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Messages - maxotics

#51
I've sent multiple e-mails to MÃ¥rten Dalfors, who seems to be the dev behind RAWanizer.  I asked if he might continue dev or release it as open-source.  I explained that it would be best if FocusPixelFixer, and other new apps, were called from RAWanizer.  I haven't received any response.  It appears that he's Swedish.  I wonder if ML drove him insane ;) 

#52
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
December 04, 2013, 02:56:36 PM
Quote from: loicremy on December 04, 2013, 08:56:06 AM
Many thanks for all ML team !

I wouldn't call them a team.  Little fault of theirs.  Everyone wants different features, so each dev works on whichever feature they're also interested in.  There are two forks of ML, as far as I can see.  Until users take some responsibility for helping the devs work through what are, in the end, political issues, the EOS-M will remain an Alpha fork. 

One dev wants the other dev to put his work into the main fork.  Everyone agrees it's a good idea, but no one really takes a stand. That would create a lot of dull work for the second dev and would take away from new/fun feature dev.  It's his time.  In order for that to happen, if that should happen, users need to make sure it's somehow worth it for the devs to put time into drudgery work, or, as they say, fire up your compiler and do it yourself.


#53
Raw Video / Re: can't understand things
November 30, 2013, 05:32:39 PM
This may help, applies to all APS-C cameras.  For RAW video:

http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=8825.msg82948#msg82948

Crop essentially means taking a rectangular shape of pixels from the sensor that, when "blown up" effectively increases the focal length. 

Don't worry about the buffer size, etc., just read the posts and see what frame-rates/resolutions people are able to get with their camera/card/setup cofigurations.

ExFat just allows over 2gig file sizes.  Doesn't work on some cameras.  If it does, you want it.

Are you talking about RAW or H.264.  RAW doesn't record audio. 
#54
Quote from: Allen on November 30, 2013, 02:05:39 PM
Is there any possibility to get 14-bit picture into ... into 8-bit ... anything?

And make it like 14bit? No, unless you spend a lot of energy (battery power) and time compressing it.  I would think the cameras do the best they can do--after all, they spend millions upon millions on it.

One can think of it this way.  You have a palette of 14 scales of gray.  You need to convert them into 8 scales for something else.  So 1-2 because 1, 3-4, become 2, 5-6 becomes 3, 7-8, becomes 4; 9-10, 5, 11-12, 6, 13-14, 7 (and we throw out the 8, for example)

Let's say you have two gray colors in what you shot, and they are 2 and 6.  You want to reduce the exposure by 1.   

They were convered to 1 and 3, so now they become 0 and 2.   You went from a 300% difference (in 14bit) to 200% (in 8bit).  More importantly, you went from some gray 1, in 14bit, to no gray 0, in 8bit.

At a certain point, lossless compression tricks run out and there is no way to preserve, let alone, increase image quality (however you measure it). 

#55
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
November 28, 2013, 06:28:28 PM
I know g3gg0 has been putting tons of time into MLV.  I haven't tried it on the EOS-M. 

1. So is MLV stable on the EOS-M (I only tried it on my 50D)
2. What benefits does/can it give us?
#56
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
November 28, 2013, 02:30:18 PM
Quote from: drchagas on November 28, 2013, 08:09:30 AM
I'm using Build20131012 from max's starter set. I've noticed that when shooting raw video in crop mode, the crop boundary overlay is misaligned.

EDIT: Solved my problem for now (I probably should upgrade.) Here's my solution, it's not pixel perfect but it's fairly accurate. Haven't tested it at different focal lenghts, I'm using 18mm. Save it to your /ML/cropmks/ folder to use.

drchagas, that looks very interesting.  the 11/09/2013 build should be in my latest starter set.  I haven't seen 1% around much lately, and don't believe the build has been changed much in a month, maybe Jerykill or 1% can weigh in here. 

Joe has made even further improvements to the FocusPixelFixer.  I need to incorporate it in some scripts, or an app, to allow one to process a RAW file straight into DNGS, TIFFs or Proress, etc. 

About a post above, yes the 22mm in crop mode gives a great image, but lack of IS, when it's at an effective 90mm focal length, is a downer.  I really wish Canon would start selling the 11-22mm STM lens in the U.S. at a reasonable price! 

#57
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
November 26, 2013, 09:03:38 PM
Quote from: jordancolburn on November 26, 2013, 08:22:12 PM
Thanks for the info, I had read the guide and used crop mode w/ h.264 on the M and on my t3i, but I guess I just misunderstood crop mode in raw to mean the built in crop from using a smaller resolution and not actual crop mode.  Looking forward to trying it out soon.

Yes it is confusing.  Crop mode was used in the beginning, with H.264, to boost your effective focal length.  Cheap way to make a 150mm out of 50mm :)  The image is so compressed in H.264 that you don't notice the line-skipping (very much).  In RAW, however, if you blend away all the chromatic aberrations from line skipping you might as well just stick with H.264.   With crop mode, however, you don't get the line skipping, though now the increase in focal lenght works against you when you want wide shots.  Hope that further clarifies. 

Once you shoot some RAW in 1280x720 crop (I suggest a tripod), you're gonna have a revelation!
#58
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
November 26, 2013, 07:25:47 PM
Quote from: jordancolburn on November 26, 2013, 04:35:09 PM
Oh, so after enabling the 3x crop I will be able to select true 1280x720 without the squeeze in raw_rec?  I just assumed crop mode meant the way it crops toward the center when recording raw video.  I'll try it out soon.

Don't know if you've read my shooters guide: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=8825.msg82944#msg82944

The reason the vertical is 434 pixels tall is that the sensor has a 4:3 geometry, so it's not tall enough to provide the 720 columns by 1280 rows.

The benefit of crop mode is that is uses a block of CONTIGUOUS pixels in the center of the sensor.  The bad part is the increased effective focal length.

Here is the relevant part from the Shooter's guide:

In full sensor mode, video is generally captured by scanning pixels from a 5,194 by 2,903 (16:9 aspect) of the sensor.  The right way to do it, would be to down-sample all those pixels.  But for electronic/engineering reasons, the EOS-M doesn't read and sample all the pixels, but reads them every other line (The 5D3 does, BTW).  So it skips about 2.2 lines vertically and 7.2 pixels horizontally.  This is complicated by the fact that the sensor pixels each read either a red, green or blue value.  So two lines, if they don't have enough color information (because it's missing from the middle), will end up with a bright red or blue or green.  When the pixels get de-bayered (the full colors calculated) chromatic aberrations occur.  The bottom line is that all consumer cameras, in video mode, suffer from this "line-skipping" problem, to a greater or lesser degree.

In addition to chromatic aberrations, line skipping means that if you have a hard vertical or horizontal line in your image, and it falls between the samples lines, it appears as a jagged artifact.  They form ugly "moire" patterns.

What software is used to de-bayer the image, also has a bearing on the quality.  The distortions from line-skipping show up more in some software and less in others.  I believe Davinci Resolve is the best at dealing with it, but I have no direct experience. 

CROP MODE

In the 19:6 aspect ratio, the EOS-M, can create images from the center 1280 pixels long (wide) by 720 pixels high.  The reason that crop-mode videos do not suffer from moire is it doesn't skip lines, or pixels.  It uses the center-most 1280x720 pixels of the sensor.  The drawback, is that it taking an image from a small part of sensor and enlarging it, so to speak, which creates a zoom, long focal-length; that is, if a lens is 20mm normally, by taking the a center part of the image it becomes 79mm. 
#59
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
November 26, 2013, 03:33:48 PM
Quote from: jordancolburn on November 26, 2013, 02:18:48 PM
Don't get me wrong, it's great fun, and I'll still keep trying out raw video every so often as tools improve, but right now, it just isn't workable enough for me yet.  I tried the new pixel fixer, but it crashes halfway through, although oddly enough it seems like the top 1/3 and left 1/3 of the image are free from focus pixels, as if it got partway done before it crashed.  My raw files were 1280, 16x9 aspect, so 1280x434 before the stretch, is this correct?

Sorry jordancolburn, the PixelFixer will only work on 1280x720, what you get in crop mode at 16:9 (which will add a 4.5 crop to your focal length).  I plan to make it work for 1280x434 at some point, but don't, because the aliasing/moire in that mode is pretty bad on that camera.   Though I think that can be improved (long story).  For the SD cards, I strongly advise shooting in crop mode.  I get good results with my 10-20mm Sigma EF on adapter.

This is my favorite video with the EOS-M.  It's low light, but I prefer the natural/grainy colors, looks like 16mm film to me, then what I get from H.264 (though I like that better in bright/event situations). 



I agree, RAW isn't for everything.  But when skin tones and shadow detail is important, RAW really delivers.

I should put a warning into the software that prevents it from running non 1280!  Will do.  Thanks for the tip.
#60
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
November 25, 2013, 10:36:21 PM
Quote from: jordancolburn on November 25, 2013, 09:50:45 PM
Do not let a lack of usable raw scare you making great videos at an awesome price on this tiny camera with all the video features of the t2i through 7d.

We like our RAW self-flaggelation ;)  Anyway, the RAW is very usable.  As you say, you just have to be careful and you're right, the H.264 is as good as any other camera I've tried.

Some REALLY GOOD NEWS EVERYONE, some guy, Joe Jungmann, have no idea who he is, emailed me a vastly improved source to the FocuxPixelFixer.  Before it was slow.  Now it screams!

You can get it here.  Again, only works for 1280x720 for now. 

https://bitbucket.org/maxotics/focuspixelfixer/downloads

#61
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
November 25, 2013, 01:55:49 PM
Quote from: cpreston on November 25, 2013, 06:05:07 AM
Even though I've been following these threads I am still not sure what happened here, but I would be extremely grateful if there was support for ML on these cameras.

The two roots of the problem is too few developers and lack of users organizing themselves to agree on priorities (and too few users doing documentation, etc).  If Alex could clone himself we'd have a stable version for the EOS-M.  From what I can understand, 1% decided he could get more done for the EOS-M if he spend most of his time on his fork.  If 1% could clone himself, it would be stable.  Alex and 1% have had discussions on these issues elsewhere on the forum.  No solution seems imminent.

Everyone, including myself, probably thinks the same thing before trying  to get more done, "do I, can I, commit to the time it will take over the next 6 months to do X?"  Ultimately, everyone seems to kick this can down the street.

I have put in oodles of time developing a C# program to interpolate around focus pixels for the EOS-M.  The other developers were very responsive, but not helpful.  Again, everyone has a list a mile long. 

I got so frustrated with all this I bought a BMPCC.  It's a joy not to deal with all the buggy issues on the EOS-M.  However, it's a great sadness too because, as you know, the EOS-M is incredible and with a stable version of ML, would be the utility camera everyone would want.   I feel I've done my part with the pixel software and shooter's guide.  Jerrykil has been posting builds.  Gary tests everything.  And we have others...so drawing blank of names.  But we only have "one" 1%.  Alex and G3gg0, as much as they would like to help, are focused on other cameras/software.

People have tried to pay them, but I think they reason they're doing all they can.  If they take the money they're just shifting their attention from one person's request to another.  Who knows?





#62
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
November 23, 2013, 03:27:59 PM
Quote from: a1ex on November 23, 2013, 03:11:56 PM
Correction: since there's no ML for EOS M, there can't be any ML bugs ;)

Hi Alex, I'm sure you'd be the last one to argue with me on this.  Most people don't know "official" from non-official ML.  On another forum, a guy posted that the reason Canon doesn't go into this more, RAW for their DSLRs, is that their reputation would be tarnished by all the complaints.  Even if Canon did it well, people would complain that the footage is "horrible and washed out", or "my Class 10 card doesn't work", or "I shot 20 5-minute clips, back-to-back, of my kids play and the camera melted apart" etc :)

In many posts in other threads I did my best to try to organize people around the need to agree on a common set of goals and how to spread out the time to do them.  I'm glad to see you're back, if you are back, but now it looks like 1% has disappeared. 

Anyway, my major point is the EOS-M can be a killer cameras.  Better than the 5D3, because it is so small and versatile.  But if people aren't going to rally behind your issues, which I agree are very serious and important, then what hope is there for the EOS-M  :(

#63
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
November 23, 2013, 01:45:40 PM
Thanks Gary!  Good idea.  That wait you're seeing is the program creating a copy of the RAW file to work with.  Anyway, put a message in.  I noticed that on some really large files the program dies.  Don't know what causes it, if it will happen again, we'll have to see.

The program could definitely be speeded up by a master C# person.  Not a priority for me at moment.

On the Black Magic Pocket Cinema Cam

The camera is a joy to use after coming from the buggy build of ML on the EOSm.  You turn it on, hit iris, then focus, then shoot.  ProRes goes straight into the NLE.  the BMPCC is light and small.  But of course, it is $1,000.

What I didn't expect is the moire and aliasing caused by the sharpness of the image.  So the image needs to be softened a little bit.

The good news is that the 720p crop-mode image from the EOS-M is just as good to me, dynamic range wise, as the BMPCC.  If you want a nice grainy 16mm film look, I don't think any cameras, even the black magics, are going to beat the EOS-M or t4i, etc.  You may not believe me, but 720p is enough for me.  It's the bugginess of ML, the post-processing stuff and lack of cheap wide-angle glass, that drove me to the BMPCC.  EOS-M can still be a rock-star. 

More good news is that after figuring out how to use batch mode in Photivo I put some normal focal length, moire filled video, through it using Amaze and 8-pass processing.  It does a great job on the color distortions.  If we can get the EOS-M to shoot in normal focal length without too much moire things will get VERY interesting I dare say :)

The EOS-M still have the same benefits (awesome photo mode, etc.) and drawbacks (ML bugs and post-processing headaches).  The BMPCC hasn't made me want to give up on the EOS-M.  Not by a long shot, as nice as it is.

#64
Tragic Lantern / Re: 50D and 40D Raw video
November 23, 2013, 04:14:48 AM
We had this problem with the EOS-M too.   Don't believe the fonts file has changed so an old should work too in the /data folder I believe.
#65
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
November 22, 2013, 08:55:29 PM
Quote from: Escaperoute on November 22, 2013, 08:33:56 PM
Thanks for the reply, i've used it and i still have some pink dots in bottom of the frame, and some minor pink dots if i boost the shadows. Could you update the program for better pink dot removal...

Hi, Okay, fixed problems.  I was shortening the loop to find all pixels that was missing last rows/cols.  Also think I improved interpolation a bit.  Also put up an exe in a zip file under downloads.  Again, ONLY does 1280x720.  Let me know what you find, thanks!

https://bitbucket.org/maxotics/focuspixelfixer/downloads
#66
Tragic Lantern / Re: 50D and 40D Raw video
November 21, 2013, 05:55:00 PM
RAWanizer is only an GUI to command line tools which you can find located in its /tools folder. 

It uses raw2dng to create dngs
it uses dcraw to create TIFFs from the dngs
It uses ffmpeg or ffmbc to create proxy videos
it uses raw2gpcf to create 422 cineform.

The versions of those programs, and the params sent to them , will change what you get.

Your TIFFs should not look like negatives.  They may be bw if you send the -D param to dcraw.
#67
Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: PinkDotRemover tool 650D
November 21, 2013, 05:50:33 PM
They aren't green pixels.  However, there may be pixels that PDR would have removed.  Rewind, I can't remember if that clip was processed before or after you fixed the patterns.  But I did see them again in footage I shot a few days ago, but am not going to put up on Vimeo.  In any case, I want a tool that takes care of all "fixed-pattern" problem pixels.  It's why I wrote FocusPixelFixer.   Like PDR, it can work 100%.  Just too much work for me to do at moment.

Apefox, thanks for posting the plugin.  However, without source code, doesn't help me.

I just bought a BMPCC.  I still believe in the EOS-M, and other Canon cameras, but I haven't been able to get anyone involved in ML to get more professional.  If you use ML professionally, Remind, I commend you!  I don't need this stuff professionally.  This is a hobby for me.  Even as that, I find it too aggravating.  It's hard enough trying to fix the focus pixel issues with these camera AND wrestle with bugs.  This isn't anyone's fault.  It's a collective failure.

Again, I've gotten pretty good at Photivo, a lot because of Rewinds help!  So if someone gets the Java PDR into a single more usable code base going forward, i can handle the EOS-M camera settings, which I have. 

But Rewind, I'm not asking you!  God knows you've done enough.  We need someone with dev skills beside you and I!  Anyone?
#68
Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: PinkDotRemover tool 650D
November 21, 2013, 03:30:31 PM
Quote from: Rewind on November 21, 2013, 02:47:55 PM
Then may be you should be more specific, because I use my 650D for commercial work now quite fine, PDR does it's dedicated job nicely, that's why I don't bother updating or fixing it.
If you tell me scenarios, when it doesn't work, then there will be a point to deal with it.

Rewind, I said it a gazillion times!  If you shoot anything with clipped/overexposed parts of the frame the dots re-appear.  You may be using a workflow that interpolates around them, so I'm not saying you're not wrong, for your use.  (BTW Do you shoot outdoors?) It usually works perfectly for me too. And I know you're trying to help!  And have!  What would be really helpful is a new version with the latest good settings.  Right now, I have to switch back and forth.  I did look into it.  Seems to me they punted a bit in the code, so not that easy.  Anyway, once that's done, I can probably help out with fine-tuning any of the dot matrixes.

Also, now that I've worked with this stuff in serious depth there are some lines of dots that do not fit a formula.

Here's a video where you can see the problems.  The dots appear in over-exposed sections of the frame.

#69
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
November 21, 2013, 02:16:07 PM
Quote from: Escaperoute on November 21, 2013, 11:48:11 AM
Can anyone compile the FocusPixelFixer to useable exe file, I really don't have the resources to compile.

It's here in the bin folder.  Also in my big zip of EOS-M files

https://bitbucket.org/maxotics/focuspixelfixer/src/258dc1804f67b314b94436b5ca02eaae157a0909/bin/Release/?at=master

I haven't pushed it because I'm taking a breather.  Keep in mind it only does crop-mode at moment.  If many people show an interest I'll get myself re-charged.

You drag a RAW file onto it and it will create a copy without the pink dots.   It does not do anything to the original file.
#70
Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: PinkDotRemover tool 650D
November 21, 2013, 02:12:11 PM
Quote from: demetrisag on November 21, 2013, 12:33:53 PM
Well, like you said it

Kinda, under perfectly controllable case scenarios and specific resolutions should be ok.

Real world scenarios not so much :)

Which is why I built my own version in C#.  It needs to be tweaked a little bit for sensitivity to exposure and I missed a couple of rows of dots.  The Java version of PDR is 90% there.  Rewind always shoots within that 90% :)  Anyway, there is now a Java and C# open-source version. 

I was looking at a lot of my old footage, that was properly exposed, and used PDR.  Looks great to me.



#71
Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: PinkDotRemover tool 650D
November 21, 2013, 01:11:57 AM
Quote from: demetrisag on November 21, 2013, 12:54:09 AM
Any news on the Pink dots effort? Too much silence in here :)

Too few developers  :-[ 
#72
Quote from: Marsu42 on November 20, 2013, 10:29:49 PM
Hey, that's nice - I wish something like this was up when I didn't know how a sensor sees the world and all smart people talked about Bayer vs. Faveon sensors, but I had no clue what was it about!

Me too! 
#73
Tragic Lantern / Re: Tragic Lantern for EOS M
November 20, 2013, 06:23:25 AM
Hi Gary.  I bit the bullet and a BMPCC should come tomorrow.  I don't see any leadership emerging here and no one wants to follow me ;)  If I were Alex I wouldn't come back. At some point 1% will want a vacation too.  Then we'll have two forks to nowhere.  g3gg0 is happy to build a viewer for 3 people.  I think there are only a few of us doing anything meaningful on the EOS-M.  I'll try to continue with it, and can see getting more interested if the 11-22mm lens goes on sale here under $300.  How about you?

These are the things I think need to happen for the camera to gain any traction.

1. Audio is turned back on if you go back to H.264
2. FPS is turned off if you go into photo mode
3. The 11-22mm lens is cheap OR
4. Someone figures out how to reduce the horrible moire in normal shooting mode.
5. The shutter bug is fixed.
#74
For those not clear what the sensor sees before de-bayering I created this fun little video using my EOS-M, Magic Lantern, Photivo and ImageMagick.

#75
Tragic Lantern / Re: 50D and 40D Raw video
November 20, 2013, 03:33:36 AM
Those cards are factory seconds.  Which means a testing machine found potential problems.  When you buy the card, you put your time into testing them further in the interest of getting a good one.  I don't know of many guaranteed "brand" cards failing.  IF a card was going to die, then ML would be the thing you'd want to throw at it.  You're writing as fast as the camera can, generating heat, etc, and putting all the memory cells through max read/writes.  I just don't get it.  To ask if ML is somehow busting something that is a factory second?  Yes, it was a bad card along, as all of them have the potential to be discovered as such.