Magic Lantern failed me!

MileCreations

MileCreations

EDIT: Before reading this bear in mind that I have reinstalled it with no issues. It also didn't ruin my shoot or anything, all that happened was that I was without the hack when shooting

Well today during a shoot magic lantern failed on me. Pretty much the camera froze and none of the buttons worked. I tried taking out the card, taking out the battery and a combination. Right when we were starting the second shot of the short. We'd been rehearsing for an hour and were about to start the shot and suddenly my camera wasnt working, so it became incredibly awkward.

I formatted the camera and that didnt fix it either. Eventually I had to do a full format wiping ML off. We were shooting on location 30min from my house with a strict deadline, so I had no other options.

So I lost out on my crop marks which were helping me with the fact that I am editing in 2.35:1. And my very custom white balance and one or two other smaller features that make life easier (and that I have gotten used to over the last two months). I also then proceeded to forget how to change the white balance with the normal menu so I was stuck on the setting that it was last on while in video mode prior to my ML instal.

Probably our biggest problem was that after formatting we completely forgot to reshoot the one shot done before the stuff up, so it is lost forever :(

Considering the only negative feedback about ML I have ever read was extremely brief and harsh (more troll like so you don't know if they're really truthful) I thought I would just share this.

Oh for those that don't know I was shooting on a Canon 600D / t3i

-Brendan
 
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I'm really sorry to hear this .

I've been using Magic Lantern for about 3 months now and I never had any problems, I love love love the crop marks .

I hope your film will turn great despite the failure.
 
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I've been using it for more than a year, on different cards and still no problem.

It's weird... Sometimes ML misfires when I turn on the camera but nothing taking out the battery cannot solve.
 
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3 cards at all times... Just in case. Cheapest insurance you can carry (pun intended) for keeping even messed up files together until someone can sort them out. 1 spare with ML and 1 blank spare if all else fails.
Sorry to hear of your troubles. I have been looking forward to using ML for month's now, hope it continues to be the great stuff it's always been in the past.
Any way the community here can help out? Re-shoot the scene from another dimension? LOL
 
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icba pictures said:
3 cards at all times... Just in case.
Click to expand...

I too have never had an issue that a battery removal couldn't resolved. I have 7 cards all preformatted with ML ready to go at all times. I don't have one blank, but I can always reformat one if need be for some reason.

One thing to note for newer ML users. The configuration that you so carefully set up, is on a PER CARD basis. If you switch cards, all the options will need to be reconfigured. I keep a sheet of all the changes I've made to the default configuration, so I can reproduce it and keep them all consistent if I needed to create a new card.

CraigL
 
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I'll assume you tried the ML bypass startup on set to alleviate the problems? Hold down the "set" button while turning the camera on, until it comes to the normal menus.
 
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Sounds like a corrupt SD card to me. Of course magic lantern IS essentially alpha software, and all software fails at some point, the more mature the software, generally the more stable it is, but that doesn't make it infallible. ;)

It's unfortunate you had bad luck with it, but I'd guess it was a corrupt card more than anything else. As others said, your best bet is to always travel with spare cards.
 
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NickysFX said:
I'm really sorry to hear this .

I've been using Magic Lantern for about 3 months now and I never had any problems, I love love love the crop marks .

I hope your film will turn great despite the failure.
Click to expand...

I've been using it for two months and I've once had to take the battery out and that is the only problem I've had before. I love the crop marks too! :/

icba pictures said:
3 cards at all times... Just in case. Cheapest insurance you can carry (pun intended) for keeping even messed up files together until someone can sort them out. 1 spare with ML and 1 blank spare if all else fails.
Sorry to hear of your troubles. I have been looking forward to using ML for month's now, hope it continues to be the great stuff it's always been in the past.
Any way the community here can help out? Re-shoot the scene from another dimension? LOL
Click to expand...

I currently only have two because I can't justify the price of buying anymore just yet.

knightly said:
I'll assume you tried the ML bypass startup on set to alleviate the problems? Hold down the "set" button while turning the camera on, until it comes to the normal menus.
Click to expand...

I actually did not. While this would have made sure we didn't lose our already shot footage, we had had a slight break between the two shots so I had forgotten we had shot it. Besides the WB would have been way off between them.

TBH I actually forgot that was even a feature.

Will Vincent said:
Sounds like a corrupt SD card to me. Of course magic lantern IS essentially alpha software, and all software fails at some point, the more mature the software, generally the more stable it is, but that doesn't make it infallible. ;)

It's unfortunate you had bad luck with it, but I'd guess it was a corrupt card more than anything else. As others said, your best bet is to always travel with spare cards.
Click to expand...

Well the card worked for the rest of the day withOUT (edit that should hsve said without!) ML so it couldn't have been totally corrupt?

I will continue to try and use ML, especially with the intervalator, but it looks like I need to purchase some spare cards...
 
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The only issue I have with ML is plugging in & powering on the external monitor in the wrong order, which requires a battery replacement; not the card.

it looks like I need to purchase some spare cards...
Click to expand...

You should have several, yup. Don't keep all your eggs in one basket. I favour using smaller cards, too, in the 8 to 16 range. If you shoot everything on one massive GB card, and the card corrupts... or camera gets stolen... or dropped in lake... or someone hits that Format OK button by mistake while using the Canon's wrench1 menu (long story, that one, heh)... at least you'll still have other footage to help lessen the loss. Additionally, you can also have someone constantly dowloading & verifying data integrity during the course of the day's shoot, to catch errors as they pop up. Can't do that when all footage is going to a single card to be backed up at the end of the day, when you get home. (Of course, not every shoot has the luxury of a free person for that task.)

configuration that you so carefully set up, is on a PER CARD basis.
Click to expand...

Yup. Keep your set of cards with a common config. You can keep a fave setup on your computer to drag/drop onto each new card in jiffy and arrange an army of identical swapouts.

I failed this last night, fwiw - found a card in my set with older settings after I'd loaded it in quickly between songs at a live performance. Couldn't adjust anything 'til end of the next song, so there's an odd-lookin' & soundin' clip in the mix now. Oops. :blush:

.
 
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Will Vincent said:
I guess I was confused when you said:


:D
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MY BAD! That should have said WITHOUT

Zensteve said:
The only issue I have with ML is plugging in & powering on the external monitor in the wrong order, which requires a battery replacement; not the card.



You should have several, yup. Don't keep all your eggs in one basket. I favour using smaller cards, too, in the 8 to 16 range. If you shoot everything on one massive GB card, and the card corrupts... or camera gets stolen... or dropped in lake... or someone hits that Format OK button by mistake while using the Canon's wrench1 menu (long story, that one, heh)... at least you'll still have other footage to help lessen the loss. Additionally, you can also have someone constantly dowloading & verifying data integrity during the course of the day's shoot, to catch errors as they pop up. Can't do that when all footage is going to a single card to be backed up at the end of the day, when you get home. (Of course, not every shoot has the luxury of a free person for that task.)



Yup. Keep your set of cards with a common config. You can keep a fave setup on your computer to drag/drop onto each new card in jiffy and arrange an army of identical swapouts.

I failed this last night, fwiw - found a card in my set with older settings after I'd loaded it in quickly between songs at a live performance. Couldn't adjust anything 'til end of the next song, so there's an odd-lookin' & soundin' clip in the mix now. Oops. :blush:

.
Click to expand...

Well getting spare cards is now in top of my list! But I just got a car so the cash is low.
 
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If you have a laptop, I suggest always keeping that with you when you shoot. Reset your firmware, and re-install ML. You should always be able to have control over your camera in the EOS mode. Technicians use it as a way to override the original card settings. ML is just a firmware override, using the card as a secondary storage. However, the camera will always output to USB first, rendering the card useless.

Since the shoot, have you been able to fix it yet?
 
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Zensteve said:
I favour using smaller cards, too, in the 8 to 16 range.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I should have pointed out, my 7 cards are all 8GB, for the very reasons you point out; losing one is not such a catastrophe. It also means the cards get rotated quickly and backed up onto a notebook for easy review should the need/opportunity arise.

That, and at under $10 for a decent class 10, I can have multiple of them quite easily.

CraigL
 
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Will Vincent said:
Ahh.. well that makes more sense then.


So, after you formatted (full format, wiping ML) it worked fine. As I said, the card was corrupt. Sounds like specifically the portion of the card with Magic Lantern on it was corrupt. Formatting resolved that issue.
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But how exactly did it just become corrupt do you think? I mean it was working for a scene 20minutes earlier and I made no setting changes
 
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Well I think it was not ML problem as well.

4 weeks ago I had the absolute same experience . However my card was crappy and it was not ML fault.

I bought myself far better SD card and everything is working perfectly again.


If your SD card was not very good then I guess you were just unlucky that it stopped working at the time of shoot .
 
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Will Vincent said:
Of course magic lantern IS essentially alpha software, and all software fails at some point, the more mature the software, generally the more stable it is, but that doesn't make it infallible. ;)
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ML is alpha for 5D3 and 7D. It's not alpha for any of the other platforms. It's considered "stable" AFAIK.

The EOS-M platform is only at the "hello world" stage, which is a proof of concept only, although I expect an alpha sometime ... my guess being once they figure out how to deal with the touchscreen nicely.

Often when software fails, the hardware is at fault. And vice-versa. But the result is definitely the same ... major annoyance on the set!
 
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Trust me, as a software developer -- all software has faults, more mature software is able to better catch and handle error conditions, less mature software generally fails more abruptly.

But all software has issues. Even "stable" software is generally riddled with bugs.
 
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