Development Thread: Footage for Mac (New Mac app for MLV)

[martinhering]

Hi,

I am Martin Hering, a long time Apple Developer. I recently got into filming and Magic Lantern. As a developer I was a little frustrated with the RAW processing situation on MacOS. There seems not to be an all-in-one setup-free solution that is able to develop RAW images and export to ProRes or whatever. So I decided to fill this gap. I only put in a couple of hours yet, but developing RAW and export to ProRes already works. You don't need any other tools or programs, you only need to run this app. Here's a screenshot:



And here's an example ProRes 422 export, filmed with a 5d Mark III (350 MB):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qnh54t35o7oyc1n/M05-1847.mov?dl=0

The application uses Apple's system RAW engine and Core Image for image processing. Export is 2.8x faster than MLRawViewer. Here is what I have planned for 1.0:

- Folder based file management
- Batch processing files
- Histogram and RGB Parade
- Reference Mode (2 images side by side to match footage)
- Export to all kinds of formats

Let me know what you think and if you like to test it out. I might be able to post an alpha version in 2 weeks. Also please post your feature requests.

Cheers,
Martin

[Danne]

Interesting. How are you exporting different flavours of prores? Could you share code?

[martinhering]

This is a Mac-only app, so I am using AVFoundation's AVAssetWriter class to export ProRes. There's lots of sample code at developer.apple.com.

[Lars Steenhoff]

Nice!

feature request, a thumbnail overview of all the mlv files so looking for a shot by image will be easier.

[lostfeliz]

Would love to try it out. Will it work directly with MLV files or does it need converting first?

Thanks for sharing what you're working on.

[martinhering]

It'll work with MLV files directly. However maybe not every feature is going to be supported first, since I am implementing everything from scratch. But standard video and audio should be fine.

[DeafEyeJedi]

...Let me know what you think and if you like to test it out. I might be able to post an alpha version in 2 weeks. Also please post your feature requests.

Welcome aboard @martinhering and I am extremely intrigued by your work as few of us have been waiting for yet another Mac guru with a background like yours to come on board, literally for years!

It was definitely worth the wait but I haven't tested it yet and wanted to ask does it export ProRes4444XQ at the very least, right?

Also do you plan on including with an option to use a Waveform and if possible an option to apply Logs/LUT's of our own as well within Color Space?

[MitchLally]

Oh snap. This looks cool. Can it deal with sound and 10/12 bit dngs? Looking forward to a release.

[reddeercity]

Very Interesting some as DeafEyeJedi does it export ProRes4444XQ or are you using FFmpeg ?
If you are using Mac backend AV Foundation it should, plus are you also using MAC Camera Raw backend
for white & black levels ?

[Teamsleepkid]

please have it remove focus pixels:) i wanna try it now. do we really have to wait 2 weeks? and thank you for your work sounds amazing.

[martinhering]

It was definitely worth the wait but I haven't tested it yet and wanted to ask does it export ProRes4444XQ at the very least, right?

Oh snap. This looks cool. Can it deal with sound and 10/12 bit dngs? Looking forward to a release.

OK, so the RAW is 14 bit. This image gets processed in Core Image using 64 bit float and then drawn into a ProRes4444XQ 12-Bit pixel buffer. If you choose ProRes 422, it's only 10 bit, but also fine. This is the highest quality workflow, I could come up with. I could process the image using 128 bit floats, but I really can't see any difference in the result. It just uses more memory.

plus are you also using MAC Camera Raw backend for white & black levels

Yes, I am.

Also do you plan on including with an option to use a Waveform and if possible an option to apply Logs/LUT's of our own as well within Color Space?

With Waveform, I suppose you mean the image diagram and not the audio waveform. I could do that, not planned yet though. LUTs are definitely planned. As for color spaces, currently it can convert to sRGB, Adobe RGB, Rec.709, C-Log, S-Log, S-Log2, S-Log3. Let me know what else you need and where I can find the formular.

[Simonwb]

Marvellous and thank you, Martin, looking forward to the release.

[Lars Steenhoff]

cinelog luts support would be cool

http://www.cinelogdcp.com/cinelogc-overview/

You can ask for the formula here on the forum

http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=10151.0

[DeafEyeJedi]

With Waveform, I suppose you mean the image diagram and not the audio waveform. I could do that, not planned yet though.

Correct. Would be useful.

LUTs are definitely planned. As for color spaces, currently it can convert to sRGB, Adobe RGB, Rec.709, C-Log, S-Log, S-Log2, S-Log3. Let me know what else you need and where I can find the formular.

Look below...

cinelog luts support would be cool

http://www.cinelogdcp.com/cinelogc-overview/

You can ask for the formula here on the forum

http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=10151.0

+10 but also keep in mind that this actual Log is a paid product commercially and would require certain users to use this -- reach out to @Andy600 and maybe he'll give you hints?

[dfort]

...here's an example ProRes 422 export, filmed with a 5d Mark III (350 MB)...

Could you post a short example in ProRes 4444 XQ? That's what the raw video users want to work with.

[martinhering]

Could you post a short example in ProRes 4444 XQ? That's what the raw video users want to work with.

I did a little digging into the 4444 XQ situation. It is very bizarre. There 2 media architectures: QuickTime and AVFoundation. QT is 32-bit only. I am using AVFoundation. The ProRes AVFoundation plugin sits in /System/Library/Video/AppleProResCodec.bundle. It contains support for 4444XQ, however only decoding. When you get FinalCut or Compressor, you can extract a plugin component called "AppleProResCodecEmbedded.component", which contains 4444XQ encoding. This is the 32-bit only QT Plugin. It is used by FinalCut and Compressor via the AVFoundation plugin "AppleCMQTAdapterCodec.bundle". You can copy the "AppleProResCodecEmbedded.component" into /Library/QuickTime to enable 4444XQ encoding in old apps like "QuickTime Player 7". Unfortunately I could not get the "AppleCMQTAdapterCodec.bundle" to work. No hack I know worked. I could go ahead and implement a 32bit process that encodes 16bit RGB image, but this seems to be a lot of work for something that Apple might enable in the near future.

Anyway, I can only offer normal 4444 at the moment. Here are two sample clips (1.3 GB each):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fa0gej9yvvs64ry/M14-0954.mov?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/08jsc80n1qnpbus/M14-1031.mov?dl=0

+10 but also keep in mind that this actual Log is a paid product commercially and would require certain users to use this -- reach out to @Andy600 and maybe he'll give you hints?

I checked it out. Thanks for the hint. Looks very good. It shouldn't be a problem to support LUTs for color space conversion. However it seems that I can't ship the app with embedded support for it.

[Lars Steenhoff]

Having support for user LUTs is very nice indeed.

As for colorspace I think aces will be good, I have not used it yet, but it seems to be an industry standard in cinema.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Color_Encoding_System

And perhaps Rec2020

[kontrakatze]

This looks very promising! A picker for WhiteBalance would be great.

[Teamsleepkid]

Please please can we try it! It's like dec 23rd over here waiting for Christmas lol

[Lars Steenhoff]

Yes white balance picker is welcome!

[martinhering]

OK, I finished up the first Alpha build. You can download it here: http://bit.ly/2kHwn9V

- Open the app and click on the + button in the top left corner of the window
- Add 1 or more MLV files or select a folder
- Select the files in the left sidebar
- Editing the image parameters in the right sidebar
- Change the video possible below the image preview
- Export with the export button in the top right corner of the window

That's it. Happy testing. Let me know what you think.

There's also a new screenshot:

[Teamsleepkid]

I'm on eos m. clicked the plus sign added a file. only see black screen no preview of the mlv file..tried to export it without seeing it and it crashed. maybe because I'm on 10.12.4 sierra?

[martinhering]

I'm on eos m. clicked the plus sign added a file. only see black screen no preview of the mlv file..tried to export it without seeing it and it crashed.

Can you provide a sample MLV file?

[Teamsleepkid]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_4dpBYObDvEY3B1V0I3bVRseTg

[aschille84]

Really cool, thanks alot!

I have some suggestions: [edit:] toggle grade on/off, reset grade, zooming in preview window (to check noise, sharpness)
Beautiful layout. Nice work

(yeah, and app crashes when exporting, im on macOS sierra)