Dropping frames with the Canon 5D mark ii

My wife, Rachel, is a photographer and we happen to own a 5D Mark ii.  I -like every other filmmaker out there- have been very excited about the whole hybrid DSLR revolution.

There are many extraordinary benefits offered by this new breed of camera.  Many blogs have been covering them.  The cost to sensor size ratio is probably the foremost one.  With the 5D mark ii, you're basically shooting with imax depth of field characteristics.  This has advantages and disadvantages.

The advantage of course is that you get a beautiful big picture look.  Focus falls off beautifully (an there's a world of gorgeous lenses available for far less money than quality cine lenses).  Looks very cinematic.

The disadvantage of course is that your depth of field is often SO tight that focus can be VERY hard to nail.  It's certainly impossible to tell focus on the tiny screen, you need a high def monitor etc... etc...  The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the photo lenses are actually designed so the focus ring doesn't have to travel far (faster autofocus, more energy-efficient).  When you're trying to pull focus manually however with great precision this works against you obviously.

I figure the troubles are well worth the look you get.  If a take goes soft (and I use the Small HD monitor to gauge it, with my face about 6-10 inches away from the screen), I can always do another.  Get more coverage.  I can also stop down.

Yes, the other benefit to the huge sensors in vastly increased light sensitivity.  The footage I'm going to post below was shot at 3200 ASA.  Yes, there IS noise visible in the low end, there IS some slight vertical lining noise (which I often see on the RED footage I handle) but it can easily be crushed out.  Also, I'm not completely anti-noise on most shows.  Depends what you're shooting.

Here, we were performing a screen test (of tech, style, and cast) for an edgy experimental film we're working on called ZOO.  It's a gritty thriller set in a warehouse, and so, some noise is not an issue for me.

But 3200 ASA!!!  It's absolutely mindboggling.  Thanks to that level of sensitivity I was stopped down to a 5.6, close to the sweet spot on the lens and the image looks glorious (IMHO).  Obviously, this helps massively with the aforementioned depth of field problem.

Sadly however, I've discovered a serious problem with the camera.  It is dropping frames.  I'd read some reports online about dropped frames but people have been waving them off, saying they're due to the high bit rate of the compression.  Most machines won't play it back smoothly.  Though the high bit rate does make it hard to play back the footage natively, it has nothing to do with the problem at hand.

Here are a couple short clips.

Canon 5D Mk ii dropping frames on a pan
Canon 5D Mk ii dropping frames on actor movement

If you play the footage back you'll see two duplicate frames, then motion catches up.  Always one original and two dupes before it catches up.  The fact that it's always exactly the same number of frames gives me hope that it may be a software problem and firmware fixable.  I have no basis at all to say that, it's just a hope.  Because the camera is great in so many other ways.

A short note about workflow, the footage was transcoded to 1920x1080 ProRes HQ at 30 (not 29.97, same as the native stuff).  When I saw the problem I went back to the native footage (which is choppy to play directly as mentioned before) and saw that the problem is in the original media.  The camera duplicated frames and then 'jumped' back into real time.

This is hard to reproduce which may be why there isn't much chatter about the problem yet on the intertubes.  It appears to happen only when the image is changing substantially (pan or other major movement in the frame), yet it doesn't happen ALL the time.  I read on another blog that people were linking it to a change in aperture but the camera was on full manual (with the latest firmware) and all settings were constant.  I DID have the image stabilization set on the lens but that should not be creating duplicate frames.

My current theory is that the internal processor gets overwhelmed occasionally with new data and this is the result.  This is VERY VERY bad and potentially disqualifies the camera altogether at this point.

But I'm not ready to give up.  Firmware update anyone?  Or any other theories out there.

I'd love to hear back.

UPDATE:
I think the problem is most likely an overheating one.  I've now seen the duplicate/dropping frames problem happen right in the middle of a static shot.  Just not at the beginning of takes.
It is obvious from looking at the camera that it isn't designed for heat dissipation.  RED cameras and SI2K cameras have fans and heat sinks.  The 5D on the other hand is designed to be water and dust resistant, lots of seals, poor heat dissipation.

I wonder if the 1D-Mark iv suffers from the same problem of if their dual DIGIC-processor design solves this problem.  I bet the 7D is just as bad.

In the meantime, there will be more testing.  And if we're shooting, I'll be getting additional coverage.  It does happen quite rarely.

Bummer though.