Guessing 1st April for 2019 - Share your thoughts

[nikfreak]

Yeah we discuss about Digic 6/7/8 like 5D4, EOS R, EOS RP and such. There's need for some serious amount of $$ to let a1ex hold these real hardware in his hands. Not only QEMU stuff. Then there's the bills - family needs to be satisfied, not just by words. There's all these sleepless nights a1ex spends for ML project. That's not for free. It was for the last years. But in my opinion it's time for some funding to keep ML ongoing. ML is not about discussing for the next years about Digic 4 and 5. As harsh as it may sound I still vote for a code freeze and drop support for these old cameras when time comes. You a1ex need all of your free time for the new stuff - not for supporting the old cameras. I even can't believe how you try to spend your free time to reflash those peoples' broken cameras. That's not your job.
Set up that Patreon page or announce some other donation phase. Then wait some weeks for the income. Is it hundreds, thousands, maybe ten thousands or even hundred thousand or maybe more???

Afterwards decide if the income meets your requirements.

Oh btw and don't forget about Walter Schulz. He deserves that medal of honor.

[Kharak]

I say complete the 5d3. Its so close.

[a1ex]

If you want me to figure out the real-time LiveView at extended resolutions (crop_rec) on 5D3, that alone might take an year of research or so, AND a very good reason to work on it, given the difficulty. Why? It's done on a secondary CPU I don't yet fully understand. Yes, it's significantly harder than porting basic ML features on DIGIC 6/7/8; it already reaches into the "crop_rec on 7D" territory, difficulty-wise.

The same feature is a lot easier on 5D2, EOS M and other "simpler" cameras. There are already proofs of concept working to various degrees.

Or, about ironing out the remaining bugs - I could fix the simpler ones I know about in a week or two, but many of them are quite hard to reproduce, and others require significant research. Won't happen overnight either.

Or, otherwise, please define what you understand by "complete". Code freeze in its current state? That's easy, but I bet you don't want that.

What if you could tell me what to work on, on the Patreon page? I won't be able to promise I'll complete any of that in any given timeframe; I can only promise I'll work on that stuff. Maybe it could work as a reward?

[theBilalFakhouri]

The most recent developments were about Binning and Resolutions for nearly all cameras plus mv1080 on EOS M with correct real-time preview.

A1ex did great job for writing new code of crop_rec for 700D.

650D, 100D and EOS M are likely identical with minor changes, same for 6D and 5D3, and That's a good deal for finishing these things and make it official.

5D2 maybe it's easy too.

Also Lossless compression for 70D with basic 3x3 for 720p will be cool.

The testers are ready.

For me, I'd like to see Eeko routines (Compressing 1736x2214 to 1736x1107 in 1x3 Binning to get continuous recording and 5D3 video quality).

Not sure if Dual ISO processing happens by averaging 1st & 2nd lines with 3rd and 4th lines, if it can be Done with Eeko routines beside 1x3 mode now this is Hilarious. Maybe I am wrong at this until someone tell me it's technically possible.

Down sampling Engine in sRAW and mRAW will be useful for these things and for crop_rec.

Faster patching of sd_uhs (Danne did it actually by erasing most of the code only the task of patching left it), more performance is welcomed too.

Uncropped real-time preview for native x5 resolution 2520x1080 in 700D (We can already bring x10 preview to x5 and the otherwise is possible too). Also unstretched real-time preview for 1x3 is useful.

Real-time playback for MLV was explained here:
https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=23778.0
Not sure if it technically possible.

Magic Zoom sometimes flickering in 700D maybe I will find out why for this.

That's what I am interested in, is it a good thing to ask the community what he interested in?

[Kharak]

edited.
I think I actually mean just bug fixes. Straighten some lines. The 5D3 works so well, It is so rare that I have crashes, its a workhorse if you know how to use it. Lossless 14 bit, same quality as uncompressed but half the size! Runs even faster in Resolve aswell.

Either way, do what keeps you going a1ex. I wont hesitate to support you in anyway. Patreon sounds like a very good idea. How would it be if the Patreon got really big?  Or is ML too niche a product?

[andy kh]

Also Lossless compression for 70D with basic 3x3 for 720p will be cool.

i have a build which is already working

i wil be very happy to donate to the main developer every month or year
i would also like to donate to the one who can maintain 70D properly bringing new stuffs like danne do for eos m
and mlvapp developers for sure. i have given up resolve now. MLVApp is very slow though

[theBilalFakhouri]

@andy kh

Yes I meant to include it in the new crop_rec beside the new code.

If someone can take the donations for making MLVApp GPU Accelerated by making an offer in freelancer it will be great.

[andy kh]

If someone can take the donations for making MLVApp GPU Accelerated by making an offer in freelancer it will be great.

 im in. i can donate 20 USD or more

premiere pro and resolve is way faster than mlvapp but i like it as i can color correct easily in mlvapp without having to convert to any other format

[12georgiadis]

I think the personal Patreon is a good idea. Each Developers can decide to open a Patreon. For supporting research. Not features.

[theBilalFakhouri]

Researchers will be as features in the end. It's the same. No features without researching.

[Walter Schulz]

Please! Don't oversimplify!

[12georgiadis]

what about selling "rebranded certified CF / SD cards" dedicated to magic lantern ? With a margin to help ML development.
Instead of Komputer Bay cards, we have Magic Lantern certified cards =) It's just a random idea but we all need cards so...

[Walter Schulz]

My take: Thanks, but "No, thanks!". Selling/reselling is business, including business address, all kind of taxes, regulations and responsibilities. And there is no real value added in this service making the whole thing very, very fishy.
 

[12georgiadis]

OK Walter, understood. Then, another alternative would be education. Giving conferences or teach. I'm sure for example that Louis Lumière's School in France would be interested to invite A1ex and other developers to talk about the open source challenge and canon's reverse engineering

[yonbarh]

If someone from Canon reads the forum, and I suppose they do, will be an question of honor, in japanese terms, try to quantify the profits that they made thanks to the efforts of this comunity's developers (same but in another shape Panasonic with the PersonalView's hacks) and put them side to side with the loses (haha), if any of course.

I'm not saying they must pay money or such of thing, neither make public statements, but sometimes I think that the first camera company that, in some way, go down the road of open source will be making the difference. And easing the development of ML behind the curtains seems the right thing to do, everyone needs to eat.

I don't think that is a good solution for anything, neither I am forgetting about codec and hardware patents or legal issues: just saying that IMO their main sources of profits they have not only will be the same, maybe grow. And the developers will have an option to profit.

Anyway, I'm just thinking aloud and babling around <sigh> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Courage, a1ex and co.

[extremelypoorfilmaker]

Yes, it's addictive, it's great to see you guys finding it useful, but... it's also draining my energy. Especially when a large part of the comments suggest what I'm doing is not enough. Yes, I know I can do a lot better, but... not during breaks / evenings / holidays. I need to change something.

TBF Anyone who dare saying that what you are doing is "Not enough" should really shut the fuck up and be grateful.
I will never be able to put into words how much magic lantern mean to me.

[jtvision]

I would like to donate thru paypal to express my gratitude to ML project and team for everything they've done for us. How can I do that?

[skitron]

However, my (mostly part-time) job became increasingly demanding, to the point I've started to have major trouble getting things done for both ML and Apertus (even after putting in pretty much all the extra time not claimed by job and family). I feel like I'm solving about 10% of what I want to achieve, and everything else goes to the backburner. And, both being spare-time projects, I've started to question why I'm even doing this.

Yes, it's addictive, it's great to see you guys finding it useful, but... it's also draining my energy. Especially when a large part of the comments suggest what I'm doing is not enough. Yes, I know I can do a lot better, but... not during breaks / evenings / holidays. I need to change something.

FWIW, I put in the kind of hrs you describe trying to get a commercial energy software off the ground. 22,000 hrs of my time in an insanely short calendar span while also working a full time job for 1/2 of those yrs. LOL, I've been the tech project addict with a young family, so I know first hand about dealing with what you want to achieve vs time available vs living a life with family. JMO of course, but my advice is to not let anything dominate your time unless it provides for your family either right now or imminently thru contract. And even then, put family first. Life is short and you can't go backwards when you miss a bunch of it for an addictive tech project. As for monetizing your time investment in ML, maybe reach out to Canon upper management and tell them you'd like to work for them? (provided you'd want to) Or their competitors for that matter. ML features as official native firmware would be quite attractive for some company's latest release cameras imo.

best regards and thank you for sharing your fine work.

[domo94]

A while ago, Dfort sent to me this:

https://shotonwhat.com/cameras/canon-eos-7d-camera

Looking through the different cameras, I was quite surprised to see that the 7D was used more often than any other Canon DSLR camera in shooting serious film productions.  Film makers know what they are doing!

Finally, I have several friends filming with the 7D and ML for living - RAW videography of nature and wild life.  When talking to them about the 7D, they say that there is nothing in this world that can make them use another camera for what they are doing.  Certainly, they have very good reasons to state that.  Soon after Danne implemented high-resolution crop recording into the 100D, some of them transferred to the 100D for one single reason - it is smaller, lighter and easier to carry around in areas that are hard to access.  But they all say that, despite the lower resolution, video quality from the 7D is much better.

That's amazing to see and makes me ever so much more happier with my old 7D.

I'm still really conflicted on what new camera gear to buy and what not, though, because nothing can really compare to how the image quality turns out with the 7D when done right.
I love it too much

[dfort]

Please be advised that I sent IDA_ML the link but the commentary is his. I know quite a few photographers and filmmakers here in the Los Angeles area and can't name one who makes a living with a 7D in this day and age.

[a1ex]

FWIW, I put in the kind of hrs you describe trying to get a commercial energy software off the ground. 22,000 hrs of my time in an insanely short calendar span while also working a full time job for 1/2 of those yrs. LOL, I've been the tech project addict with a young family, so I know first hand about dealing with what you want to achieve vs time available vs living a life with family. JMO of course, but my advice is to not let anything dominate your time unless it provides for your family either right now or imminently thru contract. And even then, put family first. Life is short and you can't go backwards when you miss a bunch of it for an addictive tech project.

Thanks for advice. Besides ML, family was the reason I've stayed away from a full-time (8 hour) job. So far, we were pretty lucky to get away with it (i.e. without full-time jobs), but it's no longer the case.

As for monetizing your time investment in ML, maybe reach out to Canon upper management and tell them you'd like to work for them? (provided you'd want to)

I've actually considered the idea. Maybe I'm wrong, but... to my knowledge, the interesting stuff happens in Japan; look at jobs available at Canon Europe, for example.

Yes, I've visited Japan and liked it a lot, but I'm not sure I'm prepared to raise my family there. I'd rather accept a position at Google (which also requires relocation, but at least it would be in Europe).

However, a full time job means I'll have to step down from ML and let someone else do the ground work.

Or their competitors for that matter.

That's exactly what I've tried with Apertus. Didn't work out

We were also contacted by Samsung, and things were quite promising... until a moderator leaked the info to the big public...


To answer some older piece of advice:

"If something works, don't touch it and don't change it!"

No, in my case it's no longer working. That's why I'm trying to fix it.

[skitron]

I've actually considered the idea. Maybe I'm wrong, but... to my knowledge, the interesting stuff happens in Japan; look at jobs available at Canon Europe, for example.

Yes, I've visited Japan and liked it a lot, but I'm not sure I'm prepared to raise my family there. I'd rather accept a position at Google (which also requires relocation, but at least it would be in Europe).

I'd say don't be shy about reaching out to upper management of various companies to see if they are interested in doing a creative deal with you. Chances are they will know who you are (even if not by name but as "the ML guy") since knowing the mkt place is a big part of their job description. It could literally look like anything, including doing your thing right where you are and tele-collaborating with them and taking some road trips when necessary. Of course no such deal is available through their jobs boards, but that doesn't mean that a company's upper mgmt wouldn't do it, it just means the mid-ling managers can't offer it. In fact upper mgmt would expect someone with your success to ask for such things (including the folks at Google). What you don't want to do imo is sell your self short. Not with what you've accomplished with ML. Just be prepared for a bunch of "it looked promising, but it didn't work out", remembering the goal is exactly one deal accomplished.  best regards

However, a full time job means I'll have to step down from ML and let someone else do the ground work.

Well, yes and no IMO. To me what would make the most sense is to direct the project as opposed to hanging in as the lead dev. Much less time requirement, plus given the number of people who have already stepped up doing dev work, it's something that needs to happen IMO. LOL, I know it can be tough to let go, but a stint directing ML is just going to make you that much more attractive to the corporations.

[12georgiadis]

@A1ex : Hasselblad has a big potential with H6D series but also big issues with their video capabilities. Maybe they want to fix it with someone who has a lot of experience.
https://ymcinema.com/2019/05/13/hasselblad-medium-format-video-capabilities-extraordinary-potential-poor-execution/
I have one contact that I can give you by PM if you want