- The EOS C300 Mark II Digital Cinema Camera integrates an 8.85 Megapixel Super 35mm 16:9 CMOS sensor that supports 4K (DCI) recording with a maximum resolution of 4096 x 2160 pixels. The camera fully utilizes the image data delivered by this 4K CMOS sensor to also enable Over Sampling HD Processing for 2K (DCI) and Full HD1080/60p recording.
- We just got our shoot footage back from Saskatchewan, and most of the hundreds and hundreds of clips will play back and export perfectly from Canon XF Utility (v1.3.0 on OSX 10.6.8). We are also using the Avid Canon XF AMA plug-in to AMA link and consolidate our clips in Avid.
- Above you can see footage from a cooking test shoot using the 120fps 4K and 180fps 2K RAW capabilities of the new Canon C300 Mark III camera. Dave was very impressed with the ability to be able to record non-cropped 4K at 120fps.
Cover image via
Working with Canon C300 footage – which is XDCAM 422 50/Mbs footage in a.MXF wrapper – should ordinarily be quite straight forward. MXF files will work natively in Adobe Premiere and ingest quite happily through a free plugin in Final Cut Pro 7 and FCPX. You can also bring this footage in through AMA into Avid Media Composer 6.
Editing Canon C300 MXF footage? Follow our tips to make video editing with C300 MXF footage go as smoothly as possible.
Working with Canon C300 footage – which is XDCAM 422 50/Mbs footage in a .MXF wrapper – should ordinarily be quite straight forward. MXF files will work natively in Adobe Premiere and ingest quite happily through a free plugin in Final Cut Pro 7 and FCPX. You can also bring this footage in through AMA into Avid Media Composer 6. AbelCine has an excellent step by step guide to importing C300 footage in Adobe Premiere CS6, Final Cut Pro X, FCP 7 and Avid Media Composer 6. You can check it out here.
Everything will work seamlessly, that is, if your cards have been copied correctly to the hard drive with their entire folder structure intact. Without that folder structure you are effectively locked out of accessing your footage and an editing application like FCP7 will give you an error message like this one:
How to Copy MXF Files Correctly
So how do you copy cards correctly?
Well first, and this may go without saying, but if you’re going to get an intern or producer to do it make sure they know what they’re doing. Essentially you must copy the entire card structure (preferably not through dragging and dropping in the finder).
Sony and Canon both have free browser apps that will let you back up your media. Or you could invest in something like Shotput Pro to duplicate your cards to multiple drives simultaneously. You are backing them up as you go, right?
If that’s not enough detail, just watch this great tutorial on a correct tapeless media workflow from Shane Ross. Although the tutorial winds up in Final Cut Pro 7, the initial principles are the same for any system. If you want even more tips, check out this great video from Chase Jarvis on his complete tapeless workflow.
What To Do If Your C300 Card Structure Is Broken
If for whatever reason your card structure doesn’t come across intact, what can you do?
Depending on your NLE you have various options. If you’re in Adobe Premiere it doesn’t matter, as it will read the MXF files just fine.
First, you can try to ‘fake it’ out by recreating the C300 card structure (which should look like the example below). In the past I’m sure I’ve gotten lucky with it but its a pretty slim chance of actually working.
FCPX needs a correct card structure so if you have to, transcoding in a 3rd party app is a feasible workaround.
Free App For Converting C300 MXF Files
Miro is a great free app (one of the few free apps I found) that actually works and works well. Miro Video Converter will allow you to grab the .MXF files and transcode them into Pro Res 422, DNxHD and AVC Intra 1080p and 720p. You can batch transcode as many of them as you like and it works pretty quickly. The files look great and were a higher quality than files I created using the demo of MXF Converter for Mac from Pavtube. But as Miro is a free app, there are a few catches.
First, you cannot specify the output folder and it defaults to your MacHD > User > Movies folder. So you need to have enough space on your boot drive to transcode the footage too. This is also a problem if you have multiple files with the same name, (which I had on this edit with a two camera shoot) as this means you have to transcode one set at a time and move them out of the folder so as not to overwrite them with the next batch. Annoying.
Also the original camera footage I was working with had two audio tracks in it where as Miro would only export a single mono track. This was not helpful either as I needed to be able to mix each track individually.
Paid Apps for Working With C300 MXF Files
As I was editing on an FCP7 system I had to find a way to get my C300 MXF files to play nice with Final Cut Pro 7, while getting around the broken file structure. A cry for help on Twitter led to this great recommendation from Andy Mees who saved the day by suggesting I check out both MXF Import from Calibrated {Q} or MXF4Mac from Hamburg Pro Media. Both plugins essentially do the same thing which is to allow Quicktime (and any apps that make use of the Quicktime architecture) to work with MXF files, just like any other file.
Calibrated{Q} MXF Import for OSX is a QuickTime Import component for NATIVE Importing and Editing of MXF Files within Final Cut Pro 6, 7, and X without using Log and Transfer.
And you’re not just limited to Final Cut Pro, you can also natively import and work with MXF files in CatDV, Compressor, Motion, Sound Track Pro, QuickTime Player and Shake.
You can download a free demo of MXF Import from Calibrated {Q} to test that it will work on your system. The demos only restriction is that it only allows you to view the first 30 seconds of the clip, other than that it’s the same as the full app. After installing the plugin I could drop the C300 MXF files directly onto the timeline in FCP7 and get editing – and with the dual audio tracks in the original files! Huzzah.
Hopefully these tips will save you some time, effort and frustration with broken MXF file structures. And next time you’ll just copy the cards structure correctly…and get to editing!
I recently bought the Canon C300 markii and thought I'd share some of the footage and some first impressions here.
Although the markii has the same form factor as the original C300, it immediately feels a lot more solid. The camera itself is slightly larger and built from stronger material. The first big difference is the handle. This is so much sturdier than the original. Rather than having one small screw to fix the top handle, there is now a much more robust solution. The handle is fixed with two thick screws to a plate, which is then fixed with three further screws to the camera. On the whole this is great. It means you can now pick up the camra with confidence, no matter how big your lens or other accessories. The only downside to this is that it does take a while to remove the handle as there are now five allen key screws to remove. Still, a small price to pay.
The cables running from the LCD to the camera can now be fully removed, which is a major improvement. Also, one cable is for audio and the other video. This is another big advantage for gimbal users, as you can now mount the LCD monitor with just one cable fairly efficiently.
The big change with mark ii really comes when you start looking at the images coming out of the camera. I already liked the image I was getting from the C300 but the markii really impressed me.
The dynamic range is something that immediately jumps out at you. One of the first things I shot with this camera was inside a dimily lit cafe and the sun was absolutely blasting through the windows. The camera handled it so well. I used Log2 Cine gamut, which gives a slightly flatter image than the orignial Canon Log. I know pretty much nothing about colour grading, so I simply slapped the appropriate LUT on. I thought the LUT was a bit intense and made everything a touch to contrasty. I then backed off with the LUT to 50 percent and left it at that. There is a lot more that can be done to grade the image, but I just wanted to put this up as is, so you can see what comes out of the camera. The shots using Clog 2 are at the begining part of the video above.
The shot below is a jpeg screen grab from an ungraded shot, using BT2020.
The next thing, which I just couldn't believe was the low light ability. I was tentaively going higher and higher with the ISO expecting to see grain and digital noise and it just didn't happen. I was shooting with the camera on a Ronin, so I didn't want to shoot with the lens wide open. In order to have half a chance of getting anything in focus, I decided to stop down and use the ISO. To further complicate things I was shooting half speed at 50p and 120 shutter (we were in the USA, hence 120 rather than 100).
The shot above was taken at night a couple of hours after sun set. The only light illuminating the face here is from an iphone.
The lens flares are deliberate. I was using my Leica 35mm lens which flares like crazy if you don't use the hood or matte box. I personally love it, so use it as an effect.
The shot above was taken just after sunset. Again there is no lighting here. Despite the lack of light, I really like the natural look of the image, it could certainly benefit from a grade, but I am pleased with this as a starting point. This is an image straight out of the camera with no LUT applied. For all the night time shots I didn't use LOG but shot with the BT2020 profile. This gives a decent amount of dynamic range and requires less work in post.
One of the feature I was keen to try out was the face tracking and focus. Since all of these shots were taken on the Ronin, I wanted to see if auto focus or assisted focus was possible. I found that, to my surprise, the face tracking and focus worked pretty well, with a few caveats.
Canon C300 Sample Footage
The face tracking does work and the focus is smooth enough to use. However, it really functions best in decent light conditions. In daylight, or if you are lighting your subject well, the face tracking quickly picks out a person and tracks them. However, in these dark street scenes, where the director did not want any lighting, the face tracking struggles to see the face.
Another issue is that the auto focus does not work at all in slow mo. I found the best way round this was to shoot in 50p and then conform this to 25p in the edit, which gives you your half speed, but keeps the audio and the auto focus features.
A funtion that I really like was focus assist. If you are using a Canon lens, the camera is able to tell you whether to pull fowards or back to acheive focus. This was amazingly useful, particualarly when the camera was on the ronin. Even if you are using peaking, it's really tough to see what is in focus when you are running around with the ronin, but the focus assist really made it easy.
Often I would set the focus at a distance I wanted to be from the subject, and then turned on focus markers. Depending on whether the two triangles are above or or below the single triangle, lets you know which way to pull (or move). On the left shot the focus is set towards infinity and the focus is behind the flowers. In the shot on the right the focus is set too close and the focus is infront of the flowers.
This was particualarly helpful on the Ronin, and I would just move the rig closer to or further away from the subject.
Canon C300 Mark Ii Sample Footage
It is also very useful in an interview situation if you are shooting at a wide aperture and your subject is moving backwards and forwards a bit. It is nice to have control of the focus yourself so you can decide if you want to pull focus or not.
Canon C300 Sample Footage Download
The only thing I didn't like about the focus was that the digital zoom in now doesn't work once the camera is in record mode. This seems like a step backwards to me. This will apparently be fixed in the next firmware update. For now, I just need to learn to trust the focus guide - so far they have been amazingly accurate.