Magic Lantern for 7D alpha 2

[g3gg0]

For raw video and autoboot, check this thread.

Merry christmas!


Its time to release the second alpha version of the 7D port.

We've enabled these features since alpha 1:
 * Advanced Bracketing (HDR)
 * Intervalometer
 * Audio tags
 * Bit Rate manipulation
 * [EXPERIMENTAL] Modify card flush rate for higher bit rates
 * [EXPERIMENTAL] Modify GOP size (down to ALL-I or up to 100 for better (?) details)
 * a lot of minor fixes

Key Features:
* Audio meters while recording
* Zebras
* Focus peaking
* Magic Zooom (via half-shutter, or focus ring)
* Cropmarks, Ghost image
* Spotmeter
* False color
* Histogram, Waveform
* Vectorscope
* Movie logging
* Movie auto stop
* Trap focus
* LiveView settings (brightness, contrast...)
* Level indicator
* Image review tweaks (quick zoom)
* and some debug functions

But:
* If anything goes wrong, we don't pay for repairs. Use Magic Lantern at your own risk!

Known issues:
* You have to reload Magic Lantern every time you use it. (this is intentional)
* when using HDMI output, frame drops may happen (to be verified)
* make sure your battery/adaptor is chipped, else canon menu will abort "firmware update" (= loading ML)
 * movie restart and video effects menus visible but not working

Installation
1) Update camera firmware to 2.0.3
2) Format your CF card from the camera
3) Extract contents of ML .zip into your card's root folder
4) Run "firmware upgrade" once again
5) Voilà. Magic Lantern. (press DELETE for menu)

Thanks to all who helped us with donations and bug reports.
We finally received a few IDA licenses and can improve Magic Lantern a lot now!

Main article:
Click here to read this article!

Download:
http://upload.g3gg0.de/pub_files/17248a00956f1e932457094756b2a3ba/magiclantern_7D_203_Alpha2.zip
Alternative: https://bitbucket.org/hudson/magic-lantern/downloads/magiclantern.7D.203.Alpha2.zip

[jplxpto]

G3gg0, Congratulations!

This is a good gift desired by many of our users

Mery Christmas

[scrax]

Happy Holiday 7D user

[gmfbln]

Thanks a lot!

Merry X-mas and a happy successfull New Year! And: enjoy your holiday g3ggo!

[cracky123456]

g3gg0 thank you a lot !
Mery Christmas !

enjoy your holliday ( you deserve it !!!!! )

[beej]

g3gg0 and team - thanks for the continued efforts, and of course alpha2, and have a great holiday season. 

Time to dig out the manual for the new features...

Excited for: HDR exposure bracketing, timelapse, rack focus and lots more... awesomeness

[SonicScot]

The perfect xmas gift for every 7D owner, thanks to all the developers (especially Santa g3gg0).

[edgardave]

i think i'm going to be in trouble with the missus!
a new MLalpha to play with on xmas day and a new lens too (they don't know i know about that though! !)

thanks a lot g3gg0 and gang! happy festivities!

[arrinkiiii]

THANK YOU and the sweet TEAM !!! Best present ever !!! 2012 !!!

I think i found a bug, wend i use the intervalometer the zoom show up in the screen, is this normal? Some time its show up other times not.

Merry Xmas to all the good people!!!

[CaronteGF]

Thanks G3gg0, this is the best christmash gift that a 7D owner can desire.

Merry Christmash.
Greetings from Spain

Now its time to play CustomBitRate.

[RenatoPhoto]

Dear g3ggo,

Nice gift!  Thank you for the wonderful contribution and all your great effort!

Merry Chiristmas to you, your family and also to the rest of the ML team.

Best wishes form Ecuador!!!

[feureau]

Best. Christmas. EVER! \o/

Thank you g3gg0!

Btw, what does High Sharpness mode do? I don't see this in the ML user manual. Is this unique to the 7D? None of the image effects seems to work though. (intentionally disabled?)


Initial bug reports:

Under Expo > Aperture: I couldn't dial down my aperture to 1.8. If I go down from 2.8, it goes: 2.8 > 2.4 > 2.2 > 2.0 > 22.6

Video hacks settings not saved. kept defaulting to Off, flush at 4 and GOP 12

Can anyone confirm this?

[g3gg0]

Btw, what does High Sharpness mode do? I don't see this in the ML user manual. Is this unique to the 7D? None of the image effects seems to work though. (intentionally disabled?)

yeah image effects dont work yet. not sure why i didnt disable the menu yet

Under Expo > Aperture: I couldn't dial down my aperture to 1.8. If I go down from 2.8, it goes: 2.8 > 2.4 > 2.2 > 2.0 > 22.6

didnt notice, thanks. will check after xmas.

Video hacks settings not saved. kept defaulting to Off, flush at 4 and GOP 12

intentional behavior, we dont save such experimental settings.

[feureau]

didnt notice, thanks. will check after xmas.

Awesome! What's High Sharpness mode do though btw?

intentional behavior, we dont save such experimental settings.

Will this stay this way up till final version? I've figured out a setting I like for flush and GOP that works well for me with my 7D and card combination. Would be nice if there's a way to have this setting load up every time ML is loaded...

[sanderbontje]

Awesome Christmas indeed! 

[g3gg0]

yeah due to lack of time i've missed to disable some menus.
might also happen that a feature is broken that worked in alpha 1. sorry if that happens.

i focused on the technical aspects and the results are especially the bitrate thing that involves master and slave digic cache hacks. (controlled via RPC handlers as canon does it to communicate)
i also tried to put fps override into this release, which also requires master and slave patching.
it works but after some time (approx. a minute or less) the picture freezed or was crappy.
and this makes the feature useless, so its disabled.

[g3gg0]

Awesome! What's High Sharpness mode do though btw?

Will this stay this way up till final version? I've figured out a setting I like for flush and GOP that works well for me with my 7D and card combination. Would be nice if there's a way to have this setting load up every time ML is loaded...

i didnt add sharpness feature. its mainly from the digic register research.
i just didnt make it work on 7d as i focused on different things

we will see how stable it works. i am not sure yet how to make the setting safe enough.
i am afraid that some settings and/or use cases can render the video crappy and the user doesnt notice.
just imagine you shoot your whole xmas and later you realize that you just have defective videos.

so it depends on how stable the features are. we will decide depending on your feedback.

edit:
this means: tell us if the experimental features work or if they dont.
tell us what the best settings are, why these are the best and which settings are a no-go and why?
(e.g. GOP 100 is too much or do we even need GOP 10000?)

also tell us if the features are a must-have or if they are for nuts and nobody will use them.
so we can tune the values and make it appear in stable releases too somewhen.

[obiyan19]

woo hoo, intervalometer and hdr, you made my day

thanks a lot 

[Stedda]

Excellent work and as always THANK YOU.

HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY!

[feureau]

we will see how stable it works. i am not sure yet how to make the setting safe enough.
i am afraid that some settings and/or use cases can render the video crappy and the user doesnt notice.
just imagine you shoot your whole xmas and later you realize that you just have defective videos.

so it depends on how stable the features are. we will decide depending on your feedback.

edit:
this means: tell us if the experimental features work or if they dont.
tell us what the best settings are, why these are the best and which settings are a no-go and why?
(e.g. GOP 100 is too much or do we even need GOP 10000?)

also tell us if the features are a must-have or if they are for nuts and nobody will use them.
so we can tune the values and make it appear in stable releases too somewhen.

One thing I've been noticing in using bitrate hacks with GOP and flush settings is that how I would set them up differently for different situation.

For instance,

I would crank up the CBR factor/VBR Scale to the max, disable audio and low flush and low GOP number to shoot audioless stuff, e.g., stuff like trees, macro shots and other objects, etc.

I would switch flush to 24 with audio enabled with medium GOP to shoot things that makes sound, like a musical instrument or machines chugging. I shoot with an external audio recorder that I would sync with in post, so having sound really help to sync stuff. (even when VideoRemoteShot gets enabled in future firmware)
This version seems to disable audio every time I fiddle with video hacks so I'd have to manually turn on audio after every settings, so that's kinda annoying.

So, the biggest feedback I have is probably this: having a custom preset that could save video bitrate setting preset would be nice. This could be experimented on pre-release to maximize stability, and user-customizable if one desire to experiment on.

Not sure if this is outside the 7D ML scope, but there it is.

Has anyone researched on lowering the audio bitrate btw?

Also: I'm loving the sticky half shutter function Is it possible to assign it to the AF-ON button too? (a lot of shooters uses the back button to focus) And is the DOF preview sticky still disabled? I can't seem to get it to work. DOF preview sticky seems only to work on liveview mode, and not through the OVF. Is there a way to get this to work with the OVF?

Thanks for all the hard work, g3gg0! This thing is superb! :3

[xmd5a]

"Limit bitrate to:" option is needed when shooting video in VBR mode. Otherwise if I have many cards with different speeds I have to change video settings. If invalid parameters are set then recording will stop. This makes bitrate manipulations unuseable. Also lack of this option limits safe ISO range due to excessive bitrate caused by noise and makes hard to determine this ISO for certain scene.

[feureau]

"Limit bitrate to:" option is needed when shooting video in VBR mode.

Try using CBR mode. It's like setting a "max" bitrate.

if I have many cards with different speeds I have to change video settings. If invalid parameters are set then recording will stop. This makes bitrate manipulations unuseable.

This is an issue with the card's write speed though. You shouldn't set the bitrate to exceed your card.

Also lack of this option limits safe ISO range due to excessive bitrate caused by noise and makes hard to determine this ISO for certain scene.

I've been trying out some settings. Maybe having a "bitrate setting cookbook" would be nice. Sort of a rule of thumb on how high the bitrate can be set in relation to ISO. OTOH, this is something that you should have a rough idea of.

For example: Turning the audio off, I find that I can shoot grass and trees at 12800 ISO, with a fast flush and small GOP. With the audio on, it would drop recording at about 1600 ISO, plus flush needs to be set according to framerate it seems.

[madebysander]

thanks ml-team...just love the hdr and intervalometer

[StefanKeller.AC]

if I have many cards with different speeds I have to change video settings.

Settings are save on the card, so you can optimize it once for each card.
its a feature now


where should we post bugs?

[RAK1966]

Merry Christmas together.
First I want to say that ML is a great extension for all EOS cameras.
My compliments ... great job.
I use mainly the bit rates increase .... but somehow it does not happen with me. I set up a CBR times at 2 to 3. But the uptake rate is unfortunately not up. It goes partially downwards. (Display film Inspector in QuickTime Player)
I would like a cbr 100 mbit / s
What am I doing wrong?
Thank you
Ralf