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Movie Menu Overview

Lesson 18 from: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV Fast Start

John Greengo

Movie Menu Overview

Lesson 18 from: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

18. Movie Menu Overview

The movie menu is hidden until you activate the right settings -- learn how to bring that menu out of hiding and what all the movie options mean.
Next Lesson: Auto Focus Menu

Lesson Info

Movie Menu Overview

Alright. Just when you thought we were done with the shooting menu, we're not because there's a secret menu. And what you have to do is you have to put your camera in the movie mode, and the page four and page five of the shooting menu now become the movie menu settings. And so this is where all the movie settings are secretly buried. You have to be in the movie mode to get there. So first up is Movie Servo AF, and this is the tracking where it tracks the subject moving back and forth. And enable, if you are very casual about your video shooting and you want to use this camera as a basic camcorder just to record simple video, let the camera do its focusing, that's perfectly fine. If you're shooting serious, professional video work, chances are that that focusing is gonna be distracting to your final shot, and you're gonna probably want to manually focus yourself. And so the more serious shooters are gonna want to have this turned off. And I would say most people are probably gonna want...

to have it turned off. The AF Method, this is the same as we talked about in the live view sections, and so I prefer to choose a small point and choose what the camera is focusing on. The face and subject tracking does an excellent job, and so it's very useful, I just don't like to use it in all situations. Grid display, so when you're in the movie mode, do you want to see a grid display? Once again, just for compositional aid, making sure your horizon is level, you have something exactly in the center of the frame. Normally, you're gonna leave it turned off. Turn it on as necessary. Okay, this is the important one. Movie recording quality. What quality of movies do you want to record? First up is the option between the MOV file and the MP4 file. MP4 file is a more basic file. If you wanted a simple, basic video for YouTube or a small video, you would go MP4. But most people are gonna probably want to have an MOV file format. Movie recording size. And so here is your resolution, your frame rate, and your compression setting. And this will vary according to what your previous setting was with MOV and MP4, and so the highest of these, of course, is gonna be the 4K setting. Not everyone is gonna want to have that because you have the crop frame on it. And so I think a lot of people are gonna use the 4K, but a lot of people are gonna be using the FHD. And so if you wanted a good standard video, the FHD at 30 frames per second with the compression of IPB is gonna be fine, I think, for most people. But if you want the most out of this camera, that is gonna be the 4K 30 frames per second, which only has the option of the motion JPEG compression system. There is an option for not just shooting this 29.97 or 23.98, but exactly 24 frames a second. Hollywood films, most all of their movies at 24 frames a second, and there is a certain film look that looks different than TV look. And there are many people who prefer one or the other. Your standard video is at 30 frames a second. So most people are gonna leave this disabled unless you're looking for that Hollywood look in your video. The high frame rate option will shoot at 120 frames per second, but it does it only on what is known as HD, which is 1280 x 720 in resolution, which is a little bit smaller than our standard full high definition that a lot of us are used to. So it is a reduced resolution, but more frames per second if you really want to slow things down. And just as a side note, you can shoot full HD at 60 frames per second. This one, you shoot it at 120 frames per second. In 4K, you are limited basically to 24 and 30 frames per second. And that is your movie recording quality. Next up deals with sound recording. We have a number of little items that we can go in here and tweak with. If you want to manually control sound or you want to disable it, you can do it depending on if you want to use the built-in mic or not. Most people are gonna be fine with auto unless you have an extra mic that you want to hook up to it. Recording levels can be adjusted. And once again, as I mentioned, when you're in the movie recording mode, you can press the Q button and activate the on-screen controls so that you can control this silently by just touching the back screen of the camera. There is a wind filter and an attenuator which suppresses loud noises. The wind filter suppressing loud wind noise, and so if you're gonna have a lot of wind, you would want to enable this, and it reduces that horrible sound of wind hitting the front of the camera. And if you're gonna be around something like, I don't know, maybe fireworks or explosions or loud noises, this would help kind of dampen those really loud noises from going off the charts a little bit. It's a fairly wimpy control when it comes to the sound recordings, but this is not a video camera, this is a still camera that has video capabilities. So it gives you some but not the full kit that Canon has in other dedicated video cameras. Movie Servo AF speed. Now, this one's a little bit unusual, a little bit hard to explain. This is controlling how fast the camera focuses and when it is active. And so there are two types we're talking about. There is when we are recording video and then when we're setting up for a shot. And when we're recording video, in some cases, we don't want our camera focusing too quickly because it's too jarring having the focus jump too quickly. And so there's a number of people who want to kind of dial back that speed when it's focusing when they're recording. But as they're getting set up for a shot, they want it to be nice and quick. And so that's what this is all about here. When do you want this on, always on when you're just shooting, and do you want that speed, normally, it's set pretty fast, and there is a number of areas where you can dial it back if you want to kind of slow it down so that it has a smoother, more silky, even change from one subject to the next. And with that touch screen on the back, this is gonna be very useful for people really getting the look that they want in their videos. Then there is the Movie Servo AF tracking. So as it's tracking the subject, let's imagine that we have a subject. Alright, there's our subject, and we're focused on that subject. Oh! Here comes somebody else. Do you want the camera to focus on that new subject or to stay on the old subject? That's when you can go into this little gauge and you can dial it. As it's very responsive, I always want it to go to the new thing in the frame, or I want it to kind of stick with the subject and I don't want... Let's say you're filming a shot where somebody's waiting at a bus stop across the street, and every time a car comes past, do you want the camera to refocus on the car? No. Well, you could dial it down to lock on so it's less likely to be distracted by a momentary change in subject distance. And so that will be something that you need to adjust kind of on an as-needed basis. How long the metering stays on. Once again, a balance of battery life and convenience when it's in the movie mode. Time code gets a little geeky here for those of you who are shooting with multiple camera setups. And you have three different cameras and you want everyone's time to be the same on the frame. You can control that in here. Normally, we're gonna have this on record run so you can see how long have I been recording this particular clip for. Free run is where there's just a clock running at all times. And you would kind of calibrate that between multiple cameras, and so it's really for multi-camera shoots. If you are just having a start time, you can go in and you can manually input kind of a Greenwich Mean Time, we're starting here. You can reset the clock. You can set it to be the same as the camera time if you want. And so most people, unless you're really into the video and working with kind of a team of photographers, probably are not gonna be playing around with that mode. And this one is gonna show you what the recording time is or the time code is in playback. Or, excuse me, when you're recording it, this one shows it to you in playback. Got those mixed up there. And if you are exporting through the HDMI port, what does it show when you output through there? Because there's a number of people who will be using this camera with various types of monitors, whether on-camera or stationary. When you shoot at 29.97 frames per second, there is a discrepancy somewhere along the lines. And so for most people, if you enable this, it automatically corrects for this problem. If you disable it, you end up kind of with this extra frame that people who are in the biz know what to deal with. But for most of us average cinematographers, you would leave this on Enable. That's the time code. And then we have, what do you want the shutter release button on the camera to do when you're in the video mode? Normally, it's gonna focus and it's gonna do metering, but it doesn't do anything when you press all the way down. It doesn't take photos, it doesn't start the video. And so if you shoot a lot of video, you might want to change this so that when you fully press it, that activates the movie. Normally, there's the thumb button on the back of the camera, and it just depends on how you want to activate your movies start and stop and recording. Now, a moment ago, we talked about the intervalometer on the camera. One of the other new features in the new 5D Mark IV is a time-lapse movie mode, and this is very similar to a time-lapse mode that we looked at earlier, but this one is recording it in the video functions of the camera, and there's a little different setup for it. So on this one, you need to have the camera in the video mode, and we're gonna dive into the menus real quick and go over to Time-lapse movie, and we are gonna enable this, and we're gonna have to hit the info button to go in and program this one. And so I'm gonna program this one with an interval of one second, and I think my final video is gonna be about four minutes, which would be around 240 shots, but I'm gonna overshoot it just to be careful, and I can cut it out later if I don't want it. So I'm gonna shoot 300 images. So I'm gonna set it for 300 right here. And then I'm gonna come down and set OK. Now it does get a little interesting here. So we're gonna enable this. It's gonna give us some information in here, and what we can do is if we want to take a test shot, I can do a test shot with the shutter right there, and that's just checking exposure on it. And so now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna press this start/stop to get ready to shoot the time-lapse. And now I'm gonna press the shutter release to actually start the time-lapse. And so let's go ahead and start the time-lapse right now. And it doesn't sound very exciting, but it's working right now. So Jake, go ahead and start walking. So one of the main advantages of using this over the other time-lapse where we shot individual photos is that the shutter was clicking away and the camera was working very hard, you might say, and in this case, it's just grabbing a video frame, and so it's a little less intensive on the battery power on this. And so we're gonna let this run as Jake walks down the beach and comes back, and we'll have another time-lapse to look at. I'm gonna go ahead and hit the stop/start button, and we're gonna stop recording on that. Now I have a video right in camera, it's done right now. If I want to watch it, I can hit the play button and go in here and watch our time-lapse, and it's completely done. Now, it might be a little bit harder to work with in the end run if I want to go in and I want to clone something out or I want to adjust the brightness and so forth. But having an in-video, or video done in the camera, complete, done, no more work to do is a really nice feature to have along with the fact that the shutter's not firing all the time and not putting as much wear and tear in the camera. So a very useful feature, a lot of fun to have, so have fun with it on your camera. Alright, we're talking about the time-lapse movie, and we shot that in the field, and it's done, we don't need to do anything else. And so if you want a finished video, this is great, it's gonna dump it right in with your other photos, and you'll be able to just click on that movie file and open it up, and let's go ahead and play this one here. And so this is very similar to the other time-lapse that we shot where we shot a photo every second and did this for about four minutes, and it's in a finished video file that I don't need to do anything with, I don't need to size it. It looks pretty good. Now, if you do want to go in and adjust the colors and saturations, you're gonna need a video program to do that, but you're not working on the original images. And so if you want a quick, easy time-lapse to shoot, there it's done and it's not taking up as much space on your memory cards 'cause it's not using up all those individual photos, this is gonna be a great way to get a quick and simple time-lapse out of your camera. So, great feature to have. Thank you, Canon, for putting it in there. Alright, so there you go. We have two different ways of doing and accomplishing very much the same thing. And so we now have an easy solution that's the low wear and tear. So for those times when you just need, yeah, I just need to shoot a basic, little time-lapse, but if you're trying to, no, this thing's got to be perfect and I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna tweak and adjust it and I need to make all sorts of controls on it, then you're gonna want to go in and do the traditional intervalometer series versus this one in the movie mode. But I like the fact that the shutter's not firing, it's putting less wear and tear on the camera, 'cause I used to do time-lapses. I'd have a camera dedicated to time-lapses because it was putting so much wear and tear on your camera 'cause you go out and you shoot a lot, you'll shoot thousands and thousands of photos in a single day 'cause that shutter's got to be firing every single time. And so two different modes for two different styles of shooting there. So, good to have. And so very much like the previous one, you go into it, you can enable it, disable it. The info Detail set will give you the ability to go in and choose what the interval is. And what's nice there is, down towards the bottom, it does the math for you. So you put in the intervals, you put in the number of shots, and it's gonna tell you how long your finished video is gonna be and how long it takes you to shoot that video. And there's been some cases where you set up, let's do a picture every 15 seconds, and you come back three hours later, it's still shooting. And so, in this case, you can get some of that figured out ahead of time, which is quite nice. So that is the time-lapse movie mode. And beauty is you end up with a final video. It's not 4K. It is a 1080p. You can either shoot it at 30 or 25 frames per second. And the maximum number of shots is 3,600. I don't know why, it just is. So there are some limitations on it, and it's not gonna be good for everybody in all situations. But it is a nice option to have. You can hook up external displays through the HDMI port on the side of the camera. And one option is that by hitting the info button, you turn information on and off. Some people don't like that 'cause they're recording on these external devices and they don't want that information accidentally coming up. They want that to appear only on the back of the camera. In some cases, you want to see it on both the camera and the monitor itself. So it really depends on what type of monitor you're using and how you are using the monitor. If you want, you can use a remote control to trigger the camera to start and finish recordings. And the camera kind of needs to be kept on and knows to look for that signal. So if you have that, you would turn that on here. It does use a little bit more battery power, but it's pretty minor. Alright folks, that gets us through the first major section, which is definitely the most dense section in the menu system. So that's all the shooting and movie menus, and it's time to check in with Kenna, for some questions and answers. Alright, well we definitely have questions. We can take a few before we do head into our next break. And grab a mic if we have any in the studio. Question came from Jones KC. "Does mirror lockup work with bracketed shots?" Mirror lockup should work with bracketed shots. I don't see any conflict there at all. Is there any conflict with shooting manually and using anti-flicker? Shooting manually with anti-flicker is not a problem at all. You're gonna have a specific shutter speed, a specific aperture, but when you are firing the shots, it might add a little bit of shutter lag between pressing the shutter and when the picture is taken. It's likely to be so little that you or I would not notice the difference, but that's when it's adjusting. A question from Martin76, "Does shooting video decrease the lifespan of the sensor "more than taking photos?" I don't know the answer to that one. I guess it kind of depends on... Well, most times cameras are rated in the number of shutter actuations, how many shutter firings, and I believe this camera is 150,000 firings. And just for reference, like a standard camera is supposedly 50,000. The higher-end 1DX, I believe, is 3 or 400,000. And so it's got a very durable shutter in there. But that movement is probably taxing it more. And so I would say somebody who shot the movie time-lapse mode is gonna put less wear and tear than somebody who shot the individual photos in time-lapse. Just a followup question on that quickly. Can you tell us again, did you talk about how long you can shoot video for when you're shooting in 4K? Is there any kind of restriction on that? So 4K video is gonna probably mostly depend on your card size. And so it's 29 minutes and 59 seconds if you have a card that has a very fast write speed to it. And so that's kind of the legal limit that the cameras can go to. But it could very well be shorter if your camera heats up or if your camera's buffer can't get that information to the memory cards. And so before you hire out to shoot a 25-minute 4K video, you better test your card to make sure that your card can handle it. I have a question about the flash controls working with non-Canon flashes. I have not experimented with non-Canon flashes, but my guess is that there will be no communication at all in that regard. Did you have a question? If you're using just one video card, what do you recommend for video... Or one memory card, for video or still shooting? Definitely, the CF memory cards because they're gonna be faster and they can write data quicker, whether you're shooting stills or videos, but that will mostly come into play in videos, where you can shoot 4K video much easier on modern standard CF cards compared to SD cards. And there's no reliability difference between them? Well, between the CF card and the SD card, the SD card definitely has a little flex to it. It's small and lightweight and I can drop it and that's not really a problem, but if I was to step on this, I think it's game over. I don't play baseball, but I could huck this against the wall as hard as I want and it's probably still gonna be fine. This thing is just solid. And so I like the construction technique on a CF card. These are flimsy in my mind, but they're small.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Canon 5D Mark IV Recommended Settings

Ratings and Reviews

r_peddle
 

John is such a fabulous educator. Well spoken, knowledgeable and he presents with such clarity and easy, it makes listening that much more enjoyable. I would highly recommend taking this class and any of his classes dealing with photography. HE simplifies the menu system and buttons on the camera in this course that would be painstakingly long if you tried it on your own. I have watched this video 2-3 times know and each time I go back, I learn a little more. Being able to drop into any of the main topics with easy, not having to watch and search for your desired info is so convenient. I will never buy another camera without checking to see if John has completed a review on it........I trust his opinion. Thanks John......I am a fan.

Ralph Somma
 

I was reluctant to purchase this course because I already have the Instruction Manual that came with the 5D Mark IV and am committed to reading it in it's entirely. Nevertheless, after watching a preview of the course, I decide to buy it so I could view it at my leisure, pause and rewind it as needed. I am so glad I did. John Greengo's teaching method is clear and concise. He presents the material in a way that makes it interesting and enjoyable to learn. His effective use of visuals and demonstrations makes understanding every important function of the 5D Mark IV a breeze. I look forward to implementing what I've learned, his recommendations and tweaking the camera's settings to suit my own needs and preferences. Now as I trudge through all 600+ pages of the manual, I'm confident I will more easily grasp the camera's 100+ settings and can always refer back to the course if necessary.

Teri
 

First I have to say that I wanted this camera before it was even released. I had taken some of John's fast start courses and I had some questions regarding this camera vs. the 5D mark III and 7D mark II that I was using at that time. I emailed John and got an "out of office/out on location response". I put it out of my mind assuming that when John Greengo was back in the office, he'd have hundreds of emails waiting and my little question would get lost in the shuffle. I was delighted to receive a response a few weeks later. I was even more delighted when he released this fast start course. I did end up buying the 5D mark IV (love it) and had a pretty good handle on using it. This class opened up some new doors in how to use all of the features and customize things to suit my needs. I can never recommend John's classes enough. He explains things in an easy yet technical way that is useful to both beginners and seasoned photographers!

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