I am not one for publishing rumours. There are many sites out there doing that sort of thing so I normally avoid it as speculation is a bit pointless, but this one is so odd and unlikely but I guess could conceivably happen that I had to share. I was just notified on my Facebook page by Forian Bottger about this that someone called Earz62801 will be releasing a firmware hack for the T2i/ 550d (not the other Canons) that will give it 2K, 3K,4K video recording capability and bit rates between 45mb/s and 175mb/s. . The date of the release is Jan the 1st. This is nothing to do with Magic Lantern, just totally out of the blue from this person. There is no other information that I can find about it.
If this is possible can the camera handle it? Will it melt? Surely the sensor cannot handle that sort of readout at 24fps? How long can it record at this resolution or bitrate? 4 frames? Won’t the buffer bottleneck it? So many questions and no answers yet. The guy on you tube is being very cagey and there is nothing in his history to suggest a firmware hacker but I guess we will wait and see if this is a hoax or the real thing, it’s a bit early for April the 1st! I already did that earlier this year and got yelled at by a lot of people even though it was on April 1st!
He gives the following info on the YouTube description:
2k: 175mb/s = 91 seconds of footage
3k: 175mb/s = 32 seconds of footage
4k: 175mb/s = 6 seconds of footage
Often things are too good to be true…don’t yell at me if this turns out to be rubbish…I am but a messenger… :)
EDIT: I emailed him and got this back:
Hi back, Yes This one hundred percent real. We’ve been working on this with the t2i, 60D, and the 5D Mark II. We were stuck..missing a whole bunch of steps. But when Magic lantern was released, it opened up those missing holes. So we got excited. Last night was the first time I slept in six days haha.
We knew there were limitations with t2i and bending those limitations wasn’t exactly an easy task. Just think, a few days ago we were only able to to shoot not even 2 seconds of 4k footage. As of today on the 3 t2i’s we’ve tested it on…it’s holding steady at a little over 6 seconds.
Our next release 1.0.3 will ad different frame rates.
This all came about from a couple of guys sitting on the couch, drinking beers and watching football. The question was ” If we can make a 4k timelapse and take pictures in 5184×3456, can we make the thing shoot video in 4k without destroying the camera and at minimal bitrates?” At first all we kept coming up with was NO it can’t be done.
We both thought that the t2i didn’t exactly shoot in 1080p, we thought it was a little under that. But what canon did was limit it on purpose. Basically what I’m saying is the processor for shooting video wasn’t exactly opened up to it’s full extent.
I’ll be answering questions today on Ustream at 12pm est.
PLEASE DO NOT ALL GO OUT AND BUY A T2i ON THE BASIS OF THIS. LET US WAIT AND SEE!!!