Canon 5D Mark iii Firmware 1.2.1 Disappoints

The Wait Is Finally Over…But It Wasn’t Worth it.

It doesn’t feel like it, but the Canon 5D Mark iii has been out for over a year now. I remember comparing it with the Nikon D800 when trying to decide which camera to buy. Out of all of the features, I was most envious of the clean HDMI out feature that the D800 boasted over the 5Dm3. However, since I have a lot of Canon glass, I went with the 5Dm3.

I bought my 5Dm3 as soon as it came out. The funny thing is, upon receiving my camera and testing it out, I remember calling Canon and requesting for the clean HDMI feature before the eventual firmware update was even announced. The other thing I remember asking them about was if they could enable the audio signal to be sent through the HDMI cable in order to be monitored on an external monitor rather than just out of the headphone jack on the camera. The representative said that she would relay my message to the higher ups, which I’m sure she did (sarcasm).

Here we are now, over one year later. We’ve all been patiently awaiting this firmware update since Canon announced it 10 months ago (talk about dangling a carrot!). The time has finally come, it’s April 30th, 2013 and the 1.2.1 firmware with clean HDMI has finally arrived! I have been very excited throughout this entire month in hopes that my 5Dm3 experience would be taken to a new level of satisfaction. At the stroke of midnight, I eagerly began refreshing my page until the firmware posted at 12:05am. I immediately downloaded and installed the 18.84MB file.

The first thing that I tested was to see if with the new clean HDMI output (or as Canon calls it HDMI Mirroring) would send an audio signal out of the HDMI. The reason I want this so bad is because the headphone output volume is simply not loud enough out of the camera and because Canon’s audio VU meters don’t display continuously while recording (you have to press the Q button to display them). I use my Sony MDR-7506 headphones to monitor sound and I find it difficult to hear everything as loud and clear as I would like to. Of course, I monitor audio levels, but I also like to be able to hear everything for my confidence. So I plugged my headphones into my Marshall V-LCD90MD monitor (which has a volume controlled headphone output that goes nice and loud and it has its own set of on screen VU meters that function much better than Canon’s) and to my dismay, I am still unable to get any audio signal from the HDMI in the HDMI mirroring mode and in regular mode. This is very disappointing to me because I was really hoping this update would fix this issue. After all, my GoPro Hero3 Black Edition has this ability so why shouldn’t the much higher end 5Dm3? This is disappointing to me because I specifically bought that monitor because of it’s cool audio features in order to compliment my JuicedLink Riggy Micro low noise preamp on my rig.

I know that the camera can record both audio and video when in mirroring mode (if you press the record button on the camera), but it made me wonder if audio is even captured along with the video when using an external recorder. So I hooked it up to my AJA ioXT and tested it out. Unfortunately, there was no audio signal captured along with the YCbCr 4:2:2 8-bit video. Therefore, those of you who are like me and have an XLR audio solution running through your 5Dm3 will not be able to utilize your audio when capturing externally. This means that you will need to plan on two system recording setups on your shoots. Also note that PluralEyes will be useless to you as well because there will be no reference audio to sync your clips to. This means that we are back to the dark ages of syncing the footage manually so make sure you keep track of your shot numbers and use a marker on every take.

Enough about audio, let’s talk about the 422 video. A word to the wise, if you are in a 1080p24 recording mode then make sure you set the HDMI frame rate to 24p (in the yellow settings tab with the wrench) in order to record progressive scan movies to your external recorder. In my experience, if I left this setting at the default Auto mode then my footage was interlaced to hell. After recording some Prores 422 video to my computer via the ioXT, I loaded it up in Premiere to see how it fairs. Since the latitude is already pretty good in ALL-I mode I wasn’t really expecting to be able to push the footage all that much further in the grade. And for most shots, this is true. I wasn’t really able to see much of a difference except for when pushing it to the extreme or when there is a lot of fine moving detail like tree leaves blowing in the wind. However, the 422 certainly helps a bit more when dealing with green screen footage. Of course, at 8-bit it’s still not the best, but that extra color information definitely helps to clean things up a bit and get a nicer key. I was really hoping to see an improvement in sharpness, but that wasn’t the case either. Sure, just like with the ALL-I mode, adding the sharpen filter in post definitely helps a ton with the 5Dm3, but it’s still not a noticeable improvement over what the ALL-I codec can do. The last annoyance that was brought to my attention is that when the camera is in HDMI mirroring mode, playing back clips only displays on the camera screen. It’s strange because the definition of mirroring is to play on both screens, the camera and the HDMI monitor, but for some reason this is not the case when it comes to playing back your clips. Therefore, you will have to switch back over to regular HDMI mode in order to view playback on your external monitor. Why, Canon? Why? This makes zero sense.

Aside from the huge audio and playback disappointments, the new 1.2.1 firmware update actually has a couple of surprise benefits. The first benefit is that even with the mirroring off, there seems to be an improved HDMI output display resolution. Before the firmware update, it was 720p while in standby and while recording. I’m not sure exactly what it is now (I think it’s somewhere between 720p and 1080p) but there is evidence that it is higher than it used to be. For starters, with my 720p monitor, I no longer have to use any DSLR scaling since it fills up the entire screen. It seems logical that since it was 720p before and since my monitor is 720p that the same would be true; however, before the update, it would not fill my entire monitor so I had to use the DSLR scaling feature on the monitor. Another reason that I know it is higher than it used to be is that on my 720p monitor, the pixel to pixel zooms in much more than it used to, which means that there are more pixels being previewed. The cool thing about this is that I can press the pixel to pixel button on my monitor in order to get a much closer look to check my focus (in case you’re wondering, no, you still can’t use 5x or 10x while recording). The last thing I want to note about the resolution increase in regular mode (note: I am specifically referring to when you are in the info mode where no info is displayed) is that when hooked up to a 1080p display, it does not fill the entire screen. It is much closer than it used to be, but it’s not all the way full like it is in the HDMI mirroring mode so you will still have to switch over to that mode for your clean hdmi needs.

The next benefit that I didn’t expect from this update is that when in HDMI mirroring mode, 5x and 10x are displayed on the external monitor. This means that you can record this 5x or 10x sensor crop video at (nearly) full 1080p. This is useful if you are recording to your external monitor and you want to artificially extend your lens without a loss of resolution. However, there are 2 caveats, you can’t do this while the camera is recording and there is some pillarboxing so it’s not quite 1920 pixels wide. While most people would want to stay away from resorting to this, I could see it coming in handy in a pinch if you don’t have time/aren’t able to change lenses or get closer to your subject. I wish Canon would just enable some sensor crop modes like Nikon does.

Overall, I am not at all pleased with this firmware update because I was really hoping that Canon would enable audio to be sent out of the HDMI and it boggles my mind as to why you can’t playback clips on your external monitor. Sure, there are certain situations when recording at 422 prores will be beneficial, but for me it’s not enough to warrant losing my ability to have my audio synced to my video in camera. It also isn’t that much better than the ALL-I codec except when dealing with green screen footage so in most cases it’s not worth the hassle of dealing with the external recorder workflow and the larger file sizes. The only real benefits I will get out of this firmware is for green screen studio shoots and the surprise benefit of the improved preview resolution in regular (non HDMI mirroring) mode. If Canon would fix the audio and playback issue then this firmware would be a real winner, but until then, it’s a big, overhyped flop. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter so don’t hesitate to post a comment. Thanks!

Brandon Peterson