Canon DSLR Footage 10-Bit Colorspace Up-conversion Tutorial on Vimeo

To do a 16-bit export, select RGB+Alpha and Trillion+ colors. The video shows an 8-bit export from After Effects, but otherwise is a cool workflow.

Video is now updated with the correct 16 bit settings. Thanks David!

Martin,

Thank you! I'm starting to edit a big project and I will be using your workflow. One question I have is why did you not use the sharpening within Neat Video? I've always found that to work well since the program seems to know not to sharpen the noise.

Thanks, Marc

Thank you Marc.

I found that sharpening within Neat Video did sharpen some unwanted artifact on low light (really noisy) shots but that might be me doing something wrong in Neat Video...

Best of luck with your project!

Marc, thanks for sharing! Great job.

Martin,

I did a comparison of Neat video sharpening vs. AE and you're right, AE looks better. What version of AE are you using? I'm still with CS3 and Neat Video is a real render hog. Are you using the 64bit CS5? If so, is it much faster?

Regards, Marc

Yes i'm on 64Bit CS5 and it's pretty fast specially when you render on multiple cores.

Thanks, this might give me an excuse to upgrade :)

Martin,

I put together a cheat sheet of your tutorial. Thanks again.


1. Convert to Cineform
2. Set AE to 16 bit in project settings
3. Add clip to composition
4. Apply Neat Video noise reduction process (enable ‘very low freq’)
5. Apply ‘blur & sharpen>unsharp mask’ (default settings)
6. Apply ‘blur & sharpen>sharpen’ (12)
7. Apply ‘noise and grain>noise’ (set amount to 0.4)
8. Composition>Make Movie
9. Output module settings:
• Format: Cineform AVI
• Channels: RGB+Alpha
• Depth: Trillions of colors+
• Format options: Set as desired
• Enable audio output if you want audio
10. Render project

Good stuff, here's some additional notes:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Convert to Cineform

2. Set AE to 16 bit in project settings

3. Add clip to composition

4. Apply Neat Video noise reduction process (enable ‘very low freq’)

* Very low freq is for very dark noisy shots like the one shown in the demo. If you are cleaning up well exposed footage you don't really have to check that unless there's large gradients (like a blue sky).


5. Apply ‘blur & sharpen>unsharp mask’ (default settings)
6. Apply ‘blur & sharpen>sharpen’ (12)

*These settings are to be adjusted to your need I really don't recommend "12" of sharpening on every shots. Unsharp mask default of 50 is a good starting point but again adjust to your needs.

Sharpening could also be done when doing final grading in your NLE. It would be better to do it at that point so you can adjust sharpness for each shot and go back and forth for matching the look of your sequences. In Premiere CS5 you have access to the same sharpening tools as in After Effects.

In extreme cases of noise reduction where 1 part of the frame is well exposed and the rest not so much I recommend cleaning up the shot and then dragging another instance of the same footage but with no processing and masking the well exposed parts (add some feather around your mask to soften it up). That way you clean up the bad compression blocking but you retain the original sharpness of your well exposed elements. That might require roto if your subject is moving but it doesn't need to be super detailed roto...


7. Apply ‘noise and grain>noise’ (set amount to 0.4)
8. Composition>Make Movie
9. Output module settings:
• Format: Cineform AVI
• Channels: RGB+Alpha
• Depth: Trillions of colors+
• Format options: Set as desired
• Enable audio output if you want audio
10. Render project

Great additions, keep the notes coming if you discover more :)

I am considering doing another tutorial on how to restore a practically unusable shot to a flawless looking shot ready for CC but it's a lot of work to put together... maybe next month.

Best,

Martin

In regards to the sharpening in your editor as opposed to AE would this still apply when editing in Vegas (8bit) or would I get better quality by sharpening in AE (16bit)? Thanks

Im not familiar with Vegas but I saw on their website the information below. It looks like you can work in 10bit.

---------------------------- from the specs of Vegas 10

Enhanced 32-bit floating point video levels mode designed to work like 8-bit mode but with the precision needed for 10-bit and higher sources and render formats
----------------------------

With that said I really don't know anything about Vegas.

I never use the 32bit mode because it's incredibly slow and I also use certain plugins that are only 8bit compatible. So it sounds like initial sharpening in AE is a good way to go. Look forward to your other tutorial when you have the time.

Marc

I've used the neatvideo workflow since back in the days of hdv.
Here's a few things I've picked up along the way...

1) The virtualdub version allows for batch processing.

2) When deadlines are tight, you can just edit the native footage (which is a breeze in CS5) and process your whole edited piece before adding titles. As long as you're only removing compression artifacts and not denoising the footage, an umbrella setting should cover a broad range of shots, even when digital zoom is used for reframing or different sources used (see #3)

3) This is VERY IMPORTANT. As you only want to get rid of blocking, banding and such, turn noise reduction to 0% for high frequency and 15-25% for mid frequency noise. This helps preserve detail and also helps avoid banding without introducing extra noise.

4) To get a good umbrella profile for processing fully edited material, try using a good shot representative of most of your material for your base noise profile and use manual fine tuning with a few different shots to tweak it.

I hope this helps you guys save some time. As I said, in most instances, an umbrella profile to process your edited program looks just as good and for a fraction of the time it takes to do it the other way. I'd say leave the shot by shot processing for your masterpiece exclusively. ;)

Martin... thanks for the tut... works well.
can you give us more detail on the GSP setup you used in first light.
also, for your flat setting in your camera, which settings are you using... I have seen a couple of setups.. yours seems to be working well for you..

Thanks again.. this is a good thread... thanks for all the inputs from everyone...

Great tutorial, thank you. What is step 7 for?
7. Apply ‘noise and grain>noise’ (set amount to 0.4)

Is this to apply a film grain look? At the end, are those presets included in first light? Or did you develop those yourself?

Marc... If you decide to upgrade to Win 7 64bit I would make a suggestion for you...
Get new hard drives and do a native load... the reason I say this is from my experience Win 7 64bit is a good upgrade, but, I have many many add-ons/plugins for my Aftereffects and Premire Pro that have not been ported over to 64bit yet... and even the ones that are being ported over the cost is not cheap to update them.

So that I won't loose them I now have to have two complete hard drive setups... one setup with Win 32bit that has all of the add-ons/plugins.. and another setup with Win 64bit that is slowly but surely getting all of the added software as its getting released....

Of course if you can afford it, the best solution would be to keep the win 32bit computer as is, and get a updated computer that has all the new hardware and the 64bit setup...

hope this helps... it would be a shame if you updated your existing system to 64bit and found out some of your software wont work on it...

Hi Ray,

The camera settings i use regularly are Neutral, 0 sharpness, -4 contrast, -2 saturation and 0 color.

For the GSP setup i used a profile that i am currently testing from Marvel Cine.(3.4 beta)
I tested their 3.3 and skin tones were orange and not fun to look at but the 3.4 beta seems really good so far. I know they have officially released 3.4 but i have not look at it yet, still testing 3.4beta. I never used the older Marvels flat styles because they rendered orange skin tones.

In FirstLight i used a 5298 film curve, 1.149 in Gamma / Blue and a little contrast.

Here's the download link for the beta that i used for the GSP setup:

http://mediatube.marvelsfilm.com/marvels_cine_v34beta.zip

Thanks Martin... some good reading over there... if we could just get them to write that anti-moire plug in
to work in AE :-)

Looks like I need to read up on how to apply the DSP style in First Light... :-)

Great tutorial, thank you. What is step 7 for?
7. Apply ‘noise and grain>noise’ (set amount to 0.4)

Is this to apply a film grain look? At the end, are those presets included in first light? Or did you develop those yourself?


He's putting that in there for preventative measure of banding/artifacts... normally for 8bit footage but doesn't seem to hurt the 16bit in his Tutorial... David says you can skip it if you wanted....

Thanks Ray, I'm actually using Win 7 64bit. What I am considering is upgrading to CS5 for the 64bit capability.

Marc... If you decide to upgrade to Win 7 64bit I would make a suggestion for you...
Get new hard drives and do a native load... the reason I say this is from my experience Win 7 64bit is a good upgrade, but, I have many many add-ons/plugins for my Aftereffects and Premire Pro that have not been ported over to 64bit yet... and even the ones that are being ported over the cost is not cheap to update them.

So that I won't loose them I now have to have two complete hard drive setups... one setup with Win 32bit that has all of the add-ons/plugins.. and another setup with Win 64bit that is slowly but surely getting all of the added software as its getting released....

Of course if you can afford it, the best solution would be to keep the win 32bit computer as is, and get a updated computer that has all the new hardware and the 64bit setup...

hope this helps... it would be a shame if you updated your existing system to 64bit and found out some of your software wont work on it...

It is not a preventive step. It's an essential step to repair the new 16-bit information. You won't see it on well exposed shots that much but on underexposed shots you will not believe it when you add the noise. It's like magic, it just flatten all banding.

Thanks Ray, I'm actually using Win 7 64bit. What I am considering is upgrading to CS5 for the 64bit capability.

You will not regret it.

I know they have officially released 3.4 but i have not look at it yet, still testing 3.4beta .
Where is the link to the official release ? haven't found it...

I dont have the option in AE cs5 for trillions of colors. It is greyed out. I can only go with milions of colors.

Is this because I am using Cineform Neo HD?

Also, for a "High" quality export is it still correct to put the quality slider to 50%?

Brian,

You are using the wrong export option. Select CineForm AVI, and select RGB+A, then trillions+ will be presented.

Thanks for the quick response.

However, (on a mac in AE) I choose the following:

Render settings: Best

Output Module:
Format: Quicktime
Channels: RGB+A
Format>Video Codec: Cineform HD/4K/3D

Depth: I can still only choose "millions+" All others are greyed out.

Brian,

There is a CS5 configuration file that you will need to modify, we are trying to get the installer to do it, but Adobe's installer overwrite the changes. Working with Adobe on this.

In the this folder
/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/

edit MediaCoreQTCodecRulesCS5.xml

Before </MediaCoreQTCodecRules>

Add:
<QTCodec codec='CFHD' vendor='****' platform='mactel' direction='encode' versionlow='0x00000' versionhigh='*' gammatag='false' cvbuffertag='0' deepdecodefourcc='b64a' decodefourcc='argb' />
<QTCodec codec='CFHD' vendor='****' platform='mactel' direction='decode' versionlow='0x00000' versionhigh='*' gammatag='false' cvbuffertag='0' deepdecodefourcc='b64a' decodefourcc='argb' />
<QTCodec codec='CFHD' vendor='****' platform='windows' direction='encode' versionlow='0x00000' versionhigh='*' gammatag='false' cvbuffertag='0' deepdecodefourcc='b64a' decodefourcc='argb' />
<QTCodec codec='CFHD' vendor='****' platform='windows' direction='decode' versionlow='0x00000' versionhigh='*' gammatag='false' cvbuffertag='0' deepdecodefourcc='b64a' decodefourcc='argb' />

Now your CineForm I/O will be 16-bit.

Thanks. That is working great now.

In PPro do I need to do anything other than turn on "Render maximum qualitty"?

Also, is it right to just have it render I frames? That is the default that I left it at.

And, back on topic. I assume that doing the steps outlined in the top post are great for getting the footage ready for work in First Light, but equally you could use the same steps (noise reduction and then sharpening) on any source footage, and then continue to add other effects or color correction before exporting and it would have the same effect of reducing banding etc. before the other effects get applied right?

That is correct, as we have a custom exporter in Premiere Pro, no need to worry about QuickTime defaults.

David,
Sorry, I only have neat video for premier. Just to confirm, to get 16bit color depth and trillions of colors, I just use the normal cineform preset when exporting.

The contrast and saturation settings are very different between the two clips.

Sorry, but the 'new' clip is not 'True' 10bit.

Great video! Cineform should add similar processing under advanced settings to their HDLink. That would be a serious advantage over Pro Res transcoders.

I'd love to find the best way to massage my EX3 + nanoFlash 100Mb L-GOP because the higher bitrate records more noise, and these EXcams have a bit of noise.

Just Bringing this thread back up to the top as its probably more relevant now that we are seeing folks working with Cineform and the Technicolor Style...

Is there a way we could get this to be a sticky...??

I have begun using a similar workflow with Neat Video, Premiere CS5 and Cineform. However, even with my 12-core HP Z800, taking 280Mb I-frame nanoFlash files and exporting to Cineform 444 & Film Scan 2 takes roughly 15 mins of rendering per 1 minute of video mostly due to Neat Video.

I would absolutely love a program that combines excellent noise reduction (like NV) and Cineform exporting with GPU acceleration. Neat Video costs $100 and I would pay double if it used GPU acceleration and even more if it was combined with a program like HDLink. However, I need the ability to export using Cineform's highest quality settings, 444 and Film Scan 2.

10 bit makes a world of difference when grading in After Effects or Resolve, and 444 adds just a bit of extra precision. However, I guess 444 isn't that big of a deal but I would like the option when needed rather than having to export through Premiere, which takes considerably more of my time compared to HDLink.

FYI, using Neat Video on 280Mb I-frame footage from an EX3 and exporting to Cineform 444 Film Scan 2 makes a large difference in file size. I compared the size with NV enabled and disabled, and with NV enabled, the size was 1/3 the size of NV disabled.

Is there an advantage to transcoding to CF 444 or even CF 4444 over cf422?

I'm striving for quality over size and space, so that's not a huge issue for me.

Love the codec.

Not happy about the lack of support for OSX LION, can't transcode unless I find a friend to install the trial on. Also had to do some xml editing to get after effects to render out the codec cineform.

Sorry got to complain. Can't have these obstacles in this economy :)

Still love the codec, and I'm getting into first light although nodes / mask would be nice.. maybe it's just meant as a preliminary color tool / looks.

Thanks

Good news - there is a new version of neat video - v3 - out now. It harnesses CUDA acceleration and GREATLY speeds up render times. Neat Video - best noise reduction for digital video (http://www.neatvideo.com/)

Now to pair it with one of the upcoming dual Xeon 8 core workstations for 16 cores + cude - surely that will get us close to realtime? ;-)

Arash, Lion support is either out now or about to be. Contact support to Lion compatibility today.

Quick question about the workflow - do you need to convert to cineform before bringing it into AE? I know the issue is the original footage is 8 bit 4:2:0 but once in AE doesnt everything including effects handle at 16bpc? Meaning skipping the first cineform conversion would not only speed up the workflow BUT give you a slightly better end result as its one less transcode?

I got an email from cineform support about the LION issue with a download link. Now it's transcoding. Thanks.

Also would anyone recommend transcoding 5d footage to CF444 or CF4444 rather than 422? Does anybody do this?

B...Now your CineForm I/O will be 16-bit.

I'm getting a strange result from AE CS5.5 following this workflow.... looks like half the screen is severely distorted (see attached).

System used: 12-core MacPro OSX10.6.8, AE CS 5.5, NeatVideo AE Plug-in V3, Neo3D (Cineform codec V 7.4.1.602).

Any ideas?

A question for support.

A question for support.

Submitted.

I did notice, in a post from Craig Davidson, that he recommended setting decodefourcc='2yuv' instead of 'argb' in MediaCoreQTRulesCS5.xml for the Cineform entries.

Could this be a factor? Thanks.

unlikely. 'argb' on the Mac typically has the gamma wrong so we try to avoid it.