Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Its not an April fools ;). I'm careful in stating "raw in liveview" and not "raw video" as its still in the early stages.
However, the developers say it passed the biggest hurdle. They currently can do 10fps of compressed raw. They say "raw video" meaning at at least 24fps is potentially possible.

Read more here and see sample files:

14bit RAW “Video” on Canon DSLR’s with Magic Lantern

Yep, we have 14-bit RAW data in LiveView. DNG silent pics for 5D2/5D3.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Preview video is incredibly impressive, but it's interesting that they keep making comparisons to the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. BMCC and 5D3 bodies are similar pricing, and lenses are interchangeable. Cool feature for existing 5D3 owners but no one would make a purchase decision based on this. Excited to see where this might go though. Hopefully my 7D can be upgraded too.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

And the T2i/3i/4i/5i. I agree, there's no point in buying a Mk III for a hacked feature. If you're making even a small amount of money doing video and you need raw, buy the BMCC.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

I wonder about heat from the camera when doing this?

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Thanks for reporting this, Ted! Just a heads-up, though: I replaced your third-party link with direct-to-the-source links. On DV Info Net we greatly prefer links that point straight to the original source, as opposed to some other site's report on that source. Thanks in advance for understanding,

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Currently it looks like a bunch of raw photos taken quickly, which isn't all that surprising (I would have thought if they found the data stream straight off the sensor, or after it is line skipped and before it gets compressed, the frame rate would be the frame rate. Then it's just a matter of writing it to the card somehow. Then again I know nothing at all about any of this).

If they get it working I wonder if the same stunt will work on the crop sensor models (7D, 60D etc). That'd be cool. Give them a new lease on life. I wouldn't be surprised if the systems, SD card based particularly, turn out to be a bit slow for the job though. (7D twin processors might help there, where they initially hindered. Who knows).

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

No worries Chris. I'm even glad you changed the links.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

I agree. But for those with the good old 5d mkII, ML gave it a new lease on life.
I was about to replace it a couple of years ago when ML became unified and became stable.
With addition of a mosaic filter its still a useful workhorse.
Personally these are the features I find most useful;
1. The ability to automatically restart recording when 4gig limit reached.
2. HDR video for tricky lighting conditions. (ideal on dslrs with 60P)
3. Headphone out monitoring with gain control
4. split channel recording with independent gain control ( int + ext mics on the 2 channels)
5. extreme low light capability and creative options using variable frame rates from 1FPS to 30FPS
6. built in intervalometer for timelapse.
7. peaking and magic zooms for focus assist.
There are much more, like auto rack focus but I don't use them.
With the BMCC coming out I was again about to jump ship from dslrs, but now its worth to wait a bit, after all, the 4K bmcc isn't out yet.
But if after several months and the ML team can't figure it out and provide a workable raw video feature then other options will be considered.
Magic Lantern team is also testing making the video record YUV 422.
Link to MLthread by developer:
uncompressed YUV422 video recording

Crazy stuff indeed.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Lets hope this can work eventually but at this stage it is just a series if still shots, which is what the camera is known for already. The 1Dx can shoot 12 frames a second in RAW right now for still work.

It would seem a big leap to be able to record 24fps RAW from this camera for any useable length of time. Canon has already demonstrated that there is a pecking order in their product offerings and RAW video from the 5D MKIII is not in that order!

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

I read that it will work for the 600d. Although unlikely to get 25fps.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Can't see how this will be possible. The media isn't fast enough to support continuous raw recording. You need around 1Gb/s for uncompressed 2k raw and a 64GB card would be full in just 3 mins.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Those might be the two coolest things I've heard. Had no idea. I suppose shooting 1fps would accomplish a very similar effect as the intervalometer.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Shooting at 1fps would visually produce something similar when using an intervalometer.
The advantage is it would be a little faster to include the footage in post since its just 1 mov file as opposed to hundreds of frames when using stills.
The advantage of the later would be resolution and dynamic range if you used raw.

Heres a test I did awhile back when the version was only at 3fps. Now it goes to as low as 0.5 fps !

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Very exciting. This could be especially great for timelapse in that the mechanical shutter can stay open.

Can they get to 24 fps? That could be very tough. If it does 10 today, they need to more than double the speed, and they can't get there by just cropping the extra stuff on the edge. And it only does burst mode today - at 10 fps. My gut tells me that there are physical limits that will get in the way. Maybe a 1DX can get there from here.

And maybe we can get a 720p crop at 24fps. That would still be useful - especially if it delivers higher relative resolution than the current 1080p compressed video provides.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

I am following the nightly builds and testing them as well. They are making progress. The first build I tried dated
April 28, I could only record around 8-9frames with corrupted bottom of frame and black bar on side, also exposure seem to vary per frame.
April 29, I could already record 11-12 frames and the frames are now clean, exposures stable throughout.
Now, just uploaded,
April 30 build. I was now able to record 51 frames, DNG.

Note that I'm only using 5D mkii with a transcend 133x 8gig card, I use this small card for tests since my 32gig cards are loaded with the stable 2.3 release.

I bet those using the newer mkIII with fast cf cards are getter longer results especially using 720P which the mkII cannot do.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Amazing stuff. I can think of no other word for it, just amazing. Thanks for the report, Ted!

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Your welcome Chris,

I edited my previous post. My frames captured is not 36 frames but 51 frames DNG per burst!
:) I missed setting the end trigger in the burst settings. That's more than 4 seconds in 24fps.

And in order that we can really be objective about the quality of this progress I am currently doing chart tests to see its impact on the charts. I will compare it also with and without a mosaic filter.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

It's great to hear of what these Canon cameras can do. They have made significant discoveries trying to enable full uncompressed HDMI. Not only do we have RAW still images from the liveview video stream. They have also managed to get RAW video working on Mark III.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

After checking the footage, the 133x cf card I have only does 51 frames consistently on the 5D mk2 using april 30 build. Thats roughly 2+ seconds at 24fps.

I changed my previous posts of 102. I missed the break between 2 51 frame clips as the test I did was locked down and there was no difference. The frame count just continued to the next take.

Now the ML team say they have 400+ frames raw at 720p on the mkIII using a fast card.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

For the 5D mk2 the raw dng hack will not improve moire and aliasing. The mosaic filter will still be needed. Maybe the mkIII's softness will be improved.

Res chart I did on the mkII also with and without mosaic filter.

Remember though that this is the early stages and this is just from the nightly builds. For this test I used the April 30 build

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

This development is going to get exciting in the next couple of days. Hopefully. :)

ML team have now found a way to do continuous raw video recording via lv_rec. Unlike the burst mode.

The last build I used with burst mode already upped the number of raw dng frames recorded from 51 to 57 using my mk2 and a slow cf card.

They are going via a different route instead of burst mode.

The ML developers now can record several seconds of raw video. There is video going around showing a dog at 12 seconds but I won't link it here since I can't personally verify it it.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Ok. I think the GUI is now up for 5DmkIII and here are samples.


Also:

Magic Lantern 1920 x 1080 full 1080P raw test Canon 5D Mark III - YouTube

compared with iFrame

Canon 5D Mark III i-frame video test - YouTube

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

A 5d MKIII stops recordng at about three sequential 30minute segments. This will run hotter, so do not expect to record events or docs with this, but for narratives it will be YUBBA DUBBA DOO!

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Based on CF read/write speed benchmarking developer a1ex says that the following resolutions are possible on the 5D II at 24fps

- 1880x840 in full-frame mode (with line skipping)
- 1920x840 or 2152x720 in 1:1 crop mode (zero moire)

The 5D III seems to be capable of higher read write speeds and therefore higher resolutions/frame rates. As exciting as all this is I think we should all keep in mind that none of this is really official until we see some high quality cat videos.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Just got the repo/compile for MarkII raw video. My card is currently very slow so doing some familiarity tests for now. Still trying to let it sink in my head to see the words "RAW VIDEO ENABLE" in an old 5D mkII menu. ;)

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Shame it's raw as your going to need at least 2.3K to get full HD resolution after the de-bayer. The crop mode might be interesting. Use the MTF B4 adapter to put a 2/3" HD zoom on a 5D MkII and you have a very compact ENG camera.

Very clever reverse engineering that's for sure, but you would still be better off with the BMCC. There are very good reasons why all the current makers of dedicated raw cameras are using faster recording media.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

It would be interesting to see if a CF to SSD bridge product could be made sort of like the EF Films products for the EX-1. The card door would be the issue with the 5D as it shuts the camera down when the door is opened.

But, if the door could be replaced with a new door having a window, maybe data flow would not be an issue? This is really early but if the video output is real then I can see all sorts of stuff popping up.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

A good test video done by cinema 5d.

Being in alpha stage it still has some minor glitches. Cinema 5D included a shot with one.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Another beautiful one by neumann films:


They even let you download some DNGs to play around with in their site:

Camera Reviews | Neumann Films


Great detail in the footage!

For those with the 5d mkII (2)
 

Since I don't have a fast 1000x CF yet, I coaxed my poor 133x card to capture what it could just so I could get familiar with the workflow and the image.
Here's a video of things around my house, shiny utensils to test for highlight recovery, detailed stuff like flowers, etc. Mostly at 1280x720 upscaled to 1920x1080.
Towards the end are various res chart tests for those interested on the resolution,moire and aliasing as compared to native h.264 and also showing how the Mosaic filter still
is needed even with raw dng recording.


Vimeo:

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

My understanding is that "RAW" is normally used to mean the digitised data straight from the sensor, so in the case of the 5DMk3 I'd expect 5616 x 3744 (the sensor resolution) words of 14 bits? (More likely to be 5616x3159 - the 16:9 crop)

But references to "in liveview mode" and 720p resolution seem to indicate that's not what is on offer here?

"Liveview" is normally obtained by ignoring or grouping a percentage of the total photosites - typically as many as 75%. ("Pixel skipping", "line skipping" or "pixel binning" are various methods used.) It's the only way the sensor can be read at rates fast enough for video.

I suspect what's being done is obtaining the liveview stream pre the processing which gives normal video, obtaining the 14 bit samples, but not from the whole number of photosites of the chip. This may give some benefits in that there will be more controllability in post - but resolution, aliasing etc will be the same as in normal mode. It will give benefits over the normal recorded signal - in terms of post manipulation - though probably less than many may be hoping for. The question is whether the improvement is worth the far greater data rate that needs recording....?

The real issue is that more photosites is not necessarily a good thing, certainly for video. It's far better to have the optimum number and make use of them all, than too many and have to ignore a percentage of them. If the 5D has 20MP and uses 25% of them in video mode, it can never be as good as using a 5MP chip and fully using all of them.

Which is why chips and cameras are designed to have optimal performance for stills OR video. It's unrealistic to expect a camera primarily designed to take high quality still images to have comparable performance to one in the same price class designed specifically for video.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

For the raw hack you can choose either a line/pixel skipped output that uses the full sensor but pixel skips to achieve different output sizes or a crop mode which does not pixel skip but only uses a much smaller part of the sensor.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

......Which makes perfect engineering sense!

The problem comes that if pixel skipping, the sense of the Bayer pattern is lost, and if the gaps (unread photosites) in the pattern are large, then expect high aliasing/moire levels, or significant softening if this is controlled via a low pass filter. This seems to be held up by a quick look at the resolution charts posted.

Do you have figures for how big the area is in crop mode, Alister? It's reasonable to expect a readout of about 5MP (a quarter of the total), which I'd reckon to be about 2808x1580, and here could be a true Bayer pattern. That should deBayer down well to full 1080 resolution, with little aliasing etc - but in terms of lens angle/crop/dof will mean it's only operating as a 4/3 (approx.) size sensor camera. Which rather defeats the point of having a ff 35mm camera in the first place....? :-)

I don't deny this is a clever technical achievement, but don't anybody get too carried away. It may have benefits over the normal video modes in some respects (at the cost of far larger file sizes, and much faster - hence expensive - memory) but don't expect it will ever mean you'll be getting F5 class results at bargain prices.

If you want optimum video quality, buy a video camera, period. And marvel that it's possible to get decent video from a stills camera at all........

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

I read somewhere that currently it's only possible to record for about 40 seconds in raw before the camera stops, is that right and if so, has it to do with a fat32 file size limit that makes the camera stop when it reaches a certain filesize?

It all looks beautiful but I also have seen some footage with errors in it like vertical lines and other artifacts but I guess that over time this should be eliminated as well. Currently it doesn't seem like anything usable in a paid production.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

You can choose various H and V sizes, they are all multiples of 4, so all bayer compatible. Some of the frame sizes currently enabled are:

Full Frame or near full frame with line/pixel skipping
3592 ×1320 - Reported as very glitchy and dropping frames, not surprising as it is over 150MB/s
1920 x 1280 (3:2) Approx 70 MB/s
1920 x 1080 (16:9) Approx 60 MB/s
1280 x 720 (16:9) Approx 30 MB/s
1280 x 1280 (1:1)


1:1 crop modes -

3592 x 1320 Very glitchy as above.
2880 x 1320 Approx 110 MB/s
2560 x 1080 Approx 90 MB/s
1920 x 1080

The raw format is 14bit linear uncompressed RGGB raw and you then use a command line utility called raw2dng to convert the raw data to Cinema DNG.

X1000 CF cards are said to be able to hit about 140MB/s, so being realistic for video that means a useable speed of half that so I would suggest the real speed limit is 75MB/s, so you might be able to do 1920 x 1280 or 1920 x 1080 reliably but your really going to want 2880 x 1320 to get full resolution and that needs around 100MB/s so it's seriously pushing the technology even if it was actually designed to do it.

But the pixel/line skipping will kill any real advantages full frame, you will still suffer all the 5D artefacts that have always been there.

Crop mode should eliminate the artefacts, but the BM pocket camera or BMCC make more sense if you want a smaller sensor. A 64GB card will give 10 mins, 128GB card will give about 20 mins of record time, but with FAT you'll only be able to shoot for 40 seconds unless they can figure out a way to do split files. At $700 for 128GB or $450 for 32GB per card that's more expensive per minute than AXS, SSD or Red media.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Here is Macgregor's video he shot with raw. I helped him out getting some of the files needed to do the module install and file extract.

He currently has a slow card so he only shot with 1920x720.

We've seen lotsa trees and rocks, this is docu style showing a craftsman doing his trade.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Actually, a 128GB RED-mag cost $1,250.-

-- peer

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

Thanks for the information. As far as speed goes, then it's likely there will be an element of in camera buffering, so even a slow card would be able to record a high bitrate stream - just not for very long!!! :-) Faster the card, the longer it will take for the camera buffer to fill, hence why a faster card will record for longer before cutting out. (And why a card will manage to record a bitrate much faster than it's rated for - if not for very long.)
Fundamentally agreed. This "liveview RAW" mode may give more post manipulation possibilities, and avoid the basic compression - but since the drawbacks will be still be more significant, is it worth it?
Again, agreed. It's clever, and may have niche applications, but fundamentally if you want a camera to shoot general video, something like a BMCC makes far more sense, far better value for money.

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

From the few videos I have seen, the ML software is doing some truly amazing things. The RAW capture is impressive but the video sharpness they are getting from a sensor like that just knocks me out. Aside from bypassing the internal codec, how are they doing it? Have they changed the sensor scanning read out order? It doesn’t appear to have “typical” line skipping artifacts that we always see. Are they pixel binning? (is that even possible?)

Bigger industry questions:

How will this affect Canon’s upper model sales? (C 100/300)

How will this affect BlackMagic Design? (BMD is no longer the only player in the sub $4000 RAW recording anymore. (I’m sure there are many, MANY Canon folks rethinking their BMC pre-orders)

How will this affect Sony, Canon and Panny in the long term? RAW recording in $1,000 to $4,000 cameras is going to be extremely popular moving forward. (once you go RAW, you never go back)

How will this affect future designs and will it pressure the “big three” to build RAW into new lower tier models? (Until recently, RAW has been reserved for top end customers only)

It seems to me that BlackMagic and Magic Lantern have created a watershed moment in the industry. We might look back on all this years from now and say they were the “rule-breakers” that forced a big industry marketing model change. (Compression-free, RAW recording for the “little guys”)

Re: Magic Lantern unlocks Canon 5D to shoot 14 bit raw via liveview
 

I can see not wanting to have to deal with the compromises of compressed codecs, but most pros will use the format best suited to the situation, and that may not always be raw.