[Pete Burger]

Yes, you have to have the files on each card, since the program isn’t installed on the camera but loads from the card each time. Which is a good thing imho. If you’re using a card without the files -> No ML.
The release from the ML site didn’t work for me, so I read in a german DSLR forum, that there seems to be a guy who almost every day updates the program and does bug fixing and stuff…

The first one, that worked for me (I have the Canon 1.0.9 firmware installed) was:

https://129.187.43.19/download/magiclantern-2010dec18.550d.fw109.PRERELEASE.deti.zip

Today I updated to:

https://129.187.43.19/download/magiclantern-2010Dec21.550d.fw109.menu.deti.zip

Very fine!

There are a couple of other versions here: https://129.187.43.19/download/

This is how I got things working:

Formatted the card with the PC, low-level formatted it again with the camera, made it bootable with BootCF (unfortunately a windows program and you need the cc3280mt.dll in the same folder as BootCF.exe), copied the unzipped ML files to the card, and voilá Magic Lantern!

Some guys had to do a “firmware update” with the bootable MF card, to get it working. Seems to make the camera booting from the cards.

HTH

[Pete Burger]

Sorry, Richard!

Just became aware of my mistake! Had a conversation with a “Phil” in another forum! And mixed up the names. Have to check, if I called him Richard…

Sorry, again!

[Pete Burger]

If you don’t have, or don’t want to invest in third party software for syncing, there’s a little trick I used quite a couple of times in music videos:
Prepare the playback track with two or three sound-beeps, before the music starts.
In your NLE you can easily sync the different waveforms of each camera by eye with those “sound events”.

For workflow I would recommend the multi camera mode. In Premiere it is limited to four cameras.

[Pete Burger]

Audio with the T2i (and 7D) is a bit tricky for two reasons:

1.) Built-in microphones
2.) Audio gain control

Of course you can plug-in an external mic, but you still don’t have any control over volume because of the AGC unless you use “juicedlink” (I think that’s the name…).
With the T2i you can use the Magic Lantern software, that provides manual control, which is a cool thing, but I personally like to use extrernal sound recording, that’ll give me more control over audio.

The 60D has manual audio control, with the 5D I’m not sure. But there is a Magic Lantern Version available for the 5D

[Pete Burger]

Got it up and running for three days now. Haven’t had time for extensive testing, but for what I have seen and tried until now, I must say, it’s a great piece of software! Absolutely must-have!

Had to try a couple of versions, since the menu didn’t show up, when I hit the trashcan-button (seems to be a known issue), but eventually it worked.

[Pete Burger]

Yes, with CS5 there should be no problem. I’m still working with CS3 and have to transcode, but a friend of mine has CS5 and doesn’t have any problems.

All the best!

[Pete Burger]

I personally (for my private projects) use the Zoom-H1, which is very affordable. You can plug in external microphones or use the built-in ones, which are quite good, but very sensitive to wind.
For bigger/commercial projects we sometimes use the Zoom-H4 with appropriate microphones.

I have a T2i myself and wasn’t happy at all with the audio. Mostly because of the small built-in mic and the auto-gain-control. Same problem with the 7D, that my working-partner uses.

Of course you can plug in external mics and for T2i you can get the Magic-Lantern firmware, that’ll allow you manual gain control.
The 60D has manual gain control built-in.

There are two great sites with information for any kind of VDSLR-work:

https://dslrhd.com/
https://nofilmschool.com/dslr

Helped me a lot.

All the best!

Edit: Forgot to mention that you can plug in the Zoom-H1 into the camera and use it as microphone as well, if you want to avoid syncing in post

[Pete Burger]

There is no big difference betweet the 7D and the T2i, concerning the picture quality. In lowlight with ISO higher than 800, the T2i is a bit noisier.

[Pete Burger]

You’ll most definitly need a bunch of equipment.
There was an interesting discussion here recently:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/280/3233

The Canons can hold about 50min of video on a 16GB card.
Clips can be 12min (or 4GB) max. Then you have to start a new one.

Audio is a big problem. I use an external recorder and sync in post.

[Pete Burger]

Assuming, that you are aware of the differences in shooting (focus, stabilizing, not very good audio with the built-in mic, etc…), I’ll just talk about editing:

Best solution might be, to change from Premiere CS4 to Premiere CS5, since with CS5 you can work with the native files from your DSLR.

I used to work with the exact same hardware setup as you (but with Premiere CS3) with VDSLR footage quite a time, so I think I can confirm that it will work as well, but you’ll have to change your workflow.

First thing is: You won’t be able to edit your DSLR footage natively in Premiere CS4.
So you have to transcode your footage to a more “editable” format like Cineform or the AVID DNxHD codec. You can do this with MPEG Streamclip.

Second thing is: Buy lots and lots of HDDs 😉 And very big ones. The transcoded files need a lot (and I mean A LOT) of space.

With a not so fast machine like yours, you might want to consider proxy-editing. Works pretty well in Premiere (convert your original files to SD, edit in a sd-project, open your sd-project in an hd-project, set the sd-files to offline and relink with the hd-files). It’s a bit time consuming, but works even on slower machines.

Hope this helps a bit