Some food for thought
The following information is from one of my regular contributors. Read, enjoy and discuss.
5D2, 7D and 1D4
Digic IV was not designed as a video processing chip, hence it cannot downscale multi Megapixel images in real-time at a frame rate needed for video. The fastest camera ever released by the company is the 7D and it can only down sample by pixel binning close to ten 18MP images to any smaller size a second. Current implementation skips vertical and horizontal lines then averages pixel values.
Digic V has a new on die area for video processing which lets it do up to 60 1080p frames a second with help from a pre-encoding ASIC chip that does pixel binning really fast. This will generate an image with almost no visible artifacts or moire. It will still be a step below RAW video but quality will be usable on production environments and on heavily detailed scenes.
I have not heard anything about a RAW module for SLR cameras. It seems far fetched since the CF module on these cameras just can't feed that kind of data for video even in sRAW. The only raw module I have seen specs on will be an option package on the upcoming line of video specific products in 2010.
The 5D MII 24p firmware seems to be on hold, it has been tested since the camera was a prototype and there is simply no reason why the 5D can't do 1080 24p or 720p 30. The upcoming 1D Mark IV will have even better video than the 7D from the specs Ive heard about and this camera will not be released this year as speculated. So Canon doesn't
really need to release a new update for the 5D. One interesting
thing that might cement this decision is that the rolling shutter on the 5D MII is much nastier in 24p and they probably thought it was just not good enough to release it. If the patch is released expect heavy rolling shutter.
1D Mark IV what to look for based on part lists from suppliers and engineers:
-Completely new AF module akin to that on the 7D but with several times as many AF points. The tracking performance on this will be the best in the industry for many years. Video focus assist will be improved in speed five fold.
-Video: 1080p 24,30,25 720p 50, 60, SD with improved picture and audio control limits. Improved video processing. If it has Digic V it will be a true binning downscale and a big jump in quality.
-No swivel screen, improved contrast and color gamut.
-12 fps at full 14bit. – this is not confirmed just rumored by staff outside of the project!
The 1D line is guarded air tight and even many engineers working on modules for the camera have not even seen the full spec list.
cr
89 Comments
i agree with 24fps is not important, 60 and higher fps are very nice BUT NOT at the expense of resolution, i think of video from the PoV of a frame grabber (my target is more often the grabbed frames than the clip itself).
I think you’re forgetting something when saying crop is an option. If you had the exact same pixel density on a FF sensor and an aps-h sensor, the processing loads would be larger on the FF camera, which would slow down your max FPS by roughly 25%. Yes, images quality would THEORETICALLY remain the same, but the 1D MKIV is built to be a sports camera with HIGH fps. Batch cropping would just slow things down more if it was done in camera, you’d also have to worry about how the user would compose their image through a pentaprism if the camera just cropped it after exposure. So, to me it just doesn’t make sense to shoot full frame and crop for pro users.
In the 7D’s case, I’d much rather have a camera that had 18mp @ 8fps with a 1.6 crop factor, than the equivalent 28mp FF sensor body shooting at 3.5fps that cropped my shots to give me 18mp equivalent. Again, you have to remember that these cameras are limited to the speed of the Digic processors, which is somewhere near 80 mega pixels per second for the Digic 4. I think the FF users already have their camera’s……5D MKII, and 1Ds MKIII.
We are never gonna get 1080 60p on the 5D2, it’s twice the bandwidth. 720 60p is the same bandwidth as 1080 30p, it’s definately doable. It’s not the best, but at least there’d be some option for smooth action shooting, and if the client only needs web delivery for the video, that is more than enough. Obviously 720 60p is not ideal for feature film making or high end Bluray delivery. But having the option would be nice.
I’ve already done a lot of HD video work using stop motion with point and shoots (don’t laugh, they come out really well considering).
I’m looking at buying a 5D2, it was the capability of HD video with fast L lenses that really whet my appetite. I assumed it would record true RGB per pixel (21MP scaling down to 2MP can enable this).
I’ve looked at many 5D2 (post firmware update) mov files (as huge as they are: 42Mb/s) – they’re really disappointing. It is quite obvious that it is skipping alternate VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL lines. This effect is really noticeable where there is strong red/blue colour. It’s like recording with a basic 2MP camera with a really bad demosaic filter (but without the noise).
I think this is really bad; can anyone else see this effect?
(I can still see significant artefacting even when scaling down to 540P)
Is there any chance this will be fixed in firmware in the future, or is this a fundamental limitation of their DIGICs? Should I remain with my 1000D until something good comes along?
no clue, this posting just sounded like it might have been from him, although the part about having guessed some stuff from parts orders sounds a little different though