Blackmagic Forum

Seeing how much life the Magic Lantern community has infused into the aging Canon dslr's and also seeing how many folks on the forums would love to see tons of new features added to their BM camera, it would be awesome if there was a way for people to start hacking the BM firmware. As I understand it, magic lantern doesn't actually replace the firmware but runs alongside it. Any chance of seeing this happen Black Magic?

Magic Lantern added audio metering, frame guides, battery percentage and of course raw video now to canon's DSLR's. Black magic could see a huge community of hackers get behind their cameras if they let people hack the firmware.

I was wondering that too actually. I assume because the number of Canon DSLR owners is masssssssive compared to the number of Blackmagic camera owners, it makes sense for them to put their efforts into where it'll be most used.

Even Nikon firmware hacks are almost non-existent (you can remove the 30 minute video restriction and use non-brand batteries are the only two hacks I know of so far).

So to be honest I don't like our chances. And Blackmagic firmware might be encrypted, I'm not sure.

Canon never opened their firmware for hacking but sometimes the Canon programmers leave hints that may be aimed at the Magic Lantern team. Although they don't try to fight it either, except for their 1d series. They've been un-officially quoted that they would 'bring the might of its legal team' if anyone tries to mod the 1d series firmware.

Also, what helped was that Canon released CHDK which gave the magic lantern team insight into how the canon firmware worked. I don't think any of the other camera manufacturers released anything like that.

woodybrando wrote:Also, what helped was that Canon released CHDK which gave the magic lantern team insight into how the canon firmware worked. I don't think any of the other camera manufacturers released anything like that.

As far as I know Canon has nothing to do with CHDK, it's "just" a group of firmware hackers, like Magic Lantern.

If BMD released open-source firmware they'd have to put a not officially supported clause in the t's and c's. Other than that I don't see why they couldn't hacking made the gh panny cameras what they are now.

Thx, Christian yeah I wasn't sure where CHDK came from I just remember Vitaliy, the guy that hacked the gh2, said that CHDK was why the magic lantern team had gotten so far with the Canon firmware hacks.

I e-mailed them about this three days ago. They'd probably have to cut out a lot of the modules that make the camera work, like the ProRes and DNXHd encoders, perhaps the debayering processor too. It'd also be a little more complex compared to the Canons because the Canons use an ARM+ASIC/DSP combination whereas the BMCCs are FPGA-based (it's like an ASIC that you can modify).

...but if they did open-source it it would be amazing. And you could replace most of the missing modules with open source code from projects like FFmpeg and dcraw.

Aaron Scheiner wrote:...but if they did open-source it it would be amazing. And you could replace most of the missing modules with open source code from projects like FFmpeg and dcraw.

This could be Grant Pettys proudest day then - letting others do the work which they're seemingly not capable of - for whatever reasons.

letting others do the work which they're seemingly not capable of

A good point... but I always enjoy being able to modify the software on my equipment... and then they could further reduce the price of their cameras .

Aaron Scheiner wrote:A good point... but I always enjoy being able to modify the software on my equipment... and then they could further reduce the price of their cameras .

Haha, if they listen to you they might release cheaper cameras with only a barebone-firmware on it...
beware!

I don't think they need me to do that ... just a press release via e-mail will do.

If they are honest about their whole
"cheap amazing cameras because we just love our community so damn much"
standpoint.

Then it only seems they should not allow for alterations to be made, but strive toward it as a goal.