RAW video with Canon MKiii

vicmilt wrote on 5/13/2013, 10:08 AM

The next HUGE step in video acquisition has just been created by the genius team over at Magic Lantern. It's the ability to shoot RAW footage at high definition sizes with the (relatively) inexpensive Canon MKiii

RAW footage will give you a huge luminance range and an enormous ability to correct or create new color profiles and scene "looks".

Plus you'll now really be able to get some GREAT stills from your Video Footage (up to 5k still frames).

This is big - and it's the next big step for those of us who cannot afford 5 and 6 figure cameras.

Way back in December of 2009 I shot this short and presented some of the first footage to introduce large sensor capture (and the value of limited depth of field) to my Vegas buddies.

Of course, today that is all old news - but THIS IS THE NEXT STEP.
Be sure to check it out.
http://www.eoshd.com/content/10324/big-news-hands-on-with-continuous-raw-recording-on-canon-5d-mark-iii

Apparently the firmware upgrade delivers a series of 4k to 5k stills in a contiguous stream.
Magic Lantern is suggesting importing this stream of stills into After Effects, but I'm thinking that Vegas may also be able to do the same. I have certainly imported dozens of still sequences into Vegas for time lapse studies - and it IS the BEST editing software available on earth.

So why not?

More to come next week, when I get a chance to try it all out!

v

Comments

FilmingPhotoGuy wrote on 5/13/2013, 1:41 PM

I read about this this morning. I've installed Magic Lantern on both my Canon 60D's but they use SDHD cards and somehow the CF cards are faster or they don't make SDHC fast enough to capture at that rate.

Is there any downloadable footage to play with? I think that a 128GB CF card with do about 5 minutes of footage.

Thanks for posting.

Andy_L wrote on 5/13/2013, 4:08 PM

Huge is right!

FilmingPhotoGuy wrote on 5/14/2013, 3:25 PM

I don't think the penny has dropped yet. People should be doing flic-flacs with the news of this release of Magic Lantern for the Canon 5D MkIII.

Quote:
There’s no doubt the raw images from the 5D Mark III exceed the quality you get from Canon’s much more expensive cameras, like the C300
Unquote:

Andy_L wrote on 5/15/2013, 11:30 AM

download the original file here: http://vimeo.com/66033769

I've never seen anything remotely like this. It's like a DSLR timelapse running at normal speed.

c3hammer wrote on 5/16/2013, 11:01 AM

I've downloaded the zip file of the Smith Rocks sample video. Trying to figure out how to process the DNG images as Vegas doesn't recognize dng files.

Anyone have a simple solution for getting raw image sequence into Vegas?

I guess I might have to learn how to batch process images in Photoshop CS6. What output file from Photoshop would be suggested to then import as an image sequence in Vegas?

Cheers,
Pete

Andy_L wrote on 5/16/2013, 11:06 AM

Here's a direct link to the mp4 the author created:

https://vimeo.com/66033769/download?t=1368720204&v=164378627&s=13554c3698e48017dcb037b9cba1591c

This, to me, is pretty much the holy grail of video. It's what video is supposed to be. It's so far beyond anything I've ever seen come out of a consumer camera I really don't know how to describe it. I just know I want it. :)

dlion wrote on 5/16/2013, 1:29 PM

I believe lightroom 4 can work with raw video . not at my pc but I saw a tut a while ago... she applied color correction, i'm fuzzy on the output details.

JasonATL wrote on 5/16/2013, 3:19 PM

Lightroom or After Affects can process the raw files.

If you have all of the raw files in a folder, then you can "develop" them in After Effects for use in Vegas as follows (this is what I use with Blackmagic Cinema Camera footage when I use AE):
1. Open After Effects, creating a new composition with the characteristics of the clip you are importing.
2. Import one of the raw files, which will open Adobe Camera Raw. Select the option to import all of the clips in the folder as a sequence.
3. Make your preferred adjustments to the image. If you want to color correct in Vegas Pro, then you might want to just raise the black and shadows and lower the highlights and whites a bit to get a "flat" image, perhaps even lowering the saturation a bit.
4. Select "Interpret footage" to set the frame rate of the clip.
5. Put the imported footage on the timeline. Change the timeline properties to be the same length as your clip (starting to appreciate Vegas Pro, yet?)
6. Export the footage (put in the render queue).
7. Set the render to Quicktime, DNxHD 10-bit, 4:2:2. It should be 175 Mbps.

Then, bring the DNxHD file into Vegas.

Alternatively, you can batch process the files in Lightroom and/or Bridge and/or Photoshop/ACR to JPEG or TIFF files (I suggest TIFF to preserve as much bit depth as possible) and then import the image sequence in Vegas Pro. This puts the largest burden on storage space, though.

Working with raw files is painful, but the results are oh-so-nice.

I'm loving the footage I'm seeing from this hack. The price of fast CF cards and the fact that I already have a camera that shoots beautiful raw video keeps me from playing with my wife's 5D3. But, I'll probably do so sooon.

dlion wrote on 5/16/2013, 10:59 PM

does this work on the t2i as well (w/ml)?

FilmingPhotoGuy wrote on 5/18/2013, 1:36 AM

Here's a shootout between GH2 and Canon 5DMk III. I think the GH2 is pretty impressive.

Shootout

Also the comparison between H.264 vs RAW is like chalk and cheese.

Rory Cooper wrote on 5/23/2013, 2:47 AM

Vic please keep us posted looking forward to see what you get.

HDR video is very impressive the problem is every few minutes you have to slap in a new card.

FilmingPhotoGuy wrote on 5/23/2013, 4:35 AM

So the workflow is to use RAW2DNG.EXE to extract 1000s of DNG files from the Canon's huge RAW movie file. Can Vegas make use DNG image files?

JasonATL wrote on 5/23/2013, 8:52 PM

Can Vegas make use DNG image files?

No. I requested this feature about 6 months ago. To Sony's defense, neither can others. Even Premiere Pro cannot read DNG files directly (though there is a plug-in that allows them to be used). After Effects can, but it is a bit round-about. Resolve can read some DNG's, but apparently not the flavor output by the RAW2DNG.EXE file.

Seth wrote on 5/31/2013, 8:42 PM

I would add to that workflow the step of applying your LUTs in After Effects, where it will be easier to preview, and then 'bake in' the highest dynamic range [and any radical processing/color looks you might want to use in your final composition] before importing into Vegas, and then export from AE into a format which Vegas can smart render, like MXF, so that your Vegas workstation doesn't become molasses in January.

EDIT: As was mentioned in another thread: CS2 is now abandon-ware, making Photoshop 9 and After Effects 7 both "free" DNG batch transcoders:
http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/

FilmingPhotoGuy wrote on 6/1/2013, 2:02 AM

Here the awesomeness from Magic Lantern. They've taken the Canon 50D which is a 6 year old non-video DSLR camera and have given you free firmware to make it shoot RAW (High Dynamic video without audio). The test have proven that that sensor size and pixel density are better than the later model sensors. Suddenly that camera is doubled it's value.

Canon 50D shooting RAW