blackrat

Not to nitpick but this is untrue. Very very few screens are showing in true 4K at this moment in time. There are hundreds or maybe even thousands of the Sony Dual lens 3D systems in theaters across america that say they are 4K in the Sony branded pre-roll in the theater. These are really projectors that have 2 x 2K projection systems in one projector body. They are usually projecting from 2K (2D) DCPs or 2K 3D DCPs that are actually split between each lens/sensor and projected interleaved (which does not actually give you anywhere near 4K projection). Additionally, the current Digital Imax system does the same thing with two completely separate interleaved 2K Christie Cinema projectors projecting from a 4K DCP. This translates to a very, very slight increase in detail over a single 2K system (and is done to give each eye more light). This translates to very few true 4K DCPs being projected on true 4K projectors. Even in specialty situations where we have a movie like Prometheus that was captured at 5K native. I believe I read that Prometheus was posted as a full 2K DI. The Visual effect sequences were definitely rendered in 2K. So this means that even when they had specialty 4K screenings at select locations those were partially or completely 2K content on a 4K system.

 

Even in a true 4K situation, such as when I saw Samsara projected at the Arclight Hollywood in 4K it was stunning but not nearly as much of an improvement over 2K (in a high end theater setting mind you) as you would hope. And this is coming from a guy with 20/10 vision who has overseen dozens of premieres and special screenings (many of them at the arclight). 4k is amazing but it's not as amazing as it should be or as prevalent as you are led to believe.

 

The single most stunning resolution experience I have seen was the Dark Night in Imax at Universal City. Those prints were supposedly struck from the negatives. This means the viewer was seeing something between 8k and 16k on the screen during the imax sequences. THAT was what I always hoped true 4K would look like. Someday.

Yeah Dark Knight in a real IMAX theater was pretty amazing. Soooooo crisp for all the IMAX scenes! Almost like you were really on the streets of NY.

  
This is not true, and even if it were, almost none of the content being screened is 4K. Even Skyfall, which Sony used to push 4K projection, was sourced from a 2K master.
And 1080p TVs are hugely more widespread, but that doesn't change the fact that all TV broadcasts are 720p.

I'm pretty sure there have been some true 4k theatrical projections.

All TV broadcasts are not 720p. In fact relatively few are. Most stations are 1920x1080i. Only ABC and cable affiliates such as ESPN and FOX and cable affiliates such as FX are 720p. Blu-ray are mostly 1080p (with the very occasional 1080i).

Well then, smart guy, remind me when the breakthru in human evolution occurred that, not in a millennia, not in a century and not even in a generation but within the span of a product cycle uplifted the resolving power of our eyes so that the resolution in a 4K display of average television size isn't completely wasted as a result of physics and biomechanics.

 

PS> they had HD in the labs since the 1950s, before we went to the moon, before a majority of TV owners were "enjoying" color sets.  Technology improved in all that time but our eyes are the same.

See my message above. And heck look out the window and then look at a blu-ray on a HDTV 1080p TV set. If you can't see a difference then you have bad vision. 4k sets they say start beginning to give you that looking out a window feeling.

Another thing people print out images and say you need to do that to see all the details, well many prints are no larger than a regular PC monitor so how come the prints look much sharper than that 1080p on a 24" screen never mind 55"?

4K in the home is rather stupid.

People said the same thing about 1080p and how you'd need a 70" screen to even notice it etc. Heck I noticed it even on a 24" screen. Why do you think video games at 1920x1200 need AA to not look nasty on even 24" screens? Because that resolution is nearly enough to match the eye! Look at a retina iPad for a while and then look at a typical 24" PC monitor, the PC monitor suddenly looks blocky and grainy as heck.

It'll take some time but 4K in the home will arrive and it makes every bit of sense in the world.

This isn't "perceived detail", or false detail.  This is blades of grass:

 

...that's unaltered 5D on top, BMCC on the bottom, 1:1 to each other @ 200%

 

 

...if it were "false" detail then further enhancing wouldn't further resolve maintained blade structure, here still at 1:1 to each other, 5D on top and enhanced BMCC on the bottom (mild de-moire + my LCE scheme).

 

...and here we have 5D on top and BMCC on the bottom scaled down to 1080.  The comparison would be even worse for the 5D if you were to go the other direction. 

Sort of. Some of that BM stuff there is verging on looking like screen caps from a video game with AA 100% turned-off though. Aliasing is false detail. Even the 5D3 RAW has some aliasing for sure, as much as you'd ever want.

Don't wanna burst bubbles around here, but while all of this is great... only 40 seconds of recording time is not gonna cut it for narrative. Hence, I don't think this will be the Black Magic killer everyone is saying it will be. If BlackMagic Pocket/Production can shoot for several minutes, WITH audio, TV and Cinema shooters like myself will need to stick with it.

 

Still, a nice little treat for people who only shoot demo videos or music videos, I guess. 

Once again the long form narrative folks always seem to think that nothing else exists. Not music video, not commercials, not short take pieces (and even very many long for narrative takes are 49 seconds or less, although certainly plenty are longer), not wildlife, not natural world/landscape/scenics. Long form narratives are just a part of a larger world.

I'm pretty sure there will file span soon anyway. Although for really serious stuff if it skips 1 or 3 frames every 49 seconds I supposed that may be one frame too many, but just one or two frames as repeats every 49 seconds might not really be terribly noticeable.

I think the CF interface tops out at 150MB/s, could be wrong on that. SSDs would be nice for the capacity but I think 1000x or maybe 1100x is the max for the current CF spec.

 

I've tried the higher frame rates now.

 

960x540 at 60fps works fine, but some aliasing.

 

1920x540 is squashed looking.

 

1280 x 720 is actually 1280 x 672, and looks a bit squashed too.

 

But the card can handle it pretty reliably at 48fps.

 

Next on my list to try is anamorphic lens & 1920x1280 (3:2), that is going to be my preferred mode. From 3:2 with the Iscorama you will get roughly 2.35:1 :)

What setting gives the 1:1 zoomed mode? That looks great for wildlife and macro.

Really depends what you are shooting.... For music videos and similar.... 40 seconds is fine.

Yeah or lots of natural world/wildlife/scenics. People always forget it's not all long format scripted stuff.

THAT is actually a very good question !

Because all of this will be 90% useless if not long enough recording can be pulled on set for movies ... with actors waiting for the cam to cool down or something weird like that.

It doesn't appear to get hot. The liveview stream is put out there all the time anyway when in liveview or movie mode. All-i already sometimes writes out to the card jsut as fast as does holding the shutter down when stills mode.

OTOH it seems to stop every 4GB for now which means only 49 seconds continuous at 1920x1080. Once the hack is further along I imagine they will be able to have it immediately start up a new file, hopefully with no frames or maybe only 1 or 2 skipped (maybe this is already possible I've only fiddled with the hack a little bit so far). If you mess around with pressing info button or run it with full ML zebra/focus peaking and everything tryng to work at once sometimes it quits out. But basically it can keep recording to that for as long as it doesn't hit disk format file size limitations (4GB for FAT32) and I expect they will be able to seamlessly (or all but so) get around that as happens with regular video (and maybe there is already a setting that allows for that).

Thanks for sharing but have to agree 100% with Per Lichtman. "... the best DSLR for low light shooting" Huh? Not by a long shot!

Don't forget that the D4 video is pretty soft and weird while the 5D3 RAW footage is a million times more detailed. Maybe if you did a ton of NR on it and ended up with the same detail the D4 video shows it would be even or better.

But what did the smearing? Everyone agrees that on the 5D3 the internal video recording sucks (regardless of picture style used) and 22MP RAW stills are the best you can do. However we can't get 24 22MP RAW stills per second, at least not unless there is some massive development on the CF card front (some have suggested an SSD adapter of some form). So there is detail that's being smeared away for the ML hack just as there is for the uncompressed HDMI out, which is a fairer thing to compare it with.

 

Is the ML RAW hack in its full sensor mode using the same 3x3 pixel binning downsampler that the uncompressed HDMI out is? Because if it is, that's the same detail damage. The difference in luma detail should then be minimal, unless Canon is damaging the HDMI image somehow. ML hasn't figured out the HDMI driver yet but they do suggest that some image processing is being done there (it does appear a bit brighter of an image I think). But is Canon intentionally crippling that image as they clearly did for the internal recording (40Mbps H.264 should look a LOT better than what they are giving us...)? I don't know but a fair, scientific, detailed comparison between the two would tell us. We know that chroma detail will be cut in half (422 vs. 444) and we know we will only be mapping the DR into 8 bits rather than 14, but that will only result in gradient accuracy being lost (i.e. banding) rather than detail and acutance/sharpness being lost.

 

So I want to know how bad the uncompressed HDMI actually is vs. the ML RAW...I predict it won't be noticeably worse when Cinestyle + LUT is used, and with Neat Video applied properly even a strong grade should hold up well. If not, if Canon really is damaging the supposedly uncompressed HDMI out beyond its 1080i60/8 bit 422 that we all know already, then we have a new thing to yell at them for and praise ML for saving us from. Otherwise we have a choice between buying a Ninja 2 and a couple cheap laptop drives and getting a usable field monitor in the bargain, or investing in a stack of the fastest CF cards available and trying to figure out a practical RAW workflow that's worth the hassle. Again I would have already answered this for you if I had the fast CF cards and a reliable ML build...asking if there's anyone out there who is trustworthy enough to do so for us now.

As far as detail goes the ML RAW has MUCH more than using HDMI to Ninja 2. Absolutely no question at all. How much the final difference in DR will be I don't know. The RAW, at the very least, grades a lot more easily and with the extra detail it has richer color input too, you can easily pull sliders all over the place, raise exposure like crazy, pull shadows, change WB radically and it all holds together. I mean look at what RAW 22mP stills processing is like vs. manipulating an in cam JPG (and the in cam jpg generally seem hold together better than the video).

I have ML pre-alpha with RAW. I have 1000x cards. I have Ninja 2. Boulders that are waxy with internal or ninja 2 (and for fine static detail there is barely a difference at all between those two) suddenly have texture and subtle roughness, different color shadings using RAW Video for ML.

Just grab one Lexar 1000x 32GB card and the ML and try for yourself quickly if you don't believe any of us.

Sure the Ninja 2 collected footage is easier to handle. It goes straight to a nice larger HD and record clips longer than 50 seconds with ease and you don't need to pre-process it or anything. (OTOH ACR is so powerful that you can often skip having to use slow grading tools in premiere inwhich case you gain some back in saved render time there and it's not quite as bad a comparison overall). And the Ninja 2 takes way less space. But the detail just ain't there compared to the RAW ML Video.

I completely agree that Neat Video is doing a lot more to restore the image and remove compression artifacts/banding than just NR. Anytime I'm doing a severe grade it's got to be on there...it's basically the best $99 you can spend in post. And far less hassle than RAW.

 

However I think it's laughable that you suggest ProLost Neutral is better than Cinestyle. And that Cinestyle has poorer highlight handling! Lol!

 

I will try Canon's new "X" style (released the other day but lost in the ML fuss) to see if that's like a Cinestyle that doesn't raise the blacks so much, saving a bit. But for the moment I haven't found anything overall better. RAW will of course be the best we can do, but at what cost? Also note, "you can change the WB in RAW without losing anything"...no, your noise floor is going to shift with a WB shift, not much but some, so there will still be some loss...but the loss won't be any more than the loss would be if you set it properly in-camera. One thing the 5D3 lacks that the C100 has is the ABB (Automatic black balance) function that neutralizes the noise floor for a given ISO and WB setting...RAW will cover that too but again at enormous data and workflow cost.

 

Just give us a great internal codec, whatever you can, ML!

There is no such thing as setting the WB in camera for RAW.

The camera records what it records and that is it.

NeatVideo won't bring back all the detail that got smeared away.

This was not carried out ideally, but look at this comparison and the detail at least is much better:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7286/8742046520_18fc4c218e_o.jpg

Granted a fair test does need the best profiles to be used in all cases and the best PP done, etc. but for detail at the least even a quick hack of a test makes the difference clear and it's clear that at the very least the RAW video files are much easier to deal with when messing around with tone response/color/WB/etc.

I have no problem working with Cinestyle on the 5D3, and with just a touch of green/magenta correction I can get it lined up fairly well with Canon Log (Cinelock) C100/Ninja 2 footage. ISO 10000 on the internal codec is significantly cleaner than 12800 in the same way 2500 and 5000 are...it may be in-camera NR that you can't turn off, or some other mechanism, but the pattern is consistent and I shoot that way accordingly. The 5D3 clean HDMI out to the Ninja 2 does not display the pull-down ISO pattern as strongly so you might be right in that case.

 

The A/B we are all waiting for is the absolute *best* you can do "officially" vs. the best you can do with the ML hack. I will test that once all the bugs are shaken out of the hack and we know what works best. The best I can get out of a 5D3 at this time officially is clean HDMI out to the Ninja 2 using ProRes 422 HQ on the Ninja, Cinestyle with default settings on the 5D3, and then applying NR (I use Neat Video) and a LUT (I use Pomfort) in post. I don't see banding after grading the Cinestyle in typical use. Even so, that image is blown away by the C100 in Cinelock to the Ninja 2 in every capacity (other than full-frame DoF and angle of view of course).

 

I have no delusions that the C100/Ninja 2 will be displaced by the 5D3 RAW output in absolute IQ. That sensor and system is just purpose-built and far superior for filmmaking. I think a lot of people overestimate the value of RAW, perhaps egged on by Jannard. For stills of course I only shoot RAW but that's because the only other choice (JPEG) sucks and RAW stills aren't onerous. Direct-to-ProRes HQ with a log gamma is an absolutely credible option and anyone skillful enough to get decent exposures from pre-Log DSLRs will have no trouble at all with that codec. The hassle with RAW is so intense in comparison to just capturing hours of ProRes on an SSD and loading it directly into your NLE ready to cut that it better completely blow it away even if the best possible settings and workflow is used with the compression.

 

The main losses for the HDMI 8 bit 422 are going to be chroma detail (422 and 444 are VERY similar to the eye, even for keying work..it's the 420 used in the internal codecs that truly sucks) and maybe a touch of DR. 8 bits with the Cinestyle gamma is not far from representing with high fidelity the full DR of that sensor on most ISOs in practice...see DxoMark's reports on all the read noise of the 5D3 sensor in stills mode. The main hit resolutionwise is going to be done at the downsampler in-camera taking the 22MP to 2MP. If you use a crop 1:1 pixel mode, you will get a ton of sensor noise and probably some aliasing/stair-stepping the OLPF doesn't fully blur out. We aren't recording 24 RAW 22MP stills in a second on this camera...there is damage done in both pathways.

 

What I would like as a working professional for whom any gains from RAW are likely overkill for a 5D3, is a nice internal codec from ML. If MJPEG is the best they can do, OK, make it a good one with 422 and an easy workflow in post. If that, plus the CF cards needed, is overall cheaper and better in practice than getting a second Ninja 2 I'm happy. Will be more compact to just use the Zacuto loupe and hopefully not require too much card swapping while shooting.

All I can say is try the hack and you will see. It's a night and day difference for dynamic range, detail, color tonality, ease of color and tone processing (just think how power ACR is for stills and imagine using those sliders and all that power for video correction; just think that you can adjust WB in post without losing anything). At times it is almost laughably better.

The workflow is a tedious slow mess to get stuff converted true and it burns up CPU cycles like mad (although color correction and processing the steps where you do stuff are actually much easier and quicker thanks to the power of ACR) and yeah less than a minute and it cuts off at the 4GB limit. But man the quality!

I'm telling you if you think internal vs Ninja 2 is much of a difference then this ML RAW will blow your mind. The difference is like 1000x, literally, more noticeable.

What's up with the magenta tint to all this RAW footage? The H264 versions seems to filter it out?

A sensor issue. The image processing engine filters it out and counter acts it normally.

Andrew, simple yet incredibly relevant point:

 

What picture style and associated settings are you using for the H.264 footage?

 

Because Cinestyle is a FREE download. And friends don't let friends shoot 5D3 internal with anything worse when DR matters. No "ProLost flat" or "FLAAAAAAAT" or any nonsense. If DR matters, then you use a high DR picture style and then grade in post with a LUT.

 

That looks like Neutral or Faithful with reduced contrast and saturation. Why are you crowing about the dynamic range difference, when you chose to burn it out with those settings?

 

Also, why aren't you using the pull-down ISO's (2500, 5000, 10,000) as we've all learned to by studying the 5D3 noise floor?

 

Show us that it beats the best we can do otherwise, fair and square, and that will be plenty sensational enough.

1. There is no such thing as pull down ISOs once you are that high. Above ISO3200 everything is simply 1/3 more and more and more digitally pushed.

2. Cinestyle can be dicey to work with, that flat and 8 bits doesn't always grade so easily. Some of the others have even a touch more DR but keep some better pop in the mids.

3. The RAW gives truly amazing rich colors and all the advanced tools of Adobe ACR processing with ACR pseudo-HDR sliders, raw pre-sharpening, advanced NR, etc.

4. Maybe this is not quite scientifically carried out, but believe me Cinestyle doesn't process the way these RAWs do and you get somewhat less DR and a lot less beautiful tonality (and of course the detail is simply much less).

wtf?

+1   indeed

Andrew about your footage...what was the sizxe of the overall RAW files? I read about 7MB per frame for  1920x1080 RAW this would equal to 10GB per minute :|

Nope you are making it two times too scary :) . It's about 3.5MB and around 4.4GB per minute. Still yikes of course though.

In reference to :vimeo.com/66170436

 

They crushed the blacks so it's not really a really a valid comparison of DR. The BMCC video has been shown to have more DR that 5D3 stills, so I'm not sure why they think the new 5D3 video hack would increase the 5D3 DR beyond its stills capabilities.

 

(looking at the downloaded version)

Consider: @ 1:15 (BMCC) you can see more detail in the wood background, and the highlights are not blown out on his face@ 1:23 (5D3) you can see slightly less detail in the wood and his forehead is over exposed. Looks like a clear DR advantage for the BMCC

I'm not saying that the 5D3 RAW video has more DR than a still, but since it is normalized down to 2MP vs. 22MP it surely could. You have the same max allowed value but have averaged potentially tons of pixels together to form each deep shadow pixel, trading spatial information and detail away (the 22MP starting point).

I'm happy with my D800, but I really wish there'd be some hardcore developers hacking on the Nikon's like Magic Lantern :) The Nikon hacker forum seems quite idle...

 

 

I suspect it won't be possible. Nikon I believe is much harder to hack. The liveview feed on the D800 is awful, choppy and aliased so I'm not sure it's possible to do this trick with the D800. Someone said the Exmor chips might become too hot if read smoothly at 24fps (???).

So it's basically safety: if you get it really wrong with an even higher dynamic range sensor and have to push four stops, the Nikon is better.

 

I suppose it's best not to get it four stops wrong!

It sure is nice when you have a one of chance and something goes wrong or you don't have time to change settings before the scenario is over. Also you are missing the point, what if the scene has more than 10 stops of DR that you wan't to capture? It doesn't matter how carefully your expose, it won't work out.

This was on my 5DII.... if that isn't enough DR, i don't know what is. (That is very bright cloud on the way up a mountain, it would ruin the shadows in h264... The tree stumps would be almost black).

 

A foggy day. Try it with sun beams shooting through the forest. Then you'd wish for the extra nearly three stops at ISO100 of the Exmor sensors. Sure your scene has a decent DR range but it's not crazy high. I should also say that anything downscaled to like 1/8th of a MP look good too.

Canon sensor even in RAW Still mode only has 11.7 EV of dynamic range at only ISO 100 (it's less at higher ISOs)., 

 

http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Cameras/Camera-Sensor-Database/Canon/EOS-5D-Mark-III

 

11.7 is the best case in still mode. In video mode  even in RAW it's most likely going to be lower than 11.7

 

Black Magic Cinerama camera will easily beat it ... 

5D3 has worse than 11.7 EV at 1:1 level but when at normalized to 8MP it rises and normalized to 2MP it would really rise (if the info was used well and not tossed).

I think that a way to put this in test is just compare the amount of noise of a 1920x1280 fullframe raw with a 1920x1280 1:1 raw. Can anyone do this?

Just look at the SNR of the 5D2 vs the 5D3 (nearly 2 stops better, because it is not line the skipping, the 5D3 sensor is only maybe 2/3rd of a stop better for SNR at best) and the difference in moire/aliasing. No way the 5D3 is skipping that much. They are probably doing a 3x3 bin style (C300 stuff does 2x2 bin style).

The new video footage takes it even to another level yet. Simply speechless.

I wonder which part of the "plan" was to lose both their pro/ama video film market to Black Magic?

Exactly. Instead of worrying about internal market segmentation and this and that they should've charged ahead. I started getting on them years ago because I saw where they were headed from how they were talking and acting and what stuff they had and were either sitting on or not deciding to improve yet and got called a troll, but now we see a bit that their short term margins and safety lead to loss of perhaps much larger sales in the long run. Sure they are surviving overall fine, but....