Perhaps maybe you know of a software that I could use to edit/view the RAW raws? Because I was using RawTherapee and RawHide. Both softwares had this crop. Those were RAWs from my S3IS. When it came to my SX40HS, they couldn't even open the RAW. I have no clue what to do. Since you've been doing this for many years, you probably have some expertise in this area, and perhaps know of a software that can do this.
I'd suggest using DNG. As I described before, the actual image data is the same. The difference is that for CHDK "raw", each program needs special support for every camera. As for software, it depends what you actually want to do with it. For processing raw into pretty pictures, raw therapee is fine.
For analyzing raw data, you probably want something else. If you want to inspect unprocessed raw data from a CHDK DNG, you can use the chdkptp dngdump command to extract it in a more common format, for example
dngdump -rfmt=16pgm -raw
gives you a 16 bit, non-debayered greyscale PGM, which you could load into gimp or convert further with common tools.
The reason I want the RAW raws, is to do some sensor testing. I'm interested to see how many dead pixels I have
If you use DNG, you can use the chdkptp dnglistpixels command to identify pixels with values in a particular range. See
https://app.assembla.com/spaces/chdkptp/wiki/DNG_Processing and also I want to see if I can unlock that black border of dead sensor to perhaps make it work, bringing my 12.1MP to a full 13MP.
This is extremely unlikely, IMO. At least some of the black borders are physically masked on the sensor, so the are already read out, but contain only noise and
dark current.
Afterwards, I have a certain idea to test. I want to see if I can use CHDK PTP while recording a video, and seeing if CHDK PTP can offload each RAW movie frame as soon as it hits the movie buffer.
IMO, there is no raw data visible to the main CPU during movie recording. Whatever YUV data eventually gets turned into compressed video is generated directly during readout, similar to how live view works, and indeed, in some cases the live view buffer is use directly for video. So at best, you will find uncompressed YUV at the same resolution as the native video file.
It has to be this way, since the system does not have the bandwidth to read out and process full resolution images at video frame rates, and again, we know the live view works this way.
After all, the frames have to be captured first, meaning they are RAW before they hit the conversion. If I can grab a hold of them, through the CHDK PTP, I can get my laptop to do all the heavy lifting, while the camera just relays the data over USB. Since upon some research, it seems that even if I could make it happen in-camera, the SD Card can't take such high speed RAW offloading, but USB might.
These cameras only support USB 2. In practice, the fastest CHDK supported cams top out around 33 mbyte/s of user data, and older ones are significantly less.
FWIW, what you describe is essentially how the chdkptp live view works.
