![]() ![]() 5DtoRGB does allow you to select either a 1.8 or 2.2 output gamma. The Apple ProRes 4444 footage from 5DtoRGB is more faithful to the gamut of the original footage. The first thing I noticed right away is that the output from 5DtoRGB is not as dark or contrasty as the MPEG Streamclip output. Still, my first tentative experiments with 5DtoRGB are interesting. Is there a difference between Quicktime conversion and Rarevision's 5DtoRGB conversion? Yes. Pixel peeping is not my specialty so please don't expect this to be an exhaustive or empirical test. I ran a few clips through 5DtoRGB in an informal test. Timecode support (extracts Exif timestamp from THM files).Output luminance matte as an alpha channel (ProRes 4444 only).Raw YCbCr output option for unprocessed luma channel extraction.DPX output for visual effects / green screen work.Higher quality output than QuickTime Player or FCP.Higher quality output than Canon's E1 plugin.Full support for Canon 5D Mark II and 7D.Panasonic Lumix GH1 support (video only).In short, it'll make your footage look just plain amazing!" "5DtoRGB gets you as close as possible to the original data off the camera's sensor while putting the brakes on any additional quality loss. Rarevision makes a rather bodacious claim: You're stuck with it if you've converted your footage with Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Effects, MPEG Streamclip or Canon's Movie Plugin-E1 for Final Cut Pro - all of them use QuickTime to decompress H.264." ![]() And guess what? There's no way to disable this. To add insult to injury, QuickTime adds noise to its H.264 output (and so does any program that uses QuickTime to decompress H.264) in what looks like an attempt to cover up H.264 compression artifacts. This is probably OK for general use, but unacceptable when trying to maximize the quality of highly compressed H.264 footage for visual effects work, green screen compositing or film outs. I suspect this due to a performance compromise, in that "well enough" is suitable for most users (remember, QuickTime is designed for real time playback of those 1080p movie trailers as well). Many programs use QuickTime internally to perform YCbCr to RGB conversion which, according to our testing, does only a mediocre job. "The main problem with all this is that you have to trust your NLE or compositing app to do a good job of performing the YCbCr to RGB conversion. Adding insult to injury, QT adds noise to mask the compression artifacts. Unfortunately Quicktime does not do the best job possible. It's familiar workflow, easy batch list, versatility, and speed are hard to match. However, MPEG Streamclip, the Canon E1 movie plugin and Compressor uses Quicktime to handle the YCbCr to RGB color conversion. I briefly used the Canon E1 movie plugin for Final Cut Pro, but soon went back to using the ever faithful utility belt tool every Canon DSLR editor has - MPEG Streamclip. So I was curious about this new (at least to me) tool for converting Canon EOS footage that he tweeted about. This morning I came across Rodney Charter's tweet about Rarevision's 5DtoRBG converter for Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 7D H.264/MOV footage to Apple ProRes. ![]()
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