Really strange news about the 4:2:2 on 5dmark 3

[N.Mendes]

Hello everybody, i've read a really strange think today, about the official April firmware for the mark 3, the guy talked about the 8bit 4:2:2 and says that, maybe, the firmware wil not allow a real 4:2:2 signal..

Here is his text:

"I have some doubts over Canon and Nikon's specs when they talk about HDMI. Canon say they have uncompressed 4:2:2 coming in a firmware update this April for the 5D Mark III, a full year after the hardware was released. The Nikon D800 it is claimed does 4:2:2 1080p out of the box. Is it really 4:2:2? This would require a significant change in the way the sensor is sampled. When a DSLR is skipping whole lines on the sensor just to read out a 1080p feed from a high resolution photographic imager, I don't see how it can be sampling 4:2:2. Rather, I think the HDMI coming from these cameras is 4:2:0 wrapped in a 4:2:2 ProRes format by the external recorder, and Canon and Nikon are possibly guilty of mislabeling it as true 4:2:2 when it isn't, much as the video is mislabelled 1080p when it is actually resolving far less in reality".

I would like to have your opinion about that, because if it is true, i have no reason to stay with canon..

[a1ex]

It's 4:2:2, easy to tell with some pixel peeping.

[N.Mendes]

So it will be a real 4:2:2 signal, really good to know..
Thanks for your reply A1ex, and for the work you do with magic lantern, if anyone has an other opinion about that, i would be curious to hear it..

[1%]

Its 422 internally already. What is the real bit depth of the YUV buffers is what I wonder... its not 8 bit is it? The 422 pics convert all over the place from 8 bit jpeg to 24bit tiff... but what's the original depth?

6D screen shot from 1080i produces 1680 something image with black bars instead of 1804 sized one so possible new code base had separate buffer for HDMI which is why they can do this and you can still record a movie at the same time it seems.