Silent picture capture with raw video format

[barepixels]

thnx Josep

confirm:  I too were able to process Attero's MLV with no black border on Windows 7/64




Attero, use mlv_dump to proccess http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=7122.0

[Attero]

Ok, thats very interesting. So the Problem is not inside the Camera. Its the Converter, thats good.
And now. I used mlv_dump.exe, he sad "Processed 3 video frames" but he did not created any files. What am i doing wrong?

And, Thanks Josep!

[sdesign]

yes, raw video is set to off.. is this my issue?

[Attero]

Ok, thanks for the screenshoot barepixels Its working fine by me too,  now ^^
I was not familiar with the cmd. I simply dropped the .mlv on the mlv_dump.exe

a simple Interface would be awesome! But what ever gonna happen. This is so teriffic a this point. Taking TimeLapse without killing the shutter, so nice!

[dmilligan]

This thread is starting to turn into a debugging and stress test of MLV converters


With barepixel's 00000001.MLV file my version of mlv_dump on osx crashes (and does not output any dngs), however, -v works and lists all the blocks correctly. I'm not really able to debug issues with mlv_dump because I can't compile it due to GCC issues with '-mno-ms-bitfields' (I'm on a Mac and Apple's flavor of GCC has dropped support for '-mno-ms-bitfields'). So I don't really know what's going on. Maybe the file is corrupt, or 'slightly' corrupt (missing some data at the end or something, IDK. Other files seem to be processing fine, so for know I'll consider this a fluke/issue with mlv_dump. MLRawViewer is able to convert it, but it doesn't respect the 'active_area' and the black bars are in the output

If you are getting black borders it's a pretty safe bet that it's your converter and not anything wrong with this particular module. Please submit posts to the relevant threads of those particular converters, not here (I already made a post for MLRawViewer).


Could someone please test the 4GB limit thing? (Just take more than 4GB of photos in a timelapse and make sure you get a .M00 file and that it converts correctly.) I have not had any confirmation that it is working.

[Attero]

Agreed. Gonna test the 4GB limit right now.
Camera is shooing in this moment.
btw. i notice a bug. After i took an Image i wasnt able to take a picture on the normal way. Then i turned the camera off and on again. Still bugged... But now i wasnt able to turn the camera off. I had to take out the battery. Then the camera startet "normaly" again. "no clean shutdown - no moduls loading" etc.

Any Ideas?

[dmilligan]

update: EXIF shutter speed should now be the time of FA_CreateTestImage (the time you see displayed on the LV screen), not the value set in the Canon menu (which is wrong). This value may be slightly longer than the true exposure time, but it's more correct than Canon menu shutter speed.

[Attero]

Ok. I took 150 Images á 31,5MB what schould be 4,725GB. I got 2 Files

File 1 --> 00000000.MLV (4.145MB)
File 2 --> 00000000.M00 (601MB)

What does this mean? Can i rename the File 2 to 00000001.MLV and everything is fine?

[MA Visuals]

Could someone please test the 4GB limit thing? (Just take more than 4GB of photos in a timelapse and make sure you get a .M00 file and that it converts correctly.) I have not had any confirmation that it is working.

Ok I tested (5D3, Win7) for over 4gb and it did create the separate 4gb chunks in camera (mlv... m00... m01).

But mlv_dump gives the following error trying to extract the DNGs.  I was able to extract the complete set of DNGs using mlv2dng.exe however I do get the black bars.

E:\0001-MLVs>mlv_dump 00000001.mlv --dng

 MLV Dumper v1.0
-----------------

Mode of operation:
   - Input MLV file: '00000001.mlv'
   - Convert to DNG frames
   - Output into '00000001_frame_'
File 00000001.mlv opened
File 00000001.m00 opened
File 00000001.m01 opened
File 00000001.m02 not existing. (This is where is breaks... it is expecting m02 even though m01 is actually the last file)
Processing...
[ERROR] File ends in the middle of a block
Processed 0 video frames
Done



Edit: I just verfied that mlv_dump works fine extracting DNGs from regular video on my system.

[Attero]

Mine worked totaly fine. It extracted all 150 Frames perfectly.

MLV Dumper v1.0
-----------------

Mode of operation:
   - Input MLV file: 'K:\DCIM\102CANON\00.MLV'
   - Convert to DNG frames
   - Output into 'F:\abc\ML_TL_'
File K:\DCIM\102CANON\00.MLV opened
File K:\DCIM\102CANON\00.M00 opened
File K:\DCIM\102CANON\00.M01 not existing.
Processing...

Vertical stripes correction:
  1.000  1.000  1.002  1.000  0.999  1.004  1.000  1.001
Reached end of chunk 1/2 after 919 blocks
Reached end of chunk 2/2 after 133 blocks
Processed 150 video frames
Done

Win7 64bit - 600D NB.July19+silent.mo(.mlv container) - mlv_dump

Edit: Just added the sequenz for inspection

[Greg]

Live View Full Res (loop without writing) :

[barepixels]

MA Visuals with 5D3, can you make a small MLV file and upload to dropbox so Linux and OSX users can try to convert with their  mlv_dump 

I have a feeling Linux user will be able to extract DNG without black bars just as for my 5D2

[dmilligan]

Mine worked totaly fine. It extracted all 150 Frames perfectly.

Great, thanks!

File 00000001.m02 not existing. (This is where is breaks... it is expecting m02 even though m01 is actually the last file)

actually, there's nothing wrong with that, it's just telling you there's not a m02 (which there isn't). This appears to be the same issue barepixels was having with one of his files (mlv_dump thinks the file ends in the middle of a block). I suspect this has nothing to do with the 4GB limit or the spanning. It might be a bug in mlv_dump, perhaps something to do with the huge frame sizes of these full res pics (it normally handles much smaller frames), as other converters seem to handle it fine. maybe @g3gg0 has some ideas or can take a look at it (like I said earlier, I can't really debug mlv_dump here on a mac).

[philmoz]

I'm not really able to debug issues with mlv_dump because I can't compile it due to GCC issues with '-mno-ms-bitfields' (I'm on a Mac and Apple's flavor of GCC has dropped support for '-mno-ms-bitfields').

Install GCC 4.8.2 using macports (http://www.ficksworkshop.com/blog/14-coding/65-installing-gcc-on-mac).
This will also give you nested functions so you can compile cr2hdr if needed.

Phil.

[MA Visuals]

MA Visuals with 5D3, can you make a small MLV file and upload to dropbox so Linux and OSX users can try to convert with their  mlv_dump 

I have a feeling Linux user will be able to extract DNG without black bars just as for my 5D2

Ok.. I'll post a link shortly.

[MA Visuals]

In case anyone needs it for testing purposes, here's a small mlv file shot on the 5D3 containing just 5 full-res silent pictures inside...  https://copy.com/7pc7Tla4SAqx

[josepvm]

MA Visuals file behaves the same way as barepixels files.

With mlv_dump for Linux I can extract the 5 images, and after that, I get an error:

Code: [Select]

MLV Dumper v1.0
-----------------

Mode of operation:
   - Input MLV file: '00000002.MLV'
   - Convert to DNG frames
   - Output into '00000002_frame_'
File 00000002.MLV opened
File 00000002.M00 not existing.
Processing...
Reached end of chunk 1/1 after 37 blocks
Processed 5 video frames
*** Error in `mlv_dump': munmap_chunk(): invalid pointer: 0xf5530008 ***


The images look fine, no black borders:




I think this reinforces dmilligan's possible explanation: a mlv_dump bug when handling large images. The issue, so far, affects full frame cameras (barepixels 5D2 and MA Visuals 5D3), with images larger than 18 Mpix.

[barepixels]

so who is the author for mlv_dump for windows. can they help investigate?

[josepvm]

so who is the author for mlv_dump for windows. can they help investigate?

I think g3gg0 is the author of mlv_dump:

http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=7122.0

[josepvm]

Live View Full Res (loop without writing) :

Very  fast 

Writing images in an MLV file, intervalometer set to 1 sec,  my 500D takes 10 full res silent pics in 1 minute. This is, one pic every 6 seconds.

At 25 frames/sec for the final video, this means: 1 min video --> 2.5 hours real time. Not bad for some landscape timelapses, in my opinion (sunsets, moving clouds, etc).

I will experiment with it next week.


If I try to supress completely the intervalometer delay ("take pics like mad") every pic is saved in a separate file, as you have already posted. And this is not faster.

[g3gg0]

upload a file which reproduces the error.

[barepixels]

5d2
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/63842491/00000001.MLV

5d3
https://copy.com/7pc7Tla4SAqx

both extracted fine on linux mlv_dump but fail on windows mlv_dump

[g3gg0]

thanks, fixed in repository

binaries here

[barepixels]

that's amazingly fast.  thank you...

confirm it's fixed  YAY!!!!

tested with 5D2 and 5D3 files

[josepvm]

that's amazingly fast.  thank you...

confirm it's fixed  YAY!!!!

tested with 5D2 and 5D3 files

I can confirm it's fixed

I have built the latest code in the "unified" branch, that already includes the fixed "mlv_dump.c"
I also have built this file for Linux, and processed again barepixels and MA Visuals sample MLV files,

Works OK, the extracted images look fine, no black borders (this is like before, in the Linux build) but now I do not get any error, mlv_dump completes the job normally.

Now we only need that someone builds this fixed version for Windows and Mac     I can't do that, I don't know how to crosscompile from Linux   
--------------------------------------------------------
Edit:  I see now g3gg0 has already done it 
The Windows version works fine now with the problematic MLV samples in Linux through Wine