Magic Lantern for 7D alpha 2

[Pelican]

Almost accidentally hit the donate button. *phew* That was close.

Huhh. Almost got my first donor... 

[arrinkiiii]

I have manage to download 2 times that take me more that 5 minutes to download 839kb and the third time still is downloading (more than 5 minutes). 

Never have this problem but tomorrow will try on other computer to see and also try to use in the card (that i didn't manage to do yesterday). For sure that the problem is in my computer or in my web connection. I download a file in piratebay with 700Mb in 5 or 10 minutes.

Purposely i have click in donation button, but just don't go anywhere... please, let me be the first one!

[hd7]

Edit: fixed my issue. thanks.

[Pelican]

I have manage to download 2 times that take me more that 5 minutes to download 839kb and the third time still is downloading (more than 5 minutes). 

Never have this problem but tomorrow will try on other computer to see and also try to use in the card (that i didn't manage to do yesterday). For sure that the problem is in my computer or in my web connection. I download a file in piratebay with 700Mb in 5 or 10 minutes.

Purposely i have click in donation button, but just don't go anywhere... please, let me be the first one!

I've checked the site but looks OK from here.
The donation button didn't work until now (Thank you for report it!) but I've fixed it so if you are quick enough you can be the first...

[arrinkiiii]

Now to even can enter in website =((  Today i didn't have the oportunity to try in different machine and different internet service. Hope tomorrow i can.

[arrinkiiii]

Now yes, download it in 2 seconds =))  I have send you paypal, for now is like that, need to wait 

[Moon]

Following the steps given by britom on page 31, it seems to me that the EOS Utility 2.8.1 no longer exists in the linked dropbox location. Any help? To my understanding it needs to be this exact version of EOS Utility, or will the newer ones do as well?

BTW big thanks to the amazing Magic Lantern Team for their great work and to everyone involved!

[Pelican]

Following the steps given by britom on page 31, it seems to me that the EOS Utility 2.8.1 no longer exists in the linked dropbox location. Any help? To my understanding it needs to be this exact version of EOS Utility, or will the newer ones do as well?

BTW big thanks to the amazing Magic Lantern Team for their great work and to everyone involved!

You don't need the EU at all...

[Moon]

You don't need the EU at all...

Are there some detailed instructions how to do it without the EU? I tried to look around this thread but maybe I missed it. I'm a bit hesitant to start working outside of the instructions because even in the simplified steps on the wiki page it says that the second step involves using EOS Utility..

[ted ramasola]

you don't need EU. use pelican's Eoscard instead.

[Moon]

OK I have been trying to follow the instructions step by step, but I'm sure I did wrong somewhere because when trying to update the firmware with the patched one on the camera menu, I get the following message: "Firmware older than ver. 2.0.0 is on memory card. Delete old file and update using later version."

The firmware on my 7D is version is 2.0.3 and the version I dowloaded from britom's link is 1.2.3, so my question is should I download the newest firmware version and try to patch that one with the given instructions?

[Walter Schulz]

I think you read the wrong installation guide. Use this one:
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=7464.0

Ciao, Walter

[rlk]

Pelican,

Can you do a version (even command line only) of EOScard for Linux (perhaps in source form)?

[r4ptor]

Hi guys,

I used ML Alpha 2 on my 7D a lot lately and really loved it. But today i ran into some trouble.

I was taking pics as usual, camera went in standby and then it happend. I couldn't power the camera on again.

So here is what i did:

-) Remove the battery(both of them[battery grip]) and waited
-) Removed the batterygrip and tried with one battery
-) made sure the battery was fully charged
-) removed the buffer battery for about 20 minutes
-) removed my primary CF card(with magic lantern in it) for 20 minutes
-) changed the lens

None of the above worked, i couldn't turn the camera on again. No red light when putting the card or battery in, just no reaction

So, what got my camera back to life?

-) Removed the magic lantern CF card,
-) removed the batteries for 5 minutes
-) inserted a fresh formatted card

Camera booting again, everything fine

But: i wanted to read out the images of the (corrupted) card on my PC. Windows told me, that the card has to get formatted. Linux(Arch) told me, the card contains a bad superblock.

So I'm here right now, rescuing the data from the card. This whole thing caused me no real damage, but it would be a pain in the ass, if I really would need my camera and this would happen again.

Long story short: Still in love with magiclantern BUT: how did this happen? Is there a way I can get a log file or something I could send the developers? How can I avoid such failure?

Thanks and keep up the great work

[Pileot]

Flash cards fail. Its a fact of life. I'm going to bet its less of a problem with magiclantern and more of a problem with the card itself.

Basically, each memory slot in the card has a limited life span, a limited number of read/write cycles before it will wear out, kind of like tread on your car tires.  There are lots of fancy ways that the card controllers can wear the cards evenly (cycling through every memory 'slot' before starting at slot 1 again, etc) but eventually the cards will fail.

Usually these cards are rated at the tens or hundreds of thousands of cycles and its a non issue, the card will be obselete before it fails (how many of you are still using your 50mb cards from 5 years ago? thats what I thought) HOWEVER...

Most people buy the least expensive card they can because, lets face it, we are limited by our budget.
Most people will keep using a old card as long as they can before its not worth using (like most of my friends using 4gig cards in their current gen camera bodies).
A lot of people buy cards from ebay or third parties
Some stores sell counterfeit cards without even knowing it!

This is a problem because the lower quality flash chips (the ones with the memory 'slots' holding your picture information) will either wear faster (always write to slot 1 first, then slot 2, etc. instead of sequentially) or have a lower number of cycles before it fails.

What can you do? Well personally, I research my cards before I buy them. How fast the card is is only half the equation. What sort of warrenty do they have on their cards? How do I get a broken card replaced (varies from manufacturer to manufacturer), is it a trusted name brand? do they have a PSA about fake cards and how to identify them?

The last cards I bought have a lifetime warrenty. Other's that I was looking at had a 3 month warrenty. Which one do you figure is going to fail faster?  Any pro photographer who has been in the business a while can tell you horror stories of cards failing. When the shot really counts its worth having quality equipment.

TL:DR - You get what you pay for.

[Pileot]

Forgot to mention, this is why I always carry a couple cards when shooting events, not in case they fill up (64 gig cards ftw) but if one were to fail I wouldn't want to be dead in the water

[r4ptor]

Thanks for your reply.

Well it could be the card, but i don't believe so. The card isn't the cheapest one(Kingston 600x), sure not a fake nor is it very old(2 months) and hasn't many read/write cycles.
So, of course it could be, that the card is broken, but i will figure this out with a bunch of tests.

[edit] ran some tests with linux and windows on the card. No errors, everything fine 

[Pileot]

Curious, which program did you use to test?  I know some will only test accessable sectors (not written) where others will format the card and test every sector. Any test that will erase data on the card likely tests every sector.

Some cards fail prematurely, some last longer than advertised, but if you did a readwrite test on every sector and it ran through several times with no problems chances are your card is fine.

It is also possible there was a glitch when files went to be written and that caused the data to be corrupted. Could be any number of things, loss of power while trying to write to the card, battery or card door was opened or card was ejected before the data could be written, non OEM battery running out of power unexpectedly, random surge of power, hell the list of things that COULD under the right conditions cause problems is as long as my arm.

If your card is fine and you can't see any problems personally I'd get the latest version of EOScard, throw the current "stable" build of ML on there and not worry about it. As previously mentioned I have several cards but only once have had issues where I didnt properly set the bootflag on one of my cards. The only time i'd have cause for concern is if the problem is repeatable but I think its unlikely (tho possible under the right conditions) that ML is causing your headaches.

Good luck!

[r4ptor]

I tested the card with ChkFlsh under Windows and with Linux, i wrote random data at it with dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdd1 bs=1k and vice versa tested for reading with dd if=/dev/sdd1 of=/dev/null bs=1k.

No errors occured with the Windows nor with the Linux version. So i would i say, the card is fine.

Thanks for your reply, I'm aware of the causes that might lead to corrupted data. I just wanted to ask here, if maybe this behavior is know and if this was really was triggerd by magiclantern, if there would be a chance to get a log or so.

But, regarding all facts, it might really just have been corrupted data. So i'll install ML again and be happy

thanks

[_7D_]

Hi!

Sorry, but I'm a little bit confused, because of the RAW developement ;-)

Which version do I have to use, to get the best Bitrate-features for h264? You know, before RAW came up, there was the Bitrate-Monster Thread with the settings for All-I and so on. I wanna use them...
Greets

[feureau]

Hi!

Sorry, but I'm a little bit confused, because of the RAW developement ;-)

Which version do I have to use, to get the best Bitrate-features for h264? You know, before RAW came up, there was the Bitrate-Monster Thread with the settings for All-I and so on. I wanna use them...
Greets

Go with britom's fps disabled bundle. Check his signature for download links.

[_7D_]

I don't understand it. So, do I have to choose a version without a signed fir or with a signed fir? Or should I just install the latest ML (09/10/2013)? Sorry for that ;-)

[1%]

Video hacks only worked on signed fir.

[_7D_]

Thanks. I've just installed TL from yesterday (Nightlys...-.fir included), but if I do the firmware update to get the video hacks, my camera freezes when I want to turn on video hacks. So I guess I've installed the wrong ML/TL, if I want to use Bitrate Settings with Flush-Rate etc.
EDIT: It seems like the 12/09/2013 firmware works. So this is the best and newest firmware, if I don't wanna use RAW Video, but wanna use the h264 hacks like GOP and things like that. Right?

[1%]

Yep, use older signed fir and if you want modules make sure to use the sym file that came with it.
Toggling video hacks too much seemed to freeze it but otherwise worked OK. I haven't made too many new firs because really this is the only thing left in them, I don't recall the vignetting working right.