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Raw video on Canon 5d Mark 3 and other cameras using liveview framebuffer
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  • beta 0.4 Mac OSX raw2dng now does batch conversion http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5508.msg37558;topicseen#msg37558 just drop a folder of raw files onto it. It's still limited to 2Gb files. If anyone has experience writing 64bit code for Mac OSX the developer could use some help breaking the 2Gb barrier. It's already up and running on Linux.

  • Can you post the link again @squig? It got eaten/truncated.

  • Updated link to the thread, link is on that page.

  • MK3 raw vimeo group https://vimeo.com/groups/192344/videos Just got the 1066x card. 1928x1180 24p @ 90MB/s sustained :D. I recorded a 9Gb file before I got bored.

  • @squig Which card did you get ? I am getting dropped frames on the Lexar 1000x. What do you use to handle 9Gb files ? Linux ?

  • @TrackZillas maybe we are Vitaliy RAW for the GH2

  • @uninexus Toshiba 1066x 64Gb. I haven't opened the files, was just a speed/frame rate test, I'm on a mac. If the 64bit mac batch converter isn't out by next week I'll start using Linux.

  • @bannedindv wow! that genesis video looks great! Has a really great atmosphere, off course time of day helped out a little... (Watched it without sound by the way)

  • This is all great for the Canon 5D Mark III...

    All we need now is to do the same thing with the Panasonic GH2 :)

  • wow! that genesis video looks great! Has a really great atmosphere, off course time of day helped out a little...

    Choosing the right time of day as well as how you photograph your subjects is arguably more important than achieving a perfect exposure. So, folks taking their hacked 5Ds out to shoot flowers with overcast skies or harsh front lighting, etc. are not making a compelling case for this thing being a big deal, if you were to look at the results of their effort.

    With available light photography you still have to "light" your subject but in this situation you're moving your subject and camera (or just moving your camera relative to your subject) with respect to what the light is doing rather than the other way around. With a few exceptions, if you're shooting outside and there's the slightest chance you, the photographer, could cast a shadow over what you're shooting (or if your shadow points towards what you're shooting) then you're likely pointing the camera the wrong direction.

  • @BurnetRhoades

    "Choosing the right time of day as well as how you photograph your subjects is arguably more important than achieving a perfect exposure."

    --> totally agree! I've shot a lot of footage with my gh3+25mmf1.4 lately, how they look is almost entirely depending on how much and what kind of available light. I'm not much of a videographer or photographer but those magical moments around dusk and dawn makes reasonable videographers out of most of us. In that video i see the work of someone with skill and a keen eye, compimented by that time of day (which he off course chose with a purpose). In my humble opinion off course, i'm no expert what so ever...

  • GH3 All intra 72Mbit corrected in FCPX vs. 14 bit RAW on EOS5DMKIII corrected in AE6, converted to ProRes 422HQ, imported into FCPX and exported to Youtube with Highest Quality H.264 possible (heh).

    25 mm Summilux vs. F 1/1.8 50 mm Canon.

    I tried my best to recover as much of the DR in post on in each footage.

  • @uninexus no offence intended but im not sure thats a fair representation of the gh3 .... ive seen it produce images far better than that video showcased...

  • @jakepowell no offense taken. What was better about those other images you have seen ? Better dynamic range, better story, better subject matter, better overall quality, focus, lighting ? The video was (primarily) a demonstration of a dynamic range comparison between one and the other. It was not an attempt to win an Oscar. It's a footage of a field and some plants after all. Hardly that exciting. I was curious about what the RAW can do - so I picked up a EOS 5d Mark III and am trying to compare. GH3 is my workhorse and I depend on it a lot. I used a GH2 before ... a lot. Needless to say I am frustrated by its limitations. You can only do so much in post. I needed to see for myself what can be done with RAW on Mark III. The footage from each respective camera was shot side by side from the same tripod - seconds apart. As hard as I tried - I could not get the clouds in the sky to look the same - without destroying the rest or not at all. I am sure that could be done with a graduated ND filter for example. I can set the focus on the MKIII, set the aperture and shoot. Everything else can be corrected in post. If anyone has suggestions for what they would want to see - please let me know. We are all here to contribute to the community.

  • @uninexus Very insightful comparison video, thanks for posting! The RAW workflow is the biggest sticking point for me. How much RAW footage and storage space did it take to make that with the Mk3?

  • @uninexus also no ofense and thanks fot the test, but did you grade the footage from Gh3??

    If you did that's not a pretty job the highlights are so low that a had to line on the floor to see the comparison :-)

    something went wrong there, Gh3 is much more capable of giving a decent fight, ok its not raw, ok is not 14bit, but that was unfair...

  • @leonbeas The footage was shot on in bright light on a sunny day with no filters on the lenses (well the GH3 Summilux has a UV on it) and I tried to expose within the limits of the aperture and shutter combination. Both cameras were set to ISO 200 (since that's the minimum GH3 can do). The shutter speed was 1/50. The aperture was set to 16 on both lenses. Inevitably because the highlights will fall outside of the capability of the sensor on the GH3 - they will be "blown out." There is nothing you can do to recover them. I have graded the image in FCPX to try to recover as much of the highlights as possible. What kind of monitor do you use ? Just to humour you I used my iPhone 4 to view the footage and I did not have to lie on the floor to see it...

  • @SuperSet For example the wild rose footage works out like that: RAW file: 464.3 MB, Folder with .DNG images 467 MB, Prores422 HQ file of the same - 133 MBs, GH3 shot of wild rose: 37.1 MB, Entire ~ 1Min movie of mixed footage in Prores422 HQ: 1.45 GB, H.264 version for Youtube upload: 574.4 MB Hope that helps. So if you can't store the original RAW project files - you can store the Prores footage at 3.5x less space. Or you can store H.264 footage at 9 MB/s ? I hope I have that last calculation roughly correct...

  • Thanks for posting this example. Even if it can be argued that GH3 could look better, the RAW 5D MK III looks fantastic, not just dynamic range, but the color, the resolution and the field of view, are all working together to great cinematic effect. Great time to be in the market for a new camera (that shoots RAW)...

  • @uninexus

    Thanks for the comparison.

    ............ inevitably because the highlights will fall outside of the capability of the sensor on the GH3 - they will be "blown out." .......

    This might be a limitation of 8-bit color representation just as well. Take a look at this video comparison and explanatory text made some time ago. http://nofilmschool.com/2012/10/why-dslrs-are-no-match-for-blackmagic-cinema-camera/

    The photographers have had a luxury of having higher than 8-bit workflow (12-bit or 14-bit in fact) for about a decade now. It started with professional gear and slowly trickled down to consumer gear. The same process I guess will happen with video.

    As to the current photo/stills cameras doing video, the higher than 8-bit sensor readout technology is already built in them. Otherwise how could ALL THESE cameras produce stills in 12- or 14- bit RAW format. For video this high bit representation is dumbed down (reduced in 8-bit representation).

    Is something lost in the process? -> YES DEFINATELY. Losses are visible and they are even more apparent if some grading/post processing is done.

    True sometimes the dumbing down process (conversion to 8-bit representation) is more intelligent than others, but it cannot possibly address all the variations in light & color that human could during post processing stage. So my take is that the raw and 10+ bit workflow is the future.

  • @uninexus i would use the 50mbps mov mode first, and sharpen a little to taste , then the images just look flat, have u simply pulled the highlight levels down? there may be the problem i would let what blows blow a little (i can tolerate some in white fluffy cloud areas personally more than that flat looking image that just looks wrong) i just feel this test is not doing the gh3 any favors, i own the cam and it is a pretty damn capable camera , it isnt raw it isnt 14 bit but it is capable of some fantastic images (even of mundane subject matter like this) (and with much lower storage costs and much quicker workflows which is important to someone like me) do u reckon maybe you could make a similar version but with 50mbps and make the original files available for download and we can try out and repost our own comparisons? (if this is too much hassle just the original files from this one? ) sorry , i dont like knocking people and am by no means an expert but i know what i see... the 5diii footage looks very impressive however , (i just wish i had one atm lol)

  • I expect my 1000x CF card to arrive today. Getting the ML on to the 5D3 seems straightforward. I have a Mac only workflow, although I do have Win7 as a VM on MacOSX.

    Has anyone used a workflow that gets the DNG into Resolve without going through Adobe stuff?

    --Double thanks for any replies....

  • @seeker - the very article you mention and the video presented is the very thing that influenced me to seriously look into higher color depth some time ago. There is no arguing with what Marco Solorio presented. It made perfect sense to me when I saw it. We have had 12 and 14 bit in photography for quite some time. I have been shooting RAW on Canon cameras since 2005 and of course did the same on Panasonic GH2 and GH3.