My Canon EOS R5 recording 8K video 50 minutes straight

[horshack]

3 minutes ago, Electroholic Anonymous said:

I would NOT be surprised, at all, because the R5 is much hotter shooting a high number of stills in short succession than shooting 8K RAW, that includes, the grip, the back and the top of the R5, as well as the CFE card. It was the only time that I was concerned that the temperature might damage my card. If not for this, I would not have attempted my first 47 minute 8K RAW test, and neither the test that I am starting within an hour for at least an hour long.

What's the highest EXIF temp you saw shooting stills for that sequence you noticed it slowing down? If we are seeing such throttling even shooting stills then my theory that the thermal management is to protect the cards / data rates becomes much more plausible. A continuous stills burst slowing down is manageable - a video dropping frames would be more problematic for users - which may explain why the R5 continues to allow stills but not video in hotter situations.

[Electroholic Anonymous]

9 minutes ago, gt3rs said:

Coping an almost full 512 Sandisk CFE USB-C reader to internal M2 SSD did go in trothing mode after around 400 GB.... 7 time slower.. was all Canon RAW video files

I have not experienced this yet, but the Sandisk runs some 5 to 10 degrees Celsius hotter than my Integral 1TB CFEs. Again, both are fine, and the only throttling I have witnessed was the Sandisk during this infamous 8000+ photos in little less than an hour. It's bad luck for the Sandisk, it's only anecdotal. Integral was a bit of a risk for me, as I have no personal experience with that brand. Still I trust the Sandisk a bit more, that's personal, it's how strongly you prioritize personal experience I guess.

[Electroholic Anonymous]

2 minutes ago, horshack said:

What's the highest EXIF temp you saw shooting stills for that sequence you noticed it slowing down? If we are seeing such throttling even shooting stills then my theory that the thermal management is to protect the cards / data rates becomes much more plausible. A continuous stills burst slowing down is manageable - a video dropping frames would be more problematic for users - which may explain why the R5 continues to allow stills but not video in hotter situations.

That shoot is already processed and backed up. I have to get the jpegs from the offline backup and run your script on them, probably tomorrow.  I will pm you the csv's once I know how 😉 I will find out, I think I can manage that.

[Electroholic Anonymous]

15 minutes ago, Electroholic Anonymous said:

If we are seeing such throttling even shooting stills

A single photo I took gave a RAW + jpeg file, 60 + 15 MB = 75MB. I shot in 20 fps, that is 20 x 75 = 1500MB/s data flowing to the CFE. The buffer is very rapidly clearing I am telling you 🙂 .

I see in Bridge that I took 8310 photos in 53 minutes. That computes to 196 MB/s on average. I did not shoot averagely. There were a few stretches on which I often ran out of buffer. So the peak might be close to the maximum writing speed of the CFE card, and even the 1500MB/s.   Then the meagerly slow rate of 8K RAW in comparison with its slow 300MB/s should not be a problem at all.

  "even shooting stills", pfff! 😉

[Electroholic Anonymous]

I am out now for a few hours, bricking my R5 😉

[horshack]

10 minutes ago, Electroholic Anonymous said:

A single photo I took gave a RAW + jpeg file, 60 + 15 MB = 75MB. I shot in 20 fps, that is 20 x 75 = 1500MB/s data flowing to the CFE. The buffer is very rapidly clearing I am telling you 🙂 .

I see in Bridge that I took 8310 photos in 53 minutes. That computes to 196 MB/s on average. I did not shoot averagely. There were a few stretches on which I often ran out of buffer. So the peak might be close to the maximum writing speed of the CFE card, and even the 1500MB/s.   Then the meagerly slow rate of 8K RAW in comparison with its slow 300MB/s should not be a problem at all.

  "even shooting stills", pfff! 😉

Right, but such bursts are typically short-lived unless someone is holding the shutter down for inordinate periods of time. Shooting 8310 photos in 53 minutes would certainly qualify as inordinate 😀

[horshack]

18 minutes ago, Electroholic Anonymous said:

A single photo I took gave a RAW + jpeg file, 60 + 15 MB = 75MB. I shot in 20 fps, that is 20 x 75 = 1500MB/s data flowing to the CFE. The buffer is very rapidly clearing I am telling you 🙂 .

I see in Bridge that I took 8310 photos in 53 minutes. That computes to 196 MB/s on average. I did not shoot averagely. There were a few stretches on which I often ran out of buffer. So the peak might be close to the maximum writing speed of the CFE card, and even the 1500MB/s.   Then the meagerly slow rate of 8K RAW in comparison with its slow 300MB/s should not be a problem at all.

  "even shooting stills", pfff! 😉

Btw, regarding running out of buffer and what the effective CFE throughput is on the R5, DIGIC's throughput would play a role in that. I did a deep-dive onto the Nikon Z's relatively slow CFE performance and found that its DIGIC-equivalent (Expeed) was the bottleneck. I'm guessing DIGIC is much faster but there still might be limits. Here's a link to the conclusion from that deep-dive: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/63645424

[DayBreak]

Been watching all the tests on the R5 and it's very interesting. Great work. From looking at all the info that's been comming together I think a picture might be starting to emerge. 

My theory is that while there is an extemely over-conservative overheating/cooldown timer, there is are some thermal issues that they are trying to control.

I do not think that the overheating shut-off is to protect the proccesor/sensor/RAM/etc but to keep the CFE cards from throttling. This would be supported by the fact that the camera seems to be able to run much hotter in photo mode without shutting down, while in video mode it shuts off at a fairly low temp. 

When shooting photos it is not essential to keep the CFE card from throttling as the only thing this will do is make the buffer take longer to clear. However in video mode if the CFE card throttles too much in high bitrate recording modes it could stop recording and potentially corrupt the video file.

So while I think there is some validity to keeping the camera from overheating (and what the R5 is doing seems to make sense), I think that the way they are dealing with it is not good at all. Instead of a timer, they simpy need to monitor the internal temperture and only shut off when it reaches a certain threshold AND let you record again as soon as it falls below that threshold (which seems to be very quickly). I also think that it should not be neccesary to "overheat" to protect from CFE throttling when shooting in lower bitrate modes such as 4K HQ and probably 4K 60 as the throttling would probably not dip below their write speed requirements. 

I wonder if shortly before release/announcement Canon discovered an issue with card throttling and slapped on a very ill-designed thermal control system just to keep from having a bunch of "my card throttled and I lost my video" complaints, and may have been planning all along to fix it in a firmware update.

Looking forward to seeing what futher testing reveals.

[hoodlum]

Apparently a firmware update is coming tomorrow.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64300120

Quote

 

Just had CPS France pn the phone, very helpful person. He's going to contact Lexar and get back to me.

He also told me a new firmware is coming tomorrow, it's confidential, but it will mainly be to remove some of the "overheating" limitations. So maybe that will fix my issue as well?

 

 

[Mazinkaizer]

How about trying to make this thing useful now?  And get it to actually make videos?

Anyone lucky enough to own an R5 can erase thoroughly and format a card - then post an image of the empty card online.  Then, record a video with this newfound method, and after removing the battery - image the card again and also post the image file online.  Finally, after duly erasing and re-formatting the card - record a video in the same format but stop it and shut down the camera properly.  Maybe repeating the process (always erasing and formatting the card in between) would also help.  Then Andrew's devoted army of technical genuises can examine the files and get cracking at finding a way how to rescue and repair the video files when the camera is abruptly switched off....  Basically we need image files (using tools such as CloneZilla or the ageing Ghost) of an empty card, a few with video stopped abruptly with the battery pull trick and others with a proper, completed video file - all in the same pre-agreed 8K format.  

Once we learn how to find and repair a video file - we can write a small utility which can run on any smartphone or tablet, which will rescue the file automatically as soon as a card is inserted in a connected reader - still very cumbersome to use - but for some it might be worthwhile and we'd show dear Canon the finger by turning the R5 they crippled into a (semi) useful 8k video tool!

A flight of fantasy or is it doable?  

 

[mechanicalEYE]

1 hour ago, hoodlum said:

Apparently a firmware update is coming tomorrow.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64300120

 

Who here  with an R5 is gonna be the first to update?

After all this, I'm feeling like I may need to move slow with R5 firmware updates.  

No formal response, but just the firmware update that they mentioned before we call came to know what we know now. 🧐

They might try to low key close some loose ends.

[gt3rs]

2 hours ago, Electroholic Anonymous said:

I have not experienced this yet, but the Sandisk runs some 5 to 10 degrees Celsius hotter than my Integral 1TB CFEs. Again, both are fine, and the only throttling I have witnessed was the Sandisk during this infamous 8000+ photos in little less than an hour. It's bad luck for the Sandisk, it's only anecdotal. Integral was a bit of a risk for me, as I have no personal experience with that brand. Still I trust the Sandisk a bit more, that's personal, it's how strongly you prioritize personal experience I guess.

If I remember correctly was around 700 MB/s and dropped to 120MB/s was in room at 34C.... card was really hot could not hold in hand for long time, but once you stop using it cools very quickly....

[horshack]

52 minutes ago, Mazinkaizer said:

How about trying to make this thing useful now?  And get it to actually make videos?

Anyone lucky enough to own an R5 can erase thoroughly and format a card - then post an image of the empty card online.  Then, record a video with this newfound method, and after removing the battery - image the card again and also post the image file online.  Finally, after duly erasing and re-formatting the card - record a video in the same format but stop it and shut down the camera properly.  Maybe repeating the process (always erasing and formatting the card in between) would also help.  Then Andrew's devoted army of technical genuises can examine the files and get cracking at finding a way how to rescue and repair the video files when the camera is abruptly switched off....  Basically we need image files (using tools such as CloneZilla or the ageing Ghost) of an empty card, a few with video stopped abruptly with the battery pull trick and others with a proper, completed video file - all in the same pre-agreed 8K format.  

Once we learn how to find and repair a video file - we can write a small utility which can run on any smartphone or tablet, which will rescue the file automatically as soon as a card is inserted in a connected reader - still very cumbersome to use - but for some it might be worthwhile and we'd show dear Canon the finger by turning the R5 they crippled into a (semi) useful 8k video tool!

A flight of fantasy or is it doable?  

 

A workaround that keeps the video files has already been found and tested:

 

[Mazinkaizer]

9 minutes ago, horshack said:

A workaround that keeps the video files has already been found and tested:

 

Missed that bit!

So at worst you'd lose about the last 20 seconds when pulling power when recording RAW.... can the card be re-used again soon after powering up the camera up - or would it be flagged as needing to be scanned / repaired?  Mind you, unless you have thousands to splash on expensive cards - in practice you'd need to stop and backup to a cheaper medium anyway (or have an assistant do it for you). 

[horshack]

3 minutes ago, Mazinkaizer said:

Missed that bit!

So at worst you'd lose about the last 20 seconds when pulling power when recording RAW.... can the card be re-used again soon after powering up the camera up - or would it be flagged as needing to be scanned / repaired?  Mind you, unless you have thousands to splash on expensive cards - in practice you'd need to stop and backup to a cheaper medium anyway (or have an assistant do it for you). 

The amount of seconds lost will depend on how much video fits into each 4GB split, which will depend on the data rate for what you're shooting. The R5 manual has a chart of the data rates for all movie modes on page 901 and 902.

Pulling the battery in the middle of the writes has the potential to leave NAND cells and/or the filesystem in an indeterminate state, so a high-level format is recommended if not a full-capacity wipe. Try to time the battery pull in between the card-access pulses to minimize the risk to NAND at least.

38 minutes ago, gt3rs said:

If I remember correctly was around 700 MB/s and dropped to 120MB/s was in room at 34C.... card was really hot could not hold in hand for long time, but once you stop using it cools very quickly....

The R5 manual has several warnings about handling hot media cards - they actually recommend waiting a bit before removing the cards after powering on the camera.

[Mazinkaizer]

24 minutes ago, horshack said:

The amount of seconds lost will depend on how much video fits into each 4GB split, which will depend on the data rate for what you're shooting. The R5 manual has a chart of the data rates for all movie modes on page 901 and 902.

Pulling the battery in the middle of the writes has the potential to leave NAND cells and/or the filesystem in an indeterminate state, so a high-level format is recommended if not a full-capacity wipe. Try to time the battery pull in between the card-access pulses to minimize the risk to NAND at least.

The R5 manual has several warnings about handling hot media cards - they actually recommend waiting a bit before removing the cards after powering on the camera.

Thanks for the info Horseshack - much appreciated!  I'd go for RAW, and backup to a portable hard disk frequently.  The bit about leaving the NAND cells themselves in an intermediate state is interesting - so potentially you wouldn't be able to use the same card once you power up the camera again - but you'd need to copy the files and scan / reformat the card before using it again....

Guess Andrew will soon try this method out on a real shoot - and we'll soon learn if it indeed turns the R5 into an 8k RAW monster.....  thanks again for the info and reply! 

[Electroholic Anonymous]

54 minutes ago, horshack said:

The amount of seconds lost will depend on how much video fits into each 4GB split, which will depend on the data rate for what you're shooting. The R5 manual has a chart of the data rates for all movie modes on page 901 and 902.

Pulling the battery in the middle of the writes has the potential to leave NAND cells and/or the filesystem in an indeterminate state, so a high-level format is recommended if not a full-capacity wipe. Try to time the battery pull in between the card-access pulses to minimize the risk to NAND at least.

The R5 manual has several warnings about handling hot media cards - they actually recommend waiting a bit before removing the cards after powering on the camera.

Yeah, this is the read rate graph of the first run, no slow down.

 

Now copying over 2nd run files, 3rd run in progress

[Electroholic Anonymous]

Still testing after 1 hour and 15 minutes, first overheating warning consistently appearing after 16 minutes, battery pull between 17 and 18 minutes. Temperatures stable. This could go on forever I have the feeling. When to stop?

[Emanuel]

7 minutes ago, Electroholic Anonymous said:

Still testing after 1 hour and 15 minutes, first overheating warning consistently appearing after 16 minutes, battery pull between 17 and 18 minutes. Temperatures stable. This could go on forever I have the feeling. When to stop?

Is it a test, right? Let it see till where and how far it goes...

Temperature(s) measure is mandatory, of course.

 

Other than that, important is to check if there's an usable mod here to pop up.

That is, if they won't try to restrict it through a firmware update from the last rumors on a new one to come.

[Electroholic Anonymous]

Exif temps peaking at 62 at the end of each run. R5 now on tripod again, 40 minute interrupted test discussed here earlier was peaking at 72C, then the R5 was sitting on a desk. Really? 10C difference?