Canon 6D RAW vs H264

[Malex]

Hi hi, I have been playing around with THE RAW!! on my 6D, and I have to say that it's pretty cool to finally being able to work with some files that can handle color correction! So for that A BIG THANK to all the developers, a1ex, g3gg0, 1%, coutts, and the also to the administrators and contributors of the forum, this is a cool community

I am happy with the RAW quality and its workflow, but I am not happy with my 6D, it has a slow SD slot, we have to fix aliasing color from moire, we can't record sound while recording, and we can't record 1080p. I know there are work around for some of my complaints, but it would just be easier to have a 5Dm3 and not care about those stuff at all, just like with a video camera.

So here is my little comparaison of RAW vs H264 with my 6D.
enjoy :

[kgv5]

Very nice comparison, good work!

But... 5D3 is in a different price range. Most people bought 6D because it is the first quite affordable full frame camera, half or 2/3 price of the 5d3.
Most problems can be solved.
Aliasing and moire - with VAF-6D - I know, its over 350 bucks, but selling quite fresh camera and buying a new one causes similar cash loss plus price difference 6D/5D3.
Price of the reliable CF cards capable of recording 1080p continously is much higher than SDs.
Audio - it is an issue but most people uses external recording devices and make a synch in post - if sound is recorded on SD and picture on CF you have to also do this.
Currently 6D can record about 16 seconds of 1808x756 (2,39:1) - with upscale 106,5% to 1920x800 - it is not long but quite usable for music videos etc..

As you said, ML is still improving and it is hard to say what can happen in the next months.

[Malex]

I got my 6D to because it came with the good 24-105mm and it was still cheaper than the 5D3. After few month with it, and now with the possiblity of shooting raw and after playing with it, now I know that I want to mostly work with it, in the best way possible, so either I get a Blackmagic, Digital Bolex, or 5D3 or I just keep quiet and wait until ML final stable version and see how it works with the 6D, and maybe consider a VAF (I don't know if I can it installed in france).

[asombrir]

Has anyone else been messing with the bitrate control on the H.246? I have a little and can see great improvement on my test shots. I finally braved ML last week for the first time with my 6D so I could try recording in RAW which I am also enjoying a lot. I also see a huge difference and love the quality. The control in post is what kills me! I wish that control was always readily available and have had many scenes lost in the past to re shoots because of this so it makes me want to film in RAW all the time now. Still hoping they do find a work around to get that 1080 or even a solid 720 at continuous film time would be great. Even up scaling the options under 720 up to 1080 all look great. I am still trying to understand the Bitrate control. I saw the option to control it was there in the menu so I messed with the numbers and saw big difference between the 10 and the 50 options.

[kgv5]

So what h264 settings do you recommend?
I used ipb, gop24, rate control, flush auto and could see some improvement comparing to stock h264.

[Malex]

I'd like to know more about the H264 bitrate option too, I never took the time to understand it, I just played with it and my recording just keep stoping by itself because I didn't know what I'm doing..

[cthornhill]

I have a 60D, and have been playing with both raw and higher bitrate H264. I suggest checking out the manual and posts on high bit rate. I found I can record continuously at X2 rate if I turn off audio in the Canon menu. I can do X1.4 on my San Disk Extreme with audio, and short burst of no audio X3. The X2 footage is really nice. It does not have the DR of raw, but has good color and low compression artifacts. Try different settings. Alas, the SD interface speed is still the issue.

[Malex]

I have a 60D, and have been playing with both raw and higher bitrate H264.

I have a 550D and I know what you're saying but the bitrate menu is different on the 6D and 5D3 it has more settings to play with.

[sonic]

Nice comparison!

how to use those Not a valid %s URL ?? it doesn't work when I paste my video link in the middle of it.

You have to use HTTP, not HTTPS.

[Malex]

Thank you Sonic 

[arkasa]

Currently 6D can record about 16 seconds of 1808x756 (2,39:1) - with upscale 106,5% to 1920x800 - it is not long but quite usable for music videos etc..

How do you get that odd resolution? I can only seem to get 1824x??? which fails after 5/6sec.

[Walter Schulz]

Crop mode.
And use exFAT file system.
MLV_REC.mo and RAW_REC.mo are exclusive.

[Levas]

Your looking at a post several years old.
There was a time that 1808 was the maximum width for canon 6d build.
Nowadays 1824 is the max width resolution.
That is all in normal mode, no crop mode needed.
If you only get 5 or 6 seconds of video you probably have the aspect ratio still on 16:9.
Set it to 2,39:1
That will give you probably about 12 seconds (in 25fps pal) or about 8 seconds in 30 fps ntsc

[lanternman]

Hi Levas,

Have a few questions:

1. How do I enter crop mode in my 6D? Will there be image degradation (like digital zoom)?
2. To get around 30 seconds of recording max per run, what is the max resolution i can squeeze from the 6d? Which aspect ratio can give me the 'most pixels'?
3. Is there any way for ML to auto-span the video files for continuous recording on high res?

Thanks!

[Walter Schulz]

1) Crop mode setting in ML menu or press 5x button in movie mode.
Crop mode vs. "standard": Lot's of discussions. It's quite the other way round. Lookup "line skipping"
2) 720p continuously or any ratio not overstepping about 38 MByte/s. See http://rbrune.github.io/mlraw/
3) Continuous as in "frames dropped" (-> Movie -> RAW video (MLV) -> Frame Skipping) or as in lags between clips (Movie -> Movie tweaks -> Movie Restart)?

[Levas]

Hi lanternman,

To enter crop mode you have to press the magnify button on your 6d, (press it several times for different zooms, recording is always in 3x zoom and not what you see on the screen) but when magic zoom is enabled this doensn't work, so turn of magic zoom.
Zoom mode is always in 30 fps, even if your camera is set to PAL, so use FPS override function in magic lantern to use 25 fps or 24 fps in zoom mode.

For about 30 seconds recording I advise to use 1:2.39 aspect ratio and 1600 pixels wide resolution (giving you 1600 x 667 resolution).
This could still look good upscaled to 1920 x 800.

There is no way to record continuous in higher resolutions.
The problem is, that the internal memory buffer is filled up during recording, when the buffer is full, it needs about 5 seconds to empty it to the SD card.
That's the reason why the camera stops for about 5 seconds after recording.
There's no way to you can bypass the 5 seconds of emptying the buffer, unless you are a technician and can open your 6d and solder some more memory in to it