Hi,
Thank you everybody for the amazing work with ML and 7D and also for all the help available in this thread.
My 64GB 1000x Komputerbay CF arrived few days back and I was able to get %1's latest build installed and working with first try. I was a bit sceptical about Komputerbay after reading about a few bad experiences, but after readig about their good customer support and that one guy who ordered 8 (?) cards and not a single one was dud, I decided to give it a go.
I'm not sure if my settings for the benchmark are right, but apparently the speeds could be worse. Also, after few quick tests I'm able to record continuously at 1728x972.
As for my first application, I've had this forever project to archive some old family super-8 films by filming the frames directly as they pass the film gate of an 8mm projector, with a DSLR and a macro lens. Poor man's telecine. After trying out a few combos of extension rings, objectives and macro conversion lenses, I found a good one that would give me the 8mm frame magnified to fill the 7D's sensor. After some tests with stock 7D and h264 I thought the quality was good if a bit muddy. Here's a framegrab from the .MOV file:
Around the time I was making these tests, I heard the news about ML RAW for 7D. I thought that RAW might make a big difference since the graininess of the 8mm film is probably difficult for the h264 encoding, and the video I was getting was not quite as sharp I had hoped. After installing ML I telecined a short clip and was blown away by the result. Not only can I now actually see the grain, but the ability to properly adjust the colors and even the exposure makes all the difference. Here's a frame grab (DNG) from the RAW video:
I've adjusted the colors a bit and applied some sharpening without too much thought, not necessarily the best settings.. Both are a bit scaled down, the original cropped-to-film-area DNG is 1172x981. The h264 frame looks so bad I've started to wonder if the camera was out of focus, though some high-contrast details look as sharp as on the RAW version.
The project is not complete, I've still got to figure out how to sync the projector and 7D framerates, but I've got some ideas, and now after trying ML RAW I'm sure it's going to be worth the effort.
Anyways, just wanted to check in and give thanks, good work!
