Creating Videos with the Canon EOS 7D: Trial and Error

Whenever I talk to someone about my Canon 7D, I am always asked how I like the video portion of it. I tell them I have never used the video portion of the camera and don’t have really any plans of doing so. It seems most people who use the Canon 7D use it to shoot videos, and until today, I have not used the video feature at all. I bought the camera because a) it was an upgrade to my Canon XSi, b) is environmentally sealed, c) can shoot at up to 8 frames per second and more. I did not get it for the video.

Video to me is taboo! There is so much with video as opposed to just taking still photos. I’ve spent the past couple days trying to figure out how to process a video captured with my Canon 7D into a workable format that can be easily uploaded to an online source such as Flickr or Vimeo. So far I’ve had not much success with figuring out all the various tidbits that involve video editing and exporting.

I haven’t even gotten into the video settings on the camera itself. I mounted my Canon 7D with the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens on my tripod, pointed it towards the outside world and switched it to video mode. The clouds decided to dump on us the other day and the splashing rain looked cool, so I thought I would try and take a video of it. I pressed the Start button for video and recorded the scene for about 1 minute.

Alright, so I got myself a video clip, what do I do with it now? I dragged it off of the CF card and onto the desktop. The .MOV file (the video file) is roughly 440MB in size. Pretty large for a 1 minute video, right? Oh well, it was recording at 1920×1080 at 30 frames per second. I guess if I lowered it to 720 or less it would be smaller. Oh well.

So thinking that this .MOV file was a typical QuickTime movie file it seems I was incorrect, it seems that the .MOV is just a wrapper for the underlying codec that the true file is recorded in; H.246. After reading over various tidbits on the internet it seems that the H.246 format is a finished, not-for-editing format that the Canon 7D encodes the video in. I then went on to read that it is better practice to re-encode the video file into something uncompressed and easier for video editing software to handle. This was another place I got stuck, what sort of program to use?

I downloaded trials for Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, Adobe Premiere Elements 8 and some other programs. Boy, what a learning curve and NOT anywhere near photo editing software. It was also recommended that I converted the original file into some sort of AVI file which would allow the video editing software to handle the video easier. This is still all crazy Greek to me!

When I did finally do some simple cuts and edits with my 1 minute clip, I uploaded it to Flickr. After Flickr processed the file it changed the 16:9 aspect ratio into the typical 4:3 ratio, and well it was stretched and looked horrible. Not what I was looking for. That’s when I read something about Pixel Aspect Ratio and there are Square Pixels, “Skinny” Pixels and “Stretched” Pixels. Again, more gargon I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around. All I want is for my video (which is in 16:9, widescreen aspect) to be uploaded to Flickr or Vimeo without it altering the video. I guess it’s not that simple.

I don’t remember what I did, but I managed to upload a properly edited aspect ratio video file (the one at the top of this post). I do know that I did export it at 720p resolution instead the full 1080p (which Flickr only handles 720p). The past 2 days of trying to figure this out, trying to get software to do what I want it to do without having to have a degree and creating about 7 different formats of the same video clip, just makes me less likely to keep playing with the video portion of my Canon 7D. Though of course if anyone out there might have some suggestions in making this an easier process, I would LOVE to hear it. I am on a Windows based machine (I’m sure Mac’s have an easier time handling video editing) so try and keep the suggestions Windows related.

If I can get an easier work-flow, figure out what settings I need for both the camera and the final product, I am sure I would get a bit more into the video side of my camera. Though, I’ll never leave the photographic part of my camera, but perhaps the occasional video of wildlife or some sporting event would be fun, right?