Chronos 1.4 RAW conversion tool - pyraw2dng

[JamesB]

Thanks, David, it is really encouraging to see the Chronos starting to mature into a dependable professional tool.  Excited by the upcoming possibilities from you and the development team. 

 

[john delonghi]

I have made some raw recordings at different resolutions but didn't make a note of the settings.

How can I find out what length and width to put into the script just from the RAW file?

You'll need to use trial and error for now, unfortunately. Try different values for horizontal resolution, leaving the vertical resolution set to 1024, until you get an image that looks clear. Once you have horizontal resolution set correctly, it's much easier to figure out the proper vertical resolution just by looking at the output image.

This conversion tool is very much a stopgap measure until we have this functionality built into the camera.

Ok I guessed the right number, so I can process those raw files now! Thanks.

 

[john delonghi]

I've now managed to get over the 4GB limit using the method Dan D found, but on a Windows 10 PC.

If you want to save RAW files larger than 4GB, here's what you do:

Download and install the free utilities 'MiniTool Partition Wizard Free' and 'Ext2Fsd'.
Format a USB stick or SD card as EXT3 using MiniTool Partition Wizard. I've used a 128GB USB stick successfully.
Plug it into the Chronos and select it in the Save Location dropdown. If it doesn't appear, something's gone wrong with the formatting of the drive.
Record and save to the EXT3 drive (when you get the 4GB warning message just tell it to save anyway.)
When finished saving, plug the card/stick into your PC and use Ext2Fsd to copy the contents to an NTFS drive. 

I just did this with a 21GB recording. It took 47 minutes to save to the stick, but we know it's going to be slow at the moment.
The main thing is it worked I don't have the 4GB limit any more.

I think I better free up some hard drive space now  ;D

 

[patrickrebstock]

For those of you itching to shoot RAW on your Chronos, you can now use the raw saving feature in the latest beta software v0.2.5 along with this new conversion tool to make DNG sequences. This is a stopgap solution until we have DNG saving built into the camera.

pyraw2dng converts the .raw files saved by Chronos to standard Adobe DNG files.

The pyraw2dng utility is open source, you can view the source code on Github:
https://github.com/krontech/chronos-utils/tree/master/python_raw2dng

Requirements

Python 2.7, available here: https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-278/
This might work in Python 3 as well, but it has not been tested.

During the Windows Python 2.7 installation, ?install? "Add Python.exe to Path" as shown below:

Usage

Save your video using the RAW16bit format on the camera. Raw16RJ works, but the images are dark and need to be fixed in post. RAW12bit packed mode is not yet supported, but is coming soon.

Download the script (see attachment)

Copy the script file, pyraw2dng.py and the raw 16 bit format video into the same directory.

Open a terminal (command prompt), then navigate to the folder with your videos and script

Execute the script as shown in the example below. You will need to update the -w and -l switches with your actual frame size.
pyraw2dng.py -w (width) -l (length) (filename)

Where:
(width) is the horizontal resolution of your recording
(length) is the vertical resolution of your recording
(filename) is the .raw file you want to convert

An example of a complete command is shown below:
pyraw2dng.py -w 1280 -l 1024 vid.raw

The raw video will be converted and saved as a DNG sequence in a folder of the same name as the .raw file.

Let us know how this works for you!

  how do you execute the script can you post screenshots for us not familiar with terminal?

 

[john delonghi]

[quote author=patrickrebstock]
how do you execute the script can you post screenshots for us not familiar with terminal?

[/quote]

Are you PC-based?

 

[patrickrebstock]

[quote author=patrickrebstock]
how do you execute the script can you post screenshots for us not familiar with terminal?

Are you PC-based?
[/quote]
i have a pc and a mac

 

[john delonghi]

As long as you've installed Python as David details, the easiest way is to create a folder on your PC, copy the pyraw2dng.py file and your .raw file from the Chronos into it, then create a batch file to run it.

I've attached an example .bat file you can use.

So, in the folder you should have test.bat, test.raw and pyraw2dng.py. Edit your .bat file with a text editor to get the resolution and raw filename correct then just double click the test.bat file and it should run.

 

[Sorchey]

Once that's done we'll be working on a better in-camera video pipeline, the primary goals are better democratic (Likely AHD, same as used by Adobe Camera RAW last time I checked), as well as better color processing. I believe this will fix the h264 quality issues.

I've just seen this thread and I'm symply blown away by the comparison between RAW and h264.

Although it is a very unpopular question, could you predict a rough time schedule for this update? Can we expect something in that direction this year, maybe this summer?

 

[tesla500]

I've just seen this thread and I'm symply blown away by the comparison between RAW and h264.

Although it is a very unpopular question, could you predict a rough time schedule for this update? Can we expect something in that direction this year, maybe this summer?

We're going to get the color improvements into v0.3. The release candidate was going to go out this week but we delayed to get the color changes in, check the Software Dev forum over the next week or two for the release candidate.

Better demosaic is going to be in V0.4 or V0.5 sometime late spring or early summer.

 

[JamesB]

Great news, also would love to get the compressed RAW converter option soon as I have a list of clips that are just sitting there. It also makes for faster storage in the field, regular RAW just eats up cards for lunch. 

I am very happy with the RAW quality and after using it, H.264, as it is right now, is not worth it even for the speed.  Also with proper and often black calibration, most banding is taken care of.   

A 10-bit version of H.265 or a 4:2:2 H.264 variant with better demosaic algo would make this amazing for speed and quality. 

It would also be so cool if we could have a daylight balance preset for the WB. Maybe be able to save a previous WB in a file as balancing every time is an extra step.  Most of us either shoot in our studio or outside needing only 2 WB presets.  For a later build of course.  Great job so far David!

 

[lcombs]

Hi,

So happy with the camera update and the raw files we have now! For what we are working on though, we need BMP files...does anyone have any suggestions on conversion or any other ideas on how we could get there? Even a code in python or something?

Thank you

Laura

 

[tesla500]

Hi Laura,

Try converting the raw file to DNG using the tool, DNG is just a specialized form of TIFF, image editors may be able to open the DNG as a monochrome 16-bit TIFF.

David

 

[nik282000]

Just wanted to chime in about RAW workflow.

I am using a 128GB USB drive formatted to EXT3 to save files from the camera and avoid the 4GB limit of FAT32, this works perfectly. To get the raw files onto a windows PC I use the software "ext2explore," it's a little clunky but it will get the job done. The pyraw2dng also works perfectly, even with raw files that were broken by the FAT32 limit and my own clumsiness.

To convert the DNG files to 'normal' images I am using Rawtherapee, an image editor meant to be an alternative to Adobe Lightroom. Rawtherapee allows for batch processing of files, so I make my adjustments to one frame and apply them to the whole set, I've done about 8000frames in one go with no problem. Once I have a folder full of PNGs I assemble them into a video file using VirtualDub, this allows you to set the final frame-rate of the video and export it as a raw or compressed AVI file.

All the tools used are free (as in beer) software and the only real limiting factor for any step in the process is time and processing power.

 

[lcombs]

Thank you both for your responses!
I've been using a trial version of Camera Raw & Photoshop to convert for now...once they are in tiff format we bring them into PFV viewer to analyze the video...but I am in the process of downloading VirtualDub and Rawtherapee now!
Thank you both so much.
Have a great week!
Laura

 

[BlackthorneMedia]

Anyone have a tool for formatting SD cards in ext3 on a mac.

I have followed every tutorial out there and cant get any of the mac options to work.

I have tried e2fsprogs (sudo $(brew --prefix e2fsprogs)/sbin/mkfs.ext3 /dev/diskN) and it just errors out. I am troubleshooting as I go but am hoping someone else has a workaround.

Anyone else have a tool or shortcut.

By the way pyraw2dng is working GREAT! The image quality is night and day!

 

[Mario3005]

That should work with the preinstalled Program Disk Utility on a Mac.

 

[Newbee]

I could not use pyraw2dng on Mac with python3.
Did you use pyraw2dng on Mac?
How can I do?

Anyone have a tool for formatting SD cards in ext3 on a mac.

I have followed every tutorial out there and cant get any of the mac options to work.

I have tried e2fsprogs (sudo $(brew --prefix e2fsprogs)/sbin/mkfs.ext3 /dev/diskN) and it just errors out. I am troubleshooting as I go but am hoping someone else has a workaround.

Anyone else have a tool or shortcut.

By the way pyraw2dng is working GREAT! The image quality is night and day!

 

[BlackthorneMedia]

I actually got both to work, but I had to do a complete reinstall of e2fsprogs via brew for Mac. Once I installed it that way it worked and I can now ext3 format my SD cards. All the info I found on the net for installing it via brew were old and dont work with the current version of brew.

I could not use pyraw2dng on Mac with python3.
Did you use pyraw2dng on Mac?
How can I do?

Make sure you are putting ./ in front of the commands after doing the things listed in this thread.

Long story short, even though you make the script executable, its not recognized as a program at the command prompt and you have to add ./ before the command to et MacOS know its a script

For example:

./pyraw2dng.py -w 1280 -l 720 inputfilename.raw

 

[Newbee]

Thank you for your reply.

I tried as you said.
but it didn't work.

This is error code.
======================================================
AKIOnoiMacownloads mycomputer$ ./pyraw2dng.py -w 1280 -l 1024 vid.raw
-bash: ./pyraw2dng.py: Permission denied
AKIOnoiMacownloads mycomputer$ sudo ./pyraw2dng.py -w 1280 -l 1024 vid.raw
sudo: ./pyraw2dng.py: command not found
======================================================

Is there something wrong with my method?

 

[BiduleOhm]

Do:

sudo chmod +x pyraw2dng.py

Then retry your command (without sudo, shouldn't be needed here).