Magic Lantern 5D IV development funds

[Walter Schulz]

Hello, zerocool22 and all!

I'm sorry to crash the party but it has to be done ...

While it is true there is no dev with 5D4 at hand you are confusing cause and effect. It is not lack of money setting 5D4 porting at hold. It is just lack of manpower. The skillset is one part of the deal (real hands-on knowledge on embedded systems (ARM-architecture) with some C and Assembler) *and* enough free time at hand to port it and do long-term support. Each ML port will (est.) take some houndred hours work even for those cams without new hardware architecture involved (5D4 = DiGiC6 = no existing port for DiGiC 6 architecture). And every time Canon renewing firmware you have to go through it again. Reverse engineering to find out where Canon's compiler put all the pieces where ML code has to lock in. Doesn't sound like fun and according to devs it's even worse.

Just piling up money won't solve the problem. You addressed that with the term "buying time". It may be news to you but ML dev team members do have a very solid opinion about this one.They made it absolutely clear to drop out from the project on the spot if payment is involved. This will - most likely - kill the project you want to support. There is no "ML company" with devs on the payroll. They are doing all the work in their spare time not consumed by job, family, friends and hobbies.

There was some kind of crowd-sourcing in the past for some more expensive items the devs asked for. Software licenses for professional developer programs, for example. If there is a monetary problem they just have to ask.

So: Why not contacting the very persons you want to support and ask them about this in the first place? And why here and not in the very forum (ML forum) where they are doing the thing you want to support? ML dev team is by no means anonymous. You may even ask why they tend to not react on several offers from forum users to throw in some bucks for 5D4 development.

If you have an ARM developer at hand with the will to do some serious work on it and doing long time support for it: Congrats from the community will be yours.

If people ask when to expect a cam to be supported I always will give this advice: If there is no ML port for your cam ... act like there will be no ML support for your cam ever.

Most likely 80D (or 750D/760D) will be the first DiGiC6 cam to see ML ported. But ML project does not know about timelines, milestones, delivery dates. It's ready when it is ready.

 

Ciao
Walter

PS: Alway have g3gg0's signature in mind: "ONLY donate for things we have done, not for things you expect!"
PPS: I'm a regular at ML forum but I'm not a developer and haven't discussed this with dev team.
PPPS: If you want to support ML there are some tasks to be done. Help text needs major work (stalling for years) or just kill some obsolete/outdated tutorials.
PPPS: Only 1D and all the C stuff (aka: Canon's professional line-up) is self-declared off-limits for dev teams.
 

 

[mercer]

@Walter Schulz hi and thank you for the detailed response. I have lurked over at the ML forum on occasion for the past couple years, specifically when I tested ML Raw with my eos-m and more recently with my 50D. I am interested in testing ML Raw with the 70D but I have a few questions and honestly I do not have the time to scour the ML forums for the answers and it seems like that is frowned upon over there... so I was wondering if you have a minute or two... could you answer a few questions regarding ML Raw on the 70D?

1. I understand that the Touch DPAF works well with ML Raw... does it eat battery life in conjunction with ML?

2. How do OIS lenses work with ML Raw on the 70D?

3. Is it possible to shoot in Shutter Priority mode with ML Raw on the 70D?

4. In your opinion, will any combination of the above make camera freezes more possible, or even likely?

I love ML Raw and it is amazing the work you guys are doing over there. With the 5D mkii coming down in price on the used market, I am contemplating picking one up instead of the 70D, as I assume that build is more stable, but the option of using DPAF in conjunction with ML Raw does sound pretty tempting. 

[Walter Schulz]

1: By design power consumption with ML loaded will be increased. As far as I can tell it is far from "eating up" or "draining". Cannot put it into numbers, though. Depends on which modules are loaded, overlays activated and such things. Of course you will see higher consumption writing 40 MByte/s to the card using RAW video recording instead of plain H.264 recording with about 5.5 MByte/s.

2. Sorry, don't own a 70D and cannot answer this one. It should work the same way with/with out ML loaded. If there are issues devs will try address it.

3. No issues here.

4. Sorry, don't own a 70D, I'm not a developer and can't even take an educated guess.

[Parker]

@mercer I used to have a 70D that I used with ML, including on some paid projects. Lenses with IS work just fine with raw recording, either MLV or the older RAW files, there's no difference. I never noticed any battery issues either, seemed the same to me, and yes, aperture priority would work just fine. Basically, magically lantern doesn't prevent you from doing anything the camera already does normally. 

Granted, this was a couple of years ago that I was using it, they were nightly builds right after the 70D port was released, I sold the camera shortly thereafter, but if you have to use a canon dslr, ML is the only thing that makes it remotely tolerable to use in my opinion, especially the peaking, zebras, audio meters, and built in time lapse functions. Raw with sexy dual pixel af is definitely pretty sweet tho! Best of luck. 

[mercer]

4 hours ago, Parker said:

@mercer I used to have a 70D that I used with ML, including on some paid projects. Lenses with IS work just fine with raw recording, either MLV or the older RAW files, there's no difference. I never noticed any battery issues either, seemed the same to me, and yes, aperture priority would work just fine. Basically, magically lantern doesn't prevent you from doing anything the camera already does normally. 

Granted, this was a couple of years ago that I was using it, they were nightly builds right after the 70D port was released, I sold the camera shortly thereafter, but if you have to use a canon dslr, ML is the only thing that makes it remotely tolerable to use in my opinion, especially the peaking, zebras, audio meters, and built in time lapse functions. Raw with sexy dual pixel af is definitely pretty sweet tho! Best of luck. 

Thanks Parker, that's good to know. I've seen a few videos with it that have blown me away.

I recently picked up an RX10ii and I am having a blast shooting in Shutter Priority mode with sLog2. It feels like point and shoot cinema. But I've had a few tests with Raw video over the past year, or so, with a BMMCC, a 50D, and a Pocket, and there is just nothing like the image.

So when I saw how cheap the 70D is now, I became intrigued. With an OIS zoom or prime and its DPAF I thought this camera could be a point and shoot 14 bit Raw cinema camera. Very interesting.

Do you know, or remember, what resolutions were continuous... in 16:9 or 2:35? I saw a video on Vimeo where the filmmaker recorded at one of the lower continuous resolutions and then downscaled it to 720p and it looked stunning. 

Anyway, thanks for your help!