5D Mark II w/ Magic Lantern and external monitor

Legion6789

Active member
I was wondering if you hook up an external monitor like the SmallHD AC7 to a 5D Mark II, will the magic lantern overlays show up on the monitor? Will I see focus peaking, zebra stripes, etc on the monitor? If yes, do I control the menus through the monitor, or still use the controls on the back of the camera to navigate through the ML menus?
 
I'm not sure about wether the overlays etc will show up on the monitor with the mk II, but one thing I'm sure of is that you wont be able to control the menus through the monitor.
 
So is it just pointless to use an external monitor with the 5D Mark II? Cause without zebra stripes, focus peaking and only 480p out, seems like you might as well make do with the LCD on the back.
 
The nice thing about the the New Raw video on the 5dmkII is that it does not downrez to SD like when you record h264. When using raw video, the resolution on the external monitor stays at 1080. If you have features on your monitor like peaking, it stays functional.

However;

Currently (meaning pre alpha nightly builds)
1.The crop marks on the external monitor that is generated by the 5D is kinda offset to the left.

2.Do not preview your shots with hdmi cable attached as your camera will hang. (you have to detach it and view on the onboard lcd.

But yeah, having resolution stay HD while recording is now great for focus pulling.
 
I was looking at the Marshall V-LCD70MD. Are you saying that with the 480p out, the false color focus peaking won't be good enough to keep shots in focus? Recording in RAW seems like a pain with the short record times and the workflow.
 
I was looking at the Marshall V-LCD70MD. Are you saying that with the 480p out, the false color focus peaking won't be good enough to keep shots in focus? Recording in RAW seems like a pain with the short record times and the workflow.

If you use the 5D mkII for h264 and use an external monitor, its only reliable when in preview. Upon record it goes down to 480p.
Unless you have an aperture that gives you higher tolerances, like f 4 or 5.6 I won't rely on 480 monitoring for critical focus.

But if you mark your shots with follow focus and its not so critical, you might get away with it.

With raw, it stays hd. =easy to focus. sd = between hard to impossible.

I have a SWIT hdmi 7" monitor.

The peaking from the mkII via ML is not always reliable when in apertures of f1.4 or f1.8

That marshall monitor is HD why don't you use its full potential?
 
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Maybe down the road I'll look at RAW. But I don't think I could get by with 10 second recording times. So, is it your contention that the focus peaking built into the monitor (not magic lantern) would be unreliable because the signal is 480p?
 
Maybe down the road I'll look at RAW. But I don't think I could get by with 10 second recording times. So, is it your contention that the focus peaking built into the monitor (not magic lantern) would be unreliable because the signal is 480p?

My monitor does not have peaking feature. The ML peaking could be tweaked to get it to be more accurate. My technical opinion would be, If I had to look at a 480p image, i'd trust the peaking from the camera that the peaking being implemented on a low res image on the monitor.

By the way, currently 5D mkII gives you more than a minute (around 1,596 frames ) with 1880 x940 and
stable recording meaning continuous and spanning files beyond the 4gig limit with 1880 x 854 2.20:1 or 1720 x 968 16:9. These are far better than h264 even when you ever so slightly upscale
the 1720 x 968 or 1880x854.

The 5D mkII raw implementation had already kinda stabilized for the past few nightly builds. Its the other models that need some more work.

However, it won't do sound. So even for me, if its run and gun interviews I'd still use h264, raw video is just another trick up the sleeve. Its nice to know it's there.
 
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