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Hey guys,

Do you know if there are any hardware differences between these two models, or are the only differences in firmware.

If the latter is true, is that the reason why I can't find any 7DSV firmware online?

Cheers,

Ben

Hey guys,

I was wondering if the end goal of ML was to make all the features loadable / unloadable via modules? Would this be a way to reduce CPU/RAM overhead?

I'd love to be able to pick only the modules that I'm using at that time. i.e. focus peeking for shooting with my vintage lenses, or dual ISO, or intervalometer for timelapses etc.

Thanks,

Ben

hey bud,

as far as I'm aware the statement:

External recording via CF to SSD is not possible because of the bottleneck in data and processing power of the 5d Mark III.

is incorrect. The processing power is not the bottleneck, it is the inbuilt card controller (probably an IC) and the firmware that drives that. You would need to replace (at least) that part of the hardware and modify the existing firmware. I'm going to assume that the firmware that controls the IO for the CF is high level in the hardware design and can't be over-ridden / run alongside ala magic lantern.

So there is a physical limit to the data throughput.

Is the camera already attempting to write to the CF card by the time the data gets there?

The camera dumps the raw files directly to the CF, with (I think only a little) CPU involvement. There are other threads where the devs have spoken about and dismissed raw compression as being viable. Unless the CPU on that emulator thing is much faster than the DIGIC then you won't have much luck compressing the data either.

If you are an engineery type person the easiest solution would be to modify an IDE/SATA to CF adapter to be bi-directional. Even that isn't a simple task and won't allow for more speed, only more storage space. 

The emulator thing could be cool if you could program it to do some post production tasks. Thats probably about it though.

I see a lot of you under the false illusion that this setup will make for faster write speeds / faster framerate at high res, remember that the bottleneck in speed is the card controller inside the camera. It won't matter if the SSD can write a 1Mb/s or 1Gb/s if the camera is limited to a maximum throughput.

There will be practically no benefit in terms of speed for this system. Any benefit found would be storage space, which could be significant over CF cards.


edit.... and I just realised that SDX essentially said the same thing I did, oh well.... no harm in repeating it

Hey guys,

Hope you're all having a good weekend.

Is it possible to move the crop area inbetween frames whilst capturing video?
If so then would it be possible to alternate frame locations every second frame so they can be stitched in post.

I'm just thinking that this method could allow a lower frame rate to have a greater aspect ratio.

Cheers,

Ben

points against:
- increasing cpu load / memory accesses will slow down CF DMA (concurrent SDRAM accesses)

thanks for the feedback, out of interest does the above point mean that any further reduction of CPU / memory usage will potentially increase write speeds?

@maxotics hey, yes i did very little research going into that question.

please be aware that it is never my intent to offend, i just like problems and see a challenge behind a "no". which is why I wanted elaboration.

I did know that realtime compression isn't viable which is why I asked what the CPU overhead is and made the comment about frame numbers.

Let me throw you a hypothetical.

Let's say the devs are able to take a frame that is about to be dumped onto the card, and instead threw it onto camera memory for processing. The camera then compresses this frame and then dumps it onto the card when it is able to next (after having compressed it).

Lets say the 5th frame is the one that gets grabbed for compression. The frames would be written to card 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9... and once compression has finished then 5,10,11. So it would be a pseudo-realtime compression. Taking a frame here or there and compressing, rather than every frame. The thing that would allow this to be completed is the new MLV format with has frame metadata, allowing the frame to be uncompressed by whatever tool supports MLV.

Of course this is only theoretical, which is why I asked the question in the first place.

Apologies for not elaborating better in the first place.

-Ben

no compression because it won't work or because it's too hard or because it isn't a priority?

(I know that this would have to be a wholly software implementation, thus why i was suggesting only a frame here or there)

EDIT: i missed a letter

hey guys, what's the CPU overhead whilst recording raws?

I was just wondering if it was possible to compress a frame every now and then to "improve" bandwidth. With the meta data included in MLV does it matter if the frames are written out of order?

-Ben

this is not an impossible project... although it will be highly unlikely that there will be any real increase in speed. the only thing this would offer would be the potential for more storage space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive

would it be possible to frankenstein some microdrive hardware?

i'm going to revive this thread to paste this link

http://www.sycard.com/cfext182.html

it's an extender for CF. I did notice earlier in the thread that somebody tried soldering pins directly on the CF card. This little device may make things easier.

-Ben

k, thanks for the quick responses

For video it could work.

For photo, it completely misses the point, since you will get better results with a simple 2-frame bracketing.

So recording video at 60 fps and then merging frames to 30 in post?

Does the current HDR use the raw buffer? I'm just thinking that if you're capturing two consecutive frames, i.e. silent picture / raw video style, those images are going to be closer together in terms of time. Better for moving subjects (less ghosting). Excuse my ignorance on the topic.

-Ben

I have read that, I understand the basics of the dual ISO and used it in the few days after it was first released.

What I am asking is: Could the process of taking two separate image be automated, whereby one image has alternating rows of low ISO then high ISO, followed by the second image that has alternating rows of high ISO then low ISO.

Almost like a HDR, but with dual ISO and with two images rather than one. The benefit would be that some detail would be retained in the shadows and highlights as there would be enough information to fill the blank areas. The downside being that if there is any movement in the frame (like a standard HDR) you're likely to get movement / ghosting. The difference is that the ghosting would be interlaced, rather than "solid"

I don't know if I have explained this succinctly, please let me know if I need to clarify more.

-Ben

Yes, but you will get both motion artifacts and aliasing. You could have just one of them with shutter HDR only

I asked this much earlier in the thread and it got buried. Again I'm not sure if I'm understanding correctly but:

are we talking about taking 2 frames with alternating ISO locations and combining them in post?

i.e. frame 1 has odd rows as iso 100, even as 1600
then frame 2 has odd rows as iso 1600, even as 100

Would this work? would we gain more detail from this method? or would you be better off just bracketing ISO?

Cheers,

Ben

This just makes me want to buy a house >_>

a1ex and stevefal... Are you guys talking about one frame, having line 1,3,5,7... at iso 100 and 2,4,6,8... at iso 1600, then on the next frame switching them?

if this is the case, couldn't you shoot at 60fps and and in post production get a 30 fps average of 2 frames, eliminating the moire?

let me know if i'm way off the mark here.

Also has anybody compiled the 7D binary yet?

-Ben

fair enough, thanks for the quick response

Hey there, I've been using ML on my 7D for a while now.

I use manual focus lenses a lot. I find the focus peaking handy, but sometimes there just aren't enough highlighted dots on the screen to ascertain whether the image is well focused.

My question is: is it possible to vary the size of the dots or draw a polygon around the area with the highest concentration of dots.

Thanks,

Ben.