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Raw video on Canon 5d Mark 3 and other cameras using liveview framebuffer
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  • is it just me or are the test videos getting more interesting and less flowers-in-my-garden? :)

  • I was tempted when I saw the news about the 50D and went looking for used price. The I considered the need for fast CF cards and other stuff and I realized that for who (like me) already owns a GH3 (and GH2) the BMPCC is a better investment. I already own 4 fast SD 64GB cards. I own Panny 35-100 and Panleica 25 1.4 (plus Tokina 11-16 and other vintage lenses). Speedbooster (and Lensturbo) M43 is on its way. BMPCC has mic, earphones, ProRes. And 50D is not Full frame but APS-C. The big advantages of the 50D would be high ISO performance and having a really good stills camera (but I should buy Canon glass with AF to use it properly). Happy I thought about it :)

  • @radikalfilm, nice workflow breakdown, thanks. Wish CineForm Studio could read DNGs on the Mac side...

    One thing I've found to be extremely handy for getting this footage into AE (in native raw format) is a script called Immigration ( http://aescripts.com/immigration/ ). It will load an entire folder of image sequences automatically and optionally maintain folder hierarchy if so desired. Normally with AE you have to import each sequence individually and it takes forever.

    A minor annoyance - the Camera RAW plugin still pops up for every sequence you import, so if you do a batch of 50 shots, that's fifty clicks on the Camera RAW window before they're all loaded. Does anyone know if there's an AE preference to disable this behavior? I looked and didn't find anything.

  • @flablo

    Most people don't realise that raw (normal, not hacked) can become common much faster than they think. And BM management with all their issues are also among this crowd.

  • Also, pro-tip - VSCO for Camera RAW is really great for these images, just remember to turn the 'grain' setting off in ACR (because it creates a single static grain pattern over footage).

  • @kurth 50D shoots higher than 720p now.. getting near 1080p @flablo your making a lot of sense got a BMPCC in preorder as well, now we just gotta wait and see if they get delivered on time. The 50D is not a bad investment at all actually it's a great investment, word is out everybody is going out to get their hands on it and that will make prices surge. Even if you don't like it after you can resell it with a profit after use. For me it's all about the image, I love the way the 50D renders the images downloaded a couple sequences to play with man I tell you real organic looking. Just got one almost new for a great price & got a Komputerbay 64GB card wasn't that expensive shocking. The other couple reasons why I got the 50D is because I have a couple personal video shoots that I wanted to try it on just because of the aesthetics / raw capabilities & high ISO's there is a 12,800 ISO test came out so clean. Waiting for July to come who knows it maybe available even later in the summer and delaying those projects would slow things down for me big time.

  • So over the weekend I was doing a pile of testing on this raw stuff. Mainly to see if I could use for commercial work (which is mostly product demos).

    Here are some bullet points:

    Fragility

    I've had a number of RAWs fail conversion with a 'not an lv_raw' message - I'm aware that you have to wait before taking the card out. I've tried twice to see what happens when you fill a card up -- both times I got a lv_raw failure.

    Battery

    On a side note I had a battery go complete flat overnight. My 5D3 is fairly new and has never had this before. I thought that ML might keep more of the camera running or something. The power switch was in the 'off' position overnight.

    From last night the battery is OK. I assume that RAW mode takes a lot from the battery and a good Li-ION will have a cliff drop at the end of its discharge. Therefore I'm assuming no real problem.

    Sound

    Where is it? From the sequence of DNG files, at first I thought there was some sound in there because AfterEffects was generating AIF files -- these were all blank (please point me in the right direction if I'm wrong!)

    Syncing

    Using a simple clap at the beginning and end of clips I worked out that the frame rate is 23.976. This might help someone to avoid lip-sync drift

    Camera 'Sleep'

    As soon as the 5D3 sleeps you'll be needing to reload modules and set the video size again. I'll have to see if you can change the 'sleep' timer between composing a shot and starting the record.

    RAW2DNG

    I have 20GB on my iMac, and found that when I had a lot of memory hogging applications open (FCPx, Resolve, AE and Chrome) RAW2DNG would crash midway through a conversion. This would be followed by one of those annoying disk unmount - remount moments (MAC OSX 10.8 - known issue). Closing the big Apps solved the problem.

  • Seriously, you have to completely re-prep your camera and re-load ML after a warm or cold boot?

    That likely sounds like a stupid question but I've only ever been an interested ML-observer over the years, never owned a Canon or had any use for ML.

  • @jasonp --- thanks for letting me know that you're not having problems. The ML forum is huge and I don't know my way around it. I got the RAW stuff from a 20th May Build that was 'recommended'. I started reading the ML forums 3 days ago.

    I didn't take pics or 'Canon' style video apart from once during my tests.

    I've had a google about sound, but would appreciate a pointer to where the settings might be!

  • andy pull the battery before you boot, there's a bug, and always wait for the light to flash before you pull the CF card. Internal sound won't stay in sync yet, an external recorder will.

    See vimeo page for notes.

  • what are the chances that canon will start shipping this camera with firmware that cannot be downgraded and thus making ML not possible.

    I'm just wondering, should I rush to buy a 5d3?

  • There's plenty of them around, besides Canon aren't that smart.

  • what are the chances that canon will start shipping this camera with firmware that cannot be downgraded and thus making ML not possible.

    Zero. Exactly zero.

  • Vitaliy... sorry to bug... but what is your logic behind this answer? Didn't this happen with the gf1 a long time ago, only the older models could be mod'ed. Yes eventually that was fixed, but there was a period of this. I'll shut up after this one.

  • Vitaliy... sorry to bug... but what is your logic behind this answer? Didn't this happen with the gf1 a long time ago, only the older models could be mod'ed. I'll shut up after this one.

    Canon has simple logic here - if not this raw discovery their sales for video crowd will be quite bleak.

  • leads me to believe that RAW is now officially the most desired feature on a "professional" camera. wonder why.....yes I'm being sarcastic.

  • Good to understand that lies behind ML progress

  • @squig --- thanks for that --- I'm not going mad ;) Is that Singapore zoo ?

  • andyharris ->Looks like Sydney to me:)

    Beautiful footage BTW, that's unbelievable what ML guys turned mk3 into, pure madness.

  • @Vitaliy-Kiselev

    I say this with total humility, but I don't see a tantamount difference in the side by side lowlight test. Am I missing something here? There are subtle differences, more at the ridiculous high iso, but... meh.

  • I can see:

    A very clear difference in colour rendition between the two.
    No artefacts around the flame in the RAW
    A wider dynamic range in the RAW
    Difference in White Balance
    

    I prefer the RAW in that example.

  • Ive tested the 60D and it aint bad for what its worth squeezing everything down a buffer that writes out max'd to 20Mbps SD write speed - 720 tested so far. Flogged my 5D MKII in March so if they get any further down the line it could well be time to invest in MKIII. Seems like their h264 development is on hold :-)