Canon 1D X Mark II user reports and 4K crop

[DBounce]

2 hours ago, jcs said:

The big reason to use the 1DX II over something like an A7S II is the AF, as with a little work the color on the Sony is usable (especially when using a Canon to capture reference color). 

Not for me. The biggest reason I favor the Canon over the Sony is motion cadence. And I can tell you regardless of what your frame rate or shutter speed is you will never completely rid the Sony of the video like motion cadence. Believe me, I have tried. Not that the Sony is not a good camera, but it does produce a much more videoish footage than the Canon. As for colors, the files from the Sony are much less forgiving in post. They will fall apart long before the Canon files. The great AF of the Canons is the final nail in the coffin for the Sonys. 

Granted the Sony A7Sii can make night look like day. But honestly when I shoot night I want it to look like night. So this feature is only useful if you are doing surveillance. 

[Travis Thor Matteson]

Hello! Just got the 1DX (coming from a 5DmkIII) and was wondering what your work flow is for PP/AE? What kind of proxies are you using and what are you using to make them? Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks!

[wolf33d]

Motion cadence here we have our new bulshit to compare a canon and Sony. Lol seriously guys... 

[jcs]

52 minutes ago, Travis Thor Matteson said:

Hello! Just got the 1DX (coming from a 5DmkIII) and was wondering what your work flow is for PP/AE? What kind of proxies are you using and what are you using to make them? Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks!

PP won't play 4K 1DX II material in real-time on my late 2013 MBP or 2010 Mac Pro with GTX980ti. The hardware is plenty fast in both cases; PP is ancient software and can't take advantage of the GPU efficiently. FCP X plays 1DX II 4K material in real-time on both pieces of hardware. For PP I'd transcode 4K material to 1080p. If you're on Windows and FCP X is not an option, I've heard reports that in some cases real-time 4K is possible (I've seen this briefly on the MacPro in Windows 10 with the GTX980ti, however it's not reliable and stutters frequently).

[DBounce]

1 hour ago, wolf33d said:

Motion cadence here we have our new bulshit to compare a canon and Sony. Lol seriously guys... 

Call it what you want. I have both so I do get to regularly compare the two. 

2 hours ago, Travis Thor Matteson said:

Hello! Just got the 1DX (coming from a 5DmkIII) and was wondering what your work flow is for PP/AE? What kind of proxies are you using and what are you using to make them? Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks!

PP plays fine with MJpeg. Set your ingest settings from Project Settings>Ingest Settings

When the window opens select ingest, next from the drop down menu select create proxies. I generally select 1536x720 H.264.

FCP creates proxies by default. That's why the playback is smooth. I use both.

[Jaime Valles]

I just got my 1DXmkII a few weeks ago. Haven't had a chance to use it for video much yet, but for photos the DPAF is incredible. I've goofed around at home with shooting video, and the AF is just as good for video. I'm gearing up to use it in a professional gig for video next week and will report back.

[wolf33d]

2 minutes ago, Jaime Valles said:

I just got my 1DXmkII a few weeks ago. Haven't had a chance to use it for video much yet, but for photos the DPAF is incredible. I've goofed around at home with shooting video, and the AF is just as good for video. I'm gearing up to use it in a professional gig for video next week and will report back.

You take your photos in live view with a 1dx2 using DPAF instead of the normal AF of the camera?

[Jaime Valles]

1 minute ago, wolf33d said:

You take your photos in live view with a 1dx2 using DPAF instead of the normal AF of the camera?

Not usually, but I wanted to try it out and it worked great. But for stills photos it's better not to shoot in live view mode. The normal AF for stills is ridiculously fast and accurate.

[Asmundma]

1 hour ago, Jaime Valles said:

Not usually, but I wanted to try it out and it worked great. But for stills photos it's better not to shoot in live view mode. The normal AF for stills is ridiculously fast and accurate.

I may use this as it give face detection and its very easy to change focus point with your finger. Kind of mirrorless camera. 

4 hours ago, DBounce said:

Call it what you want. I have both so I do get to regularly compare the two. 

PP plays fine with MJpeg. Set your ingest settings from Project Settings>Ingest Settings

When the window opens select ingest, next from the drop down menu select create proxies. I generally select 1536x720 H.264.

FCP creates proxies by default. That's why the playback is smooth. I use both.

That's not correct. In FCPX you have to turn proxies on, either when you import or generate them later. Actually FCPX renderes more effectively then PP on Mac. 

[Asmundma]

9 hours ago, jcs said:

The A7R II's AF works much better than the A7S II:

A7R II AF (Skintones and color aren't too shabby either)

A7S II vs C300 II AF (1DX II AF is similar to C300 II)

Canon's PDAF is clearly the best, the A7S II's isn't really usable unless the subject is relatively still.

Thanks for those. This proves it for face detection, but if you follow a subject with a focus point, like sports, what your experience then? (For Sony) - it did not take me long to figure out that 1dx2 is much better. 

(

[gt3rs]

8 hours ago, jcs said:

PP won't play 4K 1DX II material in real-time on my late 2013 MBP or 2010 Mac Pro with GTX980ti. The hardware is plenty fast in both cases; PP is ancient software and can't take advantage of the GPU efficiently. FCP X plays 1DX II 4K material in real-time on both pieces of hardware. For PP I'd transcode 4K material to 1080p. If you're on Windows and FCP X is not an option, I've heard reports that in some cases real-time 4K is possible (I've seen this briefly on the MacPro in Windows 10 with the GTX980ti, however it's not reliable and stutters frequently).

On a notebook W10 i7-4810MQ with a Nvidia K2100 with 2 GB Ram can playback in real-time with the windows media player at 4k 60p and in Resolve 12.5.1 it can playback in real-time 4k 30p on a 1080p timeline (I switch to a 4k timeline for final rendering), scrubbing is really fast.

Anyway it is faster and easier to edit 4k 30p MJPEG than 4k 30p H.264 Gopro files in Resolve on my notebook.

A good spec PC like a i7 6800K with a R480 8GB (seems the best at the moment for Resolve in term of price performance) should give you very good perf considering that is already usable on my notebook.

 

[Travis Thor Matteson]

8 hours ago, gt3rs said:

On a notebook W10 i7-4810MQ with a Nvidia K2100 with 2 GB Ram can playback in real-time with the windows media player at 4k 60p and in Resolve 12.5.1 it can playback in real-time 4k 30p on a 1080p timeline (I switch to a 4k timeline for final rendering), scrubbing is really fast.

Anyway it is faster and easier to edit 4k 30p MJPEG than 4k 30p H.264 Gopro files in Resolve on my notebook.

A good spec PC like a i7 6800K with a R480 8GB (seems the best at the moment for Resolve in term of price performance) should give you very good perf considering that is already usable on my notebook.

 

I picked up a new gaming laptop that has an i7-6700HQ (2.60GHz), 64GB RAM, & a GTX980M. Plays 4k60p in PP in real time. Easy to edit. Nice not having to make proxies. 

[tugela]

13 hours ago, Asmundma said:

Thanks for those. This proves it for face detection, but if you follow a subject with a focus point, like sports, what your experience then? (For Sony) - it did not take me long to figure out that 1dx2 is much better. 

(

The proper comparison for the 1DX2 would be the A9, when it is released. I suspect the later will be more than a match for the Canon.

[Oliver Daniel]

On 6 September 2016 at 1:24 AM, jcs said:

Canon's PDAF is very good and works well in most cases. It's not perfect, however it's the best AF I've ever used. Really great for keeping moving faces in focus. You can also use it to assist with manual focus.

I'm not sure I'd replace the A7S II with the 1DX II. Instead add a 1DX II and keep the A7S II for lowlight and 120fps, and any time you need high quality 1080p and small files. You can use the 1DX II to shoot reference stills to help color correct A7S II footage.

You could use just the 1DX II for 1080p with post sharpening for closeups, then use 4K down sampled to 1080p for wide shots. Or shoot everything in 4K and transcode on ingest to 1080p. Offloading from CFast 2.0 via USB 3.0 is very fast.

I'm not a fan of the Sony A7S II's 120fps. I've spotted severe moire, dancing pixels, heavy aliasing, amplified noise and all sorts of blocky weirdness in many of the files. 

I do really like the A7S II but i don't love it. 

The 1DX II is a tasty looking beast. 

Need to see what the highlight rolloff is like.

I'm going to rent the Canon and try it out.  

[DBounce]

2 hours ago, tugela said:

The proper comparison for the 1DX2 would be the A9, when it is released. I suspect the later will be more than a match for the Canon.

There is no such camera. So why would anyone compare the 1DXMkII to something that is imaginary? Why not just compare to the A12... specs should be killer.

[Oliver Daniel]

On 6 September 2016 at 1:25 AM, DBounce said:

I believe you mean DPAF. As for how good it is... dam good. Good enough for serious work. Not just a gimmick, a really valuable tool. It delivers on the promise of using autofocus lenses for video.  And to date it is the only system I have seen that can make good on that promise. 

Yes, getting mixed up with PFAW for commercial drone work. 

I'm very interested in this function as I film a lot of fast moving musicians screaming down microphones and all sorts of stuff. 

 

[DBounce]

3 minutes ago, Oliver Daniel said:

Yes, getting mixed up with PFAW for commercial drone work. 

I'm very interested in this function as I film a lot of fast moving musicians screaming down microphones and all sorts of stuff. 

 

Well from my experience there is no better AF out there. And it's the only one I would trust for a shoot where money was involved.

[Oliver Daniel]

1 minute ago, DBounce said:

Well from my experience there is no better AF out there. And it's the only one I would trust for a shoot where money was involved.

Thanks for recommending. 

I'll have to take this out for a spin and see if it tickles the creative inside. 

Do you use a small monitor on the hotshoe? 

[DBounce]

1 minute ago, Oliver Daniel said:

Thanks for recommending. 

I'll have to take this out for a spin and see if it tickles the creative inside. 

Do you use a small monitor on the hotshoe? 

For a while I was using a video devices pixie. But the weight was becoming a problem. So recently I have been monitoring from my smartphone, which is ok. 

[Oliver Daniel]

Just now, DBounce said:

For a while I was using a video devices pixie. But the weight was becoming a problem. So recently I have been monitoring from my smartphone, which is ok. 

I use a 5" on the A7SII all the time. Pretty essential. The canon isn't articulated so some shots will be a big problem without a small monitor. 

I've been using my phone for the DJI X5R - the image that feed through is awful. Very soft, pixelated and weird colour. Judging focus is very hard. They need to work on that. 

Canon should make a touchscreen PDAF monitor for video shooters - or I guess thats the smartphone app?