MLV App 1.14 - All in one MLV Video Post Processing App [Windows, Mac and Linux]

[masc]

On macOS and linux file name handling is just UTF8 (compatible with char *) so no problems here?

I think it would only require using a special wchar_t version of fopen on windows, everything else can stay the same. Glad libMLV won't be opening files directly


Sorry been inactive for a bit. Mourning the loss of my hard drive with a lot of recent raw videos. Fuck hard drives.

Oh no... that is sad loosing the videos...

Yes, no problem on Linux and OSX. It is a Windows only problem. We have to change more than just fopen: there are some functions, which have the filename as char* parameter. This needs also #ifdef's.

[2blackbar]

I recommend Blu-Ray M discs portable writer to store Your data on bluray 25GB M-Discs , theyre one of the most reliable archival method with strong laser and data burned physically that lasts about 1000 years which sounds corny but ill take it, ive seen some tests results, other methods are more expensive like LTO tape to archive hard drives.I mean LTO is not THAT expensive, just a bit more expensive, I might switch to it in near future.

[ilia3101]

Does anyone know good data recovery companies in the UK? I am scared of getting a shitty one, seems there is a lot of scams.

I recommend Blu-Ray M discs portable writer to store Your data on bluray 25GB M-Discs , theyre one of the most reliable archival method with strong laser and data burned physically that lasts about 1000 years which sounds corny but ill take it, ive seen some tests results, other methods are more expensive like LTO tape to archive hard drives.I mean LTO is not THAT expensive, just a bit more expensive, I might switch to it in near future.

I always heard that blu ray is propreitary technology full of DRM. Does that apply to these discs in any way? I mainly need it to work with Linux. 1000 years sounds wonderful. I need to store my files at least that long.

Also I'm going to invest in a 4TB SSD and boycott hard drives.

[cmh]

My two cents. If you don't plan on accessing the data anytime soon, as 2blackbar suggested, LTO tape drive is the cheapest and safest solution.
Even tho a lot have been done concerning data integrity with overprovisioning, I wouldn't trust SSDs for archival. Flash charges dissipate and data recovery might be problematic because of proprietary firmwares, controllers, etc.

I'm cheap, I'd go for like 4 SAS hard drive in raid 10. I would mix brands (at least not the same batch) and go for slower 7200rpm drives.
I'd get the best PSU available for my budget (platinum/titanium like, anything more than 90% efficient at 100% load).
I'd get a reliable, brand new, consumer grade motherboard, a cheapo cpu, few gb of ram and an SAS HBA card which is quiet expensive and not always linux friendly (google-fu required).
Everything on a DIY clean and well ventilated cabinet install debian and barely touch it.
I think SAS drives are generally 10% more expensive but they are more resistant to vibrations. It's server grade, MTBF of SAS drives are 1.2 to 1.6 million hours of use at 45 °C and their SATA counterpart only 700,000 hours to 1.2 million hours of use at 25 °C.

For recovery, Ontrack seems to be a serious international company.
https://www.ontrack.com/uk/services/data-recovery/hard-drive-recovery/

edit:
There's also cloud solutions, you can encrypt everything if needed.
LTO tape is cheap if it's several TB per months of archival otherwise it's not worth it. You can find fast LTO7 SAS drives (at least 300 Mbps) for something around £2,000 on ebay. A new 15 TB RW cartridge (30/45 TB of deduped/compressed storage) is around £60 .
If you take the hard drive route, there's also a raid backup open source software called SnapRAID.

[IDA_ML]

Merry Christmas everyone!

CMH,

Why not cheaper, much simpler and environment friendly?  I make backup copies of my data on two external USB mechanical hard drives that I keep in my desk.  If one of them dies, I still have the other.  As long as they are not hooked up to my PC at the same time, the probability that they die simultaneously is close to zero.  Moreover, they spin and consume power only when hooked up - a few times in a month for a few minutes to an hour.  I am even considering making a third copy for storage in my office at work for the event of fire, earthquake, flooding, etc.  A great advantage of this type of storage is portability.  If one of the drives is a small and lightweight 2,5 inch external HDD, I can carry it in my bag whenever and whereever I want and I always have a working copy of my data with me. 

I have been using this approach for more than 20 years now and it has always worked for me.  I still have my very first external HDDs with USB2 that I keep my scanned photos from the film era on.  These drives still work like a charm.  SATA and USB technologies are not very likely to be replaced with something else in the near future and even if this happens, I still have enough time to transfer my data onto a new technology system.

[2blackbar]

This might answer Your question Ilia3101:
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artsep16/mol-mdisc-review.html

There are more M-Disc tests online , I store them with cotton napkins between every disc , its shaped like circle with hole in the middle , so discs wont scratch when stored and handled and i keep them away from sun.
Different opinions:
https://club.myce.com/t/stress-testing-m-disc-bd-r-vs-regular-quality-bd-r/312981/10
Some guys think its a marketing thing but i did store my olda data from 2005 on regular dvds recorded back then and most of them lasted to this day.Out of 10 ,just one failed and i had 3 or 4 hard disk failures in the meantime, i dont trust HDD at all.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/7sgiz8/anyone_try_m_disc_yet/

[yokashin]

Merry Christmas everyone!

CMH,

Why not cheaper, much simpler and environment friendly?  I make backup copies of my data on two external USB mechanical hard drives that I keep in my desk.  If one of them dies, I still have the other.  As long as they are not hooked up to my PC at the same time, the probability that they die simultaneously is close to zero.  Moreover, they spin and consume power only when hooked up - a few times in a month for a few minutes to an hour.  I am even considering making a third copy for storage in my office at work for the event of fire, earthquake, flooding, etc.  A great advantage of this type of storage is portability.  If one of the drives is a small and lightweight 2,5 inch external HDD, I can carry it in my bag whenever and whereever I want and I always have a working copy of my data with me. 

I have been using this approach for more than 20 years now and it has always worked for me.  I still have my very first external HDDs with USB2 that I keep my scanned photos from the film era on.  These drives still work like a charm.  SATA and USB technologies are not very likely to be replaced with something else in the near future and even if this happens, I still have enough time to transfer my data onto a new technology system.

I do the same with a copy of the data.

I use two 3.5 inch 4gb hdd discs for photos and video materials. When I have free time I copy new material from the first to the second disk. Disks are not permanently attached to computer. I've been doing this since I started taking a lot of pictures of my daughter.

I wish You a Merry Christmas!

[cmh]

Happy Holidays!

@IDA_ML

It really depends on the scale and how serious you are about it.
I imagine a scenario like backing up 15 years of MLV of a daily shooter, twice and keep a copy in another place, safe and far away and keep doing that for at least a decade.
Your solution is prefectly fine in most cases but if my life depended on it I wouldn't push my luck with mechanical consumer grade drives that are meant to be unplugged a lot and transported often.
Keeping a physical copy on another location is a great idea tho. Cloud backup solutions are great for that.
The initial cost is relatively steep but tape really is the best thing, we are of talking of 30 terabytes of compressed data for 60 bucks.
As for the environement, a small home lab isn't the best solution but I'd argue that with the power saving features and a good power supply, in the long run it will probably waste less energy than let's say a smart tv.
If it's a concern, picking a low power SoC like an Intel N4200 that has a 6W TDP for exemple would be ideal (and it doesn't have to serve only one purpose).
What's great about that solution is restricted physical access that's why I'd suggest a locked room/cabinet, a downside is maintenance, some people don't have time for that.

TLDR: What I meant to say is that your solution is prefectly fine for dumping data before archiving (you could stack usb drives on shelves and barely touch them, some people do that but meh).

[IDA_ML]

... if my life depended on it I wouldn't push my luck with mechanical consumer grade drives that are meant to be unplugged a lot and transported often.

And this is something that I do not quite understand.  The drives do not get physically unplugged at all and do have all kinds of protection - shock, overvoltage, EMI, etc., some are even seated in splash proof enclosures.  What gets unplugged is the connecting USB cable.  There is not much that can go wrong here - Ok, the contacts may get dirty or worn out, the USB connectors may get broken and in the worst case, the controller may die.  But in that case you just open the enclosure, take the drive out, (it just has a simple SATA and power supply connector on it), then you plug in the drive whereever you like and continue using it.  Yes, it's a mechanical spinning construction but, as I said, 99,99% of its entire life span it does not operate but just gets stored in your desk.  And for the very unlikely event that it dies, you still have the second backup drive.  They are quite cheap these days. All it requires is some disciplin to not use both backup drives at the same time but just one at a time to exclude the chance that they both die simultaneously.

I am not argueing and am very grateful to you for sharing your thoughts with us on this matter of crucial importance, especially now that we all generate tons of MLV files that are quite heavy and archiving the originals is a must, keeping in mind that MLVApp gets better and better over time.  I am just trying to understand the advantages of your archiving solution.  Sofar, the only real advantage that I see is the RAID10 which is more convenient to use for that purpose and will also save you more time due to faster transfer speeds.

[cmh]

You are making a point, it doesn't make sense for most people to invest in enterprise grade hardware if your HDD aren't spinning, more so if you consider this annual failure rate report.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-q2-2019/

You are not wrong, but as I said "if my life depended on it" like if my job depended on those backups or if I had to spend a lot of money on some projects.
If those drives are dropped, if someone is trying to plug them without my consent, if it gets wet, etc.
Tape and NAS are not perfect and way less convenient but mitigates some of these issues depending of the solution. In most cases IP67 USB disks are fine for dumping and archival. Some people are dedicating a bunch of external drives to a project, backup properly, check file integrity, put the backup in a safe place and I'm perfectly fine with it. If it's comparable to the cost of the gear or cheaper, I'd consider a failproof solution. Like an insurance, you might never need one or it might save you.

The NAS solution is getting expensive real quick too. It depends on the workflow really. If you need to label projects and span that across multiple drives, it's a bit of a pain.

edit: I'm not an expert, I won't take offense if we disagree and I'd just assume that you might be more experienced than me. 
edit 2: decided to cut down the excess verbiage and edited the whole paragraph about cost, my maths was totally wrong LTO tape is way too expensive below 90 TB (so like really big projects).

[IDA_ML]

Yes, you are right - for hobby photo- and videographers like me, it does not make much sense to keep archives on drives that spin all the time.  A cheap and simple solution similar to the one that I described works quite well.  All the rest is a matter of workflow, organization and, as you said, it all depends on how serious you are about it.   

As far as SSDs are concerned, they are fantastic for everyday work but I wouldn't use them for archiving purposes.  The reason is that they die all of a sudden and when they are dead, there is nothing you can do about your data.  Mechanical HDDs usually die slowly and warn you when they are about to die, giving you the chance to still backup your data before they are completely dead.

A final word about M-disks.  After I retire, I plan to archive everything I would like to leave behind after my death on M-disks.  This includes my PhD thesis, papers, publications, patents, reports of projects that I have worked on professionally, as well as my hobby photo and video work.  The greatest problem here will be how to decide what is worth archiving and what not.  Other than that, I like the idea that M-discs last for 1000 years.  This means that in 1000 years people will still know how much we enjoyed ML and MLVApp. 

Thank you again for your detailed write up, CMH.  Greatly appreciated!

[Ottoga]

I've been using a DLINK NAS for many years now. Capacity is 4 TBs in raid 5 configuration. it's always on and set up to spin down the drives when not in use and to perform a health check of each drive monthly. The individual drives are hot swappable in the event of failure and will automatically rebuild the data on the replacement HD. And, because you can never have too many backups, all my important data/images etc are backed up to external USB HDDs.

Effectively back-up solutions are so cheap nowadays that there really isn't any excuse to lose your data anymore.

[Quentin]

Wonder why the two developments do not go hand in hand, since the image processing is a plugin to the base core program.

[masc]

Wonder why the two developments do not go hand in hand, since the image processing is a plugin to the base core program.

Developments of what!?

[Quentin]

Of MVLApp together with image processing.
Latest MLVApp doesnt not include it.

[masc]

Processing is included all the time in MLVApp... without you would not be able to view or export one single frame.
If you mean raw2mlv: this is a separate program which can be used by MLVApp. Those two apps are very different and MLVApp can use raw2mlv as a kind of plugin. MLVApp uses raw2mlv just for converting any RAW to MLV, nothing more. Processing is 100% in MLVApp. There is no need to include the code of raw2mlv a second time into MLVApp, because the devs would have the work twice.

[SMS]

I can confirm that MLV app 1.9, 1.10 is crashing when I select import MLV under windows 7 64 bit. 1.8 is working.

[masc]

I can confirm that MLV app 1.9, 1.10 is crashing when I select import MLV under windows 7 64 bit. 1.8 is working.

Would be nice if you install the development envionment, compile and start the app with debugger. None of the devs can reproduce, so the error will persist, if nobody tells where the error happens (with the help of the debugger).

[ZEEK]

MLVApp uses raw2mlv just for converting any RAW to MLV.

Cool to know! Does that include Blackmagic RAW?

[masc]

Does that include Blackmagic RAW?

No, because Blackmagic RAW is no (real) RAW. BRAW is already debayered and partially processed. Same for Canon SRAW and MRAW. There is no solution yet.

[ZEEK]

Gotchya! Wow, I wonder how they got away with actually calling it RAW. Anyway, thanks for the awesome work you guys do with MLV App. It has really, really improved over time thanks to the team/developers like yourself. As a further possibility for MLV App, perhaps a Rec 709 Luma Waveform to adjust exposure more accurately..just a suggestion. Cheers and a Happy New Year!

[IDA_ML]

I can also confirm that MLVApp is now so mature and powerful that I am absolutely certain that this is the best RAW processing tool that is available worldwide, at least to my knowledge.  I have been using it not only for video but also for photo (with raw2mlv) lately and I get better results compared to ACR on a regular basis.  Moreover, there are two functions that are of crucial importance to my workflow and are not available in ACR:

1)  Dual ISO that I use quite a lot for landscape work and
2)  Skin tone white balance that solves the natural skin tone problem on a mouse click.

My workflow is now entirely based on MLVApp and all this I owe to the genious work and skills of our developers.  Thank you, guys and keep up this fantastic work also in the New Year and the years to come.

[garry23]

@IDA_ML

Like you, and others I suspect, I am also seeing the benefits of MLVApp, in my case for long exposure photography simulation.

I haven’t yet tried raw2mlv. Do you know of there is a Win PC version for download? I don’t compile, so I would need an executable.

Cheers

Garry

[IDA_ML]

Hey Garry,

I downloaded mine from post #3595 on page 144 of this thread.  You just unzip the archive into the MLVApp directory and you are ready to go using the Transcode and Import option of the File menu.  It will transcode your CR2 files into single-frame MLVs that you can process in MLVApp as any MLV file and then export your frame as Tiff or Jpeg.  That's all.

[garry23]

@IDA_ML

Got it!

No I don't !!

I've got version 10 and I don't seem to have Transcode, 'just' MLV inport.