audio tracks. A good way of doing it is to pan the audio from one video to full left channel and the other to full right, you can easily differentiate if they are in sync or one is running slightly ahead of the other then. My advice would be to not do multiple takes as you then end up with lots of short clips, each one starting and ending at a different time. A lot more work to sync up each section. Just start both cameras and leave them running all the time. You only have to sync up once then. Apart from anything else, you can always cut out bits you don't need but you can't put in bits that you missed because the cameras weren't running.

[gerlos]

25p and 50i are effectively the same. 25 complete frames per second compared with 50 pairs of interlaced fields giving 25 frames.

So I can get a 25p stream from a 50i one? Won't I see those horizontal line typical of interlaced videos?

As said, sync using the audio tracks. [CUT] My advice would be to not do multiple takes as you then end up with lots of short clips, each one starting and ending at a different time. A lot more work to sync up each section. Just start both cameras and leave them running all the time. You only have to sync up once then.

Didn't thought about this thing, thanks for pointing it to me!

Many thanks for your suggestions, I'll give a try later with these settings, so I can figure out the details.

[Richard_G]

You only see the horizontal lines on interlaced footage if the field order is wrong or they have been badly converted from interlaced to progressive. PAL DVD is interlaced and you don't see the lines on that. 25p is 25 frames per second each frame containing the full number of horizontal lines, 50i is 50 pairs of frames, one containing all the odd numbered lines the next containing all the even numbered lines, so these 2 half frames combine to become the same as 1 frame of progressive.

I found out about leaving the cameras running from a recent experience. The sort of work I do normally involves setting 3 camcorders up to record the same scene from different angles and leaving them all running continuously (or until the tapes run out as I'm using DV). So all I need do is sync them on the timeline and then simply switch from one to the other to produce the final output. I recently did a job that didn't run continuously so I kept switching the cameras off and then restarting them. It took me the best part of a day to get the separate clips all synced up accurately as I had to go through the process about 40 times instead of just twice (with 3 streams I sync a pair together and then sync the third one to the first two).

[aedipuss]

long takes are not going to work with a t2i. max file size is 4gb and max time around 12 minutes. if at all possible i'd rent another video cam rather than use the t2i, especially if you haven't used it for video before. no auto focus while recording can bite you really badly if you aren't a pull focus regular!

[Cornucopia]

25p and 50i are effectively the same. 25 complete frames per second compared with 50 pairs of interlaced fields giving 25 frames. As said, sync using the audio tracks. A good way of doing it is to pan the audio from one video to full left channel and the other to full right, you can easily differentiate if they are in sync or one is running slightly ahead of the other then. My advice would be to not do multiple takes as you then end up with lots of short clips, each one starting and ending at a different time. A lot more work to sync up each section. Just start both cameras and leave them running all the time. You only have to sync up once then. Apart from anything else, you can always cut out bits you don't need but you can't put in bits that you missed because the cameras weren't running.

I disagree. 25p has HALF the temporal resolution of 50i or 50p. Of course, for images that don't move around much (such as possibly a wedding), maybe you won't be bothered by it. If it were me, I'd do the best possible from both cams (25p & 50p) and FRC one to match the other (whichever worked best for your look - do a few tests well in advance to find out).

Also, as aedipus mentioned, with the Canon, you will HAVE to do shorter takes (not only what he says, but it might overheat for that long).
And once the wedding starts, you can't really use a clapper after the first take, as it would be disruptive to do multiple clips & clappers. If you can feed both cams a nice audio mix from a field mixer/mult-box, then you would have audio that could match (nearly) identically when synced (even with small, non-clapped takes). Without such a feed, you will have differing audio from the different camera angles (with resulting balance changes, time-of-arrival delay, etc), and that greatly aggravates the problem of syncing. I say this from experience (both good & bad).

I agree that a loaner camera might alleviate alot of your problems (then you could do a clapper at head & tails of a single long take).

Scott

[gerlos]

Thanks again for your tips!

The camcorder is already a loaner. Since the Canon is mine, I want to take the opportunity to learn to use it for filming. If at the end of the day my dslr footage will be not so good, I'll still have footage from the camcorder to use.

My friends told me that they don't want the final video to be longer than 30-35 mins, so I'm confident that from a day of video I can pick decent sequences for it. Luckly most important moments are planned, so I can do some tests and get prepared ahead.

Anyway, I did some experiments. Final Cut Pro X doesn't seem to like 1080/50p videos, so I'll stick with 1080/50i. Sure, I can convert 50p videos using ClipWrap, but do I really need such format? I guess not.