Magic Lantern failed me!

[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

 

[justinisfilming]

Man, I just installed ML on my 2 cards yesterday (also using a T3i) and I hear about this?! Got my fingers crossed that I didn't make the wrong decision!

So far though, I'm loving ML. Peaking, crop marks, intervalometer, more ISO options, can't go wrong with those!

 

[Will Vincent]

My recommendation would be to periodically do a complete format and reinstall ML on the SD card afterward. And always, always, have multiple cards available for use.

 

[MileCreations]

My recommendation would be to periodically do a complete format and reinstall ML on the SD card afterward. And always, always, have multiple cards available for use.

Yeah this is exactly what I've done

 

[knightly]

But how exactly did it just become corrupt do you think?

When I was in IT, we called it "Bit Rot." Sometimes, it just takes a one or a zero to come up as the other, and the whole thing goes bang.

 

[stef]

Of course magic lantern IS essentially alpha software, and all software fails at some point

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.

You said "ML is essentially alpha software".
I said it was not alpha, except for certain platforms.
You said that it has faults, like all software.

Are you saying we should consider all software to be "essentially alpha" because it might have faults?

As a software developer, you must realize that you're calling the ML devs liars. When you call it "essentially alpha" software, you're stating directly that it is mislabelled and should not be trusted or considered stable. Were you exaggerating, or do you have some reason call it "essentially alpha" even when they call it "stable"?

 

[knightly]

From the ML Wikia Page: "As of September 2009 the software has been downloaded over two thousand times and there have been no reports of damage to the cameras. While this is no guarantee of absolute safety, the stable releases have been tested by beta testers. Most of the risk is to the developers' cameras while testing new features and probing new portions of Canon's firmware. By the time the software moves from development to beta testing it has been installed hundreds or thousands of times."

It's not a "this won't break your camera" promise, it's a "we're pretty sure it'll be ok" type of warning. As a small clump of developers, with a gajillion users, it's almost entirely likely that every possible bug will be hit at some point. The developers just can't possibly account for all of the different ways their users will abuse their software.

Alpha / Beta / Release are really just stages of the development/testing cycle, In this case, you're either in the group testing the brand new software with all the new tweaks in it (alpha), the older software that's being considered for "stable" release (beta), and the most mature version (already long in the tooth and lacking most of the features the users are requesting/ testers are already using in the alphas/betas.