New Music Video - 48FPS RAW

[calebdescognets]

Hey friends!

  I just finished shooting and editing a new music video and, as you'd expect, it's all ML RAW.  Most of it I shot in 48fps at 1920x872 with an aspect ration of 2.20:1 for near-continuous recording.
I used the following:
Canon5D MKIII
Minolta 58mm f1.2 (professionally converted to EF mount)
Minolta 35mm f1.8 (also converted)
Canon 24-70mm L f2.8
DJI Ronin
Skateboard for a dolly...

Would love to get some feedback on the color grade because that was something I struggled with for this video.  Thanks for taking a peek

[andy kh]

Beautiful. Can u share your workflow

[beauchampy]

STUNNING!!!

Can you please please tell me your settings for 48fps? What frame rate in the Canon menu and FPS override did you use?

[GutterPump]

Yes, impressive work. Your color grading is exemplary.

Tell us more about your workflow :

Which softs did you use, LUTs etc..

Then I always ask myself this beginner question, but what is the best way to succeed a nice sync with the lyrics for a music video?

[squig]

I like the grade: filmic, but not overdone. The trick to getting anything to look half decent on youtube is to upscale to 4k, but even then it still only looks half as good as 1080p on vimeo.

https://vimeo.com/171879959

[andy kh]

@squig next time u upscale to 50k or may be 100k

[Simonwb]

Very accomplished, well done!

[DeafEyeJedi]

Love this work of yours @calebdescognets and please share us your workflow as well as the exact settings within Canon/ML menus on the 5D3.

Also what was the ISO used during the night scenes out on the sailboat? Curious did you apply any noise reductions in post or perhaps Darkframing average process at the very least?

[hjfilmspeed]

Yes please brief workflow!!!! Did you use the 60fps mode with FPS override then unsqueeze in post?

[calebdescognets]

Yes please brief workflow!!!! Did you use the 60fps mode with FPS override then unsqueeze in post?

That's exactly what I did! set Canon frame rate to "1280 60fps ALL-I" and in the ML menus set FPS override to 48FPS and optimized for exact FPS.  Afterwards you have a squeezed image like you mentioned and I multiplied the vertical resolution by x1.67 to unsqueeze.  It's strange though, after you do your first pass of color correction in After Effects on a squeezed image you kind of get used to the squish factor and when you normalize the footage by stretching the horizontal resolution to where it should be, it looks too tall.  So for most of these shots I stretched the horizontal res. by something like 1.62 or just under what it should be.  I hope that made sense haha

[calebdescognets]

Yes, impressive work. Your color grading is exemplary.

Which softs did you use, LUTs etc..

Then I always ask myself this beginner question, but what is the best way to succeed a nice sync with the lyrics for a music video?

Hey man thanks for the compliments! I did a first pass with ACR in AE and after applying a transform effect to stretch vertical res. by ~1.67 I did a second pass with magic bullet looks.  I used like 3 or 4 different looks throughout the video depending on the scene and then tweaked the settings from there--finally exporting all clips to cineform and then edited in fcpx and finalized after 1 last pass of CC and tinkering.

As far as syncing lips to music, in this video we did it a little unconventionally.  I have a heavy-duty dewalt contractors boombox that I use for playback on set so when you're shooting the artist can easily just sing along.  For shooting in a higher frame rate for slow motion lyric shots that match the original audio track (i.e.. 48FPS in this video) all you have to do is double the speed of the song and have the artist sing it twice as fast on set (since we're finishing in a 24fps timeline).  Unfortunately, when we got to location I realized that I had forgotten to bring along a copy of the song that was doubled in speed so what we did was play the original track for a moment and found the tempo (my PA was clapping), then I had him clap in double-time and the artist sang the lyrics to the double-time clap of my PA.  We were a little off but since the shots were quick and we're shooting in 48FPS there's some wiggle room.  I was surprised it matched up as well as it did actually 

[calebdescognets]

Love this work of yours @calebdescognets and please share us your workflow as well as the exact settings within Canon/ML menus on the 5D3.

Beautiful. Can u share your workflow

STUNNING!!!

Can you please please tell me your settings for 48fps? What frame rate in the Canon menu and FPS override did you use?

ML Menu:
Modules ON: file_man, mlv_play, mlv_rec, pic_view
FPS override: desired FPS 48 (from 60), optimized for EXACT FPS
RAW video: Resolution 1920x524, Aspect Ration 2.20x1

For ML exposure aids I like to use the RAW HistoBar and a small waveform in addition to focus peaking and a medium sized magic zoom box that appears when I go to manually focus the lens.

Canon Menu:
Movie Rec. Size: 1280 60fps ALL-I
Long exp. noise red.: OFF
Highlight tone priority: OFF
Auto Lighting Optimizer: OFF
High ISO speed NR: standard

That's pretty much it.  I'm using sandisk extreme PRO 32gb cf cards rated for 160MB/s and have never had a problem.  I'm getting near-continuous 48FPS recording with these settings.
As far as processing is concerned I use MLVMystic to convert all my .MLV files to DNG sequences and then, as mentioned above, stretched and 1st pass of CC in AE and then exported as cineform to begin editing.

Also what was the ISO used during the night scenes out on the sailboat? Curious did you apply any noise reductions in post or perhaps Darkframing average process at the very least?

My ISO for the shots were probably quite high--I'd guess around 2000 or so--maybe a bit higher.  What really enabled me to capture those shots was my EF-converted Minolta 58mm f1.2.  I used that lens for those scenes as well as all the shots of the artist singing the lyrics and the ambiguous make-out scene in the cabin of the boat.  I have a whole prime set of them and am constantly impressed with the results.  They're not very sharp wide open but the bokeh rendering and aesthetic is just too gorgeous to worry about a little loss in detail.

[calebdescognets]

I like the grade: filmic, but not overdone. The trick to getting anything to look half decent on youtube is to upscale to 4k, but even then it still only looks half as good as 1080p on vimeo.

https://vimeo.com/171879959

Thanks squig that was exactly what the artist and I were going for and I was nervous that I had over-done it so it's reassuring that you feel like it was a good balance!  Thanks for the tip. Do you just upscale as you export the final project or do you just drop the clips in a 4k timeline and stretch?

[GutterPump]

Thanks for all your explanations !

[ibrahim]

Canon Menu:
Movie Rec. Size: 1280 60fps ALL-I
Long exp. noise red.: OFF
Highlight tone priority: OFF
Auto Lighting Optimizer: OFF
High ISO speed NR: standard

That's pretty much it.  I'm using sandisk extreme PRO 32gb cf cards rated for 160MB/s and have never had a problem.  I'm getting near-continuous 48FPS recording with these settings.
...

I've set these settings but for my actual FPS I'm getting 31.583 even though I've selected my desired FPS to 48. The optimized for is set at exact FPS. Am I supposed to get the actual FPS to 31.583? If not how do I adjust my actual FPS to 48?

Another question: Since I'm in Europe and wonder if it's ok to set the canon menu to 720p ALL-I at 50p under PAL rather than NTSC? Do I have to change anything else under PAL

Thanks in advance calebdescognets

[calebdescognets]

I've set these settings but for my actual FPS I'm getting 31.583 even though I've selected my desired FPS to 48. The optimized for is set at exact FPS. Am I supposed to get the actual FPS to 31.583? If not how do I adjust my actual FPS to 48?

Another question: Since I'm in Europe and wonder if it's ok to set the canon menu to 720p ALL-I at 50p under PAL rather than NTSC? Do I have to change anything else under PAL

Thanks in advance calebdescognets

Hey Ibrahim! So a couple things:
1- I don't have any experience with ML and recording in PAL so I'm not really sure if there are any limitations with shooting PAL.  Im sure you can find the answer to that question somewhere on here..
2 - Are you using the 5D Mark III?  From what you've told me it seems like your settings are correct.  I remember I only got around 31FPS when I tried to shoot 48FPS in crop mode (I don't think it can be done) So make sure you're not in crop mode.  Double and triple check your ML and Canon settings.

Sorry I wasn't able to be of more help.  If you haven't seen this yet it should help: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5472.0

[ibrahim]

Thanks calebdescognets, it's working now. 

[nazredime]

Damn your footage is AMAZING! those colors <3

@calebdescognets, you did a really great job! well done

this is why i bought a 5d mark 3

[ibrahim]

Hi calebdescognets ,

Although the ML menu claims that I can shoot continuous in 1920x524 (2.20:1) do you also get dropped frames (black) after only 5-9 seconds?

[DeafEyeJedi]

@ibrahim - Sounds like you forgot to set your cards to exFAT and be sure to enable 'Files > 4GB (exFAT)' to on in ML menu under MLV video in Movie section. Perhaps try using card-warm up to help a bit.

[ibrahim]

Thanks man,

I'm using CF-card as exfat with files > 4GiB on (ML run from SD-card and spanning on) and I'm still getting dropped frames.
Ok, what should the card warm-up be set at, 16, 32, 64 ... MB?
How about Extra Hacks and Preview Options? I've turned Extra Hacks off and Preview Options to auto.

[Kharak]

Black frames usually only show when you are only watching/converting one of the spanned files. Are the spanned files in the same folder?

[ibrahim]

I have spanning on. I have ML run from a sandisk SD card but record on sandisk CF card 160MB/s extreme pro.
Every time I record the M00 file occurs in the SD card instead of the CF card.

Now when I put the M00 file into the same MLV directory as my MLV file and convert to cDNG with raw2cdng I only get one dropped frame. In other words, much less but still dropped frames.

[Kharak]

Which version of raw2cdng? One of the latest versions had a bug where the program would drop frames, use newest version, it has a big speed boost in the conversion and does not drop frames.

[ibrahim]

I'm actually using the latest raw2cdng version.
In order to avoid dropped (black) frames I've had to change the fps from 48 down to 45 and even the aspect ratio from 2.20:1 down to 2.35:1 with card warm-up set at 32 MB, spanning On, Extra hacks OFF. That's because I need to use the proper cropmarks and peak focus in order to preserve sharpness while recording.

Due to this black frame issue I've had to postpone my shooting schedule