I wanted to start a thread where I could keep some notes about some of the workarounds I've been using for reliable raw capture while an external monitor is connected.
The following tips apply to 7D, and possibly others, please feel free to add your own camera specific tips below:
1. For the best experience (at the cost of monitor resolution) I advise to use the "force-VGA" option in the "advanced" menu. This limits the hdmi output to 480p and all of the cropmarks, global draw overlays, and even playback via MLV_PLAY works perfectly. This mode does not seem to tax the cpu any more than using the camera's LCD screen as it's the same resolution.
2. If you need to use 1080i because you are pulling focus, or some other reason where monitor resolution is critical, you should disable as many of the overlays as possible for the best performance.
3. for the BEST performance I recommend you set global draw to" "Don't Allow" in the MLV menu. This will clear all the overlays when you hit record, and show the full native 3:2 image from your sensor on the hdmi monitor. If your monitor supports custom cropmarks or framing guides, you can use those instead. I recently bought a marshall vlcd-56md that has custom scaling and custom cropmarks, they are very nice features to use with ML Raw. My Zacuto EVF also does this, as well as most of the offerings from small HD. If your monitor doesn't have these features, you can always use anti-glare screen protector film to mask off the active recording area on your monitor. This way you can still see through to check your settings.
4. Do lot's of testing of your settings, and check the recorded result on your computer before you go shoot with these settings. Make sure you're not recording a lot of pink frames or a torn image. Something I've recently discovered is that when i'm using HDMI and I set the canon Q menu to 1080 24p, Almost every other frame is torn, and the resulting footage is unusable, but if I set canon Q menu to 1080 30p, and use FPS Override to set my frame rate to 24, (or 23.976) the recorded image is no longer torn, but I still get some pink frames. The only settings I have found to work reliably with no tearing or pink frames with hdmi monitor at 1080i is to set the region to PAL so that 1920 25p becomes available in canon Q menu. Then I use exact framerate FPS override to get 23.976. There is no tearing, and I get very few pink frames (if any).
Hopefully, we can add tips and tricks for other cameras below and have a nice thread that can save new users some headaches, and possibly even provide some useful information that may lead to new developments to improve external monitor usage.
