First 7D alpha released!

[Pelican]

some time ago we discussed with Alex the "cannot communicate with battery" thing
on a stable 2.3 and he found it possible to bypass. maybe this will help.

The 'normal' ML version (run from autoexec.bin) will work with your unchipped power adapter (I've just tried  ).
The alpha runs from Canon's fw update procedure which checks the battery first (because battery failure during flashing can brick the camera). You cannot bypass that, because it happens BEFORE any ML code can start. It's in Canon's code. No fw update without chipped battery. Period. :-)

So, you can test the alpha with chipped battery or you can wait for the later releases.

[edwmotion]

My personal opinion is that this alpha release was pre-mature.

LOL.

morons, morons everywhere 

[Lubaka77]

First thanks for the alpha!
Now some things I noticed.
The shutter: ML shows 1/31 1/41 1/48 ... Canon shows 1/30 1/40 1/50 ...
When I turn the ML menu on/off I see for a moment the picture style menu.
ML zoom is flickering.

That's all for now.

[a1ex]

That's OK.

ML falls back to APEX values here, they are slightly different in movie mode (e.g. instead of 1/33.33 it shows 1/31).

Picture style menu is perfect.

MZ was covered before.

[pavel7D]

THX a lot! Great work you've done. All of you.
P.

[Digital Corpus]

@Digital Corpus:
the level bar drawing is not 100% accurate at ~45° if you wanted to report that.
also its drawing over grid.

thanks for feedback, guys

45˚ is a tough one with line drawing since you have to pick a side to drawn from etc. The specific bug is that the grid is not redrawn before the leveling line so it erases the grid wherever there was an overlap. Minor detail.

I have to get used to the UI design before I can report more. So far so good.

[RM22]

If you purchase third-party batteries, make sure you purchase the batteries that are chipped. Otherwise, you will not get a battery life counter and this 7D ML release will not work for you.

If you have a battery grip, you can use 1 genuine Canon battery and 1 third-party battery and it will work as long as 1 of the batteries is chipped. I assume that'll also work if you use a Genuine Canon battery and an AC adaptor. (I also have one and I can test if anyone wants)

As far as the 7D ML, all I wanted was peaking focus and it works as good as expected. Thanks for the hard work to all the developers.

p.s.

A pre-mature alpha: the definition of a redundant statement.

[Pelican]

... Genuine Canon battery and an AC adaptor. (I also have one and I can test if anyone wants)

If you have the genuine Canon AC adaptor please test it.
(Mine is a cheap one (~12 bucks) and it has no chip. I wonder if the most expensive Canon has the chip or not.)

[jamz]

I'd also chime in to say a big thanks to the ML team for this release

What ive noticed:
1.I do notice my 7d runs way hotter when running ML. When I tested with my normal non ML card it remains cool. Is this normal?
2.Also the shutter count only updates after the camera is shut down and turned back on. Is that also normal?
3.I do not believe the battery meter is correct. It said 42% when my battery was blinking red. Doesn't seem 2 accurate there.

thats all for now. I'm having fun testing. Never had the chance to have magic lantern as the 7d is my only canon camera

[a1ex]

1. http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=1573.0
2. OK
3. requires properties.

[Papa schulz]

My i'm use for the canon 7D, the WFT-E5 B, and is work, but the 7D block one time. I'm select in the help one option and the 7D block, must put off and eject the batteries. i'm put more détail after

[a1ex]

Seems to be a compiling issue, try browsing the help with the INFO button instead (as context help), not from the Help menu.

[pixelk]

Official Canon  main 7D adapater on the left, El Cheapo noname on the right

Canon :
- Shows as a full battery
- no message
- loads .fir fines

El Cheapo
- Shows an empty battery (but the camera works fine)
- Shows "unrecognized battery" messages
- cannot be used to load the .fir

The connector difference is obvious, but only two wire go to the adapter. Either there's a chip, or the connector is the key (but then I'm sure the noname brand would have figured it out).

I usually use the el-cheapo one because I connect it to a battery adapter I made myself (to shoot all night on one 12V car battery)

[exe]

In this alpha version is it possible to record at a constant bitrate??? I see there is no QScale option, or am I looking in the wrong place?! Thanks waiting for a reply! BTW it works like a charm great work!

[ilguercio]

In this alpha version is it possible to record at a constant bitrate??? I see there is no QScale option, or am I looking in the wrong place?! Thanks waiting for a reply! BTW it works like a charm great work!

Bitrate is constant already.

[feureau]

1.I do notice my 7d runs way hotter when running ML. When I tested with my normal non ML card it remains cool. Is this normal?

First time I run it, I smelled something burning, so I quickly turn it off. Nothing seemed to be burning, and it still works fine.

After playing around with it, and emptying a battery: I recharge the battery but apparently the charger still see about 1/2 a battery's worth of charge. It starts blinking twice when I plug it in. (empty batteries starts charging at one blink)

Strange, and not sure what's going on there.

[a1ex]

Probably the battery is old, what does it display at "recharge performance" in Canon menu?

[ilguercio]

Burning? And why would your camera burns unless something is completely wrong with the battery?

[g3gg0]

First time I run it, I smelled something burning, so I quickly turn it off.

magic lantern CAN NOT cause anything like this.
when recording without ML, the camera uses 60% of the CPU processing power *plus* the hardware unit for MPEG encoding.
even when ML would consume 100% CPU power all the time, there is nothing that can happen within just a few minutes or hours.

also about "consuming power" and "battery getting hot" we already ran a test on two identical 7D bodies before releasing the alpha. (thanks jphansen)
both cameras next to each other with fully charged batteries. one camera running ML, one without.
after 10 minutes recording, the ML camera drained just one percent (!) more energy than the other one.
that 1% is just logical when you run smth like focus peaking.

[g3gg0]

in addition to that, i use two batteries:
a brand new that i bought as the original was defect, and the "defect" one that
could get repaired later by applying voltages manually and loading in a 3rd party charger.

both are working fine and show full battery performance.

[ilguercio]

I don't know if people posting this kind of stuff is completely honest with these declaration or tries to be some kind of sarcastic.
As A1ex posted in a thread, ML uses about 5% more power than the camera on its standard firmware alone so where do you think this heat is coming? Would you really believe that a 5% increase in power consumption means that a camera, which is completely fine (until a certain point) as it came out of the box, suddenly catches fire or builds up enough heat to melt itself down to a liquid mass? I am completely fine with people posting here, even when they missed something from the manual. You know, that can happen. But when i read something like this, it makes me really puzzled about why would anybody do that. Tests are being conducted and thousands of people had ML on their cameras for the past months and here it comes somebody who probably never smelled his camera pretending he smelled it on purpose at the first ML startup just to see if it'll burn.
Meh, i'm stunned.
Have you ever tried to clean the contact of your battery and charger? That could be a big surprise to you.

[exe]

Bitrate is constant already.

On the old firmware that I had 1.2.2 that came with the canon camera there was a variable bitrate now is it constant because of the new canon firmware or is it constant only using magic lantern?

[g3gg0]

is it constant only using magic lantern?

ML should not change anything in bitrates yet.
you can easily confirm that by not loading ML and checking the result.

[ilguercio]

On the old firmware that I had 1.2.2 that came with the canon camera there was a variable bitrate now is it constant because of the new canon firmware or is it constant only using magic lantern?

As far as i know default Canon bitrate is CBR at about 40Mb per second.
That is untouched by ML for 7D, yet, so it's going to be unchanged.

[jamz]

Well I def didn't smell anything burning but yeh it does run way hotter. I'm not concerned as its been explained that it uses more power. No biggie. I noticed a few more things.

1.Audio meters don't work in liveview mode most times. If it happens to work its not as sensitive as when during record mode.

2. When I monitor with my Zacuto evf i get this note "magic zoom does not work in dmi 1080i". Would be cool to use magic zoom  on my EVF which displays in that mode.

3. When ML menu is brought up (trash button) the picture profile menu comes up for a quick moment.

4.Focal Range Notifier is very sluggish in Liveview and record mode. However if u go to trap focus menu and change the focal length of your lens its almost real time in updating. Wish that were also the case for record and liveview.

Definitely having fun with it and I'm greatly appreciative for all the hard work. Cheers.