Feature Film Experience with 5D RAW

[mohanohi]

Hi,
I did my entire movie with 5D Mark 3 RAW. Taught of sharing my experience with you guys up to post.

CAMERA: 5D Mark3
Lens: CP2
Build: magiclantern-Nightly.2014Oct07.5D3113.zip

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PRODUCTION
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I had an onsite DIT who was doing footage dumping and conversion onsite.
Problem #1: The MLV filename were not sequential. My DIT was in doubt if camera assistant was erasing the clip which it wasn't the case. Maybe some bug?
Problem #2: Using HDMI Monitor big No No. Recording was constantly stopping.
Solution #2: Use AV Cable (SD Resolution). No dropouts.
Request #3: In-Camera format to Ex-fat will be big plus. Avoiding Laptop when DIT is away.

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POST PRODUCTION
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Problem #1: For faster and direct conversion to offline (proxy) files I used Adobe media encoder (with support of Drastic). This method is faster and i don't have to go through DNG's extraction and then conversion to offline. But Adobe media encoder workflow gave additional job in my post grading session. As media encoder don't write any timecode into the proxy Resolve nor Scratch doesn't Read my XML very well.
  Solution #1: Extract DNG's using RAW2CDNG. (Don't throw 100+ files on it. Crashes often.)Use Davinci Resolve Lite to do proxy conversion to DNXHD 720p 60. Use REEL Name, Source timecode burn-in.

Problem #2: Related to scratch reading directly MLV files. Scratch uses Drastic inside which does very poor job of reading. I get lot of artifacts. Poor Demosaicing algorithm.
  Solution #2: Extract DNG's using RAW2CDNG.

And don't use MLRAWViewer to convert DNGs as it doesn't include REELID and CinemaDNG format conversion. RAW2CDNG 16bit gives 3+mb individual DNG whereas MLRAWViewer give 2 mb approx. (donno what bit depth it is exporting at)

I Hope somebody may find this useful.

Regards

Mohan
DOP, Colorist.

[extremelypoorfilmaker]

Thank you very much my friend! It was all very usefull to me at least!

[mohanohi]

And also a big no no to MLRAWVIEWER software's prores mov files. As it doesn't output timecode. Maybe useful for people who does Editing and Finishing in one system or software.

[Francis Frenkel]

Problem #2: Using HDMI Monitor big No No. Recording was constantly stopping.

May be because of the built, because I filmed my last movie a few weeks ago on the 2014 August08 with different monitors (Lulliput, SmallHD and one big monitor 21') connected to the 5DMark3 without any problem of stopping frame...And with very long takes (1080 / 24p).
Two takes just fit on one CF card 64Go !

Problem #1: The MLV filename were not sequential. My DIT was in doubt if camera assistant was erasing the clip which it wasn't the case. Maybe some bug?

I agree, it's a real problem. Is there a trick, a turn arround ?

Francis

[dmilligan]

The filename thing is not a bug. The filename is based on the date/time if you didn't notice:

M[day of month]-[hour][minute].MLV

The filesystem in the camera limits filenames to 8.3, so what we can put in filenames is very limited.

[Lars Steenhoff]

HDMI needs timecode working too, it stops when pressing raw record

[mohanohi]

Why would anyone need date/time in place of shotname which has to be in sequential? Isn't it better be in metadata section? Even if its recorded on filename whats use anybody can make it out with?

[Francis Frenkel]

HDMI needs timecode working too, it stops when pressing raw record

It does not stop at all !!

I use monitors (SmallHD DP6, Lilliput 5' and 7', and sometimes big HDMI monitors like a  IIYAMA 21'),  every time I shoot RAW or MLV RAW without any problem on my 5D Mark2 and Mark3 !!!

Francis

[extremelypoorfilmaker]

Sorry, i might be just a bit of an amateur, but.. for the time being, just using the slate with all the shot info in front of the camera for every shot does not solve that?

[Lars Steenhoff]

@ Francis Frenkel  the recoding does not stop, the timecode output from the camera stops.

[chmee]

@mohanohi

..Extract DNG's using RAW2CDNG. (Don't throw 100+ files on it. Crashes often.)..

if you ever do a similar job, throwing 100s of mlv's into the batchlist, open the taskmanager before and look on memory-consumption. i assume, it grows much, and while transcoding it needs some more memory as well. Result: it reaches the magic wall of 1.5gb, thats only utilisable in .net applications. sorry for that (but im a little bit proud you used my tool)

btw: timedate is manifested nearly everywhere in mlv as timestamp. so yes, there could be a better file-name, but mostly all other ideas entail risks, that you give filenames twice. @dmilligan said it, we're limited to 8.3.

regards chmee

[dmilligan]

Of course, this is an open source hobby project so you are more than welcome to modify the naming scheme as you see fit, or come up with a better one. This would be a change that is extremely easy to make and requires little more than very basic knowledge of C programming.

[mohanohi]

Hi chmee,
There's no alternate to your tool. What about commandline version of your software? So that it would be robust? Or Linux based tool? So that i can dedicate a server for the job and not appoint a person to watch crash and reload the job?

And about filename i would propose REELID and Filename should be the same.

Regards

Mohan

[dmilligan]

For Linux you might consider using MLVFS. There are other command line converters like mlv_dump, but they do not output Premiere/Resolve compatible CDNGs.