DIY Photography

Your one stop shop for everything photo-video

  • News
  • Inspiration
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • DIY
  • Gear
Search

Submit A Story

Magic Lantern Pulls RAW Video at 24FPS From Canon’s 5D mkIII

May 13, 2013 by Udi Tirosh 2 Comments

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Here are some great news to start off the week. The team at Magic Lantern – Canon’s unsupported firmware just shared an interesting bit of information. They were able to use the firmware to pull uncompressed RAW video from Canon’s 5DmkIII.

Magic Lantern Pulls RAW Video at 24FPS From Canon's 5D mkIII

Usually, the video that’s coming out of the 5D is a compressed H.264 stream which both reduces the resolution and the dynamic range of the data coming from the sensor. But the RAW video provide more resolution and more dynamic rage, just like a RAW file provide those over a jpg file.

It seems that while in theory the camera could produce full 1080 uncompressed footage, there is a buffer bottle neck which only lets 1928×850 at 24fps through. But that can be cropped to 1920×817 with widescreen black strips at top and bottom.

Here is the account from ML user lourenco:

“I did a quick test in Raw mode. I wanted to see how much higher I could do above 720p. I tried 1928×850 and 1928×902. I think it was 902. 902 the buffer would fill up and video stops after 700 frames or so.  At 850 I am able to get continuous recordings.

The best I am able to obtain in Raw mode right now is continuous 1928×850 at 24fps. I plan to crop the video to 1920×817 to do 2.35:1 wide screen aspect ratio, which is about 1920×817. The video will have black bars on top and bottom to output at 1920×1080.

Does It Really Look Better?

It sure does? look at those two sample movies. The first taken with Canon’s native compression with Technicolor CineStyle @ 1080p x 24 fps, and the second taken with the new RAW video.

Is there a cost?

Well, like any uncompressed format you trade quality for space and speed. The raw video coming from ML’s firmware is a 3MB per frame river of data. So you will need a card that is both fast enough   and big enough (24 FPS @ 3MB/frame is 72MB/second burst). At ML forums they used a Lexar x1000 card which cost about $300/$650 for 64/128 GB.

You would also need to do some post production processing once you download the files. Alex from ML provides a RAW to DNG converter utility.

What’s Coming Next?

Obviously, there would be a delay between discovering this new feature and releasing it to the ML firmware release. They also testing if it is possible to enable this feature on the older MKIIs. So I’d keep an eye on the ML forums.

I think it would also be interesting to see if Canon ever releases a statement about this.

[uncompressed YUV422 and 14-bit RAW video recording | Magic Lantern via nofilmschool, The Phoblographer]

FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Related posts:

Default ThumbnailWhy Magic Lantern Raw Video Is The Best Thing That Happened To Canon Default ThumbnailMagic Lantern’s Low ISO Raw Video Leaves H.264 In The Shade FFMPEG Adds Support For Magic Lantern RAW Video – On The Way For A Smoother Workflow Magic Lantern adds 4k raw video to Canon 5D Mark III

Filed Under: DIY Tagged With: Magic Lantern, Video

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.net

About Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

« Introduction To Tethered Shooting
Pictures Of Computer’s Insides Show Who’s Really Taking Care Of Our Data »

Submit A Story

Get our FREE Lighting Book

DIYP lighting book cover

* download requires newsletter signup
DIYPhotography

Recent Comments

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Recent Posts

  • Comica CVM-VM30 is the world’s first wireless shotgun mic
  • Everything you need to know about science/technology photography
  • How Fujifilm survived while Kodak didn’t
  • Use these two simple methods to remove skin shine from portraits
  • Improved Sun Moon Expert app gets you perfectly timed sun and moon photos

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

Alex Baker: from diyphotography.netAlex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

David Williams: from diyphotography.netDave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred: from diyphotography.netJohn Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic: from diyphotography.netDunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

Copyright © DIYPhotography 2006 - 2023 | About | Contact | Advertise | Write for DIYP | Full Disclosure | Privacy Policy