T2i Magic Lantern for 550D in progress!

Playback mode fixed here: http://groups.google.com/group/ml-d.../84f39efd77501fd2?show_docid=84f39efd77501fd2

Instead of FW standard, can you test without ML to see if there's any difference? It shouldn't be, but who knows?

What did you film to get those peaks? I only get almost constant graphs with that program.
Thanks for the fast fix.

For the bit rate comparison I filmed just a scene on my desk with not a lot of movement (only the camera in my hand moved a bit)
 
I am also getting strange shutter speeds: 1/31, 34, 37, 41, 44, 48, 53, 57, 63, 68, 74, 81, 88, 96, 110, etc.
Its only showing up in the ML menu and shows up as normal numbers(1/30, 40, 50 60, 80) in the canon menu. Is this normal?
 
Hi, I just did a quick test of the new build 2011May11.550d.fw109.CBR.alex

- Playback mode does not work anymore. After pressing 'play' no buttons work except 'half shutter' which switches back to normal)

+ CBR seems to work. Without audio I am able to record 3x on my class 10 card.

Hi ! What is the name of the program you used for the analysis ?

Also... What is the difference between this CBR mode and the Q-scale setting ?
I see in the Qscale wiki page and the manual that Qscale is VBR and CBR is... well, CBR.
However, looking at the numbers, those from DorianVasco seem to be quite higher than the bitrates with Qscale ; maybe I am being fooled by numbers, it's easy !
 
Just updated the wiki page: http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Bit_rate

Hopefully it will answer these questions.
Yes it did answer my questions, definitely !
Thank you for your work, very clear and fast support.

You included a [link needed] flag, what kind of link is needed ? A test, comparison ?
I just tried the x3.0 CBR and my Transcend Class 10 can't hold it for long, sometimes just above 2sec, sometimes I seem to be able to record like 5 or 6 seconds (Just recorded 30s on x2.8), some randomness in there I guess.
Maybe something like a video test of various modes (FW Default, QScale and CBR) + brutal color grading.
Anyway, for this kind of setting, I think it comes down to a full resolution, full quality render and even strong zoom in to compare compression artifacts.

Tell me if I understand it well or not but do Q-Scale and CBR also improve the quality of the shot when keying with green screen ?
 
[link needed]: yes, I'd like to see a video showing the difference between two graded results, one with standard bitrate and other with a higher value. Some people say there is clearly a difference in higher bitrate, especially when you apply color grading, others say there is very little difference. I couldn't see any significant difference in my shots.

What's interesting in Dorian's test is that the spikes (which I believe to be I-frames) in 2x and 3x are all at the same level. There may be some limit of the QScale factor, or per-frame bit rate, or maybe other parameters not yet known. To me, it seems that 3x setting converges somehow to QScale -16.

I don't have any experience with green screen, but I've read that it's better to have YUV422 data, instead of 420. Changing bit rate won't improve this. Subsampling mode may be a parameter of H.264 encoder, and playing with compression settings might lead to something new.
 
If I have the occasion to shoot a decent time without the recording to stop automatically, I will make some tests later today.
Bitrate won't do all I think but shooting with CineStyle at a high bitrate, then applying a noise filter (maybe a sharpen and dither filter), finally exporting to a 4:2:2 sampling with Cineform or ProRes may give the best results. I don't like re-encoding files... Even if it is a lossless codec, "codec" always sounds destructive to me but hey... after all... if done well, it just improves the base on which you you start to work on.

I don't know if you have this information yet but as far as I know, a GOP always starts with an I-frame so... you can read the length of a GOP on the graphs. Just thinking loud.
 
If you convert 4.2.0 to 4.2.2, I doubt it will increase the quality. It's similar to shooting at 1 megapixel and then upsampling to 2.
 
Indeed, that's right.
I am still doing tests with Cineform, comparing source and resulting converted footage.
More on this thread : http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...iate-codec-for-Canon-DSLRs-ProRes-or-Cineform
And even more here, David Newman is CTO at Cineform. Details in the comments : http://cineform.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-use-intermediate-for-dslr-video.html

From my first tests, I think it raises a bit the overall luminance level, just a bit. And makes the noise more obvious in some areas.
Will have to dig more.
 
Just updated to the newest firmware this morning and about 4 hours into a photo shoot, my camera stopped working. The LCD was black, and it wouldn't take a photo. It would meeter and display the reading through the viewfinder, but when I tried to take a picture the orange light just glowed. Couldn't get into the menus or do anything. Tried turning camera on and off, taking out the batteries and restarting, but nothing worked. The red SD card light didn't even flash, like it normally does when turning on and off.

Took the card out and it worked fine. Put in an extra card with an older version of ML in and worked fine. Got home and put my card in my PC and it says I need to format. Was this ML's doing? Has anyone else had this problem? I haven't formatted this card in ages, could that have caused it?

Also does anyone know of a data recovery program that might be able to get my photos back? did a quick Google search and tried "Zero Assumption Recovery" and "Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery" and neither could find anything on the SD card.

I'm afraid to format the card and start over because a re-shoot isn't possible (a concert).

If anyone can help me with this I will be forever grateful.
 
Hi Zech, may be the SD card was corrupted just without the fault of magic lantern. I guess it is a SDHC card? I had some time ago a cheap card reader which likes to corrupt some cards. I replaced it with a Samsung card reader.

But for recovering of data I would recommend the free PhotoRec. I used it a few times successfully to recover some deleted pictures or to restore a whole file system (possible with TestDisk same site). I think there is a good tutorial how to use the programmes, but feel free to ask if there are questions left.

Best regards,
Dorian
 
So for my 32gb card it says its 1073 MB/1024MiB. The program says
"Disk capacity must be correctly detected for a successful recovery. If a disk listed above has incorrect size, check HD jumper settings, BIOS detection, and install the latest OS patches and disk drivers."
All of my drivers are up to date ad my card reader works fine.
Am I SOL?
 
As long as you didn't write anything to the SD card after the crash, I think all the photos are still there.

It's usually a good idea to make an image before recovery (i.e. copy the raw contents of SD card to a file). This way, if something goes wrong, you have a backup. Here's a tool which seems to do this under Windows (I didn't try it): http://www.alexpage.de/usb-image-tool/

I've used PhotoRec and it works well; it found pictures shot from a few months ago :)

If you can make an image, you can send it to me, I can try to recover the pics if you don't succeed.
 
Last edited:
It wont let me make an image. The SD card doesn't show up. It shows up for my spare card, but not for the corrupted one. Also windows shows it as a 0 byte disk and asks me to format it. If I say no, then it says "The volume is does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and the volume is not corrupted.

Thank you all for your help, but I'm loosing hope fast...
 
You may try with a Linux Live CD (Ubuntu, Knoppix... whatever); from there, you don't have to mount the file system in order to read raw disk contents.

So as long as the SD card is alive, you should be able to see something.

For a 32 GB card, the command looks like this

dd if=/dev/sdb of=image.bin bs=1048576 count=32

You need to figure out the device for your SD card, mine was /dev/sdb (I see it with "dmesg").
 
Not entirely sure what im doing in here. The dmesg prints this from the card being put in:

tifm_core: MMC/SD card detected in socket 0:1
mmc1: card lacks mandatory switch function, performance might suffer.
mmc1:new SD card at adress b368
mmcblk0: mmc1:b368 SMI-S 1.00 GiB
mmcblk0: unknown partition table
 
Back
Top