Yesterday, I spent several hours testing the 8...11 bit lossless compressed video mode on the October 16-th experimental built for the 100D. Why? Because in this mode, the 100D provides continuous recording at the 1736x976 resolution at 24 fps and a very reasonable file size. I recorded 10 minutes at 11-bit and 46% compression and the LL MLV-file was just about 3.3 GB according to the File manager. But in reality ... (see #4 below). When the record button is pressed, the frame indicator flashes first red for a few seconds, then turns orange and in a few minutes it turns green. It stays green until recording is stopped. In my opinion, this is excellent news for the 100D!
Here are my negative observations:
1) The RAW-Tweak module does not work properly. With that module enabled I was getting crashes all the time. Finally, I disabled it and got stable camera operation in the video recording modes. Playback in the 10 and 12-bit uncompressed mode does not work though. I get black screen when I try to playback the recording, however, the frame counter works and this is also useful since it provides information on the number of recorded frames. With the RAW-Tweak module disabled, playback of clips, recorded in the 8...11 bit lossless compressed video mode, works fine and there are no corrupt frames but ... (see below).
2) Exposure does not work properly in the above mode. The aperture and exposure indicators respond to the adjustments fine, screen gets darker and brighter accordingly but, what I see on the histogram has nothing to do with the correct exposure values. When the histogram indicates the correct 0.0 exposure, clips get severely underexposed and the only way you see that is upon an attempt to playback the recording. The much darker screen, (compared to the nice color screen during exposure and focus adjustments), shows a severely underexposed video (2 to 3 stops or more) and this underexposure is also confirmed upon inspecting the file on the computer. In the 5x magnification mode, underexposure is even more severe. No matter what I did, I could not get the exposure right. I had to switch to Manual photo mode, take the correct exposure, switch back to the video mode, readjust the numbers manually and only then the clip turned out to be normally exposed. At playback, the screen is always very dark, even if extreme overexposure is attempted. In this case only a slight magenta cast in the overexposed highlights indicates overexposure.
Initially I thought, the problem is in the lens aperture, being not properly controlled. But then I switched to the normal MLV-rec module and everything at 14/12/10 bit with sound worked fine again.
3) Sometimes, when I try to playback a clip that I have just recorded, especially if it is longer than a few seconds, I get a black screen. When I half press the shutter button, the LED starts blinking, indicating playback, but the screen stays black and camera does not respond. The only way out of this situation is pulling the battery out and restarting the camera. Then playback is possible. This issue is difficult to reproduce. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.
4) File manager does not indicate the correct file size at long recording times. I noticed that when I copied the files to my hard drive. The 10 min. recording, mentioned above is not 3.3 but 20.25 GB.
Can anyone else with a 100D please confirm the above behavior? Thanks.
