How to get the highest quality video out of my 7D?

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NickVentura

Member
I am having problems with my 7D and getting the settings right. At first i thought to have a sharp image i should turn the sharpness all the way up but later found out that it produces moire. And then when I export in premiere i tried using the Vimeo settings of using the bitrate settings as 5 but I am not sure that I am getting the most out of it. I don't know if bumping it up to 20 which is the maximum for me would make it better? Or using something other than VBR, 1 pass? Im sorry that i don't know and I have tried researching but can't find a straight forward answer.

And I am shooting at 60fps 1280 x 720 and would be exporting to 30fps 1280 x 720
 
Obviously, the highest resolution is 1080p. I shoot 720 60p for skiing because of the framerate. The only other way to better sharpness is to buy better glass. It is all about the lenses. The Vimeo HD preset is more than enough. The 7D kit lenses are not great, so buy nicer glass.
 
You are probably using a shitty lens, like most people seem to do. Optics are EVERYTHING in the camera world.
 
hard to give you any help without some sample shots.

honestly, you're probably being too critical of your own footage. there have definitely been times when I've seen kids asking how to make their shots sharper when in reality their footage is as sharp as anything else I've seen.

or it could be your lens or workflow. as I said, sample shots help
 
I filmed this whole edit with a tokina 11-16 which I think is a pretty damn sharp lens

Tranquility from Nick Ventura on Vimeo.

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And i feel that the quality could have been a lot better. I am not unsure of what bit rate settings to use and maybe thats why I didn't get great quality video? I used 5 and 5 in Premiere Pro.
 
Looks super sharp. I think the largest thing some people don't take into consideration is the color. When you have more contrast, the video will look more "sharp". At least that's what I've seen.
 
I agree with you, just seems a bit soft, I'm probably just over analyzing, and maybe the person's right about the colours making it look sharper.

But I did notice some compression artifacts, what settings did you use to export it?
 
i think the problem is also the compression. thats the biggest thing i noticed and as always on a dslr, the more light, the better the image will be. but looked like compression artifacts the most
 
Don't do this, 20mbps is pointless, 5-10 is the best, i use 5mbps for every edit I put out.

Example: 1080p 24fps 5mbps

Park City Morning - John Ware, Karl Fost, Will Berman from Evan Heath Visual on Vimeo.

Given my camera pumps out 1080p60 at 28mbps and 1000 lines of resolution, my image will look sharper than a dslr 1080p24 at 24mbps and 700-800 lines of resolution.

@kidbond30 your edit looks fine IMO. The shots with good lighting look sharp and you definitely have some blown out shot which will make your image "less sharp". Fix your blown out shots to bring out detail in the snow, bring down your mids and bring you your highlights and it creates more contrast in the snow. You can do the same thing with the lowlight/flat shots too.
 
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What's the way to prevent those compression artifacts then? I'm sure I wouldn't notice them if I wasn't looking, is it just vimeo's conversion? and so unavoidable?
 
Yeah vimeo compresses/encodes your video again so really you can put 100mbps clip into it, its still gonna be compressed < 5mbps ya know?
 
got you, I have a feeling I heard somewhere that certain settings(think it was h.264, can't remember bit rate) they don't re-encode? is that wrong? do you know the exact bit rate it compresses it down to?
 
I have no idea, they encode the video to a flv aka flash video not sure what they do for html5 tho
 
i don't have one (yet hopefully) but I've started to notice that not having an ND filter really does make a pretty big difference if its on a really sunny day. Maybe pick up one of those. Footage just starts to lose so much quality past like f15
 
I posted a thread on wether to invest in glass or support equipment. Most people told me to invest in the support equipment first eg. gildecam and tripod.
 
Tripod to glass(iminently) and once you have some good glass maybe get a glidecam IMO.
 
While stabilization is very important to making a quality video, optics and audio are more important at the very beginning in my opinion. A lot of people skimp on audio, but when you break it down, audio is 50% of the video experience. you would be amazed at how much the audio can impact a viewers perception on the quality of an edit. If i had to start from scratch the first thing I would do is ditch the kit lens and get a nice lens, get some upgraded audio, and a cheap tripod for stabilization right off the bat. Once more money is acquired I would then upgrade my stabilization and lenses.

Anyone who tells you to get a glidecam when you are still using the kit lens has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. It was more than likely a bunch of young kids who want a glidecam so they told you to get one because that's what they want.
 
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