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Yes, it would be possible for the module to ramp ettr settings. Personally, I don't fool with the SNR limits. I usually hit my exposure limits at night anyway, it must not be very dark where you are

Bright lights, big city  . I'd imagine that changing SNR limits would be useful, for example, when doing a day-to-night timelapse of New York (not that I live there, nor is my city *that* bright, but there's plenty of artificial light here).

Uh, last time I checked there's only 14 bits of data in a CR2. There's no benefit to using 32 bit in AE. 16-bits is more than plenty to fully represent every possible value in a RAW file. (If you use a 16bit workflow in AE, nothing will be clipped that wasn't already clipped in the original RAW file, 32 bit is unnecessary unless you're actually doing HDRI and have HDR merged 32 bit TIFFs or something that you're running through my script, in which case you should be able to get 32 bit output into AE just fine)

I know Canon CR2 only has 14 bits, but even so, there are advantages in working in 32 bits (after all, even the Red Epic's sensor is only 14 bits too, and people in the film/VFX industry work regularly in 32 bit float). The advantage is not so much in the "32 bits" part, but more in the "floating point" part. Working in float gives your software more precision when applying color grades, and allows you to stack up color correction tools non-destructively, even if the original source material is less than 32 bits.

Anyway, since I prefer to use the grading and keyframing tools in AE, what I'm trying to do is to import the full dynamic range of the original raw into AE, preserving detail in the highlights so that they aren't already "pre-clipped" when AE touches them. Stu Maschwitz's recipe is designed precisely to do that. I'll post here with further updates when I start porting your script to AE.

It was mentioned previously before but is there anyway to reinclude the holy grail auto ramp exposure?

Ramping exposure is certainly more intuitive for things like sunset timelapses. This said, I've been experimenting myself with AutoETTR and this module, and it seems to work quite well. The only problems I find are:

-AutoETTR tends to overexpose (and blow out) the night pics. a1ex pointed me to the SNR limits options, and they indeed seem to work... Which brings the question: would it be possible to keyframe and ramp the SNR limits?    (A value of 6 works for daylight shots, while 4 is better for nighttime ones).

-Using the deflicker script precludes you from importing your raw sequence to After Effects in HDR 32 bits, following this recipe by Stu Maschwitz:

http://prolost.com/blog/2006/3/16/linear-color-workflow-in-ae7-part-6.html

Since it also uses Camera Raw and sets the values for the entire sequence... and it uses process 2010.

dmilligan: would the exposure compensation values that your script sets change too much if they were calculated using process 2010, instead of 2012? Or is that irrelevant? Also, I read that you started developing your script for AE before switching to Bridge, because AE was too slow. How slow would you say it was? 10x slower? 50x slower?

(I'm asking because I'm considering porting it to AE, so that I can use it in conjunction with a linear 32-bit workflow, but I'd like to know before if the slowdown makes it unusable).

Okay, I've been rereading this thread, paying special attention to the posts where this new feature (SNR limits) was introduced. However, there's one thing I don't understand:

So, when I say the midtone SNR is 5 EV, this means half of the image has a SNR less than 5 EV, and the other half has a SNR higher than 5 EV. Pretty easy and statistically robust.

Why are you talking about SNR in terms of EV units instead of, say, dB?

(Please note: I'm no professional developer nor physicist, just a humble amateur photographer. Pointers to basic notions are welcome. After googling I found this explanation:

http://www.imatest.com/docs/noise/

But I don't know if it's relevant to the subject).

I had them on their default values, 6 and 2. So if I lower them, I'll get a picture less "to the right" at the cost of more potential noise, right? I'll experiment with other values then.

I have yet to see a higher ISO noisier than a lower one (in electrons).

Okay, I just did a few tests. You were right!!    I guess I was still thinking about ISO in terms of film stocks...

However, my larger point stands: I just finished another sunset timelapse using AutoETTR, and at the end (when it was dark), it blew my highlights to the point that now I can't recover them in post. Thus, I'd like to know if there's a way to ramp EV so that, at the end of the timelapse, the software aims for a different value than at the beginning.

on-topic: change auto ISO limit in Canon menu.

Quick question: but I thought that AutoETTR didn't work if you set the ISO in auto mode?

(I'm reading the links right now. Will post later with questions if I have doubts :-) ).

Hello. I've been trying AutoETTR for a sunset timelapse this weekend, and I have some questions about it.

First of all, until now I was shooting using the old bulb ramping feature. When I shoot sunset timelapses, my opinion is that it doesn't matter if the latter shots (the ones at night) have a lower exposure value than the earlier ones; after all, it's supposed to be at night, and if you try to overexpose them so that they match the daylight shots, you'll risk blowing out the lights in the shot. Thus, until now I was using bulb ramping to ramp down the EV value.

I understand that this is not possible with AutoETTR, since its philosphy is to expose always to the right in order to decrease noise, and if you want to ramp down EV, you can always do it later in post. Which is fine... except that sometimes, when it's really dark at night, AutoETTR simply can't increase the exposure anymore. The only way it can do so is by increasing the ISO to ridiculous levels (3200, 6400), which kind of defeats the purpose of avoiding noise. (It happened to me this weekend).

Thus, I'm wondering if there's any way to "cap" the ISO levels, or the EV values that AutoETTR aims for. One way I'm thinking of doing it is by activating the advance intervalometer and adding keyframes in it for ISO, and then using the "slowest shutter" option. Is there any other way? Or, in more general terms: is there a way to ramp up/down the EV target of AutoETTR + adv_int.mo for situations like these?

Thanks for your answer. Another thing: I've noticed that, if you add keyframes in the "wrong" chronological order (adding first the last ones, etc.), they still get executed, but they don't get cleared from the list afterwards. Is that the correct behavior? Is there any limitation when it comes to the order in which keyframes have to be introduced?

Hello. I've been trying out this module this afternoon, and I have some doubts that I couldn't find the answer for. Sorry if this was answered somewhere else and it escaped me:

1) I take it that you can't delete keyframes right now. Am I wrong?
2) When creating a keyframe, why can't you set the shutter to less than 1/24?
3) Speaking of which, what's the difference between the shutter setting and the bulb duration one? I created several keyframes varying aperture and bulb duration, but the latter didn't change.

I should mention that I'm not using AutoETTR yet, since I want to get a feel for this module on its own first.

Oh, the same thing happens to me too. I get the ExtendScript toolkit window; in the Javascript Console to the side, I get: "temp file path: C:\Users\Paulo\AppData\Local\Temp\PercentilePreview.jpg"... but the file in question is not there.

I'm on Adobe CS6 (using Bridge 64 bit), on Windows 7.

Since I do have some experience with coding, I'll do some research and see if I can debug this.

Okay, I found the bug. In line 690 of your script, where it says:

output.exportTo(tempFilename, 100);

It should be

output.exportTo(tempFile, 100);

Instead. According to the docs, the exportTo() function takes as its argument a "File" object, not a string.

I just tested it on Windows, and it does work. What I don't know is whether it will break on the Mac... 

Edit: works on the Mac too.

I am no experienced colorist, but changing white balance (hint: gamma correction), contrast and other things localy on an already highly graded image with a bad ratio of noise vs. signal (like a noisy milky way shot) is pretty hard to do for me within After Effects. If you would attempt to try/do it you would defeat the whole purpose of the scripting which is getting highest quality output from a RAW file IMHO. In that case you would be better off to output a flat interpretation of the actual RAW file and do ALL (=global and local) adjustments in AE or a designated colour grading suite like Speedgrade or Resolve.
By the way, all those features are implented in commercial software, some of them based on requests made by users.

I'm late to this, but...: if I understand you correctly, the underlying problem here is that Adobe Camera Raw can't pass to AE a true 32-bit image with all the dynamic range of the original RAW file. Hence your desire to do everything (even things like gradients) "before" AE, in the RAW processing phase.

Well, a possible solution might be here. In the last comment to this thread:

http://prolost.com/blog/2013/5/15/space-monkeys-raw-video-and-giving-us-all-youve-got.html

Stu mentions a tutorial about how to get the most dynamic range from Camera Raw:

http://prolost.com/blog/2006/3/16/linear-color-workflow-in-ae7-part-6.html

I wonder if you might find it useful.

Great Script!

Everything works like a charm.  Except one thing...

From the deflicker prompt when I click Preview.  I get the Bridge Script pop out window, but it is a blank white Source tab.  I can see the script on the right and in the drop down Bridge CS6 is selected as well as Main Engine. 

Oh, the same thing happens to me too. I get the ExtendScript toolkit window; in the Javascript Console to the side, I get: "temp file path: C:\Users\Paulo\AppData\Local\Temp\PercentilePreview.jpg"... but the file in question is not there.

I'm on Adobe CS6 (using Bridge 64 bit), on Windows 7.

Since I do have some experience with coding, I'll do some research and see if I can debug this.

Hello:

I'm just trying our your script, and I found something that I don't know if it's a bug: if I select a range of RAW images and try to ramp the "temperature" setting... it ignores me. It doesn't change anything.

(Not that I care that much about ramping color temperature; I was just trying to find out what After Effects does when some images of a sequence have XMP files and others don't, and I needed to change something that was easy to see in the timeline).

Using Adobe CS6 on Windows 7, with Camera Raw 7.

Hello:

I own a 550D and am using ML stable 2.3. How are you supposed to use the "follow focus using LCD" feature? Are you supposed to move your hand right-to-left, left-to-right, or just hold it on the left/right side of the LCD?

I am asking because I'm unable to get any consistent results. No matter what I do, the lens moves one or two steps, and then stops. Actually, what happens most often is that I can get it to go in the "+" direction, but then, when I try to move the lens the other way (in the "-" direction), it doesn't do anything.

Thanks for your answer. I was doubtful because the user guide seems to imply that it's okay to change aperture while using bulb ramping... but then again, the user guide also says at the top "for 2.3 stable release", and then it contains a section about AutoETTR 

I'll definitely be using your module soon.

Hey, I didn't know about that Bridge script! Very cool. I'll use it in the timelapse that I mentioned and see if I can remove the flicker.

As for the rest... I am aware of your work in the new adv_int.mo, and I'll definitely be trying it when I'm finished exploring the stable release and start with the nightlies, but in the meantime... is the behavior that I described normal for 2.3? (i.e., not reacting to aperture changes from one frame to the next). Also, does it use spot metering for measuring light?

I'm not asking this just for practical reasons, but for my own intellectual curiosity. Basically, I'm trying to understand how does the bulb ramping work internally, what factors it uses to decide what to do.

Hello:

I am using ML 2.3 (the stable version) on a 550D, and I'm testing the bulb ramping feature to make sunset timelapses. I have it set on the "sunset" mode, and I also have the manual exposure ramping set to -0.01EV per shot, so that the final night shots are a bit less exposed than the daylight ones.

Anyway, after some trial and error, I managed to get an excellent timelapse without flicker, but today I decided to try it again while opening the aperture by hand at given intervals. I started at F18 and 1.5sec. exposure, and when the scene got darker I opened the iris manually to F14, then to F9 and then to F8.

I expected that, when doing that, the bulb ramping would automatically adjust shutter time to compensate for the changed aperture, but it doesn't do so: if a shot has F18 and 3sec., after I open the iris to F14 it still takes the next picture at 3sec. (with no ISO change). As a result, there's noticeable flicker when I make those changes.

My first question: is this normal? What am I supposed to do to avoid this?

Aside of that, in today's timelapse there was also some higher-frequency flicker that wasn't there in my previous one (both shot on the same location). After having a look, I noticed that the center of the shot had an object that moved slightly with the wind and was directly lit by a streetlight (the center spot metering mark was right on it), so its brightness varied slightly. Could this have caused it? Basically, what I'm asking is: does bulb ramping use the spot metering feature of the camera to measure light?

Thanks in advance.

Thanks. That's what I suspected.

Paul,

Did you enable these modules in the modules menu?  You need to enable them first then power cycle the camera to get it to reboot and load them.

Michael

I don't have a modules menu, hence my confusion. I'm using the stable 2.3 version, not any of the nightlies. If I open the SD card on a computer, I don't see any "modules" folder either inside ML.

So, it's either:

a) I hid the "modules" menu by accident when I first started playing with Magic Lantern (it did happen to me with other options).
b) As I suspect, the modules, scripts and other goodies are available only in the nightly builds, not in the "stable 2.3" version.

Can anyone confirm which is it? 

Hi all:

Complete newbie here. I just installed Magic Lantern last week, and after getting confused because I couldn't find some features (ETTR) in my stable 2.3 build, I started reading more in detail about the current development model. I'm ready now to try the nightlies, but first I'd like to ask some basic questions, just so I can be sure that I have the right idea (so please bear with me):

-Switching between stable and nightly is as simple as taking the SD card, deleting all the files of one version and copying the other one, right?

-For the 550D, which of the recent nightlies have people here been using? Is there any particular version with serious bugs? (I'm not asking which version do people "recommend", because I know that in the end I have to make that decision for myself; I'm asking for people's experiences using the recent builds).

Thanks in advance.

Hi all:

Complete newbie here (I just installed ML for the first time last week). I am using the stable 2.3 version (on a Canon 550D), and can't find any of the options discussed here in my menus; AutoETTR, for example, isn't there.

I figured that these options would be in the new alpha/nightly builds, but I'm a bit confused, since ETTR does appears in the user guide, which I understand applies to the stable version  (it says at the top "v2.3 - User's Guide"):

http://wiki.magiclantern.fm/userguide#exposure_to_the_right_ettr

So, can anyone confirm whether these options are available only on the non-stable builds?

Thanks.