Canon 6D firmware solves YouTube compatibility problem

by

posted Friday, December 14, 2012 at 4:34 PM EDT


Canon's EOS 6D digital SLR lowers the barrier to entry to the company's full-frame digital SLR lineup, with a pricetag well below that of the EOS 5D Mark III, and even a little less than the now rather long-in-the-tooth 5D Mark II. That's made the 6D pretty popular with photographers and videographers on a tight budget, but early adopters have found themselves facing problems sharing their EOS 6D videos.

The issue? Videos straight out of the camera couldn't be played back on Google's dominant video sharing service, YouTube. As soon as it had confirmed the problem's existence, Canon provided a workaround, but it wasn't the most convenient. It required re-encoding each video manually using the supplied ImageBrowser EX software before uploading them to YouTube. (Of course, if you'd edited your videos on your computer before uploading, you had already re-encoded and resolved the issue; it was only out-of-camera video that was problematic.)

Now, there's a permanent fix, in the form of updated firmware for the Canon 6D. The newly-available EOS 6D firmware version 1.1.2 fixes the issue for all videos shot after the update has been applied, but won't correct videos shot with earlier firmware, so you'll still need to use the workaround for your existing videos. That means if you plan to share much out-of-camera video, you'll want to update as soon as possible to avoid the inconvenience of needing to re-encode everything you're shooting.

More details and the firmware update itself can be found on the Canon USA website. (Look in the Drivers and Software section, and enter your operating system details, then click on Firmware to access the update.)

 
The full-frame Canon EOS 6D can shoot high-definition video, but you'll need the latest firmware installed if you plan on uploading it to YouTube without editing or re-encoding it first.