The Sony Camera, Edirol, and Tascam/MacBook Pro devices all synced sound perfectly over the full duration of the shoot (just over 20 minutes). To clarify – once the different sources are sync’d quickly and easily to the slate clap on the waveform at the beginning of the shoot they all stayed perfectly in sync for the rest of the video.

Both Canon cameras audio and video sync’d perfectly to each other but drifted significantly from the other 3 devices even over a 3 minute segment. The is a very serious problem for me and one that introduces significant post-production trouble and expense.

This issue was so unexpected (I haven’t run into this in years of working with a range of equipment) that I performed 3 subsequent tests to confirm that the 5D MkII’s run too fast. The results from the test show both of my 5D Mark II run about 14 frames too fast in 10 minutes. Audio that is 1 full frame out of sync is noticeable on sharp sounds causing an echo. Audio that is 2 or 3 frames out of sync causes echo on any sound and looks odd in terms of lip sync.

That the two Canon cameras audio sync’d OK to each other tells me that the cameras can be calibrated to a standard. Evidently they are just calibrated to an incorrect standard.

Anybody else experience this? Does anybody really know if this is likely a chip issue or a firmware issue? Does anyone know an easy reliable way to get the clips to conform to the standard without time-consuming constant tweaking?

I contacted Canon tech support and the girl there couldn’t care less – she said there was no fix and that it wasn’t really a video camera so what did I expect? Nice!

If you turn off scaling at full screen (the bottom button in the upper left of the player), the video playback shrinks down to what appears to be 720p, or 1280×720. The artifacts disappear but the video shows significant artifacting which implies a lower bitrate.

Of course, this video has a lot of fast motion, so the bitrate required to make it really nice and smooth might be too high for progressive download with playback on most Internet connections.

OK I’m done now.

as a video camera i’m running into some interesting technical limitations. some which will make this an awesome bit of kit for shooting certain kinds of projects, and frustrating for others:

- No manual aperture control :( I’ve been told ND filters will work around this when shooting outside, but have yet to try it.
- Low bit depth. (Data rate suggest 4:2:0) If you don’t shoot it right the first time, you’ll have a really hard time pushing or pulling the shot before you start clipping. I think this is normal for video cameras though…
- Sound input blows, but you can drive a -10dBu signal off a dedicated recorder and resync later.
- Auto focus is worthless when shooting during recording.
- HDMI out toggles during record.
- 30p :/

but yeah, it’s like complaining your gold plated ferrari handles poorly when you switch it into speed boat mode and cruise out into the Venetian canals. the camera produces beautiful video and takes amazing photos :)

Had mine for a fortnight now and am finding it great – and a significant jump from my 20D I’ve been using for 3.5yrs. The high ISO performance is just amazing when compared with the 20D!

Looking forward to lots more stills and video.

I’m always amazed how many people don’t actually read the blog post they are commenting on.