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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Big New Canon Rumor - RAW Recording Module for 5D2 & 7D?

I forgot to mention. The same source claims that the 5D2 will get a firmware update "to match the 7D's framerate and resolution."

Obviously I have no idea if this is true or not, but it makes sense that if Canon is making an sRAW recorder for the 5D2, they would give it 24p.
 
All seems very unlikely due to the data rates involved. 18MPixel RAW at 14-bit 24fps is around 864MBytes/s. If they bin or pixel drop to 1920x1080 RGB, that is still 300MBytes/s. With the little lossless compression many of the RAW modes offer, the compression rarely gets to 2:1. But even at 150MB/s the flash media is not fast enough. Same all goes for CinemaDNG. Canon hasn't licensed CineForm RAW, and a doubt they could license Redcode RAW, and these are the only suitable RAW compressors out there to achieve flash media data rates. If you skip RAW, the next best high dynamic range compression solution would be JPEG XR -- no camera even has that for stills, let alone a motion version.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm
 
Without saying more than you can, is there anything you can tell us about your source? Is s/he just a high-profile memember of the production community or someone actually working at Canon, on the 5DmkII?

sRAW from the 5D would be a game changer for a lot of people, especially if the recorder itself had a form factor and interface that would help to make the 5D feel more like a video camera.
 
Interesting to hear that Canon has not licensed anything from Cineform.

David, what I'm hearing is 1080p sRAW. How fast is the fastest SSD right now, for example? I don't know if this "device" will use SSD, but it does come to mind.
 
The cutting edge of commercially-available SSD right now writes at 500MB/sec (read here) but a drive like that is no doubt well out of reach for a consumer device that Canon would impliment. Most commercially available SSDs seem to manage about 100BM/sec read/write, with a slightly higher write than read.

Fact is though, there are lots of slightly compressed formats that Canon could impliment and then call "perceptually lossless" while still keeping at least 4:2:2. Nanoflash's LongGOP at 160 megaBITS per second comes to mind, it's 1080p at 4:2:2 (here) and records to mid-range CF. But that's not sRAW.
 
Hi,
I didn´t understand that RAW function. It´s a possible piece of kit to work with existing Canon 5DMII/7D or a firmware update?

Thanks
 
If it's true lets hope the RAW recording module has a couple xlr inputs.
 
David Newman said:
All seems very unlikely due to the data rates involved. 18MPixel RAW at 14-bit 24fps is around 864MBytes/s. If they bin or pixel drop to 1920x1080 RGB, that is still 300MBytes/s. With the little lossless compression many of the RAW modes offer, the compression rarely gets to 2:1. But even at 150MB/s the flash media is not fast enough. Same all goes for CinemaDNG. Canon hasn't licensed CineForm RAW, and a doubt they could license Redcode RAW, and these are the only suitable RAW compressors out there to achieve flash media data rates. If you skip RAW, the next best high dynamic range compression solution would be JPEG XR -- no camera even has that for stills, let alone a motion version.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm
Click to expand...
this is the man.. cineform policy rocks

but they can develop compressed RAW alone no?
no forget they are CANON

- the gang
 
That's a good point: RED built its own RAW codec and workflow from the ground up. What's to say Canon won't re-invent the wheel and develop its own 4:4:4 RAW codec?
 
Eric Ferguson said:
That's a good point: RED built its own RAW codec and workflow from the ground up. What's to say Canon won't re-invent the wheel and develop its own 4:4:4 RAW codec?
Click to expand...

It is not to be forgotten that Canon has a great deal of experience with RAW for stills. A different beast, but what could certainly be considered a beginners' step in the RAW for digital cinema direction.
 
Patrick Tresch said:
And kill the prosumer market of XLH1 like cameras?
Click to expand...

Every other camera on the market already killed the XLH1. Go to the Canon booth at NAB if you need a chair or a nap sometime. They like selling big, expensive glass for other Video camera makers. I think that's what has kept them out of the higher end ENG market.

Ultimately, I think Canon's real game is glass. RED's making glass now. Do the math and I think you'll see killer cameras from Canon. Ditto for Nikon.
 
"sRAW" means something specific on Canon DSLRs right now, but I wonder if in this case they're just saying "scaled RAW" in a very general sense... Even so, the data rates seem pretty steep if they aren't doing a Cineform or R3D type compression.

Just a wild thought, the 5D2 and 7D have HDMI outputs which obviously have the bandwidth to do uncompressed video... could they possibly be shooting out a proprietary bitstream via HDMI to a proprietary RAW-over-HDMI recorder? I wonder, are the HDMI interface chips they use flexible enough to let you do that? Although, given the bandwidth I guess it's no real problem to wrap a sRAW bitstream into something that appears to be 1080p video to the HDMI link, just wouldn't display on a monitor, until rendered out.

EDIT: just a few more notes. Right now, the EOS 7D manual says the existing sRAW mode which is 2592 x 1728 (4.5 Mpixels) takes up 11.4 MB/frame which works out to 2.533 MB per MP (interestingly, the full-size RAW is only 1.4 MB/MP). So at that sRAW storage rate, a new video-sRAW mode at 1920 x 1080 (2 Mpixels) should take up 5 MB/frame. At 30 fps that's a 150 MB/sec data stream, and at 24 fps it is "only" 120 MB/sec. So if you had a two-drive raid, maybe it could work, if you chose the fastest available drives.

The real surprise to me is if Canon can read out the full sensor at 24 or 30 fps without doing line-skipping. If their sensor had that capacity, it seems like it was overdesigned up till now, and why didn't the MP4 video modes take advantage of it? If the video mode does do line-skipping, it means two things; (1) probably you'd be back to about 1.4 MB/MP sRAW, and (2) you could almost say, why even bother with video-RAW at all, since you'd be open to the usual stairstep alias and color moire problems of a pixel array that doesn't match your OLPF. So raw might just give you a sharper view of the artifacts. Anyway it's all speculation- we'll see what we see.
 
Joel Kaye said:
Every other camera on the market already killed the XLH1. Go to the Canon booth at NAB if you need a chair or a nap sometime. They like selling big, expensive glass for other Video camera makers. I think that's what has kept them out of the higher end ENG market.

Ultimately, I think Canon's real game is glass. RED's making glass now. Do the math and I think you'll see killer cameras from Canon. Ditto for Nikon.
Click to expand...
Same idea here, as said before. That's the reason why there was a firmware 1.1.0 release, adding manual controls.
 
jbeale said:
Just a wild thought, the 5D2 and 7D have HDMI outputs which obviously have the bandwidth to do uncompressed video... could they possibly be shooting out a proprietary bitstream via HDMI to a proprietary RAW-over-HDMI recorder? I wonder, are the HDMI interface chips they use flexible enough to let you do that? Although, given the bandwidth I guess it's no real problem to wrap a sRAW bitstream into something that appears to be 1080p video to the HDMI link, just wouldn't display on a monitor, until rendered out.
Click to expand...

This sounds very similar to what I was told later this afternoon. sRAW 1080 out of camera via (probably) HDMI.
 
Interestingly, there is a rumor that Canon will make an announcement on Sept. 29 for a major new product. This is the translation of the announcement they have posted at canonrumors.com:

“Mark the calendar

During this fall, Canon will make one of its largest and most important launches in the company’s history and we hope you can attend. During a luncheon, you are invited to listen to CEO Jouko Tuouminen, Marketing president Monica Forsberg and trend analyst Magnus Lindkvist, talking about tomorrows trends and factors of success in the continually more digitalized everyday life.

Date: September 29
Time: 11 am- 1pm

An invitation including more information will come soon.”

http://www.canonrumors.com/page/3/

Assuming this is not a hoax, could this be some sort of sRAW adapter/recorder for video-capable DSLR’s?

BTW, Sandisk has just released some new CF cards (16GB, 32GB and 64GB) with read/write speeds of up to 90MB/s. Tying into what someone else said above, in a raid configuration, this would be more than enough for sRAW.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0909/09091402sandisk.asp
 
The announcement is from Canon's business solutions dept., not camera. Might be a cutting edge 4K photocopier though :biggrin:

I have a feeling Nikon will beat Canon to a RAW video codec in a DSLR. Nikon rumors have the D3s being announced in Oct. and available Nov. 3rd. They've been pretty on so far. Nikon also beat canon to video in a DSLR and 24P. They know we want a RAW codec and they have no video division to protect. Let's just hope they can contain the skew. I don't think they'll put anything less than a true "Pro" video mode in a top line "D" series body.
 
One expert at IBC in Amsterdam told me that is impossible to get 24/25/30/50/60+... fps from CMOS sensor without a "heat" sensor issue.

So we concluded that any type of video RAW files from any DSLR camera is still a "dream" from consumers and of course the makers know that very well.

That's it.
 
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