OMG I GOT A 5D3!!! ??? - Magic Lantern raw best practices 2016 *ALSO* Try Resolve - its free!

[kaylee]

OMGZ GUYS I FINALLY GOT A 5D3!!!!! ??????

for those interested i need it now for stills so i bought it used off craigslist here in california for $1800 - came with 4 batteries, battery grip, 2 chargers, sd card, cf card, and 40mm pancake. its still under the resellers warranty (not canon, local shop) for another month, two small marks on the bottom of the body otherwise in great condition, and 12k on the shutter.

the seller was legit and he already had magic lantern on the sd card! so....

PLEASE HELP ME WITH MAGIC LANTERN RAW 5D3 BEST CURRENT PRACTICES

Whats the easy way to do things in terms of workflow? Mind you i am brand new to this so dont spare the details. I have a mac with the adobe suite, fcpx and resolve lite. speaking of which...

TRY RESOLVE ITS FREE

i really have to thank you all for teaching me so much over the years ive read this board. when i first downloaded and opened resolve i had NO idea what was going on. thanks to a lot of learning i am now able to get into it a bit and i love it - resolve is AWESOME. and ykno what? it wasnt nearly as hard to get started as i thought it was going to be

so this is a special message for anyone who has had the ambition to try resolve but is too intimidated, or someone who tried in the past and gave up almost immediately (me lol). its really not that hard at all, for me the big disconnect was never using a node based app before and being terrified of that for some reason, but nodes are kinda like a tree of adjustment layers - its just weird looking at first ?

/anyway please prescribe me a raw workflow!!! id like to use resolve cuz i wanna learn it anyway but im open to whatever. any tips/tricks/pitfalls to avoid also much appreciated!!!!!!

thanks for the inspiration and all the knowledge guys!!! i really might not have bought this camera if not for eoshd ?

[mercer]

Comgratulations!!! When I first started messing around with ML Raw, I say messing because I am no expert, but I found this article very useful. It just helps to get you going, quickly and easily. 

http://www.cineticstudios.com/blog/2014/08/the-easy-way-to-use-magic-lantern-raw-straight-to-prores.html

[fuzzynormal]

I couldn't get optimized media to work reliably with h.264 footage in Resolve. Maybe with raw it's better. I'd like to know your experience with it once you give it a shot. 

[squig]

If your mac is up to it you can play/edit/grade the raw files realtime in Resolve with MLVFS. http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=13152.0

If your mac isn't up to it you can still use MLVFS and transcode to ProRes (preferably 4444) in After Effects, or make proxys and edit in FCPX. You can't use the sliders on the first screen in ACR, they cause flickering, but you can use the sliders on the second ACR screen  (curves) instead to adjust shadows and highlights.

14bit raw is awesome but a lot of people don't seem to know how to get the most out of it. I'm still experimenting with different workflows myself. MLVFS > Resolve is the easiest but I still like cutting in FCPX.

Expose to the right to keep the noise down, you can recover the highlights in post. Use the histogram with ETTR hint and experiment to find the sweet spot.

Set FPS to exact.

Use the latest build, there's a lot of builds with a pink frame bug which was recently fixed.

Just gimme a yell if you get stuck, there's a lot to absorb because ML is so customized, but once you get your head around it it's really easy to use. Once you get your config how you want it it's saved to the card. Backup the ML files to your mac so you can easily reload them when you reformat cards.

Most of the ML crew are really friendly but there's one fascist there that made me lose interest in being a mod. They do tend to hassle people for asking questions before doing a search, but are helpful if you can't find something. I don't use any of the photographic features but I can help with any video stuff.

[kaylee]

UPDATE: OMG I MADE A RAW VIDEO!!!! I AM RAWING!!!!!!!!! ?????

i just exported jpgs from acr to premiere for immediate gratification lol

whats the difference between raw and mlv... audio?

i used rawmagic lite to concert .raw to dngs

3 minutes ago, squig said:

If your mac is up to it you can play/edit/grade the raw files realtime in Resolve with MLVFS. http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=13152.0

If your mac isn't up to it you can still use MLVFS and transcode to ProRes (preferably 4444) in After Effects, or make proxys. You can't use the sliders on the first screen in ACR, they cause flickering, but you can use the sliders on the second ACR screen  (curves) instead to adjust shadows and highlights.

Expose to the right to keep the noise down, you can recover the highlights in post. Use the histogram with ETTR hint and experiment to find the sweet spot.

Set FPS to exact.

Use the latest build, there's a lot of builds with a pink frame bug which was recently fixed.

Just gimme a yell if you get stuck, there's a lot to absorb because ML is so customized, but once you get your head around it it's really easy to use. Once you get your config how you want it it's saved to the card. Backup the ML files to your mac so you can easily reload them when you reformat cards.

Most of the ML crew are really friendly but there's one fascist there that made me lose interest in being a mod. They do tend to hassle people for asking questions before doing a search, but are helpful if you can't find something. I don't use any of the photographic features but I can help with any video stuff.

aww yisss just what i needed youre the greatest @squig!!!! wow this is gonna be fun i have the day off tomorrow to play around woo hoo

yeah the ml board is too intimidating for me to post on ? thanks so much for your help. i promise not to pm you unless im super stuck ?

1 hour ago, fuzzynormal said:

I couldn't get optimized media to work reliably with h.264 footage in Resolve. Maybe with raw it's better. I'd like to know your experience with it once you give it a shot. 

ill definitely let you know! ?

[squig]

raw doesn't have audio and is a little less processor intensive than MLV without audio.

In Resolve select BMD flim for grading (not REC709) to get the most latitude and switch on highlight recovery. You have full raw controls in Resolve like in ACR except no denoise in Resolve lite. You'll want to set the sharpness slider to around 20, the default is 25 in ACR. If you want to do really quick filmic grades get filmconvert, it's a great starting point and it has ML presets for Resolve.

I find LUTs very tedious and annoying, I've got too many of them, it's like when I got a reverb unit with 200 presets, drove me nuts. Better to just start with a film profile, then build on it.

Yeah don't pm 'cause then all these poor slobs miss out on my infinite wisdom

The 40mm pancake lens is pretty good, I've got one too. I'm a vintage glass freak, no love for L glass, but the 40mm looks kinda oldschool; it's gonna be my DPAF gimbal lens when the Mark IV does raw.

[squig]

ML user guide: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=11269.0

If you're shooting still life try DUAL ISO mode, it's dope.

[hyalinejim]

Sounds like you're having fun! MLRAW is very exciting, especially when you see the amount of colour detail that can be extracted. As Squig pointed out, 2 popular work flows involve converting the DNGs to a visually lossless 444 codec.

 

Resolve is much much faster at this. But ACR gives a slightly cleaner image and possibly nicer colour reproduction. If you value the ACR image quality, it might be worth investing in Cinelog, which will give you a log image from ACR with all highlight and shadow info present and correct.

So if I'm doing a job with a quick turnaround I'll use Resolve. Otherwise I use ACR to After Effects. Transcoding times are loooong.

+1 for ETTR. You will get strong noise at higher ISOs in the shadows. Luckily the RAW histogram option shows the noise floor. Try to stay out of it.

Finally, check out the new crop.rec module (not to be confused with the older greyscale crop mode). It turns your camera into a superzoom! 

[sqm]

I'm in the same situation, today i can buy a mark iii that i will use 90% for photos but my question is, with ML is there a way to have h.264 60p in 1080p? No need for raw.

[garethw]

Hi there,
I've shot a fair bit on the 5D3 in ML raw over the last few months, the quality is awesome, rich and vibrant and very sharp... The quality of the images makes it alone worth the hassle...
A couple of things I've found:
1) Despite a fast 1066x Lexar card the MLV plus audio stops recording after around 20 seconds.. Not a big deal for scenics and b roll, but a major headache for any interview or longer shot situation... Plain raw gives continuous recording as long as I have needed so far. But with no audio... Not a deal breaker because I can record audio separately, but it adds another step to an already complicated and time consuming workflow.
2) If you are not careful you get vertical banding on the DNG conversions... MLVviewer has button to fix this for the MLV's and raw2dng in its lastest edition also fixes it. BUT I got tripped up on my first shoot and failed to notice the lines until it was too late.
3) Workflow , while relatively simple is lonnnnnnnng, ans sloooooooooow on my PC. Each file is converted to a DNG which I then take into After Effects to apply a LUT and save as a DNxHD file for editing in PPro. If I have a days shooting just to get a series of editable files takes an age.
4) You need to be careful of your shadow details... with a raw photo in camrearaw you can boost the shadow visibility, but if you start to lighten them in raw video the noise becomes apparent very quickly.. You have less possibilities as far as I can see than with a raw photo.

However the end results are beautiful..and way, way better than the H264 shots. Especially for scenics.

I have however just got a C100 which on initial tests even in the AVCHD internal recording holds up very well with the 5D raw footage. The audio is in camera and I can edit right from the off ..
If I need more gradable files I can hook up a Ninja et voilà...
Enjoy your camera it is a great tool...

cheers
Gareth

[Nikkor]

Congrats, but here in sweden it goes for 250$

[Mattias Burling]

Definitely use something like Rawmagic. It takes away that long process you speak of in After Effects.
The files convert to DNGs very quickly and then its smooth sailing in Resolve. Switch to BMD-film and grading is a piece of cake.

BTW, If one really wants to use After Effects, my tip is to set the shadows, mids, highlights in After Effects and use the Visoncolor Raw to BMDFilm conversion and export. Then its as easy as grading BMD Prores.. which is what it is.

I made a tutorial once, but Im sure there are better once out there and as I said, I recommend Rawmagic and then using Resolve. Then the process is no longer than the NX1 or some AVCHD that needs converting anyway.

 

9 minutes ago, Nikkor said:

Congrats, but here in sweden it goes for 250$

Sounds cheap, I see them regularly for $1100-1300 depending on accessories and such.
Its a good deal imo, same price as the NX1 plus the S-Zoom and a couple of primes or a BMPCC plus full kit including lenses etc.
A whole lot cheaper than it used to be.

Im waiting, I want it sub $1K. So far only seen two for that low price and I was to late... but Im in no hurry.

[kaylee]

awww awesome ? ? ? ? ?  thats so helpful

1 hour ago, squig said:

raw doesn't have audio and is a little less processor intensive than MLV without audio

dope thank you. so theres no reason to avoid .raw if im not trynna record audio?

1 hour ago, squig said:

In Resolve select BMD flim for grading (not REC709) to get the most latitude and switch on highlight recovery.

yes i read about this thank you for confirming

1 hour ago, squig said:

You have full raw controls in Resolve like in ACR except no denoise in Resolve lite

i kno i already like it so much paying for the noise reduction sounds reasonable lol 

1 hour ago, squig said:

I find LUTs very tedious and annoying, I've got too many of them, it's like when I got a reverb unit with 200 presets, drove me nuts. Better to just start with a film profile, then build on it.

yeah im personally not into luts but i think people have done some beautiful stuff with film convert etc. im tryin to get a workflow going where i can nuance parts of my image as much as possible... ykno everything resolve does lol. im coming from a stills/photoshop background so after effects is almost kind of familiar although i havent used it much. i want the footage in my feature to look really naturalistic like i didnt key everything when in fact i did lol. depending on the shot, but i might decide that a character whos in half my movie wearing a green jacket needs to be just a bit more pale, and his jacket needs to be more yellow. stuff like that. not that im shooting my film with 5d3 raw....... but you are ?

1 hour ago, squig said:

The 40mm pancake lens is pretty good, I've got one too. I'm a vintage glass freak, no love for L glass, but the 40mm looks kinda oldschool;

yeah it does. its so light and tiny i pick up the camera and think its the body only. im so glad you mentioned it because....... vignetting?? wth am i doing something wrong? i mean i read the reviews and i kno its there but its severe. i kno its easy to fix in acr/lightroom but what the heck is it that bad??

1 hour ago, squig said:

I'm a vintage glass freak, no love for L glass

yeah i cant wait to get my collection of old ff lenses started!!! i enjoy some weird old glass lol. im gonna ebay some helios glass first #weird ?

1 hour ago, squig said:

it's gonna be my DPAF gimbal lens when the Mark IV does raw

i so hope this happens itll be a great upgrade once i figure out what im doing ?

 

///hi @hyalinejim!

31 minutes ago, hyalinejim said:

If you value the ACR image quality

i kinda do. ive done enough reading on the topic to know that thats a thing. but idk. im extremely familiar with canon color + acr from stills and the footage ive shot so far looks EXACTLY the way i expected it to look in acr.... which counts a lot for me

33 minutes ago, hyalinejim said:

it might be worth investing in Cinelog

ooooo! nice

37 minutes ago, hyalinejim said:

Luckily the RAW histogram option shows the noise floor. Try to stay out of it.

sweet i will investigate

38 minutes ago, hyalinejim said:

Finally, check out the new crop.rec module (not to be confused with the older greyscale crop mode). It turns your camera into a superzoom!

whoa awesome! #module is one of the words that was scaring me like #node but im working thru it

 

///Hi @garethw!!! welcome

i made this account to inspire new posters when zachgoodwin was first getting out of control. glad to see its working lol

19 minutes ago, garethw said:

2) If you are not careful you get vertical banding on the DNG conversions... MLVviewer has button to fix this for the MLV's and raw2dng in its lastest edition also fixes it. BUT I got tripped up on my first shoot and failed to notice the lines until it was too late.

holy shit ? yeah ive heard about the dreaded vertical banding but i dont know anything about it. i checked the vertical stripes correction box in rawmagic lite because it seemed like a fun box to check and i havent seen problems yet (???) is this just if youre pushing the footage or is it obvious all the time?

23 minutes ago, garethw said:

4) You need to be careful of your shadow details... with a raw photo in camrearaw you can boost the shadow visibility if you start to lighten them in raw video the noise becomes apparent very quickly.. You have lass possiblities as far as I can see than with a raw photo.

ive gathered that. sometimes i think that im just used to creating more noise in lifted shadows in stills because that noise is WAY less noticeable/distracting when its not moving. and although thats true i keep hearing ETTR so ill do that lol

 

14 minutes ago, Nikkor said:

Congrats, but here in sweden it goes for 250$

?

i kno i was gonna fly to sweden to buy one (still wouldve saved money) but im too busy with work

 

9 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

Definitely use something like Rawmagic

hi @Mattias Burling thank u!! youll be happy to kno that i already came across that exact tutorial when searching this out ???  youre internet famous

i downloaded rawmagic lite!!! im p happy with rawmagic to resolve i think im gonna try that first ?

 

@EVERYONE BUT WAIT OMGZ

the first short clips ive shot have some weird jerky motion here and there, looks like dropped frames to me but i have no idea what im talking about. i went .raw > rawmagic > dngs > acr > export as numerically named jpgs > import image sequence in premiere > render out. could be a file naming thing i guess but it doesnt seem like frames are out of place?

im just tryin to make sure everythings working ok before i get too deep into this. could it be the komputerbay cf card that came with the camera? might be 3 years old. what memory cards are best to use for performance? im fine with buying whatever is best

U GUYS R AWESOME THANK UUUUUU

this gives me a ton of stuff to research when im at work all week

[Django]

I'd love to give ML a try (more for the video assist features then cumbersome RAW workflow) but I'm assuming my recently purchased 5D3 is locked..? Anyone here know a way to find out (serial number count?) Also heard some terrible stories of cameras getting bricked during setup...

[garethw]

3 hours ago, squig said:

I find LUTs very tedious and annoying, I've got too many of them, it's like when I got a reverb unit with 200 presets, drove me nuts. Better to just start with a film profile, then build on it.

Can't agree with that... I'm a shooter not a colourist.. LUT's just make it quick and easy for many of us...As hard as I try I can't get into deeply into Resolve...when I tried, I just ended up spending ages to get a look I had already used with a LUT....or a Magic Bullet look.
I agree if you get hundreds of them the choice is mindboggling.. but I like the Visioncolour raw setting in After Effects, very nice. I also have Andrew Reid's LUT's for the Clog setting, and recently I downloaded Canon's log LUT's for the C100. Once I've got the footage looking basically nice, I will then add a bit of Magic Bullet before exporting the project.
I try to keep it simple, as I say I'm no colourist.
Cheers
Gareth

3 minutes ago, Django said:

I'd love to give ML a try (more for the video assist features then cumbersome RAW workflow) but I'm assuming my recently purchased 5D3 is locked..? Anyone here know a way to find out (serial number count?) Also heard some terrible stories of cameras getting bricked during setup...

Easy, mine was the latest software when I bought it... you need to go back to 1.2.3 version of the Canon software...there is a link/tutorial on the ML forum how to do this with the Canon Utility tool... and a link to download the 5D3 firmware. It takes 10 minutes and you're ready to go..
I installed the latest ML version for the 5D3 and it works fine.... It transforms a great camera completely... I used many of the functions...on screen audio meters, peaking, waveform, histogram (even for raw mode), raw video naturally, but also the intervalometer for time lapse, the list goes on....
Without ML I would not have got this camera for video period..

cheers
Gareth

[squig]

1 hour ago, kaylee said:

awww awesome ? ? ? ? ?  thats so helpful

 

From the mouth of the guy who developed MLV: raw is more stable, but in practice I've found there's no identifiable difference bar the minimal processor hogging.

I've done a lot of AE/ACR vs Resolve tests and it's true that ACR has a better debayer, BUT, in a recent extreme low light test the Resolve ProRes4444 files looked better. In that particular test the AE files exported to 16bit DPX looked better than the ProRes files, but still not as good as the Resolve files, go figure.

The 40mm is known for vignetting, I like a bit of vignetting, it's more noticeable wide open, I"m generally shooting at around f/5.6 on the 5D.

Vertical stripes only appear on some 5Ds. I've never had them appear on mine neither has a1ex. I heard it may be something to do with calibration out of the factory.

You can set ML to not tell you when it's dropping frames so make sure that option is off and you set it to exact fps.

 

[Django]

54 minutes ago, garethw said:

Easy, mine was the latest software when I bought it... you need to go back to 1.2.3 version of the Canon software...there is a link/tutorial on the ML forum how to do this with the Canon Utility tool... and a link to download the 5D3 firmware. It takes 10 minutes and you're ready to go..
I installed the latest ML version for the 5D3 and it works fine.... It transforms a great camera completely... I used many of the functions...on screen audio meters, peaking, waveform, histogram (even for raw mode), raw video naturally, but also the intervalometer for time lapse, the list goes on....
Without ML I would not have got this camera for video period..

cheers
Gareth

Oh cool, so the lock out was in post 1.2.3 firmware (i just checked i'm on 1.3.3)? so i might be able to have a go at ML, excellent!

FWIW i got the 5D3 primarily for stills, and as a B-cam to my C100. Again, main interest of ML for me are those video assist features..

 

[tweak]

My tips (using 13inch retina second from top specs).

- Use Resolve, such an easy workflow, colour grading is awesome if you watch a few tutorials (as is editing). There's many hidden features you wouldn't know about unless you find a good tutorial.

- Use MLVFS if your comp can handle it, such an amazing concept. Mine is still too slow, so I use MLRawViewer to preview/select shots and then convert to DNG or Prores444, these edit and play easier in Resolve than any h.264 footage I edit. (there's also a few settings to make playback easier in Resolve that are a little hidden).

- Find good Luts that you like and tweak from there. If you get to a point where you know how to expose for your Luts with only minor tweaks it's very easy to get a solid look.

 

Here's a first quick test I did with 20mins filming 7D Raw. Obviously it's a bit harder when you need to film the action as well as nail the shot, but you get the idea of what your first attempts might look like.
 

 

[jpfilmz]

I'm a heavy user of 5D Raw.  I use Komputerbay and Sandisk Extreme cards. I shoot using MLV Raw with the audio on and just about everything disabled except the overlays. You need them to see where the screen is actually cropping your footage.  I definitely cosign the RawMagic to Resolve workflow and the use of MLviewer to preview clips.  RawMagic can correct the vertical line issue and export to 14bit uncompressed or 12bit compressed DNG files which save a ton of space on storage.  I used to save my mlv files but not anymore...just drag and drop from the card to RawMagic and click convert and work on another task while the dngs are created.  It can take awhile depending on how much footage you shot BUT....I guarantee that you will always love what comes out on the other side.

[Davey]

Quite the most cheerful and enthusiastic thread I have read on this forum. The excitement the OP expresses reminds me of the child-like joy I experienced when first messing with a full frame camera with a prime lens back in March.

 

Lovely.