Magic Lantern Forum

Developing Magic Lantern => Feature Requests => Topic started by: dubzeebass on December 06, 2014, 12:11:16 AM

Title: [ALREADY DONE] h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing
Post by: dubzeebass on December 06, 2014, 12:11:16 AM
Locked: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=4124.0

Hi folks,

1% it seemed was having some luck about 8 months ago making custom .INI files for the 5D Mark 3. I love shooting raw but I wonder if we can squeeze more bitrate out of the h264 containers so that those of us who shoot for hours and hours can get less compressed files. Has anyone done any work on this since the raw breakthrough? The GH4 does 100mbps+, obviously it's a different chipset, but any more quality we can squeeze from the Canon DSLRs would be awesome.

I'm no programmer but would be happy to test things out on my cam.

-dubzee
Title: Re: h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing (continuing from locked thread)
Post by: 1% on December 06, 2014, 04:25:23 AM
https://bitbucket.org/hudson/magic-lantern/pull-request/394/5d3-123-port-almost-ready/diff#chg-src/bitrate-6d.c

Its even done for 5d3-123. Just un-disable it. You can pretty much push till you get ~400Mb/s and dropped frames. Limiting factor is the encoder and not write speed and 95% of 6D stuff applies to 5D3 since the encoders are identical.
Title: Re: h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing (continuing from locked thread)
Post by: DeafEyeJedi on December 06, 2014, 06:56:48 AM
Hmmm... Is this even worth to try and test it out on the 5D3 1.2.3?

Without frying up our sensors?

Pretty tempting I would say..

;)
Title: Re: h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing (continuing from locked thread)
Post by: dubzeebass on December 06, 2014, 12:07:09 PM
I don't know how to program unfortunately. Can someone compile the Aug07 1.2.3 most stable build and enable this for us? By un-disable will it be controlled by a submenu or still those cryptic INI files?

Thanks 1% you rock.
Title: Re: h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing (continuing from locked thread)
Post by: marekk on December 09, 2014, 02:57:33 PM
1% .. what dou you mean by un-disable it ??
Title: Re: h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing (continuing from locked thread)
Post by: kgv5 on December 09, 2014, 06:15:13 PM
And how about 5d3 1.1.3? Will it work? I remember playing with ini files some time ago but there were many crash issues and not-so-easy-to -understand ini files setup. Is this improved?
Title: Re: h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing (continuing from locked thread)
Post by: lehestro on December 14, 2014, 08:36:28 PM
Shooting RAW is great, but I mostly shoot documentary, so it's not really practical. Would be rad to get more out of the standard H264.

I'm no dummy, I use magic lantern, I've been working professionally with cameras for 12 years, but I know nowhere near enough to understand what, on a technical level, a .ini file does, and what the parameters within the file does. I just would like to get more out of H264 shooting as well.

Would someone be willing to break it down for us less informed people? Or is there a resource to turn to that doesn't read like an engineer's manual? Everything I've looked up is way over my head, full of strange specs and jargon.

Gracias
Title: Re: h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing (continuing from locked thread)
Post by: Audionut on December 15, 2014, 03:57:53 AM
IIRC, I didn't have to do anything special with my 5D3.  Load up the appropriate ini file and it worked as expected.

There doesn't even appear to be any advantages to increasing the bitrate on a 5D3 (http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=8949.msg109844#msg109844) anyway.
Title: Re: [ALREADY DONE] h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing
Post by: dubzeebass on December 15, 2014, 04:22:01 AM
Thanks Audionut, got it. I've purchased an Atomos Ninja Blade anyway, I'll use it to record the QT files for RT playback of scenes I'm capturing in MLV for on-set playback like a VTR.
Title: Re: [ALREADY DONE] h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing
Post by: 1% on December 15, 2014, 09:50:59 PM
QuoteLoad up the appropriate ini file and it worked as expected.

Plain INI file loading has really only 2 disadvantages.

1. Canon has errors set up on certain parameters, to really push it it helps to patch those. On 6D it was at certain QPs and bumping the profile from what I remember.
2. You can't alter flush rates nor the GOP.

On this encoder think of it kinda like setting up x264 parameters. Apply what you know converting stuff since you pretty much are.

QuoteThere doesn't even appear to be any advantages to increasing the bitrate on a 5D3 anyway.
There is *kinda*. (default) 24Mb/s IPB is frowns all around. 70-80 IPB is comparable and probably better than the ALL-I, textbook wise the all-I has to be 2x the rate of the IPB.

The flip side of this IMO is that you're still encoding the same YUV stream and you have raw despite its space drawbacks if you absolutely need it. Is the amount of tweaking worth it vs just shooting ALL-I when you need H264? Remember, the ALL-I *is* workable even by default.

On older esp SD cameras all you got was the hobbled IPB equivalent so the answer was likely yes. On the 6D since you only really get 720P raw its a maybe. Here I'm not so sure and judging by how long this has all been available and the tiny amount of testing, people aren't too interested.
Title: Re: [ALREADY DONE] h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing
Post by: DeafEyeJedi on December 15, 2014, 09:57:33 PM
I am interested in testing this out particularly because I've shooting a lot of h.264 for my work lately (BUT I still love my RAW/MLV though) however the one thing thats holding me back is the fact that I worry about causing problems with the ML after installing this module to get this to work and suppose I don't like it and uninstall it... would that be possible by just deleting the ini.files rather than redoing the whole process after formatting the SD and vice versa.

Hope this makes sense...

I'm currently typing on my iPhone through Tapatalk so I apologize for any typos!
Title: Re: [ALREADY DONE] h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing
Post by: 1% on December 15, 2014, 10:14:20 PM
An INI has to be loaded every camera restart (and maybe reloaded on encoder mode changes), etc. On 6D I added an auto loader so I didn't have to manually keep doing it.

Switching ML versions you don't need to format anything either, I never have. If you're doing the unmodified nightly and just INI all you would be doing is not loading the INI. On the transplanted 6D compiled version you would just turn the autoload off (or not on in the first place). You'd have to D/L the inis I had too for it to work.

I had them all here:
https://bitbucket.org/OtherOnePercent/tragic-lantern-6d/downloads/vbr.ini
https://bitbucket.org/OtherOnePercent/tragic-lantern-6d/downloads/rc.ini
https://bitbucket.org/OtherOnePercent/tragic-lantern-6d/downloads/cbr.ini
https://bitbucket.org/OtherOnePercent/tragic-lantern-6d/downloads/H264.ini

The top 3 were all a different encoder mode. The old thread had a listing of which parameters tripped an ERR70 with no patching.
Title: Re: [ALREADY DONE] h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing
Post by: Audionut on December 16, 2014, 12:29:57 AM
Since I have an 6D now, I should start playing with your (GOP etc) changes.
Title: Re: [ALREADY DONE] h264 bitrate on 5D Mark 3 - Increasing
Post by: DeafEyeJedi on December 16, 2014, 12:37:47 AM
Thanks for sharing @1% and also I'm not sure where to place the ini.file into which folder within the ML settings on the sd card? Doesn't to be compiled into the module first?

I plan on testing the top 3 first before I go ahead and use the outdated version, thoughts?

P.s. Would you know if the 6D auto-loader would work on the 5D3? lol