5D Mark III firmware with clean HDMI is ready right now.

jcs said:
When stating that ALL-I or IPB is better, it's helpful to show proof:
Click to expand...

I agree it is helpful to show proof, can you post some frame exports of your 1.2.1 footage?

What we need now are updated comparisons. Everything out there is more than 1 year old. Many of the comparisons were done with Premiere Pro CS 5.5 which I think had some issues with 5D3 footage. Others were done with FCP and transcoding to ProRes. These old comparisons are invalid. CS 6 handles the native codec properly now.

I have done some very extensive codec testing and confirmed there is no such thing as lossless transcoding. There are many valid reasons for transcoding footage but for maximum image quality nothing is better than the native footage in an editor that handles it correctly.
 
Celluloid Dream said:
I agree it is helpful to show proof, can you post some frame exports of your 1.2.1 footage?

What we need now are updated comparisons. Everything out there is more than 1 year old. Many of the comparisons were done with Premiere Pro CS 5.5 which I think had some issues with 5D3 footage. Others were done with FCP and transcoding to ProRes. These old comparisons are invalid. CS 6 handles the native codec properly now.

I have done some very extensive codec testing and confirmed there is no such thing as lossless transcoding. There are many valid reasons for transcoding footage but for maximum image quality nothing is better than the native footage in an editor that handles it correctly.
Click to expand...


As far as I know, transcoding to Cineform (with high quality setting) actually improves the footage a bit. You can choose to upscale the footage to 10bit 422 or even 12bit RGB444. the image holds better against subsequent grading and sharpening etc.
 
Celluloid Dream said:
I agree it is helpful to show proof, can you post some frame exports of your 1.2.1 footage?
Click to expand...

Hi Celluloid Dream- I check the 5D3 every now and then however I've moved on to the FS700 + Speed Booster when quality matters (+ Nanoflash for super low light or fast motion). Full frame, pro-audio, built-in NDs, awesome framerate support + I find it plenty filmic with the CINE gammas compared to the 5D3. While it's already an excellent step up from the 5D3 as a full frame camera (with SB), the next firmware update might bring the XAVC codec to the FS700, further improving quality (it will include SLog2!). My day job is image and audio processing software, and like many here I also write, shoot, and edit video as time permits. Thus what's important to me could be different than what's important to folks who shoot full-time for a living. I happily switch brands between Sony, Canon, and Panasonic based on what products they deliver. If BMD produced a camera with a more advanced+modern IPB code such as XAVC (or simply high-bitrate H.264), I'd consider one of their new products (ProRes is MJPEG- old, fat, and inefficient). Since I have limited time to shoot & edit, smaller file sizes with high-efficiency are more important than the slight improvement ALL-I codecs can provide (at super high bitrates). Tuned 100Mbps MPEG2 (as with the Nanoflash) can look excellent, but has problems sometimes (ancient codec); tuned 100Mbps H.264 (IBP) would rock for HD (which is possible with XAVC (including 10+bit and 422 and 444)).
 
marvinhello said:
As far as I know, transcoding to Cineform (with high quality setting) actually improves the footage a bit. You can choose to upscale the footage to 10bit 422 or even 12bit RGB444. the image holds better against subsequent grading and sharpening etc.
Click to expand...

Mathematically, impossible. In the case of broken or low quality native decoders in NLEs, sure. CS6 has a good H.264 decoder, so no improvement by transcoding first (feel free to post zoomed/cropped frame dumps to show otherwise). After purchasing a few of their products, Cineform proved to be the most buggy codec and tools I have ever used for video. Not recommended. At first I was a wavelet fan purely on the math side, however in practice DCT methods proved to be much better and more efficient + scaleable (interframe/motion etc.).
 
I did a quick ALL-I test, it's still VBR, 90Mbps high detail - 30Mbps low detail.

I noticed that ProRes was noisier in the shadows in Andrews test.
 
marvinhello said:
As far as I know, transcoding to Cineform (with high quality setting) actually improves the footage a bit. You can choose to upscale the footage to 10bit 422 or even 12bit RGB444. the image holds better against subsequent grading and sharpening etc.
Click to expand...

In my codec testing I found some interesting stuff about Cineform.

1. Transcoding to the cineform codec with the Cineform Studio application gives higher quality results than the same transcode with Adobe Media Encoder CS6.

2. FilmScan 1 quality is noticeably better than High quality.

3. If grading with the Cineform Studio application, using Cineform appears to be the highest quality possible, better than native.

4. If grading inside Premiere, Canon native codec, ProRes, and DNxHD are all better than Cineform, in that order.

5. You can now apply sharpening in addition to color grading as no render adjustments with the Cineform Studio Premium and Professional, which is awesome.
 
marvinhello said:
You can choose to upscale the footage to 10bit 422 or even 12bit RGB444.
Click to expand...

You can upscale anything to anything. It doesn't mean that somehow it is "better". It's still the original file now wrapped into something bigger. You can do interpolation in between with a good algorithm and denoise/add noise to get "something" more, but it's stuff you can do later in post, why do it as a transcode?
 
jcs said:
When stating that ALL-I or IPB is better, it's helpful to show proof:
Click to expand...

I've seen all those. I didn't agree then, don't agree now. Everytime I've used IPB I've gotten a worse picture. Even the slightest amount of movement and for example, motion blur is shot to hell.
 
yoclay said:
The image is soft, and yes I can sharpen reasonably well in post, but it doesn't give it the kind of sharpness that I am seeing coming natively off of many cameras.
Click to expand...

AVCHD / uncompressed doesn't really affect this "softness" issue. If you change the encoder of the FS700 to the all-i implementation used in the 5dmarkIII, you will not get a smoother image. The smoothness is in the original output before encoding, confirmed by HDMI capture.

Yes, there is mosquito noise more in ALL-i but guess what? That's how it actually looks. Capture the HDMI stream uncompressed and you will see more noise than the internal encoder. That's because the mpeg-4 encoder does a bit of cleaning up before encoding.
 
This is from the 5d mk III (click for 100% - no grading so the colors and exposure is different):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45915964/5D_1.jpg

This shot is from the FS700 - same scene (240fps mode)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45915964/FS700_240fps_1.jpg

For me, the 5d is better. Less noise, better colours (I did expose it more so it would be easier to grade - I was mostly shooting b-roll) and the fs700 is from the A-cam operator.

There is more detail in the FS700 but it's also just...more ugly. We're gonna do some intercutting and we can get them to cut up pretty well. Is this yoclay the "sharpness" you can see coming from many cameras? Because if it is, I'm not really that interested (except the slowmo, that's great). And look at that lamp in the upper part of the image, FS700 has those telltale Sony highlight issues with color fringing. 5d is clean.
 
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legrevedotcom said:
So far I'm hearing no audio and only 24p and 50i? What a major cock-up... sorry, but that is a f***ing Canon joke... again.

Atleast Sony was wise enough to make the FS cameras world cams, because anything else is just plain stupid.
Click to expand...

I know.

This summer is going to be very interesting. If BM delivers a good chunk of 4k and pocket cams I can see huge price drops for Canon and Sony.
 
maarek said:
This is from the 5d mk III (click for 100% - no grading so the colors and exposure is different):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45915964/5D_1.jpg

This shot is from the FS700 - same scene (240fps mode)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45915964/FS700_240fps_1.jpg

For me, the 5d is better. Less noise, better colours (I did expose it more so it would be easier to grade - I was mostly shooting b-roll) and the fs700 is from the A-cam operator.

There is more detail in the FS700 but it's also just...more ugly. We're gonna do some intercutting and we can get them to cut up pretty well. Is this yoclay the "sharpness" you can see coming from many cameras? Because if it is, I'm not really that interested (except the slowmo, that's great). And look at that lamp in the upper part of the image, FS700 has those telltale Sony highlight issues with color fringing. 5d is clean.
Click to expand...

Interesting. The 2nd image definitely has a lot more detail, the from the circuit boxes on the back wall to the stains on the guys trousers. But a lot more noise. And a lot uglier than the first image.

Was this true for just this even, or other scenes with different lighting?
 
maarek said:
This is from the 5d mk III (click for 100% - no grading so the colors and exposure is different):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45915964/5D_1.jpg

This shot is from the FS700 - same scene (240fps mode)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45915964/FS700_240fps_1.jpg

For me, the 5d is better. Less noise, better colours (I did expose it more so it would be easier to grade - I was mostly shooting b-roll) and the fs700 is from the A-cam operator.

There is more detail in the FS700 but it's also just...more ugly. We're gonna do some intercutting and we can get them to cut up pretty well. Is this yoclay the "sharpness" you can see coming from many cameras? Because if it is, I'm not really that interested (except the slowmo, that's great). And look at that lamp in the upper part of the image, FS700 has those telltale Sony highlight issues with color fringing. 5d is clean.
Click to expand...


comparing 240fps and 24p isn't really a good base to compare image quality aspects. The FS700 loses image quality to get those high framrates. I would be interested in seeing them both at 24p for a true image comparison.
 
RatLabProductions said:
comparing 240fps and 24p isn't really a good base to compare image quality aspects. The FS700 loses image quality to get those high framrates. I would be interested in seeing them both at 24p for a true image comparison.
Click to expand...

Oh. 240fps? Didn't get that.

Agreed - 24p to 24p would be a better indicator, Maarek.

Either way, the image from the 5Dmk3 still looks pretty good in the still.
 
maarek said:
This is from the 5d mk III (click for 100% - no grading so the colors and exposure is different):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45915964/5D_1.jpg

This shot is from the FS700 - same scene (240fps mode)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45915964/FS700_240fps_1.jpg

For me, the 5d is better. Less noise, better colours (I did expose it more so it would be easier to grade - I was mostly shooting b-roll) and the fs700 is from the A-cam operator.

There is more detail in the FS700 but it's also just...more ugly. We're gonna do some intercutting and we can get them to cut up pretty well. Is this yoclay the "sharpness" you can see coming from many cameras? Because if it is, I'm not really that interested (except the slowmo, that's great). And look at that lamp in the upper part of the image, FS700 has those telltale Sony highlight issues with color fringing. 5d is clean.
Click to expand...

What color profile were you using with the FS700? Clearly some of the profiles (CINEGAMMAS) do a much better job with highlights and edge artifacts. That said, the FS700 has crazy edge bugs with blue highlights- hopefully will be fixed in the firmware update for next month. 240 FPS could be helped re:light & noise with a Speed Booster. Other than that, the FS700 doesn't look that bad compared to the super blurry 5D3 (I have both cameras). The reason the 5D3 still can 'look better' or 'more like film' is the absence of digital artifacts. Unfortunately it's just a bit too blurry. Modern real film is sharp and detailed, with no artifacts. Adding filmic noise grain to the FS700 can help with the digital artifacts, especially when shooting at 240FPS.
 
maarek said:
This is from the 5d mk III (click for 100% - no grading so the colors and exposure is different):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45915964/5D_1.jpg

This shot is from the FS700 - same scene (240fps mode)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45915964/FS700_240fps_1.jpg

For me, the 5d is better. Less noise, better colours (I did expose it more so it would be easier to grade - I was mostly shooting b-roll) and the fs700 is from the A-cam operator.

There is more detail in the FS700 but it's also just...more ugly. We're gonna do some intercutting and we can get them to cut up pretty well. Is this yoclay the "sharpness" you can see coming from many cameras? Because if it is, I'm not really that interested (except the slowmo, that's great). And look at that lamp in the upper part of the image, FS700 has those telltale Sony highlight issues with color fringing. 5d is clean.
Click to expand...

That's funny, because I have always hated the way the FS700's image looks. Pure video, awful colors. However, SLOG2 is coming for that camera and it's going to be a whole different ball game when that arrives. It's going to add 1.5-2 stops of DR and give you some serious color information to work with, as well as a much more gentle roll-off. I currently shoot F3 with SLOG and it blows away the 5D in terms of sharpness. I think the FS700 also has a more performant sensor than the F3 (not to mention being able to go 4K eventually), so I am sure as soon as we get away from all that internal camera processing something quite different will be seen.

However, I will say this in the 5D's favor, I often shoot fashion/beauty style images and sometimes the 5D's softness is actually beneficial and if I really need to pump a little sharpness back in, it accepts it well in post.
 
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A user on the forum I moderate for (Planet5D) is stating that definitely the image he is getting out of the camera internally is now slightly sharper with the new firmware.
Anyone else notice this?
 
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