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Wow! I actually really like the look of this! Colours and detail both seem great.

What were your MLV App settings here? And how did you scale it? The detail looks incredible, not too oversharpened, just nice (I am watching on a 13 inch laptop though, true test will be 27 inch monitor)

Also this was shot in normal mode, not crop or anything?

back from holiday,

anything i could help with?

I'll probably have something soon

IIRC we aligned that that little part of the structure is fine to made LGPL to get the exchange format accepted.

Glad to hear

only if even professional tools are allowed to use the structures, you can undercut commercial products with open source mindset

Yep, always fun to do that

@Luther Nice to hear from you again! This attempt is going much better, way more simple. Should be able to do a release quite soon.

Also thanks again for all the links you have sent since whenever you started. I looked back at that RawToAces github link you sent ages ago with the camera spectral data, and it is literal gold, what can be done with it is amazing. I really hope I can find such data for more cameras. In MLV App 2.0 (or whatever), we'll definitely have super accurate spectral colour correction

Ok I found this https://github.com/apertus-open-source-cinema/opencine/blob/master/Source/OCcore/Image/mlv_structure_mod.h

It says it's LGPL, but contains the raw_info structure. Is that a mistake on their part?

Also I will forget the library idea for a bit, as I have heard from Apertus that their GSoC student will soon be finished with MLV format improvements... don't wanna make something already obsolete.

How cool is that. I guess dng or tiff into mlv would be really convenient here. Or even jpg h264 maybe?

I saw in MLV headers that it can have h.264, but IDK if it has ever been tested or put to use (MLV App certainly doesn't handle h264 MLVs ). DNG or cr2 would be easiest to convert to MLV though, especially if it is one of the already supported ML cameras, and masc found some nice libraries we could use.

The library also seems like a good idea but I have little experience i this field. Maybe contact g3gg0 and a1ex directly too?

Yeah I guess I should reach out to them. I'm just not sure about the licensing, I remember loads of something about Martin Herring's Footage app (Footage was completely closed, this library WILL be open source, but I would want it to be usable in proprietary software). As MLV headers are LGPL it should techincally be allowed... as long as raw_info can be dealt with, maybe using byte offsets

Would be nice to see resolve and premiere implementing mlv support .

It would be so satisfying if any of the industry giants were to implement MLV support. Maybe this is wishful thinking though

You are correct, processing internally always happens in the same order.

Cool! Mac users would love this . Hopefully linux users find it useful and could maybe post some examples.

Anyone is welcome to have a go at compiling it, you'll need Gtkmm library, maybe homebrew will let you install it.

A small gift to the Linux users here... MLV Stitcher

Use case: Shoot in crop mode on a tripod, move the crop window around to capture a larger area of the sensor in a few separate shots, then combine those separate shots using this little app to create a new, higher resolution MLV!

Based on MLV App code, it can import multiple MLVs, move them around, crop them, and stitch them together. Has feathering for smooth transitions, exposure adjustment and difference blending to make aligning easier.

I will not continue as there is too few real life use cases. I also used Gtkmm for the interface, painful to use crap.

Download : https://drive.google.com/file/d/19aNCQh9xdWPPA2_P2pz_GWRFNw8zc4N_/view?usp=sharing

Source code found at https://github.com/ilia3101/MLV-App/tree/master/platform/mlv_blender

The main variable for me is HEVC (h265) settings but found a couple of "got ya's" that you probably already know about. 1) Uncompressed cDNG export cuts off at 3016x1080, hence, the ProRes

Hmm why does it cut off, what do you mean?

[does]

Ok let me condense the last verbal spaghetti post down to a couple of questions:

1. Is the MLV format suitable to use as a container for other raw video cameras' footage? (thinking of making a converter)
2. Would magic lantern community support the idea of a library (something like "libmlv") being created, with a license that does allow it to be used in proprietary software

Any kind, hdr10 maybe was just wondering if it was there. Thanks for the reply.

Okay, I looked it up, HDR10 uses the Rec2020 colour gamut and Hybrig Log Gamma transfer function. I will add HLG as an option too. It'll be possible to get HDR10 output by selecting Rec2020 and HLG - not sure how you deal with that footage later on though, somehow you'll need to make other software interpret it as HDR

The green tint in the highlights is likely caused by the sun bouncing off the grass and trees to the right, then she's in a dark area.

Ah I see. BTW do you use mac or windows? I may want to send you a test build earlier than release, for you to test if the improved BMDfilm matches better.


UPDATE: I have done most of the work of allowing selectable gamut and transfer function, see commits. We just need to do the interface and then some more refinement. Should have a release ready soon.

Just to show it is possible:
...
Graded to match but it is via individual color adjustments.

Thanks for that, both look very nice. I think the second one does have a very little tinge of green in some areas of her face though (as Dymotro pointed out).

Was the BlackMagic image shot in ProRes or raw? And the 5D image, ProRes or DNG from MLV App?

I did also try just importing the dngs and no cigar. I can actually match it with lots of qualifying nodes

Hmmm sounds like Davinci resolve may not be using the colour matrices embedded in the DNG files. Though I don't have much knowledge about this area of Resolve.

Maybe if there was a way to have prores render it as accurate 5d mk iii to rec709 or bmfilm conversion?... would be great if we could get an accurate prores export so Resolves transform tool could get accurate base colour for conversions

This will come true very soon, I found a matrix for BMDFilm on the bmcuser forum, it is not official so not sure if it will be perfect, but should be much closer than current MLV App options. Will have this ready as an option in MLV App soon, as well as a few other gamuts.

Thank you!

I still can't match them exactly The issue is telling resolve what colour gammut the mk iii has.

About telling resolve what gamut mkiii has... is that when you are importing it as DNG in to resolve?

MLV App is getting a few upgrades soon, I will try my best to find info about and add blackmagic sensor gamuts as options, so you can simulate prores from the blackmagic almost 1:1 in terms of colour.

Ok never mind about the new blocks idea, raw_info has the matrix field I wanted. Though a "TEXT" block seems like a nice idea to me.

Anyway, I found mlv_structures.h on MLV post, and it is under LGPL (what I was hoping to find). However it does not contain raw_info structure, is that because raw_info is from CHDK and is full GPL? (I think I heard about this ages ago)

I am thinking there needs to be an mlv library (somthing like "libmlv"), that developers can use to add MLV support to their propreitary software. It would need to be licensed with LGPL or MIT, and written from scratch. But the GPL raw_info block is currently the main concern. Could it be done using byte offsets to access fields? - someone else calculates the offsets and communicates them to me.

I genuinely want to spread MLV as much as possible. No, I am not planning to sell any propreitary software with MLV support. I just want MLV to be a more widespread raw video format, I think it is perfect suited for that.

But first, I want to make a raw to MLV converter that converts other raw video formats or photo sequences to MLVs, so I can use MLV App with them. No licensing issues here as it will simply be GPL.


Anyone have any thought or advice about this?? About anything... The licensing issues, MLV for other cameras... bad or good ideas?

What kind of HDR video type do you want? hybrid log gamma? I can add that if you want. Gamut selection is coming (Rec2020 will be there).

Interested to see. Also if you coul provide one or two MLV files for testing I would be very happy. There will be more progress on the colour very soon. I have decided to scrap BetterProcessing branch and do things more incrementally. Slow and steady (but not that slow).

Improvements cuming very soon.

linux recyfle bin is .local/share/Trash/files

Yes im sure for tight shots it's fine. Actually though I really hoped to use the 5d for wides as it's full frame but I see that's not really an option.

I can understand your disappointment, but there is an interesting "anamorphic" full sensor (no crop) mode that you might be interested in trying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GMRgAuH5uQ

It uses full width, but height is downscaled same way as normal 1080p video. I am very interested to see how detailed it looks if you try it out.

I'm not sure how to enable this option, but Danne knows about it.

EDIT:

I added some sharpness to the 5d and you can see for yourselves... not too bad!

A surprising improvement!

Impressive how well it matches... and yes looks a bit softer than I would expect, but not massively. Try a shot of something object using a non wide lens (50mm+) with some bokeh in the background, it will look sharp trust me, I always remember those kind of shots looking 100000000x times better than wide shots on my 5D2.

Also how about trying the "3.5K" / crop modes?

Some time ago I remember hearing that the MLV format is getting extended with more features in Google summer of code for Apertus cine camera project. Did that ever happen?

A couple more questions:

1. Would developers consider adding new blocks to the official MLV format?

2. Where can I see most up to date version of mlv.h?

I have a question about this since you bought it up. Is there a way to convert DNG+WAV's to an actual MLV file? Like if I'm using my black magic camera to capture raw, could I somehow have it so that I can edit both my Canon and BMPCC4K footage in MLVapp?

Not really sure if it will speed up my workflow or not. I was just curious if it's possible to turn any video sequence into MLV? And possibly even mock the metadata (manual lens info and what not).

could try

I tried MLVApp 1.8 on Windows 10.
When I drop the highlights I get them pink.

Where in AfterFX/Photoshop this doesnt happen.

(If I use any Cinematic Filter, the pink disappears)
Any clue ?

try lowering white level value in  raw settings, and enable highlight reconstruction

yes i'm about to reverrt that change i did  (or you can revert it as you have access that may be quicker, as im just busy working on this further, trying out more ideas)

Could you put MLV App on a different virtual desktop in windows? (https://www.howtogeek.com/197625/how-to-use-virtual-desktops-in-windows-10/)

@reddeercity, would it be possible to have a square/tall aspect ratio? (in the same builds that also contain 3008x1080 mode)

Fantastic resolution! 3968x1800. Unfortunately the top right corner stays dead.
Frame difference, exaggerated

So, what was the trick? Was it fair?

Ok, I will admit, you can't use this shooting method for a shot with a lot of action, but a reveal is coming very soon. (also I genuinely have no idea why the corner is stuck)

Ah perfect thanks.!!