Buying a Canon 7D is a smart move well done, don't second guess yourself with, should I have got the new 550/T2i for half the price? The Canon 7D can do so much more on the photo side and it is tried and tested on the video side, there has to be some downside to a new camera for half the price.

The forums are full of questions from new Canon 7D owners about codecs. It is the single biggest barrier to earning a quick fortune in stock footage. Buying the camera is just the first step of many, get ready to dig deep into your wallet. The two least sexy areas you need to spend sometime on are video editing software (NLE) and transcoding software.

Don't be cheap! free is not always good. I spent too long frigging around with streamclip trying to transcode the 7D footage into something my NLE software could run smoothly. Yes you need your footage to run smoothly in your NLE otherwise you won't see the camera movement where you pressed the button to record on the 7D. read more...