Saturday, August 31, 2013

Making the Canon C100 and Atomos Samurai work together at 24p

A while back I was having some difficulty getting the Canon C100 to work with the Atomos Samurai while in 24p mode.  We were doing some green screen tests and I didn't think to check for the Samurai's frame rate since the FS-700 didn't require any special operations.  What I ended up with is progressive footage at 29.97fps.  It turns out that the C100 always outputs a 60i signal out of the HDMI port.  The Samurai *can* recognize that this 60i signal requires 3:2 pull down and recover the original 23.976p (24p) frame, however this requires an extra step when using a camera that outputs 60i. 

Since then I did a bit of research and found section 10 in the Samurai manual.  The section basically highlights this issue and says that a user should shake their hand in front of the camera for a few seconds so the Samurai can recognize which interlaced frames need to be recombined to make a 24p frame.  Let's test if this is true.


The Samurai will recombine 60i frames to make 29.97p frames, but we already knew that.


Obviously 60i isn't an issue since the camera already outputs 60i.


You can see that the C100 display says the camera is in 24p mode, but the Samurai won't recognize 24p or do pull down.


Following the highly scientific instructions in the manual I shake my hand in front of the lens.



Viola!  The Samurai recognizes 24p and does the 3:2 pull down from the 60i camera output.

Hopefully this helps a customer or two.  I personally really like using the Samurai.  Having Prores 4:2:2 footage from the C100 makes a difference to sharpness and detail.  We also recently upgraded the firmware so DNxHD is available as an option - just in case you're using Avid.

Stop by the shop and check out this camera and recorder combo.  I'm sure Michael will be happy to give you a demo and answer any questions.

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