Magic Lantern enables 14-bit RAW CinemaDNG on 5D

Something that is possibly worth mentioning as it relates to camera makers percieved to be "holding back" raw recording, or the 5D with this hack overheating or otherwise failing (which it might, but I suspect won't): On paper at least, engineering a raw recording video camera is significantly LOWER-tech than a more conventional camera with a low-bitrate codec.

In a conventional single-sensor video camera, the sensor data must first be de-bayered, then gamma-curve applied, along with color matrix/white balance adjustments, denoising, sharpening, and/or other enhancements. Finally that image is passed along to a dizzyingly complex h.264 encoding process before finally being written to the recording media. To record raw, all of that processing can be skipped and the raw data from the sensor can just be dumped into the recording media (that's slightly oversimplifed, but you get the point). The bottleneck has always been the speed and capacity of the recording media, not camera specs per se. Affordable flash media that is fast enough to record that firehose of data is now available, and with that, it should not be surprising to see low-cost raw recording video cameras coming onto the market, or even hacked into existence from pre-existing cameras.
 
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Wesley Byram said:
Something that is possibly worth mentioning as it relates to camera makers percieved to be "holding back" raw recording, or the 5D with this hack overheating or otherwise failing (which it might, but I suspect won't): On paper at least, engineering a raw recording video camera is significantly LOWER-tech than a more conventional camera with a low-bitrate codec.

In a conventional single-sensor video camera, the sensor data must first be de-bayered, then gamma-curve applied, along with color matrix/white balance adjustments, denoising, sharpening, and/or other enhancements. Finally that image is passed along to a dizzyingly complex h.264 encoding process before finally being written to the recording media. To record raw, all of that processing can be skipped and the raw data from the sensor can just be dumped into the recording media (that's slightly oversimplifed, but you get the point). The bottleneck has always been the speed and capacity of the recording media, not camera specs per se. Affordable flash media that is fast enough to record that firehose of data is now available, and with that, it should not be a surprising to see low-cost raw recording video cameras coming onto the market, or even hacked into existence from pre-existing cameras.
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very rational post. I don't think a $300mb 64gb card is affordable though. Relatively maybe, but not affordable (to most) when you need 4 of them to do an hour of RAW.
 
I fully announce in public... I was wrong. Lol...I said I'd be happy to be wrong though. Congrats Squig, you have your feature cam now! Would be curious to see about the M JPEG modes for less "important" stuff. And the cost of data as noted by shuenwang. ^^^^
 
pulpfiction007 said:
I fully announce in public... I was wrong. Lol...I said I'd be happy to be wrong though. Congrats Squig, you have your feature cam now! Would be curious to see about the M JPEG modes for less "important" stuff. And the cost of data as noted by shuenwang. ^^^^
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Yeah it's actually looking like I do, the timing couldn't have been better, I'm hoping to start shooting in August. Looks like the film gods are repaying some karma for my gratis forum work. I can't think of a better way of showing my appreciation to the ML crew than shooting a righteous feature with ML RAW.

I was just about to pull the trigger on an FS100 and had my MK3 listed on ebay a couple of weeks ago but nobody wanted it, LOL!

You can shoot 1920x720 @ 2Mb per frame which isn't too bad.
 
...wow... when this will be out... I think it's time folks start showing their gratitude to the faceless superhumans who have worked tirelessly by donating. I will donate... AGAIN. my 3rd to be exact.
 
pulpfiction007 said:
Something to think about though...not exactly "affordable" in this case.


14.8 minutes of footage on a super expensive 64GB card. Over or around $1200 bucks for an hour of footage. Also, so far the clips just look strange..we'll see how they pan out, and see if heat is an issue.
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When we shot with an 5D MkIII it shut down because of heat at about 80 minutes of continuous recordng, this will run hotter. The hack will probably not be a great doc cam but a great narrative cam. Now enable some sound recording for easier synch.
 
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For serious work 2 camera bodies is the way to go, just swap bodies when you would normally swap batteries, or sooner depending on the heat.
 
I hope that Illya at Hotrod cameras will do a PL mount conversion once we see if the 6D or 5d MkIII is the best platform with this hack. We would be able to use everything from 16mm to 35mm on the camera, just adjust the crop.
 
There was a guy in Melbourne that was doing PL conversions on the 7D, I don't have a link but if you google hard enough you might find him.
 
Hey Squig you mentioned on your skull video that it looks just as good as a raw still down sampled to 1080. Do you know if the data stream is a down sampled feed or is it line-skipping to get it down to resolution?
 
If I remember right, I read somewhere back in the ML threads they mentioned the raw burst is line skipping. A res test on the burst dngs confirmed it still has color aliasing on the 5D mkII, this is said to be because of line skipping.
Squig's video tests might be different since he is using the MKIII.
 
...i sold my canon few weeks ago :(

ok so i have few questions:
does raw mode increasing your shutter count, or is it like normal video? also i noticed there is two modes in development, raw recording, and somekind compressed higher color and bit depth codec like recording..so whats this codec, what does it do, and what are its benefits?

also we can't shoot long raw video at the moment right? only few seconds or so, or am i wrong?
 
mcnys said:
...i sold my canon few weeks ago :(

ok so i have few questions:
does raw mode increasing your shutter count, or is it like normal video? also i noticed there is two modes in development, raw recording, and somekind compressed higher color and bit depth codec like recording..so whats this codec, what does it do, and what are its benefits?

also we can't shoot long raw video at the moment right? only few seconds or so, or am i wrong?
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It's like normal video only (so it doesn't increase your shutter count) and is now 1080p 24fps continuous shooting. The two second clip limit was when they were still trying figure things out. I haven't kept up with the other development though.
 
Ryan-Guy said:
Hey Squig you mentioned on your skull video that it looks just as good as a raw still down sampled to 1080. Do you know if the data stream is a down sampled feed or is it line-skipping to get it down to resolution?
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I don't know whether it's lineskipping or don't and to be honest I don't care, the resolution has gone from 700 lines to something like 900 or more, it's got the detail of a downscaled RAW still, we're talking C300, 1DC killer here and with a fast card you can shoot 2k RAW! With anamorphic lenses it might be able to manage 4k! But I could care less about 4k. All I ever dreamed of was 2k RAW. Who says dreams don't come true, the MK3 RAW well and truly is a baby Alexa except it shoots VistaVision!

I'm playing with it now and I'm getting continuous 1080p recording with a 600x Lexar card. I can't do anything with the files until someone writes a mac debayer utility :cry:

There's no codec as such just RAW data which has to be debayered with software then output to DNG, CinemaDNG, or JPEG. The software is still in development, everything is still in development.
 
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