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Is the camera in 720p movie mode in the Canon menu?

Hi AWPStar

Here is a 700D video with movie crop:

http://storage.bservice.org/700Dcrop.MLV

"Pattern Crop (700D)" only removes the focus dots in the middle of the frame. Several rows of dots remain at the top and bottom of the frame.

I've been trying out MLVP the past couple of days and I'm very impressed with the workflow.

I have encountered an issue. I'm using 700D footage with movie crop enabled. I select 'remove focus dots' and choose the pattern 'Pattern Crop (700D)'. Most of the focus dots disappear but a few rows of dots remain at the top of the frame and a few at the bottom of the frame. The frame size is 1280x720. Build 2253.

Is 3x movie crop possible with the t5i?

I'm considering upgrading from my t3i and this is the only issue. I routinely use the 3x crop mode on the t3i, even more so than regular mode, and I know the t5i doesn't have it natively. Does ML add that ability, and is it available in H264 or only in RAW?

Thanks for the links, Paul. I will try to implement your suggestions. I am actually using that exact Transcend 64gb card now! It wasn't much more than the mid speed card at the time so I thought it would be a good investment.

Walter - I think having a fast card is desirable even with the t3i. As a lot of reviewers on Amazon have noted, the write speed of cards is often slower than the read speeds. A 90mb/s card might only have a write speed of 45mb/s. Having some extra headroom is useful in case the card has a hiccup during writing and drops the speed momentarily. So long as it remains above the recording bitrate it shouldn't interfere.

The Transcend card seems very reliable though, and when I transfer files onto my computer the speed graph jumps to the highest available speed and just stays there until the transfer is complete. I'm not used to seeing that.

Thanks for the tripod recommendation, Paul. I will check that site out.

Thanks for the feedback.   I'm still getting used to video and scene composition but I'm glad you liked it.

Paul - At 1152 x 622 I'm typically able to record for between 40 and 70 seconds. I haven't fully explored the settings which might help to extend the recording time, but the card does seem to perform better when it's had a chance to 'warm up'. I put this together in After Effects without converting any of the clips first but will look into the transcoding options you mentioned. Thanks for the advice. I think image stabilization was off for these. I'll confirm that for sure next time. The tripod I'm using is a very cheap ($15) online store tripod with pan head, but despite its price the thing is virtually indestructible. I really had to fight with it to pry the pan head off, and discovered that it doesn't have a mount for other heads so I will be looking for another tripod to mount a video head in the future.

I've had a few weeks now to experiment with Magic Lantern between college assignments and I'm definitely starting to prefer RAW video for the flexibility it offers in editing. The past week has been quite warm here in Houston and a lot of wildlife has been visiting the backyard so I recorded some of it and put together this video. RAW is extremely slow to work with on my laptop so I didn't have the patience to coordinate clips with music on this occasion.

The footage was shot in RAW with the exception of the scene with the blackbirds which is H.264. Is the difference noticeable?

Camera: t3i / 600D
Lens: 55-250mm IS
Camera settings: Mostly f/5.6 - f/9.1 and 1/200 - 1/320 @ ISO 160
RAW settings: 1152 x 622 @ 18fps

Hi everyone

I wanted to introduce myself as I recently installed Magic Lantern and will no doubt have questions before long. I've been following the forum for a couple of years but didn't have a compatible camera until recently. I sold my first DSLR to raise money so I could come to America, but then in November Canon had a sale on their website which brought the cost a refurbished t3i down to $274, and for that price I couldn't resist. I was specifically interested in the t3i because of its video crop feature, allowing the capture of distant objects in high detail, despite its lower card write speed.

For the first few weeks I explored the capabilities of the camera and experimented with h264 video, and last week I decided to finally give Magic Lantern a try. I'm still getting familiar with the features it offers, but I've already had some success with RAW video which I've posted below. I began with the standard 960 x 540 resolution, and the resulting video offers much greater image control and detail than h264, but it does look a little soft when scaled up to 1080p.

I decided to experiment with higher resolutions at lower frame rates.

This first video was captured at 1344 x 726, and the frame rate was 12fps. It's hand held, so it's a little shaky. Rendered at original size on a 1080p frame for scale.

Plenty of detail is captured at this resolution, however you can see that the low frame rate results in a very choppy video.

I converted the video to 24fps using software to fill in the missing frames, and upconverted it to 1080p.

This processing resulted in a more organic feel. Although it's not perfect, the movement of the camera and the swaying of the bird feeder look much more natural now. If you look closely you can see that the bird's movements aren't quite perfect, it morphs from frame to frame in one or two places, but I think this resolution would probably work for scenes that have light movement.

For reference, here is a similar video recorded with the camera's H264 codec at 1080p and 24fps:

You can see that the colors are significantly duller, the contrast harsher and less fine detail captured.

I decided to push the test a little further and recorded the following video on a tripod at a resolution of 1728 x 934, and a frame rate of 6fps. Once again this is original size on a 1080p frame for reference.

The raw footage is completely unwatchable at this frame rate, however I once again converted it to 24fps and upscaled it to 1080p.

I think at first sight this video could easily fool people. It looks pretty smooth. If you look closely you'll see that there are definitely a few rendering glitches, such as leaves appearing or disappearing, but a short clip like this in the context of a larger movie would probably work. I think this resolution, even at 6fps, might be useable for scenes with very little movement. Still landscapes with slow moving clouds perhaps.

I plan to do much more testing to find a good balance of detail and movement, but these initial results are inspiring.

I'm running one of the latest nightly builds, and for the most part it seems pretty stable. The only problem I've really encountered is that the camera crashes if I press the play button while it's in raw video mode. I unloaded the mlv_play module in case that was causing the problem but it still happens.

As I get more familiar with Magic Lantern I may look into the source and see if I can understand what it's doing. I'm studying several languages in college so it might not be too different.