Nood 50D RAW/H264 questions

[tuan2195]

Hi all,

So I'm about to buy a 50D for my video purposes. I currently have a 550D. I plan to shoot some footage in RAW and some in H264.

My questions are:
1. (I know it's not as good as the 550D but) how good is the 50D H.264 implement? Can I use it on a daily basis with CineStyle? (because I have some not-very-critical work that I would like to shoot in H264 to simplify my workflow)
2. Can I do continuos 1280x720 24p RAW on a 60MB/s SanDisk CF or a Komputerbay 600x card? And how many minutes will fit on a 16GB card? (I'm not into anamorphic or 1080p I don't have that much processing power anyway.)
3. Can anyone suggests a recorder/mic combo since the 50D doesn't have one? Or should I just bring my laptop along and record into Audition with a Mic?

Many thanks!

[Toffifee]

I'm not a 50D user, but I'll try to answer what I know.

2 - I'm using a 60 Mb/s Sandisk Extreme CF card and I can do 720p no problem, you only need 37 Mb/s for that. I gave you the rate, you do the math on how many minutes you can stash on a 16 Gb card.

3 - You should definitely not use your laptop, any laptop has a terrible mic. It's not even going to be worth your time.
Look into Rode SmartLav for a great low cost lav mic, hook it up to your iPhone or smartphone and you're good to go.
VideoMic (Pro preferably if you can afford it) is another great, low-cost, decent quality alternative.

But you're probably going dual system anyway, so why not just go for a Zoom H4n and be done with it.
You should try to be more specific, I can't really tell if you need a shotgun mic or a lav mic or just an ambient mic.
Either way starting with a Zoom H4n is a good start.
It's a recorder and a microphone in one.


All that said, is it really worth it moving to a 50D over a 550D?
It sounds like you could be just as well of with the 550D, which is a solid camera might I add.
Devinsupertramp used it for a long time and he produced high quality stuff.

[tuan2195]

Thanks a lot! That solved my problem.

And no, I did not mean that I will use my laptop mic for recording. I meant that I was going to use an external sound interface, hook some lapel mics into it and record into Audition on the computer. Or I can just give each actor a lapel mic + iPhone and sync the audio later. That's what I think right now.

I prefer the 50D over the 550D because I'm a still photographer as well and I need some of its advanced function despite an older sensor.

Now does anyone has any experience with H264 on 50D?

[ilguercio]

What do you want to know?
It's Canon's old h.264 in a mov container, you are limited to full HD at 30p or 640*480 30p, that's it.
The footage is going to look pretty much like the one out of a 550D, given the same lens and settings.

[tuan2195]

So that means it works just like the 550D minus the audio? That's good enough for me!
How about 24p mode? I read somewhere that's there's some problem with 24p for the Canon 50D. The footage itself is in 24p but the metadata in the .mov still says 30p so you have to edit it before post processing or something like that...
And this is not a problem with RAW I presume?

[ilguercio]

Every Canon has got that problem, if you use fps override.