# Canon 1dx Mark II - Underwater Video



## Mantadude (Jun 2, 2016)

Hello all,

I was fortunate to get my hands on a 1dx mark II a few weeks ago, along with an underwater housing for it. Did a last minute trip to the Philippines to test this out.

It is a short video, and I did a mix of macro and wide angle. I used the 100mm F2.8L and some shots with a +10 diopter on it. For Wide angle I used the 16-35mm F4L. Make sure to choose 4k on the playback options.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjNnbAP6Jww3

I severely underestimated what the move to 4k was going to bring. The amount of resources both from a speed and storage standpoint is massive. After 40 dives, I came back with about 3.5TB worth of data. Almost all of these shots were shot 4k and 60p, played back at 30p.

Let me know what you think!
Enjoy,

Dustin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjNnbAP6Jww3


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## gjones5252 (Jun 2, 2016)

Looks good! 
If you don't mind me asking what was your process to get the footage ready for editing? Did you edit natively or did you transcode it to another format? 
Any info on your steps to prep that much data would be helpful!


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## lion rock (Jun 2, 2016)

Wow, first rate!
-r


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## dslrdummy (Jun 2, 2016)

Superb Dustin.


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## scottkinfw (Jun 2, 2016)

Stunning Dustin, grand slam!

Thanks for posting this treasure.

What did you use for lighting?

sek


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## gsealy (Jun 2, 2016)

Really great. Thanks for posting. 

I was thinking that it is all so beautiful, and yet, above all of this are billions of human beings screwing it up.


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## Nelu (Jun 2, 2016)

Great job, superb images!
Sincere congratulations!!!

Thanks,
Nelu


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## Bennymiata (Jun 2, 2016)

Fantastic.
The colours and details are just amazing.


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## romanr74 (Jun 2, 2016)

Fantastic stuff indeed...


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## arthurbikemad (Jun 2, 2016)

Now thats some great footage! Quality is amazing even here on my crappy workshop PC! Defo makes me crave my 1DX2 more!!! COME ON CANON UK get the camera's in stock for gods sake!


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## expatinasia (Jun 2, 2016)

Thanks for sharing, Dustin. Some amazing footage there from an amazing country with an obviously amazing camera. Terrific.


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## jazz55 (Jun 2, 2016)

Great colours!


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## Mantadude (Jun 2, 2016)

gjones5252 said:


> Looks good!
> If you don't mind me asking what was your process to get the footage ready for editing? Did you edit natively or did you transcode it to another format?
> Any info on your steps to prep that much data would be helpful!



I was hoping you could tell me!!! Haha. I did edit natively, but it was a slow and annoying process. I am still working out my process. This has been eye opening as far as how to have premiere configured and the different drives to do specific tasks. I am getting a raid 0 16tb drive today, so hopefully that will help with the large file sizes. For this I had to just copy over the files I was going to use, which isn't my typical workflow. It records 5.6 gB per minute. I don't know much about transcoding, but I need to investigate it more.


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## Mantadude (Jun 2, 2016)

lion rock said:


> Wow, first rate!
> -r



Thanks for watching it!


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## GuyF (Jun 2, 2016)

Very enjoyable.

But wouldn't you rather grind your life away working in a lousy office instead of splashing about on idyllic coral reefs?


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## lion rock (Jun 2, 2016)

Just wonderful. Hope your workflow is not bother with the high data rate.
I sent your links to my daughter who lives in Singapore, and she visits the Philippines often and she dives with her SL1 and water proof case. She shoots nudis. Hope she can learn from you.
-r




Mantadude said:


> lion rock said:
> 
> 
> > Wow, first rate!
> ...


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## Mantadude (Jun 3, 2016)

dslrdummy said:


> Superb Dustin.



Thank you!


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## Mantadude (Jun 3, 2016)

scottkinfw said:


> Stunning Dustin, grand slam!
> 
> Thanks for posting this treasure.
> 
> ...



Thanks. I appreciate you watching it. As for Lighting, the macro is lit with a sola 2100 or a Inon Lf800n. For wide I pretty much use available light, in the 1 shot I have lights on, it is a sola 8000.


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## Mantadude (Jun 3, 2016)

gsealy said:


> Really great. Thanks for posting.
> 
> I was thinking that it is all so beautiful, and yet, above all of this are billions of human beings screwing it up.



Yes it is something to be concerned about.


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## Mantadude (Jun 3, 2016)

Nelu said:


> Great job, superb images!
> Sincere congratulations!!!
> 
> Thanks,
> Nelu



Thanks for watching Nelu.


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## Mantadude (Jun 3, 2016)

;D


Bennymiata said:


> Fantastic.
> The colours and details are just amazing.



Thank you!


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## Mantadude (Jun 3, 2016)

romanr74 said:


> Fantastic stuff indeed...



Thanks!


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## Mantadude (Jun 3, 2016)

expatinasia said:


> Thanks for sharing, Dustin. Some amazing footage there from an amazing country with an obviously amazing camera. Terrific.



Thanks. Of all the countries I have been to, the people of the Philippines are my favorite.


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## Click (Jun 3, 2016)

Awesome. Great job, Dustin.


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## Jack Douglas (Jun 3, 2016)

I think we should have a new thread.

"The best of CR as recommended by Click"

Could save me the pain caused by some threads - you know the ones. 

Jack


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## Click (Jun 3, 2016)

LOL ;D


Have a great weekend my friend.


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## East Wind Photography (Jun 3, 2016)

Mantadude said:


> gjones5252 said:
> 
> 
> > Looks good!
> ...



Replace the old spinning disks in that raid array with Samsung SSD drives and use a computer with 8 cores and fast CPUs.

Once i got off those spinning things, the work flow improved....still, in final rendering, i start it before going to bed.


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## kaihp (Jun 3, 2016)

East Wind Photography said:


> Replace the old spinning disks in that raid array with Samsung SSD drives



If you have the budget, go for a set of Intel DC ssd drives, like the DC P3700. ~2.7GB/s read speed, 400K IOps. That's some ridiculous speeds there...


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## East Wind Photography (Jun 3, 2016)

kaihp said:


> East Wind Photography said:
> 
> 
> > Replace the old spinning disks in that raid array with Samsung SSD drives
> ...



Well you'll also need a special buss and backplane I guess. Otherwise you will "have to live with" 500MB/sec.

But if cost isn't an issue ...


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## Mantadude (Jun 4, 2016)

arthurbikemad said:


> Now thats some great footage! Quality is amazing even here on my crappy workshop PC! Defo makes me crave my 1DX2 more!!! COME ON CANON UK get the camera's in stock for gods sake!



Thank you and Good Luck with getting your camera.


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## Mantadude (Jun 4, 2016)

expatinasia said:


> Thanks for sharing, Dustin. Some amazing footage there from an amazing country with an obviously amazing camera. Terrific.



Thanks!


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## Mantadude (Jun 4, 2016)

GuyF said:


> Very enjoyable.
> 
> But wouldn't you rather grind your life away working in a lousy office instead of splashing about on idyllic coral reefs?



Glad you liked it. Unfortunately, I need to work in a lousy office in order to splash around on the reefs..


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## GuyF (Jun 4, 2016)

Ah, sorry, I thought this was your main gig.

What are you using to edit the 4k video? Can you recommend a monitor/gfx card (assuming it's on a PC rather than Mac)?

Thanks.

P.S. please post more!


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## Jack Douglas (Jun 4, 2016)

GuyF said:


> Ah, sorry, I thought this was your main gig.
> 
> What are you using to edit the 4k video? Can you recommend a monitor/gfx card (assuming it's on a PC rather than Mac)?
> 
> ...



+1 

There is a solution - retire.  And don't wait as long as most of us do! Or figure out how to make money doing what you love - if only, I know.

Jack


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## Mantadude (Jun 5, 2016)

lion rock said:


> Just wonderful. Hope your workflow is not bother with the high data rate.
> I sent your links to my daughter who lives in Singapore, and she visits the Philippines often and she dives with her SL1 and water proof case. She shoots nudis. Hope she can learn from you.
> -r
> 
> ...


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## Mantadude (Jun 5, 2016)

Click said:


> Awesome. Great job, Dustin.



Thank you. Glad you liked it.


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## Mantadude (Jun 5, 2016)

Jack Douglas said:


> I think we should have a new thread.
> 
> "The best of CR as recommended by Click"
> 
> ...



Thanks jack...and I agree with you!


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## Mantadude (Jun 5, 2016)

kaihp said:


> East Wind Photography said:
> 
> 
> > Replace the old spinning disks in that raid array with Samsung SSD drives
> ...



Problem is, I don't have that much of a budget. I have about 10TB worth of media I work with...so it makes it pretty hard. And with over 3TB worth each trip, that adds up fast.


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## kaihp (Jun 5, 2016)

Mantadude said:


> kaihp said:
> 
> 
> > East Wind Photography said:
> ...



I would only use an SSD as the 'working drive', and then have some spinning rust for bulk storage of the things you aren't working on. I use WDC Reds in my NAS. Today, I'd probably choose WDC Red Pros, as they are a bit faster (7200rpm vs 5700rpm) and not that much more expensive (+10% IIRC).


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## East Wind Photography (Jun 5, 2016)

kaihp said:


> Mantadude said:
> 
> 
> > kaihp said:
> ...



Oh yes there is cost to long term SSD storage. Requires fairly constant rewriting of the data to refresh th storage charge and ultimate failure of the memory location. SSDs are getting better though but i would never use them for long term storage. I use redundant USB drives for long term storage. USB has the best backwards compatibility support. My version 1 USB drive still works in a usb 3.0 port. Relying on things like SATA interfaces may go by the wayside with MFM, RLL, Scsi and soon to be IDE. 

Whatever you use it will eventually be obsolete unless you refresh about every 10 years or so. Possibly less.

Cloud storage is an alternative but it just moves that refresh onto a 3rd party that you hope you can trust with your data.


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## kaihp (Jun 6, 2016)

East Wind Photography said:


> kaihp said:
> 
> 
> > I would only use an SSD as the 'working drive', and then have some spinning rust for bulk storage of the things you aren't working on. I use WDC Reds in my NAS. Today, I'd probably choose WDC Red Pros, as they are a bit faster (7200rpm vs 5700rpm) and not that much more expensive (+10% IIRC).
> ...



Oh yes, long-term _reliable_ storage is expensive. I keep advocating a combination of local ("onsite") and remote (cloud or just disks at a physically different place) as a good combination.

USB drives are a good choice. Like you say, the interface is pretty ubiquitous and has been around since 1996.
A good alternative is a NAS (Network Attached Storage) enclosure with disks inside, which connects via Ethernet. Ethernet has been around 'forever' (introduced in '80 and standardized in '83) and there are no signs of it going away either (we're at 1Gigabit/s for end-users and 100Gigabit/s is standardized).


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## East Wind Photography (Jun 6, 2016)

kaihp said:


> East Wind Photography said:
> 
> 
> > kaihp said:
> ...



The problem with NAS is you are locked into that unit. If the company goes out of business, or the disk buss changes, you are out of luck. NAS makes great near term storage but i still wouldnt trust it for long term storage (greater than 10 years). You might be able to extend that with ample spare parts...power supplies, disks, etc. but not sure its worth it. Im sure others will chime in with their opinions.


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## kaihp (Jun 6, 2016)

East Wind Photography said:


> kaihp said:
> 
> 
> > Oh yes, long-term _reliable_ storage is expensive. I keep advocating a combination of local ("onsite") and remote (cloud or just disks at a physically different place) as a good combination.
> ...



Well, I don't expect to have a _single_ system run for 10+ years. I expect to do a rolling replacement.
My first NAS ran 24h for 7 years, and the reason I replaced it was that it was full (and a growing concern for loosing the disks). I'm quite convinced that that will happen with my current and future systems as well.

BTW, my NAS is really a PC with SATA disks in it. If I really wanted, I can maintain this system for as long as I can get PC-style motherboards.

The powered-off USB disks do have an advantage: less wear&tear on the actual disks. The initial access time is somewhat higher though 

But we were supposed to talk about Mantadude' great underwater video here. I'll stop here.


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## Jack Douglas (Jun 9, 2016)

Just came across a statement that the 1DX II 4K video is good but the HD is bad. Can anyone expand on this?

"Unfortunately, the HD mode of the Canon 1D X mark II is really disappointing. Aliasing is strong and the image is very soft. It can hardly be considered an HD image and is barely suitable for an old tube television. The Canon 1D C, on the other hand had a S35 crop mode that delivered a very nice HD image."

https://www.cinema5d.com/canon-1d-x-mark-ii-vs-canon-1d-c-which-one-shoots-better-video/

Jack


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## East Wind Photography (Jun 18, 2016)

Interesting. I don't think anything canon does has anything to do with ML though. More likely it's because 

1) they don't want the 1dx2 to take sales away from the cinema line
2) the bit rate is lower due to the higher sensor resolution..thus more artifacts. 

If the issue is with digic6 (maybe an oversight) it could be fixed with a firmware update. Though I strongly think it's due to #1.

4k is slightly cropped as well. On the cinema line is 4k also cropped, on a smaller sensor, or full frame?


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## East Wind Photography (Jun 18, 2016)

Actually on 2 I should have said the bit rate is lowered via compression..
More needed due to more pixels to process.


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