You post IMHO exemplifies a key misunderstanding and gap between the guys who are coding ML and the guys who are trying to use it.
I have been a huge evangelist for ML raw, even wanting to organize a special presentation for the upcoming NAB and try to sort through much of the mis-information that's floating out there.
But make no mistake, sheer power without end-user friendliness is doomed from the start. So many programmers believe that just implementing amazing code in all that is needed. This is the critical difference that made Steve Jobs so successful, he understood that the end-user experience is as inherent to a product's success as the product itself.
Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in the need to appease the absolute lowest common denominator, but in the case of ML the situation is very much at the opposite end of that spectrum.
Perhaps I don't understand the end-goal here. Maybe ML is some sort of performance-art piece designed to prove that Canon are a bunch of dick-heads who have been keeping all of this power away from the masses for their own perverse reasons. If that's the case, good for ML because it has fully succeeded in achieving that.
But the reality of the situation is that ML exists on borrowed time and in about two years' time nobody will want to shoot video on DSLR's because there will be absolutely no reason to do so (and that's me being optimistic). There are other massive disruptive forces that are causing a rapid shift in how people shoot video. I live and breathe this industry on a daily basis in a town that fancies itself the World capital of film production. I am constantly interacting with cinematographers and editors, and believe me, when I show them a command-line solution they laugh in my face at the absurdity of it. So yes this is only my opinion, but an opinion shared by just about every single professional that I've interacted with for the better part of last year.
On OS X, RAWMagic has been the only solid application that seems to really get it. Unfortunately Thomas is not particularly motivated or available to bring it up to speed with .mlv, which kinda gets us back to the original question:
Is .mlv, in real-world scenarios, worth the extra hassle vs. .raw? Because all of the metadata in the world means nothing if the conversion apps or the ingesting apps don't use it or know what to do with it. And despite a more robust data-writing method, .raw has been rock solid since I first began using it back in June of last year. If anything, this speaks highly of how well the original developers nailed .raw, and why I am not seeing the benefits of .mlv right off the bat.
Lately, Andy has brought up the idea of ACES support in ML raw video. Now that makes much more sense to me, yet none of the developers really chimed into that conversation which leads me to believe that it probably fell on deaf ears.
But I digress....what I would appreciate above all else is if you would be so kind as to explain to me, in plain words, why .mlv makes more sense than .raw with the current state of tools available and its current implementation by third parties?
I appreciate your time and passion, I really do; and I sincerely hope that my posts aren't coming across as too snarky or negative...because in truth if we could hang and discuss this over a couple of drinks I'm sure we'd come to like one another!
