Canon EOS 7D RAW Video?

[Canon Rumors]

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From Magic Lantern

A1ex from the Magic Lantern team has let it be know that they think RAW video with the EOS 7D is a good possibility.

7D users: got something cool for you https://t.co/NkDgmeJDJs http://t.co/qmfnG411ry

— Magic Lantern (@autoexec_bin) August 2, 2013

 

Read more at Planet5D

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[JasonATL]

Very nice development. With the CF card, continuous 1080/24p raw might be possible. I'd prefer this to the 5D3, since I actually prefer the APS-C sensor size for video. Excuse me while I order a 7D...

[crazyrunner33]

I have the 7D and the 5D Mark III, this is great news since I don't have to sell the 7D right away.  There's still the issue with the downsampling on the 7D, it is a line skipper and as a result it produces more noise at high iso and the aliasing is terrible.  It also isn't capable of full 1080p at full sensor resolution, this is only possible in crop mode. 

[Otara]

All sounds great, but given the 7D ML is still at alpha stage and has been for some time, this is more a theoretical achievement than actual.

[CarlMillerPhoto]

Has anybody had luck with the Mark III Raw at full 1080/24p with a CF with less than 1000x rating?

[Marsu42]

All sounds great, but given the 7D ML is still at alpha stage and has been for some time, this is more a theoretical achievement than actual.

"Alpha" is more a label to scare people who don't know what they're doing, since the ml framework is very stable by now a port to a new camera is also expected to be stable. So the "alpha" label more relates to the fact that you shouldn't *rely* on it for production and it might not be feature-complete then that it's likely to brick your camera.

Btw raw on the 5d3 will still be better than 7d because I'd expect the 1080p data rate to be too high and 720p has moire.

[DFM]

The raw buffer offsets have been found but so far all we have is burst mode (a second or two of frames taken from the silent picture buffer). Moire and fringing are very bad - the fringing was equally terrible in the early days of raw on the 5D, but it was tamed. Moire is more of a problem, I can't see that going away.

However the general outlook for people shooting stills and H.264 is good - autobooting has been sorted so you no longer need to update the firmware every time you turn the camera on, and tests with dual-iso shooting seem to be working OK using yesterday's build. If you want all-I H.264, with sound, at maximum quality you can have it right now, and for most people that's more practicable than DNG sequences.

The big revelation is that the 7D writes to card like a thing possessed - people are getting over 90MB/s, but for some reason the read speed is 2/3 of that. IF the raw buffers can be captured there's more than enough throughput for full-HD, but as I said, I suspect the line-skip sensor will be a problem.

[AAPhotog]

Has anybody had luck with the Mark III Raw at full 1080/24p with a CF with less than 1000x rating?

Yes, sandisk 600x cards allow for continuous 1080p shooting in raw. thats the only 600x card I tested that allowed it though

[Otara]

All sounds great, but given the 7D ML is still at alpha stage and has been for some time, this is more a theoretical achievement than actual.

"Alpha" is more a label to scare people who don't know what they're doing, since the ml framework is very stable by now a port to a new camera is also expected to be stable. So the "alpha" label more relates to the fact that you shouldn't *rely* on it for production and it might not be feature-complete then that it's likely to brick your camera.

Btw raw on the 5d3 will still be better than 7d because I'd expect the 1080p data rate to be too high and 720p has moire.

Thats true for most cameras where its a single DIGIC chip, but the 7D is pretty different with its dual DIGIC 4 setup, and a real alpha in my view. 

Otara

[Marsu42]

Thats true for most cameras where its a single DIGIC chip, but the 7D is pretty different with its dual DIGIC 4 setup, and a real alpha in my view. 

The problem with ml on the 7d was to get it to start at all, and now they managed to find a way, but afaik just like on single digic cameras ml is only using/running on one cpu, so it's not like the whole thing needs to get rewritten.

If ml used to brick cameras it was mostly because invalid values were written to the Canon fw, the result was that the cameras refuses to respond until you de-brick it with a special mini-firmware. But nowadays ml reverse engineering has a very good idea what valid values are and they check them before setting them, so the main risk is contained no matter how many cpus are on the pcb.

[crazyrunner33]

I've been playing around with the hack last night and plan to post a test today.  In playback mode I hit almost 92 MB/s with the write being faster than the read, but in record mode it drops to around 58 MB/s write. 

I'll only shoot with the 7D in crop mode, the full sensor mode has too much aliasing and moire. 

Edit: Here's a quick sample at 2520x1200.  I assume they'll have a lot of features from the 5D ported over soon, but right now you have to wait almost a minute for the card to write after each 2 second clip.  It also dumps all the frames into one single folder instead of making individual clip files which makes it difficult to work with, but also a little fun at the same time.

Canon 7D 2 5K RAW Test Footage	Small | Large

Here's the original file uploaded to Youtube: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxvjJuCko_vAeTBudWNJZ1lTZ1U/edit?usp=sharing

I can upload a couple DNG files if anyone is interested.

[Otara]

Thats true for most cameras where its a single DIGIC chip, but the 7D is pretty different with its dual DIGIC 4 setup, and a real alpha in my view. 

The problem with ml on the 7d was to get it to start at all, and now they managed to find a way, but afaik just like on single digic cameras ml is only using/running on one cpu, so it's not like the whole thing needs to get rewritten.

If ml used to brick cameras it was mostly because invalid values were written to the Canon fw, the result was that the cameras refuses to respond until you de-brick it with a special mini-firmware. But nowadays ml reverse engineering has a very good idea what valid values are and they check them before setting them, so the main risk is contained no matter how many cpus are on the pcb.

Alpha doesn't have to = bricking risk, but there probably is a greater risk of bricking with the 7d compared to the other cameras, if not massive.   The main limitations is that some functions aren't single digic only, so it needs extra work to get some things going, but isn't a particularly high priority camera to merit the extra effort, hence its ongoing alpha status compared to 5d cameras.

Also the firmware doesn't boot in the same way, and to get auto boot going is a much more laborious and in my view higher risk process.   So any new features go on top of those again.

[DFM]

Autoboot was solved on the 7D a couple of weeks ago and is now very simple. There's a firmware patch available to turn the bootflag on and off, just read the instructions from Pelican in the 7D alpha 2 thread on ML's forum. You don't need to downgrade the Canon firmware or run the update through an old copy of EOS Utility, you simply patch the Canon FIR file (for copyright reasons the developers aren't releasing a pre-patched file), stick it on your CF card and run the in-camera update.

There remain a few issues with the core functionality (no framerate override and some problems with the audio module) but most of the basic stuff like zebras, magic zoom and H.264 bitrate hacks are working perfectly on the 7D just as they are on the other bodies - see http://nanomad.magiclantern.fm/nightly/features.html

Also the firmware doesn't boot in the same way, and to get auto boot going is a much more laborious and in my view higher risk process.   So any new features go on top of those again.

[cayenne]

All sounds great, but given the 7D ML is still at alpha stage and has been for some time, this is more a theoretical achievement than actual.

"Alpha" is more a label to scare people who don't know what they're doing, since the ml framework is very stable by now a port to a new camera is also expected to be stable. So the "alpha" label more relates to the fact that you shouldn't *rely* on it for production and it might not be feature-complete then that it's likely to brick your camera.

Btw raw on the 5d3 will still be better than 7d because I'd expect the 1080p data rate to be too high and 720p has moire.

From what I've been following in the forums, the 5D3 is the one that is the most developed and working the best.

I wish they'd pool the resources, and concentrate on the 5D3, and get it 100% ready for "prime time" and bring that one at least to Beta, and have a straightforward method to easily load it, and also to easily get the RAW video out for a normal workflow, which appears to be straight into Davinci Resolve (after the 9.15 update).

At least get the one closest to working well out the door, and then concentrate next on the next best camera, maybe the 7D.

I'm a computer geek by trade, I do it for a living, however, after reading the ML forums, I'm not confident I could get the Alpha Stuff on, AND then correctly get the RAW video parts in, and am wary about some "flags" they say that can't be undone...etc.

I'm just not confident enough reading through the hundreds of links in the forums, etc...to get it to work, without potentially harming my camera.

So, wish they'd devote resouces to getting the first one ready for the masses, with good instructions and out the door, which seems to be the 5D3.....and then move onto the other cameras, rather than working a little on all of them, and taking forever to get any of them out into a stage that is easier to be used by the "Joe Sixpack" user crowd.

My $0.02,

cayenne

[thelebaron]

5d3's is pretty solid as is, the interface could be better but i think ML as is is kind of fiddly so Im not really sure how much more you can expect out of it. EOSHD's guide to getting the firmware working is all you really need, the only major searching might be now that the link to the fw in his guide could be out of date.
All in all im not too worried about the flags or bricking it, I would expect its a minor fix for canon if something were to go wrong(as its just software), unlike getting moisture into it or damage from being dropped.