My Magic Lantern workflow for 70D raw

[Andrew Reid]

So 128GB SD cards are very cheap now... and on cameras like the 70D you get double the record time per card with 10bit than we used to get with full 1920x1080 14bit raw on the 5D Mark III... Added bonus.

These cards need guaranteed 40MB/s write speeds... Many of them can do 90+ so that's not an issue.

Rather than copy such a large amount of Cinema DNG / MLV data off the card during a shoot which can be distracting, my method is to just invest in 6 or 7 cards to get you through a day, and leave it transcoding to ProRes over night.

Raw will never be the best choice for a fast same-day turn around from shoot to edit, but for everything else it's fine.

For shorter shoots you can do the edit the same day as transcoding 128GB or so of Cinema DNG isn't too hard.

Also, copying a full 128GB card to an SSD doesn't take long at all in 2017 via USB 3 or 3.1 C, but if you do it during a shoot with the intention to reuse the card, just bare in mind that's a lot of data on one drive and if the drive gets lost or crashes that's the whole footage gone with no backup... So the 6+ card approach is the one I go for.

Obviously for the compact flash DSLRs like the 5D3 and 7D the approach is pretty similar.

What SD and CF cards are other people using?

On the software front... I find the workflow much improved from 2013. MLVFS is so quick to mount a card full of MLV files as Cinema DNG, which can then be opened directly in Resolve 14 with fluid playback and editing of raw video.

But I still use Resolve to apply LOG gamma (like Canon LOG or Blackmagic film gamma) and transcode the files to ProRes 422 LT. Not only does this save a lot of space because the Cinema DNG files can be deleted, you still get plenty of opportunity to adjust white balance and colour... not as much as with the original Cinema DNG files but still way more than a standard H.264 codec, and I feel the LOG space captures the entire usable dynamic range of the RAW recording.

Any other workflow suggestions are welcome!

[mercer]

Okay, so with the 70D you're getting full 1080p (or close) in 10bit? Is that at 2:35? With a 128gb card you're getting almost an hour's worth of footage? Nice. 

[tweak]

7D

Lexar 1066x CF cards.

MLVFS + Resolve 14

Can shoot the full sensor continuous 14bit (very close to 1080p 16:9).

Haven't had an issue yet. I think if you're on a budget this is by far the best deal. 7Ds can be had for about 400dollars, sometimes less even.

[mercer]

3 minutes ago, tweak said:

7D

Lexar 1066x CF cards.

MLVFS + Resolve 14

Can shoot the full sensor continuous 14bit (very close to 1080p 16:9).

Haven't had an issue yet. I think if you're on a budget this is by far the best deal. 7Ds can be had for about 400dollars, sometimes less even.

Really, they're that cheap? And you can get 48p? For how long?

[tweak]

15 minutes ago, mercer said:

Really, they're that cheap? And you can get 48p? For how long?

I've seen a lot for this price in AUS (less sometimes), no one seems to want them anymore.

48fps is about 15seconds??? (if I remember rightly? but I'm not sure), but it's something closer to a cinema wide screen aspect, not 16:9. But the quality is good and you could crop back to 16:9 if needed. I don't use it much though as I don't use slomo much.

Here I found the original page (member N/A) -
https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=9848.850

___________________________________________________________

1728x692 48 fps slow mo. But wait a minute... When I play it back, the footage is normal aspect, no stretching required! I'm kinda running on no sleep in 2 days, I need someone to confirm this ASAP. I noticed when I set the cam to 1280x720 60p, and set the fps override to 23.976 exact fps, the liveview display was stretched vertically, so when recording it and playing it back records it in normal aspect! Timer A under 23.976 exact is 422 (FT -76). So I set the fps to 48, and Timer A back to 422. Mlv settings-
1728x692
3:2
GD Off
Canon preview
256 MB warmup
SRM On
Hacks on
4 buffers
Reserve on
Global Draw off
Expo override on

Rokinon 35mm manual cine lens

After messing with it a little bit more, the black and white levels get all wacky sometimes and the exposure is super glitchy. At first, I noticed this while testing out different settings in 640x480 mode, going to do some more tests soon as I charge my battery. 

:edit: Yeah definitely a bug in the fps override control. I just downloaded the latest nightly, same thing. How exactly does fps override cause LV to stretch? Or is this a new feature I completely missed?!

:edit2: Ok, just figured out that this bug has been in the nightly since 7d fps override was implemented. 

:edit3: To fix this issue, Timer A needs to be set to 498 (FT +76) for 23.976 exact and 440 (FT +10) for 60 exact.

[mercer]

I actually shoot 2:35 with my 5D3, so that's fine. Is it still 1920, or close to, on the wide end? I don't shoot a lot of slow mo either, but there are a few B-Unit shots 48p would be good for. The 5D can shoot it too but it isn't continuous... which is actually not a big deal... 5 or 10 or 30 seconds is all I've ever "needed," but it's a pain in the ass to switch all the settings around for it, so the 7D may be perfect to keep in the bag set up for 48p... it doesn't do 60p... does it? I can't believe how cheap they are... unsure why I was effing about with the 50D last year. 

[tweak]

5 minutes ago, mercer said:

I actually shoot 2:35 with my 5D3, so that's fine. Is it still 1920, or close to, on the wide end? I don't shoot a lot of slow mo either, but there are a few B-Unit shots 48p would be good for. The 5D can shoot it too but it isn't continuous... which is actually not a big deal... 5 or 10 or 30 seconds is all I've ever "needed," but it's a pain in the ass to switch all the settings around for it, so the 7D may be perfect to keep in the bag set up for 48p... it doesn't do 60p... does it? I can't believe how cheap they are... unsure why I was effing about with the 50D last year. 

Yeah I wondered why you bought a 50D as well... I did mention it at the time haha.

He goes on to say more about it somewhere else and posted that other link to the settings that I shared earlier, I'm just not sure where that was... ML is so hard to dig up stuff you read about again sometimes.

[mercer]

Ha, I think I am still on 2012 scale... I couldn't afford a 7D back then, so I just assumed I couldn't last year. 

I start searching for stuff at the ML Forums but usually end up frustrated. If a question was asked once three years ago, people go ballistic for having to answer it again... so then I spend 10 minutes reading why that guy was a douchebag for not properly searching the forum for the answer... and then I forget what I wanted to know. It's a vicious circle of confusion. Lol. 

[tweak]

15 minutes ago, mercer said:

Ha, I think I am still on 2012 scale... I couldn't afford a 7D back then, so I just assumed I couldn't last year. 

I start searching for stuff at the ML Forums but usually end up frustrated. If a question was asked once three years ago, people go ballistic for having to answer it again... so then I spend 10 minutes reading why that guy was a douchebag for not properly searching the forum for the answer... and then I forget what I wanted to know. It's a vicious circle of confusion. Lol. 

Agreed. Somethings are obvious and talked about a lot whilst others aren't but are assumed to be... I think ML forums could really use a better structure and order for grouping of different questions/features across different cameras. Usually everything is in the one camera thread or just in some random spot you wouldn't look. They need a strict mod like Vitaly from PV to clean that place up a bit.

[Andrew Reid]

4 hours ago, tweak said:

Agreed. Somethings are obvious and talked about a lot whilst others aren't but are assumed to be... I think ML forums could really use a better structure and order for grouping of different questions/features across different cameras. Usually everything is in the one camera thread or just in some random spot you wouldn't look. They need a strict mod like Vitaly from PV to clean that place up a bit.

New users sometimes turn into developers and have programming skills to bring to the table so they shouldn't be taken off to a different place.

But the nature of the threads, with many pages and posts just means useful stuff gets buried and you have to search very hard for it.

Some of the long topics are always a mix of the devs talking technical and end-users asking basic things, which is an odd mix.

Apart from this it is a superb forum and very constructive, so few trolls.

There is a mod there, I think called Walter, who tries to bat off the questions that don't contribute to the understanding of the end-users or the technical progress of the devs, and they have a FAQ.

The reason I wrote the Shooter's Guide for the 5D3 and 50D was to give the end-user (i.e. filmmakers, artists, pros) an easy way into getting what they want out of Magic Lantern (installation, shooting, best settings, special features, etc.) without having to wade through the forums and ask repetitive questions on the engineering-floor, so to speak. It is time for another guide I think, as a lot has changed in 3-4 years!

4 hours ago, tweak said:

They need a strict mod like Vitaly from PV to clean that place up a bit.

They do not

Although I enjoy Vitaly's site, even his humour I like, and he's very disciplined at technical organisation, the guy is not the most relaxed chap on the planet when it comes to replying to everyday users on an open forum. He never accepts they're right. ML has a more open and free community, with no politics and it puts a nice friendly face to the project.

What I miss about Vitaly is his GH2 hack... I wish he'd carried it forwards with others helping, to the GH4.

[tweak]

I think you missed the point big time @Andrew Reid. I didn't say they needed his opinions I said they needed a mod like him to clean the place up. PV is the most structured forum I've been to, everything is mostly in it's rightful place, there isn't 100threads discussing the same things or going way off topic.

[Andrew Reid]

Yes you're right but there isn't 100 threads going off topics because it doesn't have the traffic of Magic Lantern's site. It would take more than one mod to clean up the threads.

And at PV anything that does go even slightly off on a tangent gets shut down with a bolt of lightning.

I think I'm fine with the way Magic Lantern run the forum, messy though the threads can be... All they need is a better 'front page' to the forum area, to pull together the most recent developments, builds and downloads, so that people don't have to search for the interesting stuff - because a lot of the interesting stuff is not even in the nightly builds... it is often from a dev, in a single post, somewhere on page 220.

[squig]

I quit modding for ML after a shit-fight with a fascist mod who got off on trolling noobs (and me). He doesn't appear to be very active these days; it's a much friendlier place without him.

[tweak]

We can agree to disagree then. Personally I think ML forums would be much better with a few mods to clean it up. As Squig said it's not like people don't get shut down on ML as quick as they do on PV anyway, infact often on ML they also get made fun of as well (as he attests to).

Searching through 300 pages to find what you were talking about again gets old pretty quick. They just need to have camera specific forums with fairly specific categories, each of which should also have a seperate developments and troubleshooting thread. Often times it just people asking basic troubleshooting questions that pads out a 20page thread to 300pages (hence why devs get crazy).