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[park]

I have just bought a sexy new Canon 7D which takes beautiful video. They playback in MC, but no matter what variation of filters and splitters I use, I cant get MC to make thumbnails for the files. They are mov files containing h.264 video streams. coreAVC etc dont help.

[DarkPenguin]

How do you like the 7D?

[park]

I'm making a short film with it now which I plan to enter into the shortshorts festival. It's a joy to use. It's the camera I've been waiting for ever since I started making my first short films on hi8 back in my uni days. I was happy enough with the 40D, but this camera takes tangibly better shots thanks to it's auto optimization feature and better metering etc.
I'm selling my 40d for a third of it's original rrp if anyone is interested.

[Matt]

Is there a way you could send me a really short video from the camera for testing? (matt at jriver dot com)

Conversely, you could just send me the camera.  I think we could get it all sorted if we had the camera for a year or two.

[park]

File sent. Better late than never.

I'll swap my 7d for one of those newly announced red cameras if you like.

[Daydream]

As a less then perfect solution you can try to put the files in a different container (say, mp4). Yamb may help with this.

If you feel so inclined I'd appreciate even more details about the 7D. Thinking of buying one.

[Magic_Randy]

I have just bought a sexy new Canon 7D which takes beautiful video.

Congratulations. I just got one for Christmas myself. 

[park]

It takes stunning video. Everybody that has seen my short film has commented on the quality of the image and the beautiful color. The editable picture styles are good for creating a look before the video gets compressed, and there are people out there that have made flat styles to preserve as much dynamic range as possible for later color correction.

My only word of warning would be that focussing is a nightmare. On a short film it's ok because each shot is set up in advance. For home video though, you really need to be skilled and to be concentrating on operating the camera to get good video. The lack of auto follow focus means you constantly have to manually adjust focus as your subjects move, and you need a loupe over the LCD screen to do that properly. Shallow depth of field Makes things even harder but looks great when you get it right. 

[Magic_Randy]

It takes stunning video. Everybody that has seen my short film has commented on the quality of the image and the beautiful color. The editable picture styles are good for creating a look before the video gets compressed, and there are people out there that have made flat styles to preserve as much dynamic range as possible for later color correction.

My only word of warning would be that focussing is a nightmare. On a short film it's ok because each shot is set up in advance. For home video though, you really need to be skilled and to be concentrating on operating the camera to get good video. The lack of auto follow focus means you constantly have to manually adjust focus as your subjects move, and you need a loupe over the LCD screen to do that properly. Shallow depth of field Makes things even harder but looks great when you get it right. 

What software are you using to edit the videos to create your films?

[park]

CS4, but the files wont playback for more than a few seconds in Premiere (and that's on a dual processor 10gb RAM mac Pro), so I have been making mpeg2 intermediate files for the edit and replace the original files in at final export. Cineform should make things easier with the next couple of months by releasing updates to their codec to make it Premiere (mac) compatible. When that happens I will use the cineform tool to batch convert the 7D files to cineform files for all editing and exporting, and archive the original 7D files somewhere safe for posterity.

I have no idea how you would edit the files with consumer software. Apple's iMovie would do it but would convert them all to it's horrible AIC codec upon import.

[Magic_Randy]

CS4, but the files wont playback for more than a few seconds in Premiere (and that's on a dual processor 10gb RAM mac Pro), so I have been making mpeg2 intermediate files for the edit and replace the original files in at final export. Cineform should make things easier with the next couple of months by releasing updates to their codec to make it Premiere (mac) compatible. When that happens I will use the cineform tool to batch convert the 7D files to cineform files for all editing and exporting, and archive the original 7D files somewhere safe for posterity.

I have no idea how you would edit the files with consumer software. Apple's iMovie would do it but would convert them all to it's horrible AIC codec upon import.

I was afraid of the answer but thought I would ask anyway ?

I was hoping to find consumer software that could do a reasonable job but maybe there are none that will do the trick. The professional tools are very expensive. If something like Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 & Adobe Premier Elements 8 would do the trick the price is OK. For now I'll have to keep looking.

Thanks...

Randy

[Magic_Randy]

I have just bought a sexy new Canon 7D which takes beautiful video. They playback in MC, but no matter what variation of filters and splitters I use, I cant get MC to make thumbnails for the files. They are mov files containing h.264 video streams. coreAVC etc dont help.

Back to the original question. MC makes thumbnails for my .mov files from the Canon 7D just fine. My playback is jumpy so I still have to figure that part out. It's a Vista PC with MC and CCCP.

EDIT: the playback works fine (not jumpy) with the Canon ZoomBrowserEX software, so I should be able to get it playing fine in MC once I figure out how to configure MC.

Randy

[park]

Interesting. I am using vista with cccp and have all the canon software installed too, and yet I dont get any thumbnails at all. Files playback pretty smoothly with MC using coreavc. cpu hovers at about 70%.

[Magic_Randy]

Interesting. I am using vista with cccp and have all the canon software installed too, and yet I dont get any thumbnails at all. Files playback pretty smoothly with MC using coreavc. cpu hovers at about 70%.

Do you have Quicktime installed? I do and maybe it's related to that.

EDIT: BTW, the thumbnails do not show up in the Canon ZoomBrowserEX software

[park]

Yes I have itunes and quicktime installed. Do you get thumbnails in explorer? I get thumbnails on my mac in finder, but nothing in explorer or MC.

[Magic_Randy]

Yes I have itunes and quicktime installed. Do you get thumbnails in explorer? I get thumbnails on my mac in finder, but nothing in explorer or MC.

Hi Park,

I get thumbnails in explorer and MC. None in ZoomBrowserEX or Quicktime.

Randy

[park]

That's funny. I looked on my WHS server too, and it doesnt create thumbnails either. I installed the canon software and quicktime on it, and it didnt make any difference.

Matt, did you get my file? Does MC generate a thumbnail for it for you?

[Magic_Randy]

Park,

Have to go to work, so can't do any testing today. But I can test over the weekend if this is still an open issue.

All I know now is all of my mov files have thumbnails. I can do some testing to try to narrow down which software is creating the thumbnails. Maybe it's not MC but something else in my workflow.

Also, maybe it's related to the type of mov file. Mine are created using the default Canon 7D options. Have you overridden any of your options (e.g. FPS...)?

Randy

[park]

Thanks magic, would appreciate that.

I havent overidden anything. I transferred my files using the bundled canon utility (which btw is a big mistake because it sets the date created to the time of the copy rather than the date recorded).

Upon looking some more, I think that the issue might be that I seem to have lost all the "thm" files that get copied across with the movs. But I cant imagine MC would be using those would it??? I wonder if there is a way to generate new ones somehow.

[Magic_Randy]

Thanks magic, would appreciate that.

I havent overidden anything. I transferred my files using the bundled canon utility (which btw is a big mistake because it sets the date created to the time of the copy rather than the date recorded).

Upon looking some more, I think that the issue might be that I seem to have lost all the "thm" files that get copied across with the movs. But I cant imagine MC would be using those would it??? I wonder if there is a way to generate new ones somehow.

I looked again after work tonight. For some reason all of my thumbnails are now gone in explorer. They are still there in MC. All I can think of is some utility deleted them. I have Norton and Norton Utilities and TuneUp Utilities running in the background so all I can think of is they are cleaning things up too aggressively.

I'll do more testing over the weekend.

Randy

[Magic_Randy]

Park,

I'm still testing. Can't figure out where my thumbnails went in explorer. I'm also not sure how they got there in the first place. I will shoot some new movies today so I can test this further.

As I mentioned I do have thumbnails in MC. Does anyone know if these are stored in the mov file itself?

When I shoot my new movies I will see if MC automatically builds the thumbnails.

I also fixed my video playback. I purchased CoreAVC. Thanks for the tip.

Randy

[Magic_Randy]

Park,

I'm not sure if this is related, but I installed a newer version of ffmpeg into MC.  Maybe this is related to why I can get thumbnails for the mov files in MC. This is what I did to get the latest ffmpeg.

Get the newest ffmpeg.exe from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mplayer-win32/files/FFmpeg/
and put it into the place of the one in your MC plugins folder.

Randy

[park]

Thanks for doing the testing and reporting.

There was no ffmpeg in my mc14 plugins folder to replace, but I downloaded and unzipped it to there anyway. When selecting the quicktime engine as the playback type in MCs file type options I am now able to generate thumbnails!

Of course, that doesnt help playback since MC wont be using coreavc, but I can work around that by generating my thumbnails on another pc.

Thanks for helping and here's hoping that this info helps others too.

[Magic_Randy]

Thanks for doing the testing and reporting.

There was no ffmpeg in my mc14 plugins folder to replace, but I downloaded and unzipped it to there anyway. When selecting the quicktime engine as the playback type in MCs file type options I am now able to generate thumbnails!

Of course, that doesnt help playback since MC wont be using coreavc, but I can work around that by generating my thumbnails on another pc.

Thanks for helping and here's hoping that this info helps others too.

Well I'm glad we figured that one out.

I will test again when I do my new movies today. I'm now using coreavc to play my mov files so I'll see if I still get thumbnails. At least if I don't I know why and what to do about it.

[Magic_Randy]

Park,

I did some new videos today. I imported them in using the Canon utilities and also copied a set in using explorer.

In both cases I had no thumbnails in explorer. Still not sure how I had created them before.

In both cases I had no thumbnails in MC. I changed the video options from CoreAVC to Quicktime, rebuilt the thumbnails, and the thumbnails were there. I then switched back to CoreAVC so I could get proper playback in MC.

EDIT: I did the rebuild of thumbnails just for the individual .mov files by doing Right Click-->Cover Art-->Rebuild Thumbnails

Randy

[Daydream]

Can you post a short video here (rapidshare/mediafire/whatever)? I'm curious about the file format / video container that camera outputs. And I'll post the feedback from my end regarding thumbnail behavior and whatnot.

[Magic_Randy]

Can you post a short video here (rapidshare/mediafire/whatever)? I'm curious about the file format / video container that camera outputs. And I'll post the feedback from my end regarding thumbnail behavior and whatnot.

Park,

Daydream is volunteering to help figure out the thumbnail behavior.

Are you set up with an account to do this kind of file sharing so Daydream can look at a sample file? If not I'll try to set myself up on some kind of service.

Randy

[Daydream]

Hold on. I got a 7D file (mov) from some other site. (if you still want to UL something, go ahead, the more the better).

I get thumbnails in Explorer with no problems, either with the original .mov file or repacked as .mp4 or .mkv
My DirectShow filter chain in Windows (which is mirrored in MC's settings for the above file formats) is

Haali (Source/Splitter) -> MPC Video Decoder -> EVR
                              -> Default DirectSound (there is no audio decoder, the sound is PCM)

Now, I AM getting thumbnails in MC (all - mov, mp4, mkv). The files get parsed OK, I got the duration and bitrate using either DirectShow or QuickTime engine for the MOV file and DirectShow for the other 2 containers. Thumbs show up. And both analyzing and thumbnail grabbing show up OK in MC's log. QuickTime engine is no good when it comes to playing, is stuttering like hell, stay with DirectShow.

So I guess it's a matter of having the right (and most recent) filters. MC 14.0.121, Win7 x64.

[Magic_Randy]

I still can't get windows explorer thumbnails for my .mov files with my Vista PC. Any suggestions?

BTW: they show up fine in MC.