Canon EOS-5D MkIII RAW Movie Recording via MagicLantern

Category : Reviews

FFMPEG SECRETS
by Patrick Zadrobilek

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RAW is what we want – sort of …

The recent development of Magic Lantern for the Canon EOS-5D MkIII will rise huge waves soon!

The team at M.L. hast just discoverd how to record at least 1920×1080 (even higher resolutions) directly from the cameras sensor to a RAW-Movie format in 14-bit RAW for the Canon 5D MkIII and the Canon 6D seems to follow soon.
Yes, RAW. This is Canon DSLR stills raw quality in a movie container. (Follow this thread at M.L. if you’re interested)

The possible formats for now are (according to EOSHD):

Full frame mode

1920 x 1280 (3:2) great for anamorphic
1920 x 1080 (16:9)
1280 x 720 (16:9)
1280 x 1280 (1:1)

1:1 crop modes

3592 x 1320 Some drop frames at this res
2880 x 1320
2560 x 1080
1920 x 1080 (full HD crop mode like GH2)
1280 x 720 (the lower the resolution the more telephoto the crop)

And of course you need fast CF-Cards (1000x / 160 mb/s) to avaid drop-frames.

You still have to convert it with a converter tool developed from the M.L.-Team in order to get RAW-DNG files from it and it is not even in BETA-phase, but hey – it is here.

What does it mean for all the other cameras like Blackmagic Cine Camera and higher priced cameras like the Canon own EOS-1DC?
We will see – I personaly think that this will be dangerous for the BMCC and even the much more expensive cameras like the Canon 1DC, because it records only 8-bit compressed.

Because you risk voiding the warranty of your Canon 5D-MKIII this will be only great for a small group of filmers/hackers which will love to gamble an win a great new feature for their cam.
The downside is you still have all the caveats from a DSLR, no convieniance, bad or no audio, the handling. But no-budget film-freaks will love the capabilities, once it’s „officially“ out.

Maybe our old Canon 7D will get a reprise as a RAW-Camera, because since we got a Canon C100 I do not use the 7D as a Video-Camera anymore – as the development of the M.L. firmware for the 7D is progressing I hope for a RAW-Update 🙂 !!

As much as I like RAW (for photos), I dont like pure-raw for video. You ask why? Because of the pain processing the massive files you will get with uncompressed RAW.
Thats why we need a propper container for the movies to store, no thousands of files which are a pain in the ass to process even if you have a powerfull workstation.

Sony’s XAVC for example is a great new container for compressed high-bit-depth movies. The movies uses Level 5.2 of h.264/MPEG4 AVC codec with color subsample rates at 4:2:0, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 with bit-depths in 8-bit, 10-bit and 12-bit.
Canon and Blackmagic look at Sony, they do it right! No need for the system hogging uncompressed RAW or DNG files. The color-subsampling of 4:2:2 with 10 or 12-bit is great and would serve us all perfect!
Let’s hope the Magic Lantern RAW Firmware hack will shake the big companies awake and they develop good formats for us to work with.

Meanwhile lets look at the recent develoment of Magic Lantern RAW 😉

The first samples recorded with the new firmware look pretty sharp, not that usual soft mush from the Canon DSLRs we used to.