I hadn’t taken the time yet to try shooting 60fps with my Canon 7d. But it started to snow heavily in Whistler village this morning and as I watched out of the window it looked like the perfect chance to try it out I put the Canon 85mm 1.8 lens on the 7d and opened my front door to get a few shots.
I had mistakenly thought that creating nice slow motion shots with the footage would just be as simple as dropping the 60fps clips into a 30fps timeline in Final Cut Pro. Actually that’s not the case though. Doing that just drops every other frame and you end up with regular looking footage and simply setting the clip speed to 50% does not take advantage of all those 60 frames you just shot. I did a quick search on the net and found a good tutorial by Philip Bloom. I can only speak for Mac users here I’m afraid but the solution is pretty easy so long as you have Final Cut Studio.
If you have FC Studio you will also have a program called Cinema Tools. Fire it up and hit command+O to open a clip. The clip will open in a video viewer and on the right hand side will be a button that says “Conform”. Clicking on this will bring up a drop down box with various frame rates in it. Select the one you want (29.97 for example) and then hit “Conform”. The transformation is instant and requires no rendering, all that is being modified is an internal part of the file that denotes how the video is played.
WARNING: This process is not reversible. Once you hit the “Conform” button there is no going back so I highly recommend that you do this process to a copy of the original file. I created a sub folder called SlowMo inside the folder containing my original files. Then whenever I found a file that I needed to conform, I copied the original to that folder, Conformed it and then imported it into Final Cut Pro. Don’t forget that you will also need to transcode the 7d files from H.264 before you do anything. Make sure you transcode the files before you conform them in Cinema Tools!
I shot about 10 quick shots from my door to have some footage to test this with and the result is below. Winter is nearly back!! Click though to the vimeo page to watch it in HD.
Winter’s Coming – Whistler, November 7th 09 – 60fps 7d from Dan Carr on Vimeo.
![Last Day To Enter LensCoat’s Photo Contest [I’m Judging]](https://dancarrphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/lenscoat-photo-contest-150x150.jpg)
Looking great. And boy, so much snow.
Getting me fired up for my visit in Whis in december!!
CAN’T WAIT!!!!!!!
Hi Jonathan , i’m not sure exactly what you are asking. Do you want to make slow motion footage from 30fps (from a 5dMKII maybe?). Or do you want to change 60fps to straight 30fps?
Do you reckon this technique will work on 30fps footage? (not 29.97, but flat 30fps)
thanks man.
No this wont create slow motion from 30fps. Cinema tools doesnt really create slow motion at all , all it does is tell Final cut to play the 60fps footage at 30 fps. So what was one second of footage (60 frames) now plays like 2 seconds of footage.
You can slow down the clip speed to 50% in Final cut but it doesnt have the quite the same effect, you get some ghosting and it looks quite blurry.
Ohh I realize that I should’ve been more descriptive (stupid workdays leave my brain fried like bacon!)
Like you guessed, I’m wondering if your technique works to create a similar slow motion footage effect by using 30fps footage captured from a 5DMKII.
Thanks!
P.S: I think this little nugget will help you out with the rolling shutter iritations this season:
http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/pkg_overview.aspx?ui=47C4AB50-4636-4326-87D1-FB380B2119EF
Dan,
Just wondering, how are you finding the 7D with both its still and video functions? I was looking at getting a 7D soon but keep hearing of some issues around its autofocus and IQ when taking stills (To the point where images are appearing mushy in comparison to even the rebel) and aliasing in the 60fps 720p mode.
Thanks!
Hey will,
I havent seen any aliasing in the 60fps mode but to be honest I havent shot much more of that than what you see in the video above.
I have read the 7d reviews on the net with interest. DPReview was very favorable and their comparisons showed it as similar in quality to the d300s. I have also read Darwin Wiggets review and there is a lot of comments that perhaps his photos were softer due to diffraction. the digital picture.com is due to publish their 7d review on Monday and personally I find Bryan from that site to be the most thorough reviewer so i’minterested to see his findings.
Ultimately it really depends what you want to do with the photos. What sort of phtoography do you do?
I dont have a rebel so thats not a comparison I can comment on. I have noticed some lack of detail when pixel peeping 100% photos, but nothing I am overly concerned about. And it’s nothing that ANYONE would every notice in my images when they are printed in magazines. An 18MP photo is HUGE. Most of my photos so far in my career have been shot with an 8MP 1dMKIIn and I have had 10ft high posters made from that no problems. So 18mp is really overkill, so much bigger than necessary for magazine printing. Viewing the 7d images at 75% and they are still huge and they look stunning.
If you plan to print 30″ wide prints as Darwin likes to do, then there is no doubt that the 5dMKII is a way better camera. The two arent even in the same league in image quality. But for me its not ALL about image quality. The size of the 7d is a huge bonus for me and the 8fps is great.
As for the 7d AF system, I havent had much chance to try it yet but I will do now that the winter is here in BC. I noticed that it was not that awesome in dim light with a backlit subject though. For still subjects in reasonable -good light it locks on VERY quickly. Just as quick as my 1dMKII i would say.
I guess it just depends what your other options are really. A 5dMKII and a 7d are so very different that it’s driving me quite crazy when people ask me which of those 2 they should get. The 1dMKIV is nearly 3x the price so right now, a used 1dMKIII is really the other option for a lot of people. Unless you are a nikon user too.
Thanks Dan,
To be honest I think I would go for a 5D2 in a flash because of the ff if it wasn’t for the video functions on the 7D. Sure, the 5D’s getting a firmware and all that, but when!? But the 7D comes in at a lower price point and will do 95% of everything I’ll ever need or want really and like you say the 1DMKIV is not worth the extra hunk of cash. Just cautious about buying something I’d quickly regret. Nor do I think I need 18mp, like you say it’s a huge amount.
This [purchase] will actually be my first dive into the dlsr market, I’ve been using an old Pentax K1000 for literally like a decade, but it’s time for me to get with the times! Been playing around with a mates 5D2 and D300 but diggin the video functions of the Canon.
I’m actually a mate of Toler and Steve, did a season in Whis with Steve a few years back. Steve and I are making films these days, so the 7D obviously has it’s qualities for that! For stills work, It’d mostly be used for timelapse, low light stuff, long-ish exposures (although not the exposures i’m used to on an old 35mm!) and a lot of travel stuff to assume the role of my old trusty film camera, which I’ve used for everything from landscape to on the fly portrait’s.
Anyways, I was just keen to hear what your take on the 7D was and how you’ve found dealing with the positives and negatives. Sadly I can’t have both the 5D2 or 7D just yet!
If video is your main thing I’m sure you’ll be stoked on the 7d. Its way more user friendly than the 5dII. I still havent played with it enough to make final judgments but winter is finally here so I will post more about the camera as I get to know it better.
Cool, well thanks for the advice!
Have a banger winter.
amazing.. just bought my 7d. by the way what song is playing in the video?
Thanks Isaac!
Very nice! I actually just did a video podcast on the same topic and its also very easy to do with Adobe Premiere, as well.
Awesome cinematography as well, mate!
Hi Dan,
Love the video – wondering if I could recreate this using my Canon D500 and if so, how I change the fps on the video mode?
Thanks a lot,
Alex
Hi Alex.
Unfortunately there is no way for you to change the frame rate on your camera. The 7d was the first Canon camera that incorporates multiple frame rates. I’m sure that in the future they will all do it but for now it is reserved for the 7d and the 1dMKIV.
You can slow footage down a bit in Final Cut by right clicking on the clip in the timeline and changing the clip speed to something less than 100% but its not quite the same effect.
Nice Work.
Lame Question but what is the song?
Thanks
George
pretty lights remix by hathbanger
Looks great!
I’m wondering why I can only shoot about 10-18 seconds on 60fps. Is there a way to change the setting to shoot longer?
thank you
Deja
Thats odd, as far as i know the only thing limiting the length is your memory card size, although the file system will also max out at a 4gb file. you should be able to shoot for a long long time. Are you using a big enough memory card?