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5D MarkII Standard Definition 4:3 Frame Guides

12 Comments Published by Matthew Jeppsen June 25th, 2010 in Cameras, FreshDV, News, Tutorials

5dm2_4x3_guide_gridI’ve got an upcoming commercial shoot for a client that will air on our local NBC affiliate. The station is currently standard-definition only, so the deliverable will be a 4:3 formatted SD master. Letterboxing would be an easy way out, but is undesirable to the client. Normally I would shoot this type of project on a standard definition camcorder in 4:3 mode; but this commercial script calls for some of the lens tricks possible with a DSLR, so I chose to shoot it on the 5D Mark II (currently $2399 @ B&H).

Unfortunately, the 5D offers no video guide overlays. There are only two Grid overlay options, and they don’t correspond to anything in the video world. There is a standard definition video mode in the 5DM2 (and it really does look pretty good), but I wanted to shoot this project 16:9 HD (protecting for 4:3 with guides), to future-proof the spot and give the client more options. So I was forced to find a way to make 4:3 crop marks on the display (as I don’t have a monitor with 4:3 guides either).

5dm2_4x3_guide_tapeMagic Lantern has common crop mark overlays built in, but they don’t currently support the latest 5DM2 firmware, so that wasn’t an option for me. So here’s what I did to make my own. I locked down the camera and shot a tape measure. Then I dropped that footage into a 4:3 SD timeline in FCP. This by default displays as letterboxed 16:9 within the square frame. On the clip Motion tab I zoomed it to 50% to fill the screen (cropping the sides of the frame). Now with a full 4:3 frame of video, it was just a matter of comparing the tape measurements in the footage on the timeline to the same footage displayed on the 5D’s LCD. I stuck some clear tape on the DSLR’s LCD, and used a thin marker to draw 4:3 frame guides on the tape. As a little bonus, I placed the inside edges of the vertical tape strips roughly where the Action Safe guides fell in FCP. So now I’ve got approximate guides for the 4:3 Action Safe area of my frame as well as perfect guide lines to protect for 4:3 in my 16:9 frame. This whole process was highly annoying to have to do (and another example of the typical hoop-jumping you tend to do when shooting DSLRs), so I made some measurements that should simplify the process for anyone that might need to do the same trick. For consistency’s sake, I made these measurements from the on-screen Grid 1 marks.

Here’s how to quickly mark 4:3 frame guides for your 5D Mark II:
If you go into the menu under the Live View/Movie settings, there’s an option for Grid 1. Enable this for the moment. Now when you toggle on Live View, this will put a large hash guide of four intersecting lines on screen. Start by aiming your lens at an evenly lit bright surface. On the surface of your LCD screen, simply measure 12.5mm towards the outside edges of the LCD from the vertical guides displayed on the screen. Right around 12.5mm from those lines is where your 4:3 frame ends. Mark this on the LCD however you wish. You can use scotch tape as I did to make non-permanent marks with a Sharpie. Or you might be able to use these measurements to create a printed clear static sticker (inkjet printable static sticker blanks should be available at a decent office supply store). If I shot more 4:3 content, I’d probably make a sticker that I could quickly stick on the screen. Thankfully most of my work is 16:9 these days so I’ll probably just make do with the tape trick for now. Finally, when you are done making your 4:3 frame marks, you might want to disable the Grid 1 option to de-clutter your display.

Anyway, this solution is rather DIY and a rough hack, but it took some time to put together so I figured I’d share it here in hopes it will save some other poor soul stuck in Four By Three Land. Clearly a more professional solution would be a monitor with proper 4:3 aspect guides, or a camera that was intended to be used for video. Or both. If you’ve got any other guide or overlay tips, please let us know in the comments below. Happy shooting!

12 Responses to “5D MarkII Standard Definition 4:3 Frame Guides”  

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  1. 1 Cail Jun 25th, 2010 at 1:53 am

    Chart tape is your friend for these kind of things. It’s super thin vinyl tape. Great for marking up monitors.

  2. 2 Matt Jun 25th, 2010 at 2:09 am

    Haha or just turn the camera into 640×480, 4:3 video mode and tape off the black bars it displays…. DOH!

  3. 3 Matthew Jeppsen Jun 25th, 2010 at 7:44 am

    Thanks for the tip, @Cail. Is chart tape clear? Never used it before.

    @Matt, in the 640×480 4:3 recording mode on the 5D, it removes the display letterboxing and fills the screen, so the edge frame lines don’t match a 4:3 center crop in HD recording mode. It sure would be simpler to just trace a line from their 4:3 mode guide, but it doesn’t work that easily unfortunately. So if you want to shoot 16:9 and protect or frame for 4:3, you’ve got to measure out your own guides.

    -MJ

  4. 4 Matthew Galvin Jun 25th, 2010 at 12:06 pm

    I’d have serious concerns about the accuracy of this . . . the monitor on the rear of the 5D is sooo small, I’d be concerned about the accuracy of the tape and marker solution. Probably easier to feed the camera output to an external monitor and use chart tape or wireguides (I’ve used these quite a bit with my PVM monitor) to make sure you are frame safe.

    In my case, I’d probably end up relying on my ability to fix the frame aspect in post a bit. One of the reasons I abandoned FCP in favor of a Cineform/Vegas/Adobe CS solution was the flexibility with frame size and the ability ot create a wide variety of aspects easily without worrying about the sequence settings BS in FCP. I got really tired of my text and carefully matted objects jumping around due to FCP’s interpolation of the frame.

    Anyway, a good post and a useful exercise for maintaining some of the professional capabilities with this professional/consumer mashup technology.

  5. 5 Matt Jun 25th, 2010 at 3:11 pm

    @Matthew Jeppsen, ahhh! I just turned on my 7D and spotted what you mean! Obviously never needing to shoot 640×480, but only having switched past it, I had never looked close enough to see that it goes to the top and bottom edges and fills the frame. Thanks for alerting me of my ignorance though!

    However the more I think about it, there is still a use for this. If you taped off the 16:9 letterboxes, then remove the tape, stick it on a table for the time being, switch to 640×480 on the camera, tape off the pillar-boxes it displays, and then ADD the width of the tape from the 16:9 letterboxes to the 4:3 pillar boxes, it should equal a 4:3 frame with relative height and width within the 16:9 frame.

    To me that still seems more accurate than pulling out a tape measure and trying to record/measure 12.5mm on my display.

    Somebody please correct me if this would not work, but from my photographic visual memory I think it would because you are essentially just scaling down the 4:3 frame by the height of a 16:9 letterbox.

  6. 6 Caleb Pike Jun 25th, 2010 at 8:20 pm

    Hey Matt,

    I found a sweet way to add aspect ratio guides to the camera using the Canon EOS Utility app. I tested them with the 7D and found you could apply them to the camera and they would stay after disconnecting. The only problem I found was once you hit record you lost the guides… But I have not tested this on the 5D yet. Anyone wanna try? Here is the breakdown on how to apply them:

    http://dslrvideoshooter.com/using-canon-software-for-dslr-frame-guides/

    Thanks for the post!

  7. 7 Rob Jun 26th, 2010 at 9:36 am

    How about setting up the camera in front of a 4:3 television set (if you still have one…. I have) or a 4:3 drawing on white paper and make an image on the lcd that covers the full HD format top to bottom, then tape the sides with the clear tape.
    The other way around is possible too: 16:9 on a camera with 4:3 viewfinder.

    Just take care to equal the black bars on all sides.

    This can be done with any camera I think, without the need of external NLE applications.

  8. 8 Kate Jun 26th, 2010 at 2:26 pm

    Why not simply point your 5D at a 4:3 image (let’s say in Photoshop on your monitor) and mark it on the LCD/overlay ?

  9. 9 Shera Yap? Jun 26th, 2010 at 2:44 pm

    I agree Kate.Thanks.

  10. 10 Solomon baldwin Jul 11th, 2010 at 3:03 am

    Thanks for post

  11. 11 David Jul 27th, 2010 at 3:53 pm

    Matthew-

    I had a similar project recently and need to shoot in 4:3 to conform to things that were already on a clients website. I ended up just shooting in 4:3 at 640×480. I would have preferred to shoot in 16:9 but I didn’t know you could then convert to 4:3 without distorting the image or letterboxing.

    You said in your post: “There is a standard definition video mode in the 5DM2 (and it really does look pretty good), but I wanted to shoot this project 16:9 HD (protecting for 4:3 with guides), to future-proof the spot and give the client more options. So I was forced to find a way to make 4:3 crop marks on the display (as I dont have a monitor with 4:3 guides either).”

    How do you crop the video from 16:9 to 4:3?

  12. 12 Matthew Jeppsen Jul 27th, 2010 at 4:01 pm

    @David, I shot the project 16×9 HD, and then pulled the footage into a Standard Def 4×3 timeline in FCP. FCP will try to automatically change the sequence to match your footage settings, so you have to say no to that. And by default the footage will appear in the Canvas with black letterbox bars on the top and bottom. You have to go to the Motion tab settings for your footage and zoom it in to around 50 so it crops the right and left sides of the frame.

    Hope that helps!
    -MJ