Talking about RAW video on the 600D

Started by Murph Fish, August 03, 2013, 08:36:03 PM

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Murph Fish

Okay so I recently decided to play around with the RAW feature. I own a canon 600D (t3i) and I tried to do a lot of research on shooting RAW with the 600D but I couldn't find much.

So I decided to join the community and post about my turn out with the raw and also to help with any troubleshooting you might have or just work together to discover something new. Okay so for starters my workflow is convert the RAW to dng open in after effects to edit with in camera raw then color corrects, denoise, grade and export as quicktime video with apple pro res 4444 as codec. the first thing I noticed when editing my RAW footage was this. NOISE IS A THING OF THE PAST. Now this isn't entirely true but I will explain. I mainly use my rokinon declicked 35mm cine lens. Its a great lens however with canons compression I still get grain and noise and not the very cleanest images unless its perfect controlled lighting. Now I use neat video to denoise because it is simply amazing. So I have two shots that I will upload soon. It's a video of these little trophy models on my nightstand. Its late afternoon so the lighting is low and there is no visible light sources hitting the objects at all so its one even tone poorly lit image. so without RAW you already have the grain and noise. Then you boost the exposure and such to relight and you start to get even more noise. It's one of those situations where you know you wont completly get rid of the noise but it will be reduced. The same shot this time in raw however, It took at literally all visible noise and made it a perfectly clean image. I was in shock. So what I have noticed right off the bat is denoising RAW footage works unbelivably well.

Now for the RAW setup. As said I have the canon 600D, my sd card is a digital film 32GB class ten card. No idea what the write speed is. However I have read that no matter how good your card is the 600D has a write speed cut off of like 45mbs. I'm not certain if this is true its just something I read. The big issue as we all know with the RAW right now on the 600D is you cant shoot full 1080 RAW straight from the camera. It crops off a certain section for you to use. There is a few annoying things about this. One being its very hard to focus correctly. Secondly its hard to get an idea of how your shots will frame up. Lastly its limiting your use its like a crop on top of a crop. So here is my solution to all of this that has worked best for me and will hopefully work good for you and better your RAW technique. In the RAW setup I shoot 1024x448 with the aspect ratio of 2. 35 : 1   This is the the highest my card will allow me to go I am not sure if you can crank yours higher im certain my memory card isnt the best. The reason why I use this feature is because if you plan on upscaling to like lets say 1080 for youtube its not all too far off in a way. This however is persumed that you have the intentions the letterbox your film. Meaning the most common letter box so cropping 132 off the top and bottom of the image. If you resize the image equally (hold shift and stretch) when the outter edges reach the edge of the composition its almost a perfect 132,132 crop. so this gives you a wide box to shoot with in camera and a pretty nice upscale quality. I usually letterbox most of my work so it works in my favor. Now adjusting to the small frame box on your camera.

I took my viewfinder magnifier, (the magnetic one that connects to the live view screen and you look through it). I took that and i blocked off everything on the screen that was to the outside of the RAW box. This magnifies what you are seeing and also helps you frame up your shots much much better and it also helps you keep the subject in focus. That's really it so far. I will be uploading some test clips for you all to view soon. Hopefully this was both informative and helpful to someone just starting with the RAW feature. My opinion, I will most likely use this for wide shots such as a huge plate of a city or anything that doesnt require a specific subject, If I have a wide open space enough to move far enough back to get the subject(s) in frame I will use it. However, Until there is a way if ever to use full frame I'm not going to use it constantly its one of those nice little features to fool around with if you have nothing but time to perfect the image. Never the less you do get some great images out of it. Hope you enjoyed my first post!

Datadogie

I love the tip with the lcd loupe. Do you blank the unwanted space with some sort of black card template.
T3i and Kiss X4 (550d (T2i)) Tamron 18-200mm, Sigma 28-70mm f2.8 (need firmware upgrade) Olympus 50mm f1.8  Olympus 28mm f2.8 and Olympus 24mm f2.8
Fancier 370 tripod and LCD hinged loupe. DIY Slider and crane.

MrMehh

I can relate to most of the things you stated. I personally haven't done any denoising to my footage yet because I like to use FilmConvert over my footage and to remove the monochromatic grain/noise and add filmgrain back in later will give me, for as far as I know, a slightly softer image then just leaving it as it was. The biggest thing I noticed between, let's say the 5D MKIII, and the T3i is that the 5D looks almost like an Epic at 1080p but the T3i looks more like 16mm film. The 5D's image is just stunningly clean. I haven't seen that yet on the T3i.

I recently shot my vacation for a filmcontest in RAW and because I didn't really need shots longer than 30 seconds I shot everying in 1216x512 (2,35:1) to give me just a bit more resolution, and later upscale to 1280x539 for YouTube. I could shoot for up to max 40-45 seconds at that resolution, which was more than enough. I used Sandisk 32GB & 16GB 45mb/s cards, maybe something you should look into, especially if you upscale to 1080p.

Hope to see some denoised RAW frames soon, really curious. 

Murph Fish

Quote from: Datadogie on August 05, 2013, 07:54:34 PM
I love the tip with the lcd loupe. Do you blank the unwanted space with some sort of black card template.

I used something really professional to block out the unwanted screen. I took a rare mudkip pokemon card and cut out the middle center hahaha. Low budget as can be.

Murph Fish

Quote from: MrMehh on August 06, 2013, 02:16:34 AM
I can relate to most of the things you stated. I personally haven't done any denoising to my footage yet because I like to use FilmConvert over my footage and to remove the monochromatic grain/noise and add filmgrain back in later will give me, for as far as I know, a slightly softer image then just leaving it as it was. The biggest thing I noticed between, let's say the 5D MKIII, and the T3i is that the 5D looks almost like an Epic at 1080p but the T3i looks more like 16mm film. The 5D's image is just stunningly clean. I haven't seen that yet on the T3i.

I recently shot my vacation for a filmcontest in RAW and because I didn't really need shots longer than 30 seconds I shot everying in 1216x512 (2,39:1) to give me just a bit more resolution, and later upscale to 1280x539 for YouTube. I could shoot for up to max 40-45 seconds at that resolution, which was more than enough. I used Sandisk 32GB & 16GB 45mb/s cards, maybe something you should look into, especially if you upscale to 1080p.

Hope to see some denoised RAW frames soon, really curious.

Oh wow yeah no hack will ever compare to the 5D imaging I want one so badly but I am a broke college student haha. But yeah I did notice the image getting a bit softer after my denoise process. I will share footage soon I want to show it in a decent lit scene a comparison between raw denoise and non denoise as well as straight from camera then really push it with either an underexposed shot or a very poorly lit shot and compare those cause it denoises so well for whatever reason I was so Impressed I also want to compare my color scopes like RGB parade and see if there is any difference between raw or not should be interesting.

1%

This kills the mudkip....

6D is real nice raw footage (like 5D3), 50D is high enough res  to hide the "16mm" look when well exposed.  Pre-UHS cameras a little  :o

jordillonch

Thank you very much for your explanation. I am a 600d raw user and didn't know about the noise reduction option. I shot my vacation in raw and will try to color correct the footage in after effects as you said. I will also try the pokemon card trick, hehehe. :))

Luzestudio

This is an interesting post. I recently got a fast SD, suitable for RAW on my 600D.
I will make some test during the weekend, but I would appreciate a bit of help regarding resolution.

What is the maximum resolution you have been able to get for around 10 seconds of footage at 24 fps?

-----
www.luzestudio.es

MrMehh

On my camera I got 1280x544 (2,35:1) at 23,980 fps for 240 frames (10 seconds), or 1344x512 (2,67:1) at 23,980 fps for 240 frames (10 seconds). I should also mention that this is not on the latest build (CurrentHack). All in SRAW mode, 480p video mode, GD off, etc. 

Luzestudio

Quote from: MrMehh on August 07, 2013, 04:11:17 PM
On my camera I got 1280x544 (2,35:1) at 23,980 fps for 240 frames (10 seconds), or 1344x512 (2,67:1) at 23,980 fps for 240 frames (10 seconds). I should also mention that this is not on the latest build (CurrentHack). All in SRAW mode, 480p video mode, GD off, etc.

Sounds good, do you have any example of your recordings to see the quality? How much crop do you get, 3X, 5X?


Thanks!

Xermán
-----
www.luzestudio.es

MrMehh

I actually got the latest ML version, SixThirty and was happily suprised that I could use even higher resolutions for about 10 seconds.
Same settings as I stated before. All frames are captured from a 10 second 23,980 (FPS override) recording.

Canon 600D/T3i, Helios 58mm f/2.0.

1344x576 (2,35:1), 10 seconds, ungraded (straight from camera)

Click HERE for full resolution image

1344x576 (2,35:1), 10 seconds, graded (BMD Film --> LUT --> FilmConvert)

Click HERE for full resolution image

1408x528 (2,67:1), 10 seconds, ungraded (straight from camera)

Click HERE for full resolution image

1408x528 (2,67:1), 10 seconds, graded (BMD Film --> LUT --> FilmConvert)

Click HERE for full resolution image

Luzestudio

Quote from: MrMehh on August 08, 2013, 03:58:45 PM
I actually got the latest ML version, SixThirty and was happily suprised that I could use even higher resolutions for about 10 seconds.
Same settings as I stated before. All frames are captured from a 10 second 23,980 (FPS override) recording.

Canon 600D/T3i, Helios 58mm f/2.0.

1344x576 (2,35:1), 10 seconds, ungraded (straight from camera)

Click HERE for full resolution image

1344x576 (2,35:1), 10 seconds, graded (BMD Film --> LUT --> FilmConvert)

Click HERE for full resolution image

1408x528 (2,67:1), 10 seconds, ungraded (straight from camera)

Click HERE for full resolution image

1408x528 (2,67:1), 10 seconds, graded (BMD Film --> LUT --> FilmConvert)

Click HERE for full resolution image

Do you have the video upload anywhere?

Best,

Xermán
-----
www.luzestudio.es

MrMehh

Not yet, I didn't use a tripod so it's gonna be a little shakey. I thought the frames would suffise, but i'll render and upload it to Vimeo tomorrow. (I'll edit this post, with video)

Edit:

Here's the video!

Don't know how to embed, so click here!