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This was the first up close, so
thank you so much.
OK. Hi, everyone.
So Magic Lantern,
there's so much I thought
I wanted to put so much into this talk.
And after this, talk in different
formats, in different places, on Linux
talk, for example, this year in Berlin.
And sometimes it's it's
a draw that small, technically
interested. Sometimes the crowd that's
more interested in filmmaking in that
part. And I think with Magic Lantern,
it all kind of comes together.
So some people are really using it for
for documentary filmmaking or for short
filmmaking, and
some others are using it
professionally for advertisment
and all that stuff.
And since the project has really
grown a lot in recent
and this year mostly.
So you get all these different kinds of
people in one under one
project.
And also, I cannot
I'll try and keep all the
philosophy behind by hand it out
because I want to make this the more
practical talk.
And but maybe it just
can keep in mind that a lot of stuff
is reflected here.
For example, the the talk two years
ago by by Dr. of about
the wall and general purpose computing.
The fact that everything is a computer
now like a car is a computer with four
wheels on that stuff.
And here you've got like a camera
is a computer with a light sensor and
some input output,
I think, and some code signing.
I think that's what's happening here
as well. So keep that in mind and see how
it all comes together.
I want to go through the more practical
side of it.
So what's a Magic Lantern?
It's it's obviously a free, open
source software team project.
It's a collaboration from people from all
over the world.
It all started with one guy in
in America who figured out how we could
sign on firmwares.
And from there on, it was all about
figuring out the internals of the camera,
finding hooks into the system
and and getting in there and figuring
out all the different chips work together
and what we can do with it.
So like trying
to find out where are the hardware
limits, what are the physical
limits we cannot get over, but what can
we achieve and software?
And it's developed
just
for hobbyists by some people in their
spare time.
There's no money involved.
We even stop donations because
we want to keep it
played safe for the moment.
And so.
I'll just try and give you an overview
about it all.
How it all started with Diesel Iris
in general, like how did
they first start to make movies with it
and what happened then what happens next?
So basic, basically such a camera
here. That's a 5D mark,
two by canon.
And it's a I think it's five
years old now.
So it's it's not the newest model.
There's a 5D mark three by now, and
there are much cheaper cameras, but
still, you can get this one for like one
and a half thousand euros.
So it's affordable in a way
if you compare the functionality of this
thing after you put the Magic Lantern on
it to really high
level, expensive
moviemaking film cameras from Hollywood
and how how it all holds up together,
it gets really interesting.
But they were never meant for once film
work. And yet they are a lot of things
you have to be aware of and work
your way around.
But things have gotten lot, very
much, much, much better
compared to before.
So we tried to
add this
functionality,
and it's not just for for filmmaking.
I'm very interested in filmmaking, so
that's probably why I'm talking about
that so much. But we've also added a lot
of photo functionality.
I'll try to go out until that as well.
Um, so just
you see, there are some, some
movies,
even Hollywood movies that were
exclusively or predominantly
made with visual arts.
And so there are
even in where you don't have to look
for for your budget that much,
there can be situations where
it makes sense, for example, this
propaganda movie.
It kind of uses diesel
cars to strap them on the helmets and
throw them out of of of a car and
everything.
And you couldn't do that with a big
aerial exit camera.
So with that kind of stuff, or
you wouldn't want to do that, maybe
because
it really gets expensive.
And um, so
they
managed to do it.
There are problems with the image and
what you can do with it.
But if you know what you want to do and
how you want to do it, even for them,
this glass might be an option.
So I've tried to make a list of
challenges.
So like I thought, I'd just make
the slits at the beginning of the talks.
So everyone sees that users
are you cannot compare
them to the big cameras and there are a
lot of problems.
But we'll try and
solve all these through the talk, and
I'll try and give you options on how to
how to fix that.
So there's
no autofocus.
I think that is something usually
when you when you get a camera, a film
camera, VHS camera,
now some some digital camera
like for for your holiday season, then
you expect the camera to have a proper
autofocus.
And these things, they don't
have autofocus. So you do it manually
like you did it years ago.
It's got the lens and then you focus
by hand and you have you have
to to get the
you have to get a feel for it, like the
distances and how far you can,
how difficult the scene can be.
So they introduced
autofocus,
but very just in a
very simple way, and it's going
to get better.
But up until now, it's still something
you have to do by hand.
And I don't think
I mean
for film work for like if you do a short
movie or something,
you probably won't have to worry about
that so much. Because if you've got a
situation in
on set where where the situation
is controlled, then
thanks, then
you know where your actors are going to
walk, you know where actors are going to
stand and you can reshoot your scene.
So if you mess up the focus, it's
not that much of a problem.
But if you do a documentary, you have a
situation that won't happen again
and you just have to get the focus right,
then maybe it's not the right camera for
you. On the other hand, autofocus that
never really works perfectly.
There was always problems.
So, yeah, it's about pros and
cons. You have to figure that out.
On the other hand, if you really want to
do movies on a budget now and hope to get
there eventually and do movies
later on
with a bigger budget, it's like the
perfect way to get a hang of
pulling focus manually because
it's just the same before the 35mm camera
or that kind of stuff you can.
You just have to get a feel for it.
That helps. So then that's rolling
shutter. As the sensor is read out,
it might not be as fast as what
what's happening in the scene.
Just like the global shutter
and the rolling shutter global shutter
cameras, they don't suffer from these
problems.
For example, I think you'll know it.
You you're on the on the highway, driving
the car and you're filming out of the
window and all the lines like, it's cute
when you want to watch it later on.
That's because of the rolling shutter.
There is nothing we can do about it,
hardware based.
So there are some filters, they use
a sort of hot optical hot
air filters so you can put in there.
But something we can tell from the
software side, you just have to live with
it and figure a way around it.
You can maybe help it a bit and post,
but it's a lot of work to get it right.
Then there's Maria Morris.
Like the idea of these cameras?
They have very big sensors like
much larger than what you know from
from your typical movie cameras
from. Not like the big film cameras
from Hollywood, but as compared to
everything else you've got like these,
these sensors like the size of your
fingers or something like
that. They are much larger and they
cannot compress
all the information, like 16
or 20 megapixels and that
short amount of time 30 times per second.
So what what they're doing, they're not
reading all of the lines of the sensor
and then scaling it down.
But they just skip some lines like they
read every fifth line, so
you skip over four lines.
And it's like this if it's,
you know, it's more it's like you get
these interferences.
If you got straight lines from the sensor
and some they are not
straight lines in your work like a brick
wall or someone is wearing a shirt
or something like that.
These lines, they enter into relate,
and it's like a shimmery
pattern that happens and can look very
not pleasing.
So either you take care of what
your actors or models are wearing,
all you have to try and solve it in post,
but it doesn't really work.
There's no simple solution for that.
The latest canon camera, the 5T
three, the model after this one,
they have improved that a lot and then
are optical filters you can insert to
improve that. So if you really need
top quality, there are some solutions
than
about the Kodak. That's probably the
biggest thing because these
cameras, they record video
on a consumer, Kodak on H.264,
and that's a bit as well.
So it's a codec that it's
like you're doing photo
editing in Photoshop in
a few steps and after every step,
you save it as a JPEG and then you open
it again and you make some color
corrections and then save it again.
The codec is not meant for that.
So it's very nice for just shooting away
and not grading a lot and
post. But if you want to like,
for example, you want to lift
the black levels to get some more
information on the black area or you want
to pull pull down the brightness parts
of your image to improve that.
Then there is some information, but at
some point it's just going to collapse.
There's nothing left because that's
exactly what the Kodak is doing is trying
to throw out all the information you
can't see.
So we found ways to figure
that out, and I'm shooting in H.264
still, sometimes most
of the times.
But you
know
how to do it. It means it's the color
information.
So it's not just
that it's compressed, but the color
information is not that big.
Like, if you
if you have a nice gradient on the screen
and you're filling in a bit per channel,
then you can see those those lines
where they where the color information
doesn't hold up. It's like a it's like an
index. Two hundred fifty six
Peloton image.
Yeah, you can just can can see those.
But I go into that later a little, but
there's a recording limit of four gigabit
by it
and there's like a
30 minute limit.
I mean, most of what I'm telling you now
is not too late to canon.
It goes for every day.
A lot of camera,
right? If I'm talking too fast, maybe
someone can
point that out.
So this limit, it's introduced because
of laws in Europe where you have to pay
different Texas if you
import a movie camera
or it's just a photograph.
So they introduce that it's just an
arbitrary software limit.
It's not even related to the to the file
system or anything in all cases.
But that's why they do it.
They have to pay extra.
If they don't want to do that,
then
in Full HD, you can
go up to 30 frames per second.
So that's that's OK.
That's what you're expecting from from
the television.
But if you want to do a slo mo shooting
or something like that, you have to
go down to to 720p
to a small HD and then
you get more more' because you've got
more landscapes and you of pull it up.
It's OK for the web, but it's not really.
You can't use it in a feature movie,
really one way.
But still, it's nice to experiment with
it. And I mean, some of these deals that
are they cost like, what, â‚¬300 knowing?
I mean, the really the fancy stuff you
can do nice stuff with.
So there's no pro audio.
You got no, no SLR inputs.
It's not symmetrical.
You have to find different solutions for
that.
And there's some time codes with the
exception of the three.
The top model that is supported by
Magic Lantern, because we don't touch the
the higher level
models and
so time code, you usually use it
and in an event like like this, you've
got three or four or five cameras
and you're trying to sync them all up
and you want everything to
to sync per frame or even even
better than that.
So if you've got no time code, you have
to do the thinking in your
editing software later on.
And that costs a lot of time.
There are software solutions for that,
and I go into that as well.
But just keep it in mind, if you buy the
big ones, you've got time code, you've
got professional audio input, you've got
most of these problems you don't have
and there is HDMI output.
So when I'll try to show you a magic
lantern later on and I'll do that
via HDMI.
That's also a consumer thing.
You don't have professional SDI outputs,
so you either need a converter box
on the set or you don't use it
also for most cameras.
Once you play the hit, the record button
and the camera starts recording video
the
the signal that is sent are threatened.
Him I- is
is reduced to four EDPS or focus
putting two that is like,
you can't do it.
So lots of problems.
But there are also a lot of advantages.
I'll just go through them very quickly.
The slides will be on the later on.
You can look at that.
So the price, obviously, that's very
nice.
Then you've got the professional
resolution and frame sizes
and and frames
per second. They're very small.
So that news consumption is
conspicuous.
For example, you go to to Russia, you do
a documentary and you don't want to be
noticed so much.
Probably then
it can be a good idea to just take a
small 600 D or something,
put a 50 millimeter on it.
Do professional video.
Use it in post makes it.
Nobody will notice.
I think that's going to change in the
next years, like in 10 years.
The police or they probably will, will
have understood that. But for now, it's
nice. Um,
and also the the
risks, they are not so expensive.
You can get like a shoulder ache or
something or a stabilizing thing for
these small, lightweight cameras.
You can you can do all this on a budget
if you want to.
Also got picture styles.
Let's like look up tables.
Professional cameras.
They've got those lookup tables where
they take the whole latitude of the
color information and they have to
compress it down to eight bits or 12 bits
or whatever they are supporting.
And you can you can through those look
a table, specify what color information,
what to throw away and what color
information to keep.
For example, you've got an interview,
we've got a lot of face and
we want to keep the skin tones.
So you take a look up table,
a picture style they call it, and on the
kind of cameras and you try to
keep all the information for the skin
tones and throw away the blacks and the
whites, for example, because we really
want the people to look natural and
healthy.
Also, the lenses, the glasses not so
expensive, you can get
some basic lenses for
affordable prices. You, for example, you
can go on eBay and go shopping
for four cameras from Russia
for four lenses from Russia, likely the
stuff they did in the 70s and 80s.
You'd get an adapter ring.
They don't have autofocus.
What? You can't use autofocus anyway.
So you can you can get some really nice
glass for like 30 or 40 euros
and experiment with that as well.
They've got their problems, too, but
you have to start somewhere.
Also, storage, right?
You just get those cheap cards.
You don't need any SSDs or something like
that. That's fine, too.
So I've talked about that as well.
Bit so the information is it's reduced.
That's compression artifacts, for
example, your filming and a windows CE,
see, the trees are moving and all that
stuff, that
might be a problem.
I don't have single frames, so
H.264, it takes
a full frame every x frames
and then it just keeps the the vectors
of the information for the next five six
seven frames depends on it, so it can
really degrade the image.
What you want is an all encoded codec
where each image stands for itself
also imposed because it can be very
heavy for for your computer if it has to
calculate all those in-between frames
from like 10 frames before.
So when you're editing, you probably want
to convert it before you edit it
and
the black slows detail.
I've talked about that, and sharpness can
also be greatly reduced.
So it really all sounds very, very
dramatic.
Um, so what
can I offer us as a solution
for audio?
First of all,
most of these cameras, when they were
introduced, they had this
fantastic functionality that was called
automatic gain control.
So what we was doing like if it was very,
very silent in the room,
then a lot of.
She would come would be coming up and
then someone would say something, and all
of a sudden they were trying to
to guess the the
gain of the of the audio input
and that you couldn't turn that off
because they were never meant for
professional film work.
So they introduce it in later
firmware updates.
But I think through Magic London, you
were able to get it like half a year
before.
Um, so turn it off.
Don't use it.
Don't use the internal preamp as well as
like this small tip.
It's really not very good.
So if you want to do proper audio you,
you take a good preamp.
You put it in front of your camera from
the mic, through the preamp, into the
camera, and then you dial down
the amplification of the camera to zero.
You don't amplify it all, and you
use your external amplifier so
you get a much cleaner signal.
So, for example, you can get an external
preamp. There are some very small
things you can just strap on your camera
and then put the microphone on top.
That works very well, whether they are
battery powered, for example, there
special microphones that have a very high
output through an inch or make
into a battery. And then you can also
dial
down the the
the gain on off your camera
for time code and thinking
there is a software. It's called plurals.
It's it's really a great
solution.
I think it premiere and some
others are introducing that by now as
well. What they're doing is they're just
comparing the audio of of all your takes,
for example, you've got three diesels in
the room and maybe some some audio
recorder on on the
on the mixer.
And then you throw all these these files
into plurals or some other software,
and they will all match it up through
the audio.
And through my experience, it really
works very well.
It works on a frame basis.
So all this thinking by hand
that really is a lot of trouble.
You can just skip that duration
and it's really fast as well.
You put like two hours from
five cameras into that stuff and you just
hit think and then you drink a coffee and
after that year, you go to to do the
cutting.
So for audio,
probably do it externally.
For example, when I'm on the field,
I've got like one of
these things that they're
not so expensive and they've got that
input and they can supply
the microphones with power as well.
And I just strap it on here and
I think it up in post.
So I just use the audio from this camera
so that my software can sync it up.
But the the person viewing
my movies will never hear the sound from
the camera. I will just hear the sound
from the proper or close to the proper
thing.
All right.
So for video, I've talked
about picture styles.
There's a blog post by Philip Bloom.
He goes off all the different picture
styles you can use, like, you know, it's
going to get very dark outside or it's
going to be very bright.
I'm going to film people use a proper
picture style, and the color information
that is compressed into to your H.264
will look much better once you get the
hang of it. I've got like, I'm I think
I'm using two picture styles
and mostly I'm just using a very flat one
that's trying to even out the
whole thing. And that in post, I do all
the color grading,
so that's the way to improve it.
Don't do the sharpening of the camera.
So that's a basic software
sharpening functionality, but they
have to do it like 30 times per second
very quickly.
So it's not very good.
So it just turn it off and you sharpen on
your computer later on.
It's really much, much better results
also for
focus pulling because you have to do the
focus mainly on on most of the users
on canon, for example, it's these buttons
up here that's a plus and minus.
You start to come out short later on, but
you can, you
know, on the analog camera you
would like, focus your subject, then zoom
in completely.
So then do your focusing,
then zoom out to whatever level you want.
And it helps you seeing if you really got
the the focus properly.
And also you can use a digital zoom
and it drops into the sensor data.
So it's not scaled up, but it really
shows you the area.
So if you have a controlled situation
or you, you know you're in a documentary
and we really have to get this right,
then you use to zoom zoom buttons focus
quickly. Don't touch it anymore.
Start recording.
That's really a lot of
help you
can use. The viewfinder viewfinder is
I've got this thing for, like, I don't
know, 20 euros on eBay.
You get it with
a
simple screen that you can glue on your
camera and then you you
put this thing on on camera
like this.
And if you're outside, it's very
sunny. It helps you a lot.
And to start looking professional your
customers, they like it.
Yeah, it's really it's it's a
never really understood about that.
That's how it works. And also.
If you're shooting very if you're
shooting through just with nothing.
No, Rick, no no stabilization.
It really helps because you can
view it's got the camera like this.
You've got it on on three points
connected to your body, and it really
stabilizes the camera a lot through
this thing. So if you if your shots are a
bit too moving too
much or something, that might be a
solution as well.
And it doesn't cost anything at all.
So think
about getting a break at some point if
you want to do a proper, stable shots.
Think about quick release plates
you can just.
There's also plates that you can
put on your camera and you can easily
exchange your your camera
through different tripods and stuff
without having to screw this thing on and
off and on and off.
And at some point it's going to break.
So it's probably a good idea to use quick
release
plates and to skip
this.
Um yeah, and I
told you about that.
If you use H.264
for your recording and you start editing,
you might want to convert it into an all
eight codec, for example, into progress
or whatever codec you you like
for your post because it
will really make the chip
you a lot of your off your camera, off
of your editing suite.
It will take it down a lot and you can
throw in some more filters or whatever
you want to do.
So, yeah,
the idea
is you take your edits of footage.
You denies it if you want to.
With some some software need video or
something, take the noise out of it,
then
you do it.
The idea is to just put a little bit of
noise on top digital noise
so that the problems of
banding like this, you there's a
gradient, but you can see how the colors
are changing over the gradient.
It looks like an old picture.
It just threw a doubt that's what you do
in audio as well.
Before the mastering step you put in,
some did add some noise to to improve
that.
Then you just have
that as a 10 bit codec, 10 bit progress.
For example,
you
do a color grading and if you want to and
put some some analog
recorded noise from from proper
footage on top of it.
And once you've done all of that,
it's going to look really, really good.
That's the story. That's right. If you
want to do it, if you have to do it for
something that's really important, not
like like your fun side project, but
it's something that's going to be shown
in movie theater.
That's probably the way you have to go,
and it's probably how they did it in
Hollywood as well.
So that's all the the overview
of the diesel our world now comes Magic
Lantern and the real fun part.
So we tried
to make this chart normal consumers, they
just use their point and shoot cameras.
They don't do manual focus.
They just want to take it to the
holiday season and they probably
won't use it.
On the other hand, we've got some really
nice auto functionality as well.
Auto exposure, auto, HDR,
photo shooting and stuff.
So even people that just want to have fun
with it, I think they would like Magic
Lantern, but we'll have to see if they if
if they take it up.
So the home professionals, the cinema
professionals and people who are
tinkering, they I think they
are the perfect crowd and that's for
the professionals.
So people using it on set for a
shoot that's really
that's related to money
for my experience.
I mean, I've installed the latest nightly
build from like yesterday, I think,
and I'm confident that it's going to work
because I've used it for two and a half
years now.
And these things,
the builds, they are very stable and
the guys, the core developers, the core
hackers from from the team, they're
really careful about what they change and
what they put into the nightly builds and
what they don't.
So it's
up to you.
But if you want to use it in the Pro
Bowl, just give it a try
and it might just work for you
a bit about
the history. In 2009,
some guy Tom Hudson,
he just started it, started taking on
his five fifty two and
he managed to find out
how to sign the code, the firm, the court
to to install his own firmware
stuff.
But I'll go into that later on, but we
are not flashing the firmware at
all. The canon firmware stays intact
completely. It's something that is
installed in parallel.
That's why it's so stable.
We're not changing the firmware.
We're not flashing anything changing
like two or three bits, and it's not
really dangerous.
And
I go into that.
I mean, it's like this.
If your experience with this kind of
stuff and you hear firmware, then usually
it's like, OK, I'm flashing my firmware
that can't be good, right?
And you're not flashing your firmware.
That's all I wanted to say, but obviously
we are changing something.
That's how
it works.
So see, SDK, that was another
project.
They did the hacking of the smaller canon
cameras and we were able to use
the. Out of the code and a lot of their
experience and this new project.
And then in April
2009, there was the first code
was released on Bitbucket and everyone
started going in there and
adding
patches and stuff.
And the community
mainly collaborated on the Magnus Wiki on
a Vimeo group.
So then a new
guy came in, Alex, who's the main dev
still? And he's like, He's
like this so typical
of the nut of a dictator, you know, from
Python and stuff like he.
He just he gets it right.
You know, the whole project is working
perfectly.
And there's
two or three other people from the core
and they take they for
for now, it's really working very well,
and
it wouldn't be possible without these
core people investing so much of their
time of their spare
time as well.
Then we had
HDR video that was a little hack.
The idea of you take,
um,
you alternate the frame, the
frames and each second frame
gets a different exposure value.
So we've got one bright and one dark
image one bright, dark, bright, dark,
bright, dark.
And that in post-production, you you take
the stream and make two streams out of
it. And then you put it back together
like an HDR photography, and you've got
this enormous latitude of dynamic range
for those who are familiar with it.
You if you've got an
an actor or someone and you
put him or her in front of a
of a window, it's very, very,
very
bright outside and the inside is very
dark. Then you either have a
complete, completely overexposed outside
world or an underexposed inside world.
So if you've got two exposure levels
and you mix them back together, you can
have proper the outside world is looking
good and the inside world is looking
good. So that was very nice.
But there were problems with it because
the frame rate is only 30 p and
then you're alternating frames and all
that kind of stuff.
So it was just a hack.
We've improved on that by now, but
that's where our metric landing really
got credits in the community because time
video was released of night scenes
that nobody had seen before.
I mean, the low light capabilities of
this camera is absolutely fantastic.
But through these hacks, you were able to
do shooting shots like
with problems. But they there were,
at least on Vimeo, they looked like
footage from much, much, much more
expensive professional film cameras.
So then we started the whole Magic
Lantern film homepage, and that really
got everything started.
2013 was completely crazy.
It was. It really exploded all over the
place. And but now we've got 14
bit raw video So that means I go into
that later on, but it's really good.
And there's also dual easel.
I'll explain that when I show you the
camera
just so that
you hear all these these buzzwords just
now and then I can reference it.
So there's a
time called generator.
We can send out all your time code
LTC time code through the audio out of
the cameras. You can put that into your
recording device and you've got time
code, or you can sync up a second camera
to your camera.
It's very bitter, but I mean, it's
all just software.
Obviously, someone was able to implement
it and send it out.
There's a new onscreen display that's
much closer to the
professional film cameras.
If you're doing that kind of stuff, their
profiles so you can have different
configurations of Magic Lantern, for
example. I know I'm on a on a photo
shoot, I'm shooting pottery or now I'm on
a video shoot and I'm shooting night and
I just switch my profile and everything
is changed and the camera snaps me to
really.
Also, if film documentary making
and you can't really control the
situation, then it's really great to have
these pre-configured profiles.
There's also exposure to the right,
exposure to the right.
This is a photography technique
where you try to put
your information as far
right on the scale as possible so
that you move away as much as possible
from the noise
and that
is completely automatically.
It's usually a dangerous thing to do.
If you do it wrong, you cut out some of
the information.
So everyone is a bit careful about it,
but we are doing it automatically so that
you can't really mess it up.
There's a new raw file format, so for all
video, it's getting more and more usable.
Like you can just put it on your
computer. The raw files convert them
and start editing
or grading or whatever you want to do.
There's an auto exposure that is also
very much improved. It can actually
define through
functions how you want your
auto exposure to work.
Should the user change the exposure
change, what should be changed first and
that kind of stuff.
There's advanced scripting in.
I think
they've
taken it out for a month or so, but it's
going to be back so everyone can just
put in simple scripting if they don't
want to hack this stuff.
And that's a manual system.
So it's like Linux.
We try to keep the core small
and then we introduce modules that you
can load.
Additionally, because these things, they
don't have that much memory and we have
to take we have to make sure
that the memory is
it's not crowded too much.
So that helps and also
has some games
now.
Most cameras have been hacked and I
have a feeling that that's
if kind of doesn't change something
drastically dramatically, and that would
be quite a paradigm shift for them.
Yeah. If you if you
buy ideas that are from camera, then
probably with hectored.
And that's because
they are not that different.
I mean, obviously, the hardware changes.
Sometimes it's different chips, but
it's mostly the sensor
and the input output stuff and
then all the important stuff.
For example, the body and all of that
great stuff.
So you can see
we've touched most of them
and the community is really, really big
now. So, um, just
the the the latest stable
version was downloaded
like half a million times by now
or something, I'm not sure, but
we expect that
we we can't really expect we have a
feeling that Magic Lantern has
been tried out by a lot of
current users by
now.
For example, we've got twenty seven
registered users in the forum, so that's
not the lurking crowd that just downloads
experiments with it.
But these are the guys that actually
registered in the forum and participate
in the in the discussion there.
That's thirty thousand people and the
source code, as you can see it over
there, two thousand and
three lots of
source code changes, and the team is also
quite large.
So also as a from a philosophical
standpoint, how it all works out and
how like reclaiming one's device,
device ownership or that kind of stuff,
it's really reflected in this project.
So how are we working, so
that's
the core team is like the people who take
all the pieces together.
There's lots of patches coming in from
from all over the world and someone has
to organize it and decide which code to
save which one is not.
And also,
there's some people for some special
topics. For example, one guy
from Germany, he's very interested in the
raw video functionality.
He is putting a lot of effort in there.
And um,
some other guys, they take care of
specific camera models.
For example, one guy who figured out
how to to put Magic
Lantern on the 70 and the 70 was
very special because it has two
processors and you have to
sync them up properly.
But he managed that, so he's taken care
of that part, though.
And even if I have said this
is like a benevolent dictatorship,
that's not really the case.
I mean, everyone can chime in and
if they want to, they probably get their
stuff into Magic Lantern at some point
for new
developers. And we would love to to
to have you with us.
If you're interested in hacking,
the learning curve can be a bit steep,
so we haven't documented everything
and stuff. You have to go into the code,
but the code,
it's clean
except for like missing comments
and stuff.
But
we're working,
we're working on it and it's going to
improve as well. I mean, someone could
just come in and try and help with the
commenting if he knows what he's doing.
Like, that's ever going to happen.
Also, the community
is really good, so if you want
to hack, you probably can
get someone help you in a Skype session
and help you be RC or something like
that.
All right, I'll have to speed up a lot,
so
I'll just give this one.
We know how to do this stuff, so I'll
show you a bit of Magic Lantern
just like five minutes or something.
So you get an idea of it.
Um.
I all right.
So I'll see if this works.
I just have to show it to you.
I mean, that's the whole point, right?
And um, we'll see.
We go.
So installation of magical antennas is
really quick, it doesn't take a lot of
time.
And
I said by now, it's it's really safe.
We have pricked, I think,
four cameras in three years.
And I mean, with half
a million downloads probably shows you
that and you never know if it's
hardware defects or if really Magic
Lantern was the problem.
So we're quite confident by now.
OK, so let's this
this this trash button.
You use it when you are in the preview
mode and you want to delete the picture
so you don't use that button when you're
not in the preview mode.
So we put the Magic Lantern menu
there. It's a separate
menu.
It's a menu that is
you still have the Kennon menu like this
year,
and
it just runs alongside with it.
So I'll just quickly show you the
menu here.
So there's audio
you can do all
kinds of fancy audio stuff
even managed to
to introduce balanced audio
lenders.
You just have to go into the forums if
you really want to know how stuff works,
because I just don't have the time right
now. I just
showed very quickly then
this exposure, this
exposure to the right folks home that you
can use here, this dual easel,
that's really fantastic.
It's they have two separate
circuits for reading out the sensor,
each alternate line.
And we thought, Hey, if there are two
different circuits maybe we can use,
one is of value for one and a different
value for the for the other one.
So now we've got actual video without all
those problems.
It's really if you combine them
with 14 video video recording and
you just I mean, you can do a
documentary, run through a dark
hallway into the bright lights, and you
probably can fix it in post without ever
changing your exposure.
You have to experiment with that.
I'm not sure if it
works for all cases.
Then there's global
draw.
That's really
nice.
I'll show you that,
so I'll try not to fool many of you.
Here we are.
Let's let's magic zoom there.
Usually when you were recording, you
can't zoom in. You can only do it before
you're recording.
So like this that that was really
helpful for focus pulling.
But through
this Magic Lantern hack, you can see
you can zoom in on your picture while
you're recording.
So that's helpful.
And there's audio levels on top, and
that's the temperature of the sensor and
all the the different values you want to
see at that point.
And
also just change to this
over here.
You can introduce certain certain
helps, like you can at crop marks, for
example.
Here we go.
So if you're shooting a movie, you can
you can crop mark your previous
screen.
There's tons of you can add a ghost image
like overlay an image so that you can
find the same spot you recorded last
time. It can also
focus peaking, which is very helpful to
get your focus right. You can see where
my focus lies right now.
I just put this off
just a second.
Um.
So focus pulling, I probably have to
turn this off.
This helps, but so you
see these lions,
they're introduced where the computer
thinks that your focus is at.
That's really, really helpful as well.
That's what I said in the beginning, it's
just a computer with a sense, so we can
do all that stuff with it because it's a
computer, basically.
So here this
this movie, you can change the bitrate.
You can improve the bitrate a lot for
H.264 if it got very
active scenes, this
gradual exposure.
So if you change the exposure while you
were recording, there were exposure steps
like it was jumping, getting brighter and
brighter and brighter.
And now we've tried to smooth them out.
It's also a nice functionality.
I'll try if I can show you this
how that goes.
There's no jumping.
That's very nice.
Then that's advanced
bracketing features for photographers,
for example, taking different exposure,
pictures of the same thing for HDR
or taking different,
different focus pictures to get an
incredible focus or very
close macro objects and stuff.
Um, OK,
let's focus helps.
You can, you can say, focus points and
go to them later on.
For example, you've got, you know, your
mother's going to stand there and then
it's going to stand there. So you save
the focus point, you hit the button and
the the if you've got an autofocus
lens, it goes to the to correct
focus point and there's tons
of other stuff and games and modules.
And I can't show you.
All right.
OK, so now for the real fun
stuff.
Oh, that's really great.
Photo or VIDEO So the idea is you've got
a sensor and it's got this amazing
picture for the photo, for the
photographs, and it gets degraded so much
by the by the limits of video
functionality.
So we were always
hoping that somehow we could get this raw
footage without any degradation
and just write it to the cards.
Just take the stream, don't do anything
with it, just put it there.
And that would be fine.
So we
they suck everyone together.
We manage it somehow.
So you can do Full HD 24
frames per second raw data, 14
bits frame by
frame recording at about 85
max per second.
So it's really a lot of data and
you need cards that can keep up with
that. And it only works for the larger
models for like four, five to
fifty two or fifty three.
That kind of stuff, but also works for
the smaller cameras. You just have to use
lower resolution.
But that's not so bad because even a
lower resolution looks better than the
actual and in full HD.
So you might find a way to work with that
as well. And 14 bits per pixel,
it means you can really go into there and
create the hell out of it.
You can take a professional grading
software and change everything about the
picture, and it's going to keep up, and
that's where it's really starting to get
to get professional.
So that's what it looks
like if you don't do raw, and that's how
it looks when you can see the
difference here.
The details on the left.
And also
also, you can sit at the candle.
Right? That's completely overexposed,
no information left a bit.
And here we are at 14 bits and there's
some. I bet you could even pull out some
information from the candle spot.
So the details, I'm uploading
the slides. If you're interested, just
look at them
and the further details
as well. So it's it's um,
it's based on dry ice.
It's no it's cold virus and based
on pick out, it's on for
it's an it's an arm thing.
And if you're familiar with that kind of
stuff, it's it's not that hard to get
into it.
And finally, what I want to talk about, I
just skip this through about the idea is
we don't actually flash.
I've told about that.
We just we create a firmware file
that is not a firmware file.
We just, um, we
just um,
you can can read it here.
Once you start the firmware updating
process, we just jump into memory, put
our code there, execute it.
It's like your your usual
what happened, what's happening in
Firefox all the time as well, like that
kind of stuff.
And and that enables us to
run our own code executed in
parallel and a different threat on the
camera while all the original
stuff is still running.
And after you've done that,
we figured out there was one flag.
We could change just just a bit
and change it into into debug mode.
And what this mode meant, and that's what
we're changing. Everything else is not
touched.
Once the camera starts, it looks
for a file called Ortex have been.
If it's on your card, it's executed.
So that's how we get there.
Whenever you start to come out, we're not
flashing anything.
If you take a different card with
Automatic Lantern, you don't have Magic
Lantern on the on the camera.
That's why it's so safe where I'm
at.
I'd love to
talk about legal issues or make it short.
Basically, we've been doing
this for two and a half years and nobody
knocked on our doors.
There's no communication with
canon. I think it's probably best for
for both of us.
But but that said,
I mean, we are not
we're writing our own code.
We are not copying anything.
And by now, I
mean, if you're looking to buy a camera
to do moviemaking, you've got all these
options and then there's Magic Lantern
for the canon cameras.
You might even argue that it's, um,
it's a benefit for them as well.
So buy now with 30000 people
and half a million downloads, they
probably just let us do our stuff
for a while and we'll see how it works
out.
That would be great.
The other projects, I think the other
cameras are going to catch up at some
point. I think raw on
the Nikon, it might happen.
We'll see about that.
And
we don't know what's going to happen
next, but we're
probably going to find some other fancy
stuff as well. So visit the website.
So the community you have us hacking,
that would be really great.
So, OK, thank you for this talk.
So the Magic Lantern seems to be more
than a little candle.
Everyone who ask questions, please
find your at your
the microphones one and two.
And I think other Christians from the
internet.
OK, so
it seems to be OK.
All right. Then I have
one of one thing to say.
So if anyone has a car
in the tunnel or in German onto
fuel, then please put
it away or it will be taken
away.
So run out and take your cars.
OK, so first question,
please
internet question.
There are microphone problems.
OK, no,
just one at the moment.
You know how will plural?
I handle dropped frames.
I I didn't get that.
I'm sorry.
How will I
handle dropped frames?
Oh, OK.
That's a very specific question about
synching up the footage.
It does it. It manages it.
Really, it keeps up.
What you can do is you just split up your
video and in smaller chunks before
you think it up and then it works even
better.
OK. Thanks.
OK, the next question is of microphone
two.
Yeah, I'm searching
for the following feature
when I set my aperture manually
and the exposure
time automatically means I'm
using the
I s yes, then
I want to have some options that I can
say I want to have some risk
to have.
Yeah, which allows said I have three
stops more
exposure. Yes, to have better
ISO. Yes.
Performance is this have
experimented with a new auto exposure
stuff.
No, I yeah, it should.
So I wasn't able to show you that.
But that's a graph ed where
you can exactly
specify the point how you want the
auto exposure to work.
It's a separate model.
It's developed by by one guy.
It was not from the car team.
It's very technical, taking
a lot of effort with that.
And if you want a specific feature, I'm
sure if it's possible technically and
you can convince him all that is going to
put it in to just try that.
OK, thank you.
So OK.
The one and the frontier.
Uh, I don't own a canon, but I
think there's some
G.P.S. functionality available.
Yeah, there's
some. We've had some jeeps sometimes,
so don't use that for sinking because
this is a really, really accurate
timestamp.
No, we haven't thought about that.
So. So I think it's an idea.
I think the thing.
The man of the 42 on a T-shirt.
Yeah.
Good calculation, yeah,
yeah.
This is not exactly about this software,
but what software
do you recommend for cutting
the footage? Does consumer software
like Apple iMovie work when
you shoot in raw?
Or do you have to buy really expensive
software to do so?
Yeah, obviously I don't want to get in
this discussion.
What software is better because you can
do that all day? But I'd
say if you just want to use consumer
editing software, then
you're limited in what filters you can
use for the additional software you can
use with that and all that kind of stuff.
But it won't be a
problem. Just put the H.264 into it.
If your computer has like a two or four
core CPU, then it's going to work.
What I'm talking about is you really are
on a tight time schedule.
You want the best out of it, then convert
your footage into a 10 bit codec.
And really, you will see
that you can do much more work and still
playback your footage without any
stuttering. So for the consumer
stuff, it's probably won't
matter so much.
Yeah.
So, OK, thank you.
There is the fourth microphone
by
what means of interacting with the
software from the outside, for example.
Well, I think you can fire up a Wi-Fi
and as I say on it, but
if, for example, editing curves, it would
be much more comfortable to edit from the
outside anyway.
There there is a USB port and there
has been some experimentation
with injecting with that.
I think there is an
there's an
application for Android,
but where you can connect your phone
to your camera and then it
talks directly with a magic lantern
and that was probably what you're talking
about. I think the author stopped working
on it, but it's open sourced.
And if someone wants to pick it up,
someone from the from the
Android community, I think it would be
perfect, like the perfect match.
And also, you could probably do other
fancy stuff once we are there.
So there is some work on it must
be interaction with the outside world,
but it's not working perfectly.
Also, there's QR code reading for
configuration files and some other stuff
I'm not familiar with.
Yeah.
OK. A little bit bigger it, that there
is a question from the internet.
Um, it is where
and when will be, uh,
better or stable, uh,
release for the, uh,
5D mark three.
OK.
So the fifty three has been out for like
a year in the in the nightly channels,
and we have not released the stable by
now.
That's probably because the night is just
work and we at some point
we try to do a stable
version and
was a lot of effort, a lot of bug fixing
and testing.
And it really, you know how it is.
It's a hobby project.
And once you introduce
too much pressure
on the developers, I think they they can
lose interest.
So it was a tough decision, but at the
moment, there's going to be a stable
version at some point again.
But if you want to be absolutely
sure that nothing goes wrong, you use the
stable version from last year.
And if you want to use the the
new fancy stuff, it's the nightly build
for you. So there is a five to three
version that works very well.
You should try it out and
at some point that's going to be a stable
one as well.
Thanks. OK, this is good.
Not too much pressure on developers.
So you talked about
scripting within Magic Lantern.
Will that be like or
can you explain a little bit more?
We've experimented with a lot of stuff,
so there were some loose scripting.
I think Python was discussed, but
was a bit of a memory hack.
Um, because really, that
was really nothing against Python, but
it's really difficult to get it to run at
the same time right out like one hundred
and thirty megabytes of raw data every
second.
Um, so there is, I
think it's not based on Pico.
See, that's that was
the less the best solution now
to to preserve memory.
But the back end is very flexible.
So if you've got an a scripting language
that you like that, I think it would
be very easy to implement the module
and at scripting functionality
for for whatever scripting language you
want to use.
OK, so is there an app available
so that I don't have to write
some numbers?
No, no, no. I think
I think you could plug it in pretty
easily. OK, thank you.
Yeah.
OK, thank you.
Over there.
No, I
um.
OK. I think now it's working first.
Thank you for a great talk.
And then I have a question.
You mentioned the IP with a canon
thing and you're, yeah, you're happy that
they didn't contact you yet.
And what about collaborating with them if
they came to you and said, Oh,
OK, we can help you with those data?
Absolutely.
Yeah. I skipped all of the slides, but
obviously we are doing it for the fun
and we've introduced some
functionality that no camera on the
market has.
So it's I mean, it might be an obvious
choice for for some company
like can't do that. So I'm sure if they'd
come to us, if they open that
communication channel, I'm sure they'd
get great feedback.
But what could they give you that would
make your life much easier?
Oh, that's a good question.
I think, I think opening up
their API.
I mean, that would be like, come on in
and do whatever you want with the
cameras. I think they would have to be
careful about that because for
a professional camera, I mean, it's not
just all business, it's also they want
these things to be absolutely
stable. They can't risk any problems.
So they'd have to find a way to separate
these different worlds so that
customers who are not as experience
with software development on
the whole stuff, they don't get
the downside of it.
So I think an API
or some kind of documentation
information apart from the office legal
stuff, that would be really great, that
would really open up the world for for
us and for canon, I think, yeah,
OK.
Yeah, that would be a
that's the same weather as every time.
Yeah, we'll have to see how they play
it. Yeah. So on the left front here?
Yes, I'm asking them public because I
think maybe other 70 users might
have the same problem.
Yeah, I experimented with external
audio. Yeah.
Yeah. And well,
as well as a microphone, a stereo
microphone, as well as an external
recorder. Yeah, I always had some problem
of noise. Extremely loud noise.
And one channel was no signal, OK
and clear, but a little bit
noisy signal. And the other one?
OK, I see. I googled up and down.
OK? It's very
specific, so
I can't really help you with that right
now, have you?
I mean, the obvious stuff you have tried
changing the input information that
so I think the background is they
use different audio chips and these
cameras, their specific systems.
And in some cases
we found the documentation papers
and we were able to to really get in
there and sometimes we didn't so.
I'm sorry, I I don't know you will
have to contact the 70 guys
directly.
OK, OK, thank you.
We'll see.
OK, so officially we
have one or two minutes left, but
I think there's no talk afterwards.
So maybe
you three are able to
ask the question.
You could try to think over
if were discussing with him afterwards.
OK, that's great.
So then we take the microphone
of number one here.
You mentioned some focus points
you save in the menu. Yes.
And my question is, are they meant to be
used while recording or are they just
stored?
They're meant while recording.
It's like a focus shift.
Yes, it's it's
it's like
you just save the position of
the motor of your lens.
Then you start recording and then you
hit. Go back to the focus point and move
to that. You can hit it again.
It moves there. It could even be
improved. You could like eked out
a whole series of points.
I think that functionally is not that,
but it runs while you're filming.
So it is smooth movement.
Or is it? Yes, too
rough? OK. Yes.
Is it all done in and all that stuff?
It's just software. I mean, it's
just suffered. It's OK.
The man on the I have one
question have you ever heard about
warranty problems about changing the boot
flag?
Have kind of.
No.
Oh, right.
Yeah, yeah, we are a bit worried about
that. But so far there have been no
problems from nothing that
when you have a problem with the camera,
send it in for repairs or something like
that that they have any problem
with Magic Lantern on the card
or the bootleg set.
They just ignore it.
So when they do that for over two and a
half years now, so no, it doesn't
void the warranty in that way.
Yeah.
OK.
The man on the right.
You you did not list the very
models like I have like a 350
that's like over 10 years old.
Is that because they're too old or just
nobody cares anymore?
I think that's it.
I don't.
I mean,
you just have to find someone who
wants to hack away on that kind of
camera. And as the newer
cameras get, get more and more,
get cheaper and cheaper and all that kind
of stuff, I think it's just for the
developers. It's so much more fun to do
the drawer stuff.
So no, I
think it would be possible. You just have
to find someone who wants to do it.
All right.
So I've got a comment
to that for the 350,
I know the S.H.
decay firm where I works.
OK, there's a the one
which is for the smaller cameras usually.
So that's a perfect answer, actually.
I didn't know that. So this
huge decay.
The other project for canon cameras,
sometimes for the for the really old
cameras, they have
introduced functionality for those.
So just Google for the SDK and take a
look at it might just work.
Cool. OK.
So one last question, and please
try to discuss it.
No.
Yes. Yeah, that sounds good.
You mentioned you don't have the
moral problems and all the problems of
your recording and raw,
but is it crossed your mind?
Skipping calls make only crop mode.
No, you have those problems as well.
Maurice the more' and the rolling
shutter. Those are the two things that
really know the fifty three.
Canon has improved the way the sensor is
read out and scaled down.
So that's the only camera where you don't
have those moral problems.
As for the rolling shutter, you just have
to live with it.
So raw can't help. It can't help you with
that. It's still skipping the frames
because the hardware is just not capable
of taking 40 megapixel
images of 21 megapixels
and scanning them down 30 times
per second.
It just can't hold up.
Yeah, sure. But you could use a smaller
part of the sensor on just right the
middle and you have like
a digital zoom.
That's true, actually, that functionality
isn't already.
I forgot about that.
So you can you can take
a crop of the sensor.
You don't have to take the whole sensor,
just take the center of it.
And that gives you
if you've got a good lens, you can just
double, um, um,
you know, what's it called?
You can just zoom in into the image,
but you're not zooming the image
digitally. You're just taking a smaller
crop from the sensor.
So it's still got a full HD
recording record of the video.
It don't have line skipping.
You're right about that, and
you can like turn your 70mm
lens into a one hour photo
midlands or 200 into a 400.
And also, if you do the crop stuff,
you can add some.
If you've got a really good card and
really fast card, then it's possible to
even go above Full HD.
You can do took two and
a half. I've seen some 4K videos
by some crazy guys, but usually
it's just a few seconds.
So if you do Netra videos, that's fine.
You can't do a feature movie with that.
So thank
you.
OK, thank you.
So this should be the last
question. So I think you you will
have a good discussion here afterwards.
Yeah, I guess we can.
Just a very, very good talk.
So, no, let me have a last
question. So how how
many time or how difficult is
it to to portage
the whole software to new or migrate
to new camera?
So basically, what you have to
do for each new camera is you have to
figure out what the change in software.
And then you have to find the memory
addresses of the functions that we use
because we are just looking for like
man copy or we're looking for like
the audio controls.
So we're we're hooking into the
software from from canon.
So we've got a list of functions
we are looking for.
And once you, you take the and your
camera and you dump the firmware and you
look into it, you're just looking
specifically for those functions.
And since we've got lists and we know how
many parameters are there and we know
probably where they should be.
So it just takes a guy or
a girl like maybe a few
weeks to get everything over
and the Hello world, sometimes that
happens in like a few days.
So that's why all those different
models are supported by now.
Wow. OK, that's great.
So thank
you for the talk and have a good evening.