R5 Mark II - high frame rate enabled vs disabled

[DebST]

Hi, I'm confused about the high frame rate enabled vs disabled options when using the Canon R5 Mark II camera. If I'll be editing the video in Davinci Resolve, where I can separate the audio from the video tracks on the timeline, which option should I choose?

For instance, I wish to video fledging wrens in slo-motion (say 120fps), should I select high frame rate enabled? or Disabled? I use the frame rate of 29.97 fps as my timeline frame rate in post. I'd like the clip to play back in slo-motion. I'd like to be able to use the audio clip and fill in the rest of the clip's audio with music by adding a music clip to the audio track (again in Davinci Resolve) during the edit process.

I appreciate any info you can offer.

[p4pictures]

If you enable High frame rate which is the second item on the first page of the red menus, then sound is not recorded s written in the manual here. High frame rate gets you up to the 240fps level.

https://cam.start.canon/en/C017/manual/html/UG-03_Shooting-2_0050.html 

The movies are saved indicating with a slower frame rate in the metadata, and so they playback in slow motion on the camera, so a 10 seconds 120fps recording will play back 4x slower at 30fps and last 40 seconds.

If you don't activate the high frame rate, but set a high frame rate in the normal movie settings then these will playback in real time, a 10 second clip will play back in 10 seconds and has 10 seconds of audio. In your case if 120fps is enough then you still only have 10 seconds of audio, if it is slowed down on the timeline it will sound slow, but you can disconnect the audio from the video in Davinci Resolve.

This screenshot is from the EOS R5 Mark II - sorry it was set to 50Hz / Europe so 100fps.

[DebST]

Hi Brian, and thank you for your thoughtful explanation. 

So, if I'm understanding this, since I'm editing the video and not intending to view/show it via the camera's playback, whether I choose "enabled" or "disabled" for any slo-mo recording (60fps, 120fps, 240fps), will be dependent on how I intend to use the recording.

If I'm going to run the recording through post, I can elect to record the slo-mo video with High Frame Rate "disabled" in order to capture the sound which I do understand, after editing, will be a shorter clip than the delinked edited video portion. Then I can perform the "change speed" to the video clip singularly at the appropriate % resulting in the video appearing as slo-mo. I can lastly append music or voice over for the remaining timeline allotted to the video clip.

Will there be any visual affects/artifacts resulting by me working with the video recording in this manner vs recording the slo-mo video with High Frame Rate "enabled" and recording the sound separately??

[p4pictures · Accepted solution]

When you enable High frame rate on the menu, you can choose to shoot in 240fps or 120fps, the 240fps option is only possible when High frame rate is enabled and therefore no sound. If you want to record in 120fps then you can enable high frame rate, but that comes at the cost of no audio. Files captured with high frame rate are tagged for playback in 30fps. 

If I needed 120fps then I'd use the regular mode and not enable high frame rate. You will need to do some tests with your camera to see if you can detect differences in the quality of the footage when editing. 

[DebST]

Hi Brian and thank you! You've been a great help and I appreciate all your input!

You have a wonderful weekend.