[IMPOSSIBLE] 5DmkII RAW without recording window cropping?

[dandeliondandy]

Long time ML user since my Powershot A630. Finally signed up for the forum since I spent all day geeking out about RAW.

I apologize if this has already been covered but I can't seem to have much luck with the forum searching.

Is it possible, or might it be at some point, to record a 720 RAW clip using the full 5DmkII sensor, instead of cropping the screen? If it's the same aspect ratio is it possible to basically treat it like a sRAW1 or sRAW2? For now I would love to play around with the RAW video, even at 720, but it's hard to get around the major cropping after using the full-frame for so long.

[dandeliondandy]

Is this a feature that seems possible to anyone or am I just missing something pretty straight forward?

[Redrocks]

"record a 720 RAW clip using the full 5DmkII sensor"

If you are using the FULL sensor it can't be 720?  1880 x 840 is the highest stable resolution I can achieve with a 1000x card.

[a1ex]

It's possible if you are a Canon engineer

We are not.

[dandeliondandy]

What I meant was if the camera can shoot in a lower quality RAW image, sRAW2, then would it be possible to do that with video. So for lower speed cards record in 720p but utilize the full lens view. The camera can do this just fine with RAW images.

[dandeliondandy]

Got ya, Alex. heh. Thanks. It's a shame Canon doesn't embrace all of this and help everyone make their cameras the best they can be. Luckily for all us nerds and independent filmmakers, you guys exist.

[Redrocks]

As far as I am aware, raw is a 14 bit record of what the sensor sees and that view is cropped to allow the camera to record it. The 5d2 seems incapable of reliably handling anything above 1880 x 840, but the developers are working on 12 & 10 bit code which might unlock more of the sensor. I still don't get "record in 720p but utilize the full lens view" do you mean up scaling the LCD display or down scaling the 5616 × 3744 pixels to ? x 720?

[dandeliondandy]

Sorry, yeah, downscaling. With the 720 recording crop the mkII can record aps-c lenses great, but the problem is I don't have many of those. I just figured that since you can shoot raw stills downscaled on the camera, that video should also be possible. Perhaps this can be done with the 12/10bit that's being worked on. That way we could record lower resolution with the full viewing angle of the full-frame lens.

I'm sure it's not easy by any means but it seems like it should be possible.

[Redrocks]

I don't think there is anything to gain by down scaling any bit depth of raw as it would entail discarding pixels and squeezing the rest into your chosen resolution. Standard EF lenses should work at any resolution on the 5D2 and if anything, this workflow increases the performance of your lens by utilizing the sharpest part of the glass. All you need is a 1000x cf card and you are able to record 1880 x 840 at 14 bit, which covers most of the horizontal on my LCD. Yes they are expensive, but if Canon offered an upgrade to unlock raw video capabilities, I wouldn't think twice about shelling out. I was also getting reliable 720 with a 30MB/s Sandisk Ultra.

[dandeliondandy]

That's true about the cards. I get fine 720 as well on my Extreme 60mb, just figured it was worth thinking about if someone wanted to record at lower resolutions with full use of their lens, for certain projects.

If not then that's all good.

[JuanIrache]

I don't think there is anything to gain by down scaling any bit depth of raw as it would entail discarding pixels and squeezing the rest into your chosen resolution. Standard EF lenses should work at any resolution on the 5D2 and if anything, this workflow increases the performance of your lens by utilizing the sharpest part of the glass. All you need is a 1000x cf card and you are able to record 1880 x 840 at 14 bit, which covers most of the horizontal on my LCD. Yes they are expensive, but if Canon offered an upgrade to unlock raw video capabilities, I wouldn't think twice about shelling out. I was also getting reliable 720 with a 30MB/s Sandisk Ultra.

I think there is a lot to gain. Maybe not for the fast cameras, but the slow ones will not be able to get much more than 540 lines in 24fps Raw. Knowing that, it's much better to get most of the sensor and then discard lines or pixels, rather than getting all the pixels in the central area (we've got the cropped mode for that).

Now, from all I've read, I understand that you cannot just read whichever lines you want, developers can't change sensor sampling modes (although g3gg0 seems to be working on that? http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5558.msg38266#msg38266 ).

What I struggle a bit more to understand is why we can't read the whole sensor and then save only half the lines, or half the pixels, to have low bitrates but whole sensor images. Maybe the Raw information does not go through ML code at all? Non-developer dummy explanation: are we just telling Canon's firmware: get that much of the sensor and throw it to the memory card?