550D/T2i raw video recording port official thread

[Soupertrooper]

Would it be possible to override the sd controller? or is that just a terrible idea?

[moscow]

Hey guys. Today I thought: what if we will record footage directly to computer? I mean cable (from PC to Canon with usb 3.0 port) and SSD disk. EOS Utility could help in this, but here is one problem. When the card is not in Canon: shots go straight to the computer. When the memory card in the camera: shots go through the flash card, and then EOS Utility asks you want you to copy pictures from SD Card. Well, is it possible to install this firmware to make it work without SD Card? but I did not really know - it helps to speed up or no.

[ItsMeLenny]

from PC to Canon with usb 3.0 port

Even if your computer has a usb 3.0 port, and you have your camera plugged into your usb 3.0 port, it will not make any difference as the camera is only usb 2.0.
Usb 2.0 is slower than writing to the SD card directly.

[moscow]

Even if your computer has a usb 3.0 port, and you have your camera plugged into your usb 3.0 port, it will not make any difference as the camera is only usb 2.0.
Usb 2.0 is slowed than writing to the SD card directly.

damn, then have no idea how to speed up

[qsara]

damn, then have no idea how to speed up

yep, we're stuck with it. 7D has double processing power of 550D, I hope they'll crack the code of it and make a cheap RAW recorder camera

[3pointedit]

I cling to the hope of 10 bit compression  But yes the SD bottleneck is a bummer.

However I really love the latest build of MagicLantern. It is feature rich with a great UI. I have been timelapsing and HDRing lots again. So thanks a1ex and the team I still appreciate everything you did for my baby RAW cam 

[qsara]

we can always capture HDR video, it works for now

[NedB]

mk11174: Thanks very much for sharing your builds. They worked exactly as you described; 960x408 (23.976fps) is the max I am getting as well, with a SanDisk Extreme 30MB/s Class 10 8GB card. I'm just finishing up a comparison with H.264 which I will post when it is finished. The detail in the raw pics compared to that in a cropped H.264 video is just amazing. And opening them in ACR and being able to push and pull them so much without them falling apart is really exciting.
Also, thanks for sharing the documentation of the changes you made. This is going to force me to get a build environment going. May I ask which OS you are using for compiling, and how you set up your tool chain (pre-built toolchain, VM, or DYI)? Cheers!

[Videoteq]

Just shot a short clip on a 550D with a 45MB/s Sandisk 16GB card using mk11174's hack from http://www.mediafire.com/download/b866nsqwokaeqq8/ML_Raw_FPS.rar

720x406 @25fps

[dlrpgmsvc]

May I ask which OS you are using for compiling, and how you set up your tool chain (pre-built toolchain, VM, or DYI)? Cheers!

I advice you to use the VM: fast, easy, hassle-free, no other configurations needed !

[CFP]

7D has double processing power of 550D

Who cares? The speed of the CPU has absolutely no effect on the raw recording

It's all about buffer size and write speed. If you want a cheap DSLR with a big buffer and a fast write speed: Canon EOS 50D.
Its buffer is more than two times larger than the 550D's one and it has write speed limit of ~ 85 Megabyte/s. They cost around 300 € ...
See here:

- Raw video on 50d and 40d
- Raw Burst on the 50D

But I think on the 550D you haven't reached the limit yet. On my EOS 600D I'm able to get these results:

- 1280 X 400 at 24 frames/s: Up to 4 GB file size limit
- 960 X 540 at 24 frame/s: Up to 4 GB file size limit
- 720 X 720 at 24 frame/s: Up to 4 GB file size limit

[With this SD-card: SanDisk Extreme 16 GB SDHC Class 10 UHS-1 | 45 MB/s]

Since the 550D and the 600D are nearly the same camera and both have a max. write speed of 21.3 Megabyte/s you should be able to get similar results.

Btw.: If you want to compare H.264 and RAW video, make sure that you count in the crop factor. Otherwise your comparison would be completely pointless (Because the RAW videos are just crops of the H.264 frames ) Here are the crop factors you'll get with the raw resolutions:

Width | Cropfactor | Multiple of H.264 crop

1734 = 1.60 | 1
1280 = 2.17 | 1.36
960 = 2.89 | 1.81
720 = 3.85 | 2.41

So if you shoot a video in 1920 X 1080 H.264 at 55mm and you want to compare it with a 960 X 540 raw video you have to change the focal length to 30mm (55 / 1.81 = 30).

Have a nice day

[dlrpgmsvc]

But I think on the 550D you haven't reached the limit yet. On my EOS 600D I'm able to get these results:

- 1280 X 400 at 24 frames/s: Up to 4 GB file size limit
- 960 X 540 at 24 frame/s: Up to 4 GB file size limit
- 720 X 720 at 24 frame/s: Up to 4 GB file size limit

[With this SD-card: SanDisk Extreme 16 GB SDHC Class 10 UHS-1 | 45 MB/s]

Since the 550D and the 600D are nearly the same camera and both have a max. write speed of 21.3 Megabyte/s you should be able to get similar results.

The max performances are the ones you see here, confirmed by many 550D users. What parameters do you use, beside the ones you described, lilke: main dial position, Canon menu video mode, inherent ML menu settings, and so on... Perhaps 600D has more buffer memory ?

[CFP]

I get the best results with the following settings:

- Mode Dial: Video
- 1080 X 1920 24p Canon mode
- Global Draw: Off
- FPS override: Off
- Sound recording: Off
- "Pic Quality" set to "SRAW"

Maybe the "Pic Quality" trick doesn't work on the 550D? It should increase your "shoot_malloc total" if you set it to "SRAW" and then reboot your camera.

The Canon 600D had 74 Megabyte buffer for shoot_malloc. A1ex did something ... Now it's only 68 Megabyte - Without "Pic Quality" trick!
With it set to "SRAW" it's 96 and it was 104 once. If you want to know how much your 550D has, go to "Debug" menu and press "Q" on "Free Memory". As far as I know "shoot_malloc total" is what you're looking for.

Maybe the 550D just needs some more work to get where the 600D is?
Well, with the 21 Megabyte/s write speed limit we're screwed anyway 

[telecastDaveRI]

I just installed the latest nightly build on the Canon 550d and yes, - the shoot_malloc total is 68M as it is on the canon 600D
That being said, I would like you to forgive my ignorance on two things:

I consider myself fairly competent, and maybe I need more sleep, but I do not see any option to change the picture quality on the latest build of ML/Canon 550d?

Also, despite some poking around the forums, I cannot determine how to install a module on the camera. Again, the build from 5/24 is on there, but (obviously) no option for RAW.

Thanks in advance guys. 

[qsara]

It's all about buffer size and write speed.

you're obviously missing the point 7D can handle 8 RAW frames/sec with 120JPG buffer, what does 550D have? 12frame JPG buffer

and btw, 7D has CF card slot, 550D SD .. just really enjoyed while reading your post CFP

really, compare 550D and 7D in real life.

[goldenchild9to5]

Got a question for everybody on the this thread.. 

600D, or 550D ?

Trying to decide on which one to get.

[CFP]

you're obviously missing the point 7D can handle 8 RAW frames/sec with 120JPG buffer, what does 550D have? 12frame JPG buffer

and btw, 7D has CF card slot, 550D SD .. just really enjoyed while reading your post CFP

really, compare 550D and 7D in real life.

You're missing the point of my post too, I guess

I wasn't comparing the 7D and the 550D but the 50D

Sorry if I didn't express myself right. I'm no native speaker.

What I wanted to say is that a 7D might be a great camera. But when you're looking for a cheap camera that can actually record raw videos at high resolutions, then a used 50D seems to be the best one at the moment.
Especially since the two CPUs of the 7D might not be helpfull for raw video.

The 7D is great! No doubt! But the 50D has the same CF-controller as the 5D Mark II (Up to 90 Megabyte/s write speed) and it actually has a working Magic Lantern.
The 7D might have an even bigger buffer (?). But it is more expensive and at the moment it looks like it'll be the very last Canon DSLR that will get raw video (according to 1%) ...

So if you want a cheap camera for raw video now, I would go for a 50D instead of a 7D. If you can wait, then wait. I know the 7D looks really promising on paper. But I'm sure it will need a while until the developers will enable raw videos for the 7D, since it's so different from the other Canon DSLRs.

Hope that cleared things up

[mk11174]

I used Windows 7 64bit and VirtualBox using the prebuilt setup from here.

[1%]

There is nothing that can be done with the SD controller.

[telecastDaveRI]

Do we have the impression that a lower bit-rate will have an impact? (or is that what we are trying to discover?  )

It appears as if they are making strides over at this forum: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5601.0

My thought is that this still looks promising as I am hearing good things about the 600D and that device only has a SD card slot and the buffer is pretty much the same. And I am very willing to be proven wrong    Feel free.

My assumption is that the ability to shoot raw video will be able to be performed on the camera to some extent, but just based on the inherent limitations of the camera (550D), even 1280 by 720 might be pushing it to it's limit.

[mk11174]

Anyone interested, I enabled a bunch more things, I think it is at its max though, but seems to run the same as before 

http://www.mediafire.com/download/akpnykdda78e9ua/ML_RAW_FPS_FIX2.rar

By the way, this is from the latest changeset as well so all up to date.

[ddelreal]

This is very exciting!!! This will breathe life back into my 550D's.

[deleted.account]

mk11174, thanks for the latest build, haven't had chance to install or use it yet, need to get some more SD media, but is AutoETTR available?

Regarding SD media, is class 10 (New Faster Version) 45MB/s 32GB's Sandisk EXTREMES sufficient for raw video capture on 550D, so reasonable price. :-)

I've been using UHS Class 1 90MB/s on a 550D for h264 but now it's known how slow the SD port is what's the point?

[mk11174]

No, alex did not enable it for the 550D, I did to see if it worked, it seems to do something, but I don't know if it is accurate for this cam, but no, I kept it disabled for now, it will prob just use more memory anyway making Raw not work, we are at the very limit for sure, not good to turn on any other features with the Raw bin, it will crash for sure. But I got more features on at least so it feels like ML is back at least.

And no, I don't see a point to get a faster card, the controller in the cam is the limiter, no faster card will make any differ.

Update: I enabled AutoETTR and it worked, only in photo mode but it looks like it works, cam is for sure at mem limit, I did get 1 crash first boot after making new bin but have not been able to crash it again yet, But it is for sure at the limit. The BIN is at 444.2KB any bigger it crashes cam.

I am happy with everything that is enabled so far though. I will keep playing with ETTR enabled and if I dont get anymore crashed I will add it and send the link for it.

[leohds]

This FIX2 is doing great, I dont get playback bug on my slow card =)