Introduction
The Canon EOS 7D is a great camera to film full HD material with. However, the material you get on the Compact Flash memory card is compressed using H.264 at a bitrate that might be to low for certain scenarios and with 4:2:0 chroma encoding, sometimes resulting in somewhat blocky primary colors.
To the rescue is the HDMI output of the camera. The HDMI signal is a uncompressed 1080i signal at 60 Hz with 4:2:2 chroma encoding, giving a superior picture quality to the compact flash material. However, to extract the real 25p or 24p image from the HDMI stream requires some special software. This guide describes the process of capturing input footage so it is ready to process by the Syndicate 7D Tool.
What you'll get
Due to the nature of the HDMI output of the 7D the actual usable resolution of the uncompressed footage will be 1620 x 910 at 24p or 25p with a reconstructed 4:4:4 chroma and a red dot in the corner. The red dot can be replaced with the corresponding pixels in the compact flash recorded material in post production. Future versions of the firmware modification Magic Lantern might support 7D and allow for removal of the red dot or perhaps even 1080p uncompressed.
The final output file will be a QuickTime with each frame stored with lossless compression, which means huge files.
What you need
To follow this guide to capture video from the Canon EOS 7D you need the following:
•Canon EOS 7D (duh!)
•Matrox MXO2 Mini
•A computer running Mac OS X 1.0.5 or later. Must be one of the following.
◦MacBook Pro 15” / 17” with 2.66 Mhz minimum (faster recommended) and ExpressCard slot
◦Mac Pro with free PCIe slot
•Final Cut Pro 6 or later
•A computer running Windows XP/Vista/7 with QuickTime 7.6 or later installed
•Syndicate 7D Tool Software (demo version available)
•Something to film
Setting up Matrox MXO2 Mini for 7D capture (first time)
Install the Matrox MXO2 Mini on your Mac as described in the documentation and set it to capture through the HDMI input and not the default analog option. This is done in OS X System Settings. Good 7D capture requires a custom capture preset so inside Final Cut Pro open the Audio/Video Settings.