# So, has anyone recorded externally hdmi from 5d3 firmware updates?



## cayenne (May 1, 2013)

Anyone recorded the hdmi out from the new firmware update from 5d3?

What recorder worked best so far?

How was the footages?

Was there anymore 'headroom' for want of a better term in terms of color grading footage?

Can ya'll post some footage taken both ways off your camera for comparison for us to look at?


TIA,

cayenne


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## LetTheRightLensIn (May 2, 2013)

cayenne said:


> Anyone recorded the hdmi out from the new firmware update from 5d3?
> 
> What recorder worked best so far?
> 
> ...



Only did a few comparisons so far.

External is greener, perhaps this is a trace more accurate, not sure yet.

External seems brighter, not sure if it means highlights are actually clipped a touch more or not.

External is a bit more saturated.

Viewed frame by frame, when you have lots of full frame motion and tons of changes per frame (moving focus in and out, moving camera around a bit so frame moves all over), external has much higher quality compression than internal IPB (didn't check ALL-I yet, this may bring things much closer). Seen realtime it doesn't stand out nearly as much though and lots of the difference are hard to spot, some can still clearly be seen if you have your eyes peeled and are really paying attention since during such motion and extreme transition everything is blurry or moving fast.

For largely static scenes, even in shadows, external prores hq compression seems awfully similar to the IPB internal, crazy hard to see any difference at all.

noticed less jaggies on red next to white, as expected

vertical color transitions and such are better, at regular size it's a bit tougher to notice, regular size, in motion quite tough in many cases

oddly horizontal transitions I'm seeing longer transition zones for some cases using external! black to pink, red to white, red to yellow, tend to get noticeable false transitions whereas internal recoding only has that to a much lesser degree?!? pink to black, white to red, yellow to red has a bit larger transitions using internal and very good using external but they are not as big on the internal as the ones going the opposite direction look on the external recording

So that is weird, some white letters on red, the letters were more jaggy on the internal recording due to 4:2:0 I'm sure but on external they had like dark, low chroma halos when red would hit white that were barely there using internal compression, odd. Going white to red looked great on external and had small halos with internal.

Not sure what is up with the horizontal transition differences.

Static image detail really seems to be the same in most cases, although sometimes white letters on red or blue are a touch sharper with external (but they also get some dark halo going from blue to white across each scanline which is odd).

Didn't look at all-i yet.

Or a comprehensive test yet.

Used Ninja 2 ProRes HQ 4:2:2.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (May 2, 2013)

It seems like 1.2.1 footage, no matter how it is recorded, looks a bit crisper than footage shot with the older firmwares.


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## eyeland (May 2, 2013)

Thanks for sharing your observations. I have been saving for an external recorder, but as it looks right now, I am thinking that I may be better off spending the money on glass and other additions to my kit.
Very nice that 1.2.1 is crisper but odd that we're not seeing bigger improvements on the external. I wonder if this is yet another effect of Canon marketing or what not.
Will you be posting further findings in this thread?


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## psolberg (May 2, 2013)

> With the latest firmware (1.21) we now know what the compression does not really change image quality, as the uncompressed H.264 output via HDMI looks just as rubbish as the internally recorded compressed H.264 (at 24Mbit in IPB mode).


-eoshd.com

however THIS looks way more interesting 
http://www.eoshd.com/content/10294/3-5k-canon-5d-mark-iii-raw-video-with-magic-lantern-and-latest-updates


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## cayenne (May 2, 2013)

psolberg said:


> > With the latest firmware (1.21) we now know what the compression does not really change image quality, as the uncompressed H.264 output via HDMI looks just as rubbish as the internally recorded compressed H.264 (at 24Mbit in IPB mode).
> 
> 
> -eoshd.com
> ...



Indeed interesting.
Well, at this point, I'll likely do the Canon firmware update (I've never updated the firmware before, so first time here for me).

I may or may not get an external recorder....maybe when the state tax refund comes in.

I'll go from there....and once the BM Pocket camera comes out for awhile, and I see what is done with adapters for being able to use my Canon EF lenses with it...I may get one of those as a 2nd video camera.

So many toys...so little time and money.


C


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## Capnbooboo (May 5, 2013)

psolberg said:


> > With the latest firmware (1.21) we now know what the compression does not really change image quality, as the uncompressed H.264 output via HDMI looks just as rubbish as the internally recorded compressed H.264 (at 24Mbit in IPB mode).
> 
> 
> -eoshd.com
> ...


 sorry this is out dated guys

i want a 4:2:2 +


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## Axilrod (May 6, 2013)

cayenne said:


> Indeed interesting.
> Well, at this point, I'll likely do the Canon firmware update (I've never updated the firmware before, so first time here for me).
> 
> I may or may not get an external recorder....maybe when the state tax refund comes in.
> ...



The BMPC has a 3x crop, which will make it very difficult shooting with EF lenses. And if you buy an external recorder prepare to be disappointed, they rarely make a noticeable difference.


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## peederj (May 17, 2013)

The Ninja 2 is the way to go if you want to use the Clean HDMI out of the 5D3. And there's a lot of good reasons you would want to even if you are interested in the ML RAW hack. For one, you get hours of shooting time, and for two, you get a decent external monitor. You can also get internal proxy recording on the 5D3's own cards simultaneously. And you have the stability of factory firmware rather than a hack.

The quality improvement is a lot better than Andrew (who has a legendary axe to grind with Canon) insists. It's real uncompressed 422 at 8 bit, which can handle the ~11 stops of the 5D3 video when using Cinestyle. It is a bit noisy, you will want to run Neat Video to clean it up at higher ISO's. It's not as good a picture as the C100 recorded to the Ninja, but it's just as easy to work the Ninja on the 5D3. The C100 is a much better video camera in general, but it will never have a full frame sensor or the RAW hack (you will need the C500 for official RAW video on a current Canon).

Right now it may be best to wait a couple months if you can before buying into either option. The cost of the Ninja 2 and a couple laptop drives (you don't need SSDs, rotational ones are fine, unless you want to move around a lot in which case SSDs won't have a gyroscopic effect) is about similar to a stack of the fastest CF cards for the RAW option. The RAW hack right now has a recording time limit of 49 seconds and only 15 minutes or so can fit on a 64GB card. The Ninja can record for hours at ProRes 422 HQ quality (not quite RAW but awesome codec, most of the people using RAW transcode to it anyway, though they can do a primary grade beforehand in something like ACR) without having to change drives or batteries. Also Atomos just came out with the Samurai Blade that has a much better screen (the Ninja 2 screen isn't so pretty, just usable) so a Ninja Blade may be coming out soon.

So I'm waiting to see what happens. The RAW is going to be the best absolute IQ, but at a fair amount of hassle. I may rent a Ninja 2 if a shoot comes up where I need it in the meantime. I don't recommend the Blackmagic Hyperdeck, it's cheaper but you get what you pay for. It's bigger, it needs some external battery solution, it doesn't do the 3:2 pulldown meaning you have to deinterlace manually in post (which sucks), and it has no monitor, and requires a $100 add-on plate just to mount it to something. Blackmagic sure knows how to work the internets for maximum hype, but their products (other than Resolve, which they bought from another company) are frankly half-baked cwap.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (May 17, 2013)

ML RAW gives MUCH better quality, have to blind AND not trying to not instantly see the difference. The Ninja 2 1.2.1 external recording stuff is a minor little difference that most times you have to reallllly look to notice and well a basic static shot and you'd be hard pressed to see much difference but with ML the difference leaps out at you.

Of course the Ninja 2 does record gobs of footage at once and is tres easy to handle and you don't need to do slow pr-processing step for every little minute clip (OTOH that slow pre-process also is done with full power of ACR and even ACR and PS so you can get things so good that you don't even need to process anything in PP or use any slow tools there which does greatly speed up final compression time in PP so you gain some time back there, it's just it is a bit nicer to have the slow stage later rather than earlier, but whatever).

But most people have been kinda hmm eh I mean I guess a little about the HDMI+Ninja 2 and like OMG!!!!!!!!!!! about the ML RAW.

Once ML works with 1.2.1 the Ninja would make a nice zebra/focus peaking monitor though over HDMI since, at least for now, the ML RAW hack tends to crap out earlier at times if you try to force it's focus peaking and zebras and fancy stuff to run full force at the same time as the ML RAW is going.

If you do run 1.2.1 over HDMI I think the Atmos Ninja 2 type stuff is the way to go over the Black Magic for various reasons.

But man that ML RAW is just wow!

I wonder if they will find a way to feed the HDMI out with a less mangled signal. It would have to be 10bits at most and probably 8bits since I bet Canon didn't use HDMI 1.3 although who knows 1.3 is ubiquitous these days. It seems criminal that it took Canon six months to get the same crappy singnal out of HDMI and ML gives us this RAW stuff in three weeks. Perhaps the digic chip just utterly sucks at debayer and processing (in cam jpgs were never nearly as crips as RAW, but then again they do seem much better than the video stuff so....) and maybe that is why they say they do not use digic in C300 but use older video cam chips for processing?? (but still the in cam jpgs are better than the video they get out of it so....)

That said they did slightly tweak the video for 1.2.1 so whether hmdi or internal it does produce a bit better signal than it does with the older firmware. (which also reminds me DO NOT compare 1.2.1 HDMI Ninja 2 footage to pre-1.2.1 internally recorded footage since that footage is worse than the new internal footage quality).


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## cayenne (May 19, 2013)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> ML RAW gives MUCH better quality, have to blind AND not trying to not instantly see the difference. The Ninja 2 1.2.1 external recording stuff is a minor little difference that most times you have to reallllly look to notice and well a basic static shot and you'd be hard pressed to see much difference but with ML the difference leaps out at you.
> 
> Of course the Ninja 2 does record gobs of footage at once and is tres easy to handle and you don't need to do slow pr-processing step for every little minute clip (OTOH that slow pre-process also is done with full power of ACR and even ACR and PS so you can get things so good that you don't even need to process anything in PP or use any slow tools there which does greatly speed up final compression time in PP so you gain some time back there, it's just it is a bit nicer to have the slow stage later rather than earlier, but whatever).
> 
> ...



I gotta think the Ninja and other external HDMI recorders out there, expecting the 5D3 market to open up to them are just hating life right now, with the new ML Raw stuff coming out...that is so far, exclusively CF based.

There goes a market for them unless the ML people can somehow put this stuff out of HDMI, which by the numbers, doesn't look hopeful.

C


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## LetTheRightLensIn (May 19, 2013)

cayenne said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > ML RAW gives MUCH better quality, have to blind AND not trying to not instantly see the difference. The Ninja 2 1.2.1 external recording stuff is a minor little difference that most times you have to reallllly look to notice and well a basic static shot and you'd be hard pressed to see much difference but with ML the difference leaps out at you.
> ...



There will still be those who need the easier workflow, but yeah, they may be the biggest losers out of it all.


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