How to transcode Canon 5D mark II H.264 video into something editable?

Dmitri what do you use to transcode? Is there a tool that do batch transcoding efficiently? Also, when transcoding to MPEG-2, are you still at 1920x1080?

Finally, when you are ready for final output, do you replace the MPEG-2 clips with the original MOVs before exporting?

Thanks,

Luke

Sony Vegas cannot smoothly edit the 5d footage from what I've seen, or at least vegas movie studio cannot. I've tried it...where did you hear this?

My workaround for getting 5DII Full HD movies into Premiere CS4 for editing is this: I transcode original MOVs into DVD MPEG-2 stream with highest bitrate possible (9,4mb/s) and then import MPEGs into Premiere for further processing. Works great so far.

BTW, SD movies are edited easily without having to transcode into intermediate format.

Apparently Sony Vegas can also smoothly edit the 5dII footage.

A MAC is probably my next step.

Sadly AVCHD works great with CS4; I have a Canon HF10 with AVCHD and if I didn't also have the Canon 5DII I'd be a happy camper.

Also sadly I can edit 5DII files with the low end Cyberlink Power Director editor if I convert them to MP4. But I need more editing capability than this.

The Canon 5DII is being sold by the thousands around the world; this is a real challenge for PC editing software and a potential boon for MAC and FCP. I'm installing a Raid 0 on my PC today to see if this will get me over the hump; if not it's a visit to the Apple store.

Replacing the AVCHD issue at last.

The Canon 5D media is the "next new issue" for 2009

My suggestion - buy a Canon 5D but get a Mac and get FCP as well... where H264 is native.

I've given up for now on Cineform Prospect; could not get the 5DII files to convert correctly, plus the down load version doesn't seem compatible with CS4. I do think their system concept could possibly work for the 5DII files; but I don't know if this is a market for them. I'd be interested if they respond to your email.

Yes, Mbits/sec not Mhz. And it is probably 38.6; I've just looked at the rate shown by some converters.

I have a strange (work around) format that lets me do real time editing. I convert the .mov file to MPEG-2 (.mpg); the only converter I have for this is Alive HD, and its maximum rate is only 12 Mbits/sec. AND when I import this into Premiere Pro it only sees the video, not the audio. So I also have to convert the audio from the .mov to .mp3. I have not taken an edited file to Blu Ray yet so I don't know what the video quality will be at 12 Mbits/sec. I would be interested if this works for anybody else, and whether anyone has a higher data rate MPEG-2 converter.

I thought I had a solution by converting .mov to .mp4. I had this working with data rates all the way up to the 5DII maximum. But it turned out this only worked for short clips. For longer clips, a minute or so, Premiere Pro crashes. With the .mpg method I have smoothly edited a six minute clip.

Also, FWIW I've tried all of the conversions from the Squared 5 converter. The converter works fine but nothing runs smoothly on the time line, including their Cineform .avi conversion.

I keep thinking there must be a viable editing format out there. And it's frustrating that these files run so well with ZoomBrowser, QuickTime, and VLC but they won't run on the time line.

subscribing...

Hmmm...I tried the trial of Prospect HD and when using HD Link Conversion tab, it said the 5D files were an unsupported format. I emailed support and haven't heard back. Is there a special way you're getting Prospect to recognize the files?

Also I've never heard video describe in Mhz, you say 21 vs. 44...I've only heard it described in MBits/second, and DPReview says the mkII files are 38.6 Mbits/sec. Are you sure a Mhz rating makes sense for video? What does it mean?

I've tried transcoding the 5DMII files to several formats. The only transcoding I've found that gives smooth playback in Premiere Pro is Cineform Prospect. HOWEVER this is a very expensive solution and I'm still having some problems with it; but Cineform has a 15 day free trial so you should try it out. I'm using the trial but looking for a lower cost solution.

I have a Q6600 processor with 4GB ram, running XP.

The Cineform problem I have is that the AVI files it produces are UPSIDE DOWN; there is a setting somewhere I've missed. If there are any Cineform experts I'd appreciate help.

A solution I've found for other editors with 5DMII files is to transcode to MP4 at some slower rate like 21 MHz but this isn't working with Premiere Pro. I may try an even slower rate but this gives up all the advantage of the 44 MHz 5DMII files.