One of my reasons for buying the D7000 was the option to finally record videos in Full HD. To I have quality as an SLR camera here already noted a personal assessment. At first I was a little disappointed with the video function because that Jerking when moving really annoyed me.
Not to be misunderstood: the D7000 is a big step forward for Nikon when it comes to video, even if Canon is still ahead in this area. The problems start with post-processing. Since I only work on the Mac, everything I write here is only valid for the Mac - but I could imagine that users of other operating systems also have similar difficulties.
So: what exactly is the problem? Movements - especially across the film plane - are no longer displayed smoothly after video editing on the Mac. It took a while until I was able to really pinpoint the problem. The cause of the problem is that the D7000 records videos in Full HD with a frame rate of 24 frames per second. However, Apple's video software - iMovie and Final Cut Express or Pro - adhere to the standard of full HD videos and this is 25 frames per second. The difference doesn't sound huge, but it is particularly important for the representation of movement. (UPDATE: iMovie can now also handle 24 frames per second - just select "Cinema" as the project setting. And Final Cut Pro also has the corresponding tools that also make a separate conversion unnecessary. And when Final Cut ProX is available from June 2011, you can completely forget about this article...)
The solution to the non-smooth motion representation is made possible by adjusting the frame rate. I'll take that the free program MPEG Streamclip, which is available for Mac and Windows and is a very useful tool for converting video formats.
Here I'll show my settings, which I saved as a preset and can therefore easily be used again and again.
By the way, when using Final Cut as a video editing program, the conversion has the incredible advantage that the videos no longer have to be rendered - but that's only incidentally.
Regarding the quality, I read that it doesn't have to be 100%, but that even 50-60% would be enough - but I haven't tested this myself yet.
The practical thing about MPEG Streamclip is the batch processing, which allows you to convert multiple films without having to sit at the computer and wait. The speed of the conversion depends on the computer, of course. My "old" Macbook Pro with dual core converts a film in about half the time of the film's length - so 1 minute of film is converted in 30 seconds. That's not incredibly fast, but the batch processing still makes it reasonably convenient and at least faster than Final Cut would need to render the films anyway, and this step is eliminated by converting with MPEG Streamclip.
After editing the video, I export the film to Final Cut as a normal Quicktime film and then convert it again with MPEG Streamclip according to the Vimeo requirements - with two exceptions: Vimeo suggests deinterlacing, but I don't do that because Full HD films are not deinterlaced and the audio bit rate cannot compress MPEG Streamclip with 320kbps, but 256kbps should also be enough...
So my preset looks like this:
Please make sure that the export does not take place to Quicktime, but to MPEG4. The file size of the video is reduced by a factor of approximately 10 compared to the original Quicktime version. Incidentally, the current version of iMovie can upload directly to Vimeo and so the above step is not necessary.
And this is what the finished video looks like on Vimeo in full HD at 1080p - and please excuse the boring motif, it's just an example of movement. It may be helpful to watch the video directly on Vimeo in full screen.
If you still see jerking in the movement, then it is definitely due to your computer or your browser.
Thanks for the contribution. However, iMove 11 pointed this out to me and has always asked me whether I want to change the project rate to that of the video material. That also worked perfectly...
Greetings!
@Ben, Really? Not at my place. But maybe I'm just too critical...
@Stefan Groenveld, yes 🙂 Otherwise you can also set the project rate, which in case of doubt is a little faster than re-rendering the video 😀
Hello Stefan, unfortunately it sounds a bit like this is a problem with the D7000 that doesn't exist with Canon. The whole thing has very little to do with the camera. If you output a video at a refresh rate that doesn't match the recording rate, you'll always get a hiccup because the 24 frames per second have to be "stretched" to 25.
It is not entirely true that 25 fps is “standard”. 24 fps is the cinema standard. 25 fps is common in Germany (PAL) and 30 fps in America (NTSC).
In any case, it is important, and you point this out nicely, that the refresh rate of the source and target material match or are multiples of each other. However, this has nothing to do with the camera used and it would be a shame if someone thought we were dealing with a D7000 problem.
Regards
Gunther
@gwegner.de, Thank you for your comment, which largely confirms my research.
By the way, I also specifically wrote that "the problems start with post-processing". Apart from that, the 7D allows frame rates of up to 60fps and then movements are definitely displayed better. Nikon's 24fps is simply the lowest level and I can only hope that future Nikons will simply be even better.
I find the approach of converting before editing with iMovie or FCE very interesting, but it is actually completely useless, as you are guaranteed to be able to set the frame rate of the project somewhere, in this case to 24p instead of 25p. That would save you all the effort of converting and if you use a sensible export container, rendering is also quick 😉
What I also notice is that the moving subjects have a lot of very strong compression artifacts... the artifacts appear in both your Happy Bokeh Friday video and in the new video, which is why I assume that the export settings are poorly chosen...
Here is a quick screenshot from your video to show what I mean by "compression artifacts":
http://img5.imagebanana.com/img/5ki85aex/komprimierungsartefakte1.jpg
@Julian, thanks for your comment. Unfortunately I can't understand that at all. Neither the one nor the other…
Thanks for the nice summary. I'm using yours
Approach also for most of the videos I make with the
7D and 5D2 rotated and edited with Final Cut Express. That alone
The advantage is that intermediates can be rendered more smoothly and without rendering
Being able to cut saves a lot of time in my way of working. Direct
to work with h264, especially with the high bit rates of DSLRs
output is annoying on moderately designed hardware
impossible.
What Julian may mean is that you have the option of interpreting the footage as 25 fps when importing it into the editing program. Then you can put them into a 25 fps comp without the program trying to convert them. Logically, there are no jerks, your recording simply runs 1/25th of a second faster, which is usually not visible and hardly audible. This is how 99% of all cinema films saw the light of day on DVD. A 90-minute film is 216 seconds shorter on DVD than in the cinema.
You can do the same with 30 fps footage, with the very nice result of slight slow motion. Unfortunately, this is not yet possible in Avid because you cannot interpret the material there by hand. After FX does it without any problems and as far as I can remember FCP too. I don't know I-Movie.
But if you want to convert, so that one second of recording later corresponds to exactly one second of film, then I recommend that you take a look in After Effects from CS4 onwards. In most cases, pixel-based blending is worlds superior to frame-based blending.
My DIY workflow for 5D films (30fps): Editing with DV proxies in Premiere, then exporting to After FX, and manually replacing the footage with original material. Finally, interpretation as 30 fps (pixel blending) or 25 fps (if I want slight slow motion, sounds wrong, but it is correct). Then grading, effects processing and done.
thank you for this post. I had the same problem with the Nikon D3100 where a moving object was displayed very unevenly. I tried everything imaginable with IMovie to change that, but had little success. With the MPEG Stremplicp program and your setting recommendation it worked wonderfully.
Thank you again.
That's great to hear!
Apart from the fact that I don't think much of Nikon and Vimeo, these tips for the 24fps problem are complete, even dangerous nonsense! The matter is still relevant today (even with the generally better Canon cameras). And 30 or 60fps is only for video fuzzes who don't understand anything about film (look). Bernhard Kling