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18. ICE
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16. Magic Lantern HDR Video Workflow
2 months ago
11. DEXTERITY
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10. A Season's Ending
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9. Forgotten
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8. Sincerely,
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6. TIME
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Updated video: vimeo.com/34313293

This is a short video showcasing my personal workflow, along with some discoveries about how to shoot better HDR, for the Magic Lantern firmware.

This was all shot on the Canon T2i (550d)

Alternate workflows:
GingerHDR: vimeo.com/34072049

Free and open source workflow:
bitbucket.org/hudson/magic-lantern/src/tip/hdr
Video coming soon(?)

Footage download:
minus.com/mo8xQ556o#1
Note: That footage can be streamed this is highly compressed and at a low frame rate/


the video is a little long, but I hope you will bear it! ha ha.


EDIT: thanks to Ioda Media on the forums there is a different, more efficient, way to perform a very similar workflow

In after effects, bring your footage into a timeline. Duplicate it until you have four copies of the footage.

After duplicating it, take the top two layers, and pr-compose them. This will be your highlights, name the pre-comp as such. Repeat this pre-composition with the other two clips. these will be your lowlights/shadows.

Go into your Highlights composition - take your top clip and set the blending mode to MULTIPLY. Move this top layer one frame forward. Your shadows will be highly crushed, and this will result in a very high contrast image this is what we want.

Now, go into your low-lights/shadows pre-comp and select the top clip. Change the blending mode of this to SCREEN, and move it one frame forward. This will do the exact opposite of what we did in the highlights comp. Instead of making a high-contrast image with the highlights preserved. We made a high-contrast image with the shadows preserved.

Next you can do the luma key as shown in this video. I feel as though this results in much less ghosting etc. than the current method I have here. I will be uploading slightly modified tutorial soon (Probably just adding something to the end of this one :) )

EDIT2: Malcolm Debono on the forums suggested shooting at 48FPS and I realized that this is totally possible. With the latest magic lantern hack; you can choose your framerate in small increments. so, it is theoretically possible to shoot at 48FPS @720P

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  • Chris Morgan 2 months ago
    amazing thank you!
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  • Floris Liesker 2 months ago
    I appreciate your effort but I don't think this is the way to go. The two streams have just been blended together while they actually represent different moments in time and should therefore be treated as such.
    Now you get all sorts of artefacts in movement.
    And then you slowed the footage down just by repeating the frames without any interpolation. That is the definition of strobing.
  • DavidJFulde plus 2 months ago
    I see what you mean. However; I just did a quick test and it looks very similar (And yes; I interpolated instead of just duplicating frames which is what Premiere does)

    The only way to get the image with almost no ghosting; Is to shoot 720P 60 and then conform it to 30P; and then do the method above, which needs no re-timing etc.
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  • bikertmbv plus 2 months ago
    Thank you!
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  • Orhan Nasufovski 2 months ago
    You don't have to bring the footage back to premiere in order to interpolate it.

    In after effects, you can use an expression on the opacity for the clip in order to filter out the bright/dark frames, even when stretching footage.

    currentFrameRate = 1 / thisComp.frameDuration;
    currentFrameNumber = Math.round( time * currentFrameRate );
    currentFrameNumber % ( ( currentFrameRate / currentFrameRate ) * 2 ) * 100;

    This will start at 0, and alternate between 0 and 100 percent every frame.
    The following will do the same thing, but it'll start at 100.

    currentFrameRate = 1 / thisComp.frameDuration;
    currentFrameNumber = Math.round( time * currentFrameRate );
    (currentFrameNumber + 1) % ( ( currentFrameRate / currentFrameRate ) * 2 ) * 100;

    Filling in the transparent gaps shouldn't be a problem.
    I'm sure someone will find it useful.
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  • Joe Moya plus 2 months ago
    seems like artifact and ghosting would be a problem with this method...specially with lots of fast movements in the video.

    With the third exposure setting element of HDR missing (i.e., proper mid-exposure) you are going to get lots of ghosting and blending becomes more like strobing...

    A workflow (while lengthy and time consuming in render time) that might work better (i.e., would take out most if not all ghosting) would be to:

    Create a mid-range exposure frame for each frame. I would use screen and/or multiply (...you might be able to use AE camera exposure as well). After you have created this mid-range exposure set of frames.

    Then, export as individual images. This will a get a bit tricky but your time stretch method should work really well for exporting frames.

    Then combine the frames for each exposure setting (high, mid (created artificially) and low). into Photomatix. Photomatix will then remove most ghosting and any artifacts.

    Then export the resulting HDR frames into a video ... in Photomatix you have MANY choices of various types of HDR plus has the ability to remove most of the ghosting.

    Another alternative workflow is to simply export the two exposure shots made using Magic Lantern into Photomatix as individual frames/images and let Photomatix create the mid-range exposure set of frames. In Photomatix you can use 2 exposure settings (instead of the typical 3) to create an HDR.

    The workflow I have described above is pretty much the fundamental workflow for HDR timelapse... which is what essentially you have created with ML. Except the timelapse interval time is EXTREMELY faster than any timelaps... which is why there is ghosting and artifacts and less details for HD resolution level video.

    In short, I think if you treated the ML created HDR as if it was timelapse frames instead of video... you will have better results in the final video. And... in this way you don't have to worry about frames per second conversions at all. As a result, using Photomatix you can then create any fps final output and significantly reduce ghosting/artifacts and blending becomes a non-issue.

    Can't wait for this beta version of ML to become a 1.0...
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  • Corey Smith 1 month ago
    Thanks for this video! I recently got the guts to hack my T2i (amazing how easy it actually was. lol) and I'm floored at all the features. I followed your video to help guide me in the right direction. I'm trying applying different curves to each clip. So far it's looking to have a lot of potential.

    I too thought of shooting at 48fps to end up with 24fps (though James Cameron believes 48fps is the future. hehe.). However, I'm feeling that 60fps is smarter, because more frames equal less motion blurring.

    Another idea is to use twixtor before blending the clips together. I'm going to try it soon. :)

    Thanks again! I only wish Magic lantern would hack the Sony Nex-5n which has 60p at 1080p and plus amazing low light. It could be an ultimate beast...or even add HDR to the GH2 making it more of a beast. lol.
  • DavidJFulde plus 1 month ago
    you can look around for the GH2 hack that exists; and try to talk to them about getting this feature. I think it'd be very possible.

    Also: I was doing some tests this weekend: 48FPS is phenomenal.
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  • Satva Leung plus 1 month ago
    Is there anyway to do this using FCP X or FCP 7 in combination with Photomatix?
  • DavidJFulde plus 1 month ago
    I believe you may want to look into the open source workflows that exist: vimeo.com/groups/magiclantern/forumthread:250386 using various free programs

    You could probably use a modified version of the workflow Ioda Media helped with in FCP7 using nested sequences instead of pre-comps

    EDIT: Joe Moya has a nice workflow using PhotoMatix acouple comments above this one :)
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  • Marco Schott 1 month ago
    looks great!
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