Uncompressed 5DMK2

After Blackmagic announced its Hyperdeck Shuttle uncompressed SSD-Recorder, I was wondering how recording the crappy 1080i HDMI output of my 5D in uncompressed would affect the quality of the image (even if I would have to upscale the image because of the black border).

HDMI in and out for monitoring the 5D stream. As soon as you hit record on the 5D you lose the signal in the Hyperdeck.

So I recorded a color chart via HDMI in uncompressed first and then switched over to 5D internal recording method in h264. After that I imported both clips into after effects and investigated the blue channel. As expected the uncompressed signal was much clearer than the h264 stream.

Blue channel only. You can see the uncompressed signal is much clearer.

Here is another screenshot after a little curve correction was applied. All in all the uncompressed signal holds color correction much better than theh264 clip. The uncompressed clip has been upscaled by 118% to fit the original h264.

h264 vs uncompressed after curves correction

So my conclusion for this test is that there is a clear advantage when shooting in uncompressed even with the 5D. But to justify its drawbacks (need to upscale the footage, enormous amounts of data – 128GB hold 16mins!, handling, etc.) the only scenario where I will shoot this way with the 5D will be in greenscreen shoots. This is where you need this kind of color detail the most.

This is how I will shoot greenscreen with my 5D in the future.