A truly amazing group of creatives. Here’s a look back.

Saw this post over at Canon Rumors, a wishlist spec sheet for a Canon Mark III DSLR. One of the items listed is “RAW Video.” It’s something I hear parroted all the time by DSLR video shooters, “give us RAW video!” To that, I say…be careful what you wish for.

Ok…so you want uncompressed video? You want video that’s so “raw” and untainted that it requires huge capacity, expensive fast disk arrays just to play back your precious “RAW” video in realtime? “Uh…noooo…that sounds painful and costly.” Exactly.

C’mon guys, just what is “RAW Video?” Is it Uncompressed? Is it a high-bitrate ProRes or Cineform? Is it more color information? Is it a pristine HDMI or SDI spigot out of the camera? If you can’t define what it is, don’t just say “raw video.” It’s a meaningless term without explanation. I personally don’t really crave “raw” video from a DSLR, not if you mean “raw like a Red .R3D.” If I want it that raw, I’ll rent a Red or something similar.

Raw video means that you HAVE to process it. You HAVE to grade it. You HAVE to massage the pixels to make it look Not Raw. And all that massaging requires a lot of CPU processing. Time and CPU cycles that many folks just don’t have. If you are shooting a film with any sort of budget, you probably should consider shooting it in something very high quality or “raw” (or film). Gives you the most options in post and is insurance for all the crew man-hours you are paying for to make the film. But for many areas of production, it’s simply not necessary.

One of the key advantages for me with DSLR video is that the image looks Damn Good (TM) right out of the camera. Often I do only minor color correction/grading on my projects, and this is a very important thing for me when I’m on a tight post-production budget…and let’s face it…the reason I’d be shooting that project on DSLR in the first place is probably because of budget! I don’t want to add additional processing to my workflow, often it’s better to have something pre-baked and immediately usable. Which is why I believe that Red SHOULD be offering an in-camera solution for pre-baking a 1080p ProRes with a custom color matrix. But because they are so insistent on the resolution race (as they should be…you flog the horse that runs best for you), I don’t ever see that happening from Red. At least Red shooters have good HDMI and SDI spigots that they can add a recorder on if necessary.

Likewise, the $4,800 Panasonic AF100 offers a smart compromise to “raw” video. They include a robust, well-supported AVCHD codec, and HD SDI spigots for anyone that wants to tether a recorder and encode their own “raw” video. Tack on a KiPro, or maybe one of those (hopefully) forthcoming Ninja ProRes recorders, and you’ve got less compression, and more colorspace options to choose from. Likewise, ARRI was smart to build the Alexa around ProRes onboard. You can still go out to ARRI RAW, but most users seem to love the fact that they can bake out a ProRes and start editing NOW without all the contortions and hoop-jumping that “raw” video requires.

The whole point of the so-called “DSLR revolution” was that it democratized production and filmmaking, delivering amazing imaging tools at consumer prices. Which brings us full circle to my original point…I’m not so sure I want “raw” video in my DSLR. H.264 can be annoying, sure, but it’s incredibly efficient from a space standpoint. I can offload the cards very quickly. I can record to inexpensive media that can be purchased just about anywhere. Despite it’s limited color information, the image quality is surprisingly good, I like to call it Good Enough when shot carefully. If Canon solved the line-skipping moire issues on DSLRs, I’d be almost completely content with my DSLR for video purposes.

Given a choice between H.264 and a substantially more space-hogging codec on a DSLR, I would probably still choose H.264 most of the time. Which is why the only “raw video” I want Canon to add in the next DSLR is a proper HDMI output. That would give me all the “RAW” options I’d need, for the handful of times I’d have to use it.

Happy (Raw?) Shooting!

Here’s what. A hell of a lot more latitude in post.

This is really cool…some dudes taped a GoPro camera to a sword and shot some Star-Wars-Kid-esque footage of them swinging it around. Looking forward to the first time I see this exact same shot used in a major motion picture…

DSLR News Shooter has an article about The Lens Doctors, a UK-based lens shop that specializes in refurbing and de-clicking classic still glass (which makes it more suitable for video use). The Lens Doctors ship eBay Store items to the US, but it’s worth noting another good shop in the US for such conversions is Duclos Lenses and their Cinemod still-lens conversion package.

Canon UK has an article up that talks about the use of Canon DSLRs for Charlotte Church’s new music video. Budget was £60,000 and they used eight DSLRs to shoot a unique 360° set. Article here, video embedded below.

A few days ago Jesse Rosten posted a beautiful short film chronicling the adventures of his “wee beastie” on a trip in Northern CA. It was a fun little film shot on DSLR, and I’m happy to see that he posted a behind the scenes video showing how they pulled off some of the dynamic shots. Very cool, check out both videos here.

Ikonoskop continues to release updates and footage from shooters using pre-production A-cam dII cameras. If you don’t know who Ikonoskop is, they are the upstart Swedes with a 16mm film camera background who decided to build a CCD-based digital cinema camera around the same time that Red was expanding their userbase with Red One.

We’ve written about Ikonoskop and talked with them at length. The latest footage update is very nice indeed, watch below:

A-Cam dll Close-Ups from Ikonoskop on Vimeo.

A-Cam dll Night from Ikonoskop on Vimeo.

Despite these recent updates, there is no denying the fact that Ikonoskop is ridiculously behind schedule on delivery of this camera system. And by behind, I mean like red-scarlet-late. It’s becoming clear to me that Ikonoskop has no real interest in becoming anything more than a small boutique camera shop with niche tools for a niche audience. Which is great for that niche audience. But had this camera come out a year ago, I think it COULD have been a different story. Now, I’m not so sure. There are a growing number of options in the market, and less room for a 16mm-esque camera system that sacrifices features and functionality for form-factor.

This is somewhat offtopic from the normal geeky banter here at FreshDV, but in the spirit of the Christmas season I wanted to share two creative shorts. The first is entitled “December,” and is from filmmaker Andreas Pasvantis. The second is a short film entry for a contest that indie filmmakers will certainly appreciate. Enjoy, and Happy Holidays to your and yours!

Update: Here’s a Behind the Scenes blog entry for the second clip embedded below.

December from 328 Stories on Vimeo.

5DtoRGB is the (currently) free software that reportedly offers higher-quality results when transcoding DSLR footage. Users all seem to agree that quality is better from this tool vs MPEG Streamclip and the EOS Log & Transfer plugin for FCP…claims of how much improvement the app offers seems to vary between reviewers, but the consensus appears to be that there is at least some improvement when using 5DtoRGB.

That being said, there are few downsides to 5DtoRGB. The first is speed; this app is much slower to process footage than either the EOS plugin or Streamclip. Which is not that surprising, given the quality improvement…but a concern nonetheless. The second issue is the lack of batch processing…currently you can only run 5DtoRGB on one clip at a time.

However, I recently learned that there is a batch processing hack available. It’s called 5dtorgb-batch and it’s a simple command-line tool that allows you to point 5DtoRGB at a folder of footage for sequential processing. There are some limitations, one being that the only formats you can convert to are ProRes formats. However, that’s probably not a major issue as I’d venture that the vast majority of users are converting DSLR footage to ProRes as their editing format of choice.

Download 5dtorgb-batch and give it a shot. And tell us what you think in the comments below.