Canon announced tonight that its long-awaited firmware upgrade for the EOS 5D Mark II to allow 24p high-definition video recording will be coming this month. The exact date the firmware will be available has not been announced yet though.

Canon said firmware upgrade 2.0.3 for the EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR will "meet the demands of both professional movie producers and aspiring filmmakers alike by adding 24p video acquisition and changing the 30p video frame rate to 29.97 to comply with TV production standards."

In addition, audio capability is enhanced for professional use, adding manual audio level control, and increasing the audio sampling frequency to 48KHz from 44.1KHz.