Real world use of RAW video on DSLRs?

Started by drmoreau, January 08, 2014, 09:18:45 PM

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drmoreau

I primarily shoot wedding videos and stock footage. Running a 60D and a 600D I cannot see any real world practical use of RAW video.

Is it just that you get 14bit vs 8bit and no compression artifacting?

With either of my cameras I can't even shoot (with a fast card) 4 seconds of 1080p video (minimum for stock footage clips most places), so what use is it really?

Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking the incredible achievement of even getting this to work AT ALL. Just wondering what the actual practical use of it is at this point and what most folks dabbling with it are actually using it for.

jose_ugs

Do u shoot stock(photo) footage and if so, do you shoot JPEG?

drmoreau

I generally shoot stock photos in RAW.

I get how awesome RAW is, I'm just saying that with the current limitations what is anyone actually using it (video) for? I'm not trying to be condescending, I'm genuinely curious.

Malcolm Debono

Just like RAW photos, the primary reasons for shooting RAW are more latitude (ability to bring back highlights and shadows to a certain extent) and changing white balance in post. Tests have also shown that even when shooting raw video at a resolution lower than 1080p and upscaling it to 1080p, it is often sharper than standard 1080p H264 footage.

I have never actually shot in raw for any real work (apart from personal footage & tests) since I mostly shoot weddings & events. I think it's nice to have a camera capable of shooting raw video, and I wouldn't think twice to use it when the need arises (such as commercials). In fact it's the primary reason why I'm keeping my 5D2 as a second body to my 6D :)
Wedding & event cinematographer
C100 & 6D shooter
New here?  Check out the FAQs here!

drmoreau

yeah I figured the ability to make more corrections, but still, with most cameras capable of only a second or two of RAW video that really seems to limit the possibilities eh?

hopefully future bodies will have much faster card slots and allow much longer takes. if either of my cameras were even capable of 5 seconds of 1080p RAW video I would put it to work immediately on stock footage shoots.

a1ex

Last time I've checked, the 60D was capable of around 5 seconds at 1080p 24fps.

drmoreau

nope. I switched the camera into 1920x1080 24p in the regular menu and then tried to change the resolution in the RAW video section of ML and it said that the current size was not supported in that mode.

I did manage to get almost 6 seconds of 720p though. That's a start.

1%

Quoteif either of my cameras were even capable of 5 seconds of 1080p RAW video I would put it to work immediately on stock footage shoots.

50D can shoot 1080P till the card fills
the 7D can shoot close to 1080P sizes too

The problem is you bought a body with an SD card.

drmoreau

Well, I use the 60D because it has a flip out screen. Event video is very difficult without it.

jose_ugs

Quote from: drmoreau on January 08, 2014, 10:44:54 PM
Well, I use the 60D because it has a flip out screen. Event video is very difficult without it.

One of the things Canon should have added to 5DM3! But that's another story...
You cannot use RAW for your job... not really
But if you shoot music videos, commercials, stuff where you can afford multiple takes... RAW shines as a super nova!

drmoreau

Agreed, raw will NOT work for weddings, but would be nice for stock footage shoots.

When the 5d3 came out I considered it but lack of flip-out screen was a no-go for me.

jose_ugs

There are some solutions using small tablets and/or android smartphones where you can monitor off that LCD... So think twice :)

dmilligan

Quote from: drmoreau on January 08, 2014, 10:05:42 PM
nope. I switched the camera into 1920x1080 24p in the regular menu and then tried to change the resolution in the RAW video section of ML and it said that the current size was not supported in that mode.

I did manage to get almost 6 seconds of 720p though. That's a start.

That's because "1080p" in the Canon menu is not actually 1080p, it's upscaled from a little bit lower resolution to 1080p. The highest resolution in non crop mode is 1728x972. Canon upscales that to 1080p.

Hit the zoom in button in LV and you'll now see that you can go all the way up to 2.5K resolutions.

I can get around 15 seconds of 720p. You need to set the picture quality to S2 JPEG.

Midphase

Quote from: drmoreau on January 08, 2014, 09:18:45 PM
I primarily shoot wedding videos and stock footage. Running a 60D and a 600D I cannot see any real world practical use of RAW video.

You're absolutely right, those two cameras are pretty horrible at full res raw.

Now if you had a 5D3 (and weren't shooting weddings) you'd probably be singing a different tune.

mageye

5DMKII | 500D | KOMPUTERBAY 32GB Professional 1000x |Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II | Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC | Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III | Zoom H2 (4CH. audio recorder) | Mac OS X 10.9.2 | Photoshop CC | After Effects CC | Final Cut Pro 7

Africashot

@drmoreau Looking at your other threats you also do not seem to find 1080p practical due to long render times, thus RAW is definitely not for you. In any case I've got a 600D and wouldn't even dream about using it for RAW, on the other hand the 5D2 is doing ok for my RAW needs...
ML 5D2 & T3i

jas.brooks

In my experience shooting with a 5D3, raw is only appropriate for a certain minority of my work, but for that work it's an absolute godsend.

I shot for 5 days around Saudi back in November, getting backplates for a mid-budget CGI pre-visualisation of a massive building in the desert. Because the footage was going to be extensively comped (and hence motion-tracked), it was very useful for the post-team to be dealing with the sharpness of raw, not to mention the colorspace, DR, and flexible WB for grading in amongst plenty of full-CG shots.

I shot a total of 350GB in 5days, so not a huge amount of rolling time (managed to get by with only two 64gb Komputerbay 1000x CFs, although 3 or 4 would've been nice), and only had one bizarrely magenta-purple take during the whole experience, which I thought was a sign of pretty good reliabilty.

I've also started to make videos for high-end hotels, and for that it is also perfect. The sharpness is really impressing clients, and the flexibility with DR and colour takes pressure off trying to choose the 'best' WB in mixed-lighting environments.

All in all, a MASSIVE thanks and congratulations to the ML team and wider community.

-jason

Shield

Quote from: drmoreau on January 08, 2014, 09:52:50 PM
yeah I figured the ability to make more corrections, but still, with most cameras capable of only a second or two of RAW video that really seems to limit the possibilities eh?

hopefully future bodies will have much faster card slots and allow much longer takes. if either of my cameras were even capable of 5 seconds of 1080p RAW video I would put it to work immediately on stock footage shoots.

Second or two?  I get 12+ minutes straight with a 64GB card + 5d3.

Shield

Quote from: drmoreau on January 08, 2014, 11:09:10 PM
Agreed, raw will NOT work for weddings, but would be nice for stock footage shoots.

When the 5d3 came out I considered it but lack of flip-out screen was a no-go for me.

Get a small HDMI monitor and mount it on the hotshoe, or build a small rig.  Can still be done handheld.

fillman86

3 simple reasons;
1) green screen, compositing and other digital touch ups become a whole lot easier and better looking
2) colour correction with compression is like stapling your eyelids shut :P raw is a dream for this!!
3) until recently, the majority of movie projectors were 2k, so for the 5d3, h264 didn't look to great, but raw 1080 (close to 2k) that I've seen looks fine

it really comes down to what you want.... and if you want to colour correct..... seriously.... colour correction........... colour........ correction....... colour erection....... :P

bluewater

Depends on your needs.  8)

IF you shoot a commercials or movies, RAW video is a good choice 'cause we can focus on the 1-min-clip for 2 hours or more.
HOWEVER, if you shoot for hobbies and record for a trip abroad, you got the wrong one.


How many time could you put into JUST making videos for A TOUR?

10-hours-moive recording?

voi·là
Maybe it'll takes 100 hours or more (with SUPERFast i7 computer)


So, RAW video is not good for recording your everyday life.
I rather recommend you shooting SMARTPHONE can record 4K movie (e.g. Galaxy note 3).




4K video has more cleaner image than 5D mark3 RAW-video. (only in a day circumstances)

hjfilmspeed

I disagree. If you want to shoot your little adventures in RAW then go for it. I put together an vid in no time at all. Just an evening with friends with a cinematic look thanks to ML

and i much prefer this image over any cellphone claiming to out put 4k. Id like to see that cell phone push iso 6400 and above. some of the scenes in my vid there was no light at all! Also this 4k craze is a bit much. How many of those cams can actually output true 4k anyway. Still cams have a hard enough time resolving that as is.

I think raw is awesome for what ever you want to use it for, if you know what your up against in workflow which isnt that bad at all.

Man people are going to be driving there cars with there cell phones soon.....

reddeercity

I think there's a lot of people with "best practices" issue and not getting the result they expected .
It's seems "from the posts here in the form" that a lot of user's are finding it hard to come from
H264/MOV. file to Raw/DNG's .
Before you more of less just focus, frame it, expose then record, or set to Auto then hit record.
So now Magic Lantern Team has put a "Ferrari" in your hands (My favorite one is  1962 Ferrari 250 GTO  ;) )
like all Hi-performance Machine there's a learning curve you need to do !
But I think that maybe the problem, some people are lazy (this dose not apply here , please don't take offence).
and they just don't want to read of research the topic for raw, a lot just want someone
to tell them what to do or how to do it.
The Workflow is very simple and if you are a organized person you should not have issue .
I Subscribe to the very simple philosophy "K.I.S.S." (keep it simple stupid)  ;D
You really don't need a "super computer" to process Raw, there is so many way now to get your raw file to a video clip.
I know of (3) different way with no special software added,
1) After Effect >ARC> Video file > NLE
2)Apple Motion 5 >image sequence>Color Grade>ProRes4444>NLE
3)Apple Compressor 4>image sequence>Video File(with minimal image adjustment)
and as long as you have a good (GPU) you don't need a lot a CPU power.
:)

Edit: I use Raw for all my projects, and with MLV+Audio there is no turning back!


bluewater

I can't chime in with prevalence of RAW video; Rather I belive 4K era will come, soon.


No matter how *fast PC is, it still needs time to convert MLV into DNGs and combine them to movie file.
Plus, there's no software to convert MLV files to movie clips in one click.
If you shoot with 4K video camcorder, all you have to do is just connect USB cable to PC and play it.


Even though RED is cheaper than $1000, people will not use it to record their everyday life.
Usability issue cannot be igrnored when it comes to daily life shooting not commercials and films.


*You don't need nice GPU; CPU is far more important.
GPU encoding quality is not as good as CPU encoding. Cuda-acceleration filter is limited.
*I use RAM disk(write speed: 11000 MB/s), but it still takes much time.
*AS I said in low light, 4K smartphone is not good at all. That's why I pointed "only in a day circumstances"

Stavfilm

Quote from: drmoreau on January 08, 2014, 09:18:45 PM
I primarily shoot wedding videos and stock footage. Running a 60D and a 600D I cannot see any real world practical use of RAW video.

Try shoot something different with RAW  8)
I'd feel myself more lucky if I had ML RAW in my camera when I visited London and Glasgow. So much space for color creativity, absolutly different perceptions from the picture.

I'm preparing for my first big movie I'll shoot with my 5DM3 and ML RAW. So, believe me, there is a practical use of RAW video in real world  ::)

Malcolm Debono

Raw video has it's uses. It can't really be just good or just bad. I for one rarely use it, and in fact I've only just began experimenting with it recently as I'm aiming to use it for a short film which I'll be producing soon. I definitely wouldn't imagine shooting weddings & events in raw.

My point is that it really depends on what you're doing. This can easily be compared to cars: having a sports car can be wonderful, but I'd rather get a 4x4 if I'm driving on rough terrain.
Wedding & event cinematographer
C100 & 6D shooter
New here?  Check out the FAQs here!

reddeercity

Yes, but you still need to know how to drive a 4x4  ;)

olancollardy

The real world use of RAW video on DSLR? For me this has been an every-shoot decision for me. I've had the RAW hack since August last year and I have only shot h264 just once for a mission/time critical piece!

I don't necessarily shoot for the "extra" flexibility in post, for me it's more the sharpness and detail. Once you shoot RAW, you definitely can't go back to looking and loving your h264 shot just because you know it could be better. I must say changing White Balance in post is a massive bonus because you can change the look of your work easily with that.

I recently shot this using the ML RAW hack and everyone finds it mindblowing that it was shot on a DSLR!

https://vimeo.com/75362978

hjfilmspeed

Bottom line if your a cinematographer, you most like will love RAW and wont ever go back.

If your an event videographer that only does coverage, probably not going to like raw for that.

And if your caught up in the megapixel hype, get a 4k cell phone or what ever, not a 5d3 with full frame sensor and 1080p RAW video.

The 4k will not impress me unless we all have 40 foot screens in our house.

From my perspective, after editing h.264 for so long with endless frustration, ML gave me a new camera to work with. I much prefer taking my time with my footage and finessing it to my liking.

but to each his own

Yes content is key but if i had a choice, i would record my content in raw.

reddeercity

Quote from: hjfilmspeed on January 14, 2014, 05:20:39 AM
Bottom line if your a cinematographer, you most like will love RAW and wont ever go back.
If your an event videographer that only does coverage, probably not going to like raw for that.
And if your caught up in the megapixel hype, get a 4k cell phone or what ever, not a 5d3 with full frame sensor and 1080p RAW video.
The 4k will not impress me unless we all have 40 foot screens in our house.
From my perspective, after editing h.264 for so long with endless frustration, ML gave me a new camera to work with. I much prefer taking my time with my footage and finessing it to my liking. but to each his own
Yes content is key but if i had a choice, i would record my content in raw.
+1

amyenb

Of course there is a real world use for RAW. I've been using it for around 3 months now for music videos and short films.
I still use H264 for weddings because you don't have the time to concentrate as much on each shot when every moment happens so quickly on the day. I would love to be able to shoot a wedding in RAW.
Once you actually take the time to understand how it works and learn the workflow it becomes second nature and easy.

daisermac

I have been using ML Raw since it came out. Even took the camera with me for the summer holidays:

(+) the sharpness is breathtaking
(+) color is breathtaking
(+) your sky comes to life (instead of burning away)
(+) dark scenes retain detail
(+) ever tried noise reduction on h264 footage? Welcome banding. In contrast, raw is very noise-reduction-friendly.
(+) focusing in h264 with sharpness=0 is hard. much easier using sharpness=7 (no effect on the image)+focus assist
(+) once you hit a "stable" nightly build, reliability is very good (keeping in mind the pitfalls)

(-) reliability is (naturally) not perfect - you may loose one or two "key" scenes
(-) you have to invest in storage, again and again
(-) you will need a laptop and harddrives to take with you, running somewhere all the time in the background (offloading and converting)
(-) your family will hate you for spending time in front of a laptop during the holidays
(-) you need lots of batteries and at least three 64gb cards (you can't always offload when you want to)
(-) if you try to use an EVF to see the faces of your kids instead of their hair, then ML is not optimized for that

In addition, dualiso and MLV+sound have been great leaps forward. Thank you ML-Team and everyone providing helpful answers on this forum!

DavidSh

Hi guys,

First of all, Thank you guys here on ml for this great raw feature.

I'm David, new member on this forum, and follower after the forum for a year now.

As much as i tried to figure how stable shooting raw 1920x1080 24fps on the 5dm3 i didn't find any answer for the major question -  Real world use of RAW video on DSLRs?

are they still pink\corrupt frames on the 1920x1080 24fps 5dm3 ?

I shot my last short film on the 600d two years ago http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2194016/ 
now i have the budget to shoot the next one...
I can afford myself to rent an arri alexa or red or to buy the new bmcc 4K. But of course i fall in love with the ml 14 bit raw on 5dm3.

the sound is not important for me...
I really tried to figure this out by reading all posts at the forum back and forth but i didn't find the answer. is it reliable as a 1920x1080 24fps camera on a  narrative set or not?

Thanks for reading
David
600D | 5D3 | macOS Sierra | http://www.GentleDogMovie.com

Midphase

Yes, the 5D3 is the most reliable of the bunch by far.

After shooting raw for the better part of last year, I have yet to experience a single corrupted frame.

Tomorrow I'm shooting a narrative short film on two 7D's which we have extensively tested in raw for almost 2 months, once again I don't foresee any issues.

The most important element of shooting raw is to budget for a DIT on your shoot. There is simply no way around it, you will need a person full time on the set whose sole job is to manage, convert, and backup all the incoming footage.

But yes, once and for all, ML is a stable solution for most situations. The exceptions would be docs (where you interview people for sometimes hours), weddings (why add all the extra work for yourself?), and ENG.

Now stop procrastinating and go out there and shoot!

Danne

I, d say shooting raw 24fps is a safe bet. Even 25fps. As suggested I have not recorded a single corrupt frame on my camera. Be careful though and se to it to stop the camera before the card gets full. But even so there is solution to most situations in this forum.

DavidSh

Thank you so much Midphase and Danne...
It was very helpful.
600D | 5D3 | macOS Sierra | http://www.GentleDogMovie.com

austinmarti

I have shot and completed one music video in RAW thus far (way back in June 2013), and am now working on my 2nd and 3rd music videos in RAW (just shot recently).

RAW is absolutely glorious when it comes to using it for music videos and short film type work.

Something run and gun like a wedding would not work out well in RAW because of the sheer amount of time you need to be shooting.