Amazon: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon Product Page
Canon Learning Center
Rob Galbraith Review
Manual
I was excited at the possibility of stellar high quality video at a somewhat reasonable price. See Vincent Laforet's great demo video here:
http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2008/10/10/without-further-ado-reverie/
So I downloaded test video output from a review of the preproduction cam here:
http://www.dpreview.com/previews/canoneos5dmarkII/page15.asp
Disclaimer
DPReview stated that these videos are direct from the cam, though according to Canon, the production model uses MPEG4 video compression. This does not jibe with my results, as I found by reviewing the output of mplayer and Quicktime on my MacBook that these test videos actually use H264 video compression. Strange. Of course, we'll see what the real deal is once the camera is available for purchase. Regardless, my testing procedures below maybe helpful for people using Linux and/or Cinelerra that need to work around similar problems.
Update 10/25/2008
I downloaded a couple longer clips from the review here:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0809/08091705canon_5dmarkII.asp
My results were consistent with the original post. Interestingly, it took six minutes to convert one minute of 1080P video on my dual, quad core Dell SC1430. Oh Momma, 1080P is a resource hog!
End Update
Linux Media Player Results
Not so good. I was able to replay the video in mplayer fine, but vlc and avidemux2 hung half way, and xine played, though very choppily. Most of the above showed output errors of various kinds.
Next, I thought I'd see if its 1080P video output was usable at all in Cinelerra.
Cinelerra Results
Putting the original 1080P video into Cinelerra gave me a bunch of ugly errors, like so:
[h264 @ 0x2aaaaaf7e1b0]concealing 8160 DC, 8160 AC, 8160 MV errors [h264 @ 0x2aaaaaf7e1b0]AVC: Consumed only 161417 bytes instead of 161420 [h264 @ 0x2aaaaaf7e1b0]Unknown NAL code: 22
And the Cinelerra timeline and compositor windows weren't very promising either:
Convert!
So, I did what all good Cinelerra users do:
Convert the video to a usable format!
This command seems to produce very good output from a 1080P, H264 encoded video:
ffmpeg -i Video1.MOV -b 3000k -vcodec h264 -ab 256k -ar 44100 -acodec mpeg4aac -coder 1 -flags +loop -cmp +chroma -partitions +parti4x4+partp8x8+partb8x8 -me hex -subq 5 -me_range 16 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 test.mp4
Let's take the command options apart:
-i Video1.MOV: my input file
-b 3000k: bitrate of 3000K
-vcodec h264: use the h264 output video compression algorithm
-ab 256k: use an audio bitrate of 256kbps
-ar 44100: use an audio sampling rate of 44.1Khz
-acodec mpeg4aac: use the Apple Audio Compression codec
Next set of options related specifically to x264
-coder 1: enables CABAC entropy encoder used by x264 (better compression)
-flags +loop: enables loop filter
-cmp +chroma
-partitions +parti4x4+partp8x8+partb8x8: improves quality by looking at inter/intra partitions (i b p)
-me hex: set motion estimation method to hex (range-2 search of six surrounding points)
-me_range 16: max range of motion search (hex is limited to 16), higher useful on HD
-subq 5: good medium for higher speed encoding
-g 250: group of pictures size
-keyint_min 25: set minimum length between IDR frames (keyframes)
-sc_threshold 40: adjusts sensitivity of x264's scenecut detection
-i_qfactor 0.71: qscale (quality) difference between I-frames and P-frames
Finally, the output:
test.mp4: my output file
I don't know much about those switches. Here are two good pages explaining at least the words, if not their meaning, of these cryptic options:
FFmpeg x264 mapping
x264 (H264) options
Update 10/25/2008
However, I did see a number of these errors again while doing the conversion:
[h264 @ 0x3c2d71ab30]AVC: Consumed only 197265 bytes instead of 197268ts/s
[h264 @ 0x3c2d71ab30]AVC: nal size 0
Searching the web, it seems that they may have to do with an old version of ffmpeg:
http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-user/2007-October/012075.html
I am currently running the following: =============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=============================================================================
Removing:
ffmpeg x86_64 0.4.9-0.37.20070503.lvn7 installed 527 k
ffmpeg-libs x86_64 0.4.9-0.37.20070503.lvn7 installed 3.8 M
And it's going to be a pain to compile with external ffmpeg libraries. I think I will hold off on that for now.
End Update
The original (Video1.MOV) and converted (test.mp4) files were marketedly different sizes:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4214234 2008-10-23 23:15 test.mp4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 23690277 2008-10-23 22:55 Video1.MOV
As read by mplayer with -identify option, diffing the original and converted file's properties showed no differences. Here is what mplayer thinks both files :
[mov] Video stream found, -vid 0
VIDEO: [avc1] 1920x1080 24bpp 30.000 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
ID_DEMUXER=mov
ID_VIDEO_FORMAT=avc1
ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=0
ID_VIDEO_WIDTH=1920
ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT=1080
ID_VIDEO_FPS=30.000
ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=0.0000
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
ID_VIDEO_CODEC=ffh264
Audio: no sound
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 1920 x 1080 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
VO: [xv] 1920x1080 => 1920x1080 Planar YV12
This was odd, as mplayer spat out errors like this while playing the original:
[h264 @ 0xcfa780]AVC: Consumed only 197265 bytes instead of 197268 [h264 @ 0xcfa780]AVC: nal size 0
Once the file was converted, mplayer showed none of these errors.
Linux Media Player Results
I'm happy to say that the converted file replayed well in all the Linux media players, xine, mplayer and vlc, with the notable exception that playback in avidemux2 was slow.
In mplayer, the converted file did not show any errors, outside of a minor ASPECT warning error:
[ASPECT] Warning: No suitable new res found!
From a still, you can't really tell much of a difference..at least I couldn't. Note that the below images have been cropped for easier comparison, so they are not the full 1080P (1920x1280) resolution.
Original
Converted
The big test was bringing the converted file into Cinelerra. Since the OS level media players didn't have a problem, I was hopeful that Cinelerra wouldn't have any issues. Loading the file, I received no errors. However, playback was horrendous. I'd say that I got about 1fps in the compositor, though Preferences (Shift-P) showed that I was getting 32fps. Hmmm. Something definetly wrong here.
Final shot before I go to sleep
While in Cinelerra, I rendered the already converted 1080P content into one of the formats Cinelerra is happiest using, Quicktime using JPEG Photo compression. Rendering that video took no time at all (there was no audio track). Reloading the video back into Cinelerra, the file play more smoothly than the original conversion, but still had problems. I got 6fps. CPU on my dual, quad core was about 20% across all CPUs during playback (see below image). But memory use went through the roof! Swap was up too:
Woah! What's up with that? Well, looks like I have more testing to do. The possibility of gorgeous 1080P HD video has me slavering. Perhaps my eyes are too big for my stomach? As in everything Linux, this will take time.
to be continued..
the mule
Reference
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=35836
thanks Skottish!
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