Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests

[Chris Barcellos]

Thats right, it does not....

[Steve Nelson]

I confirmed the lut does work in Color Finesse 3 in After Effects.

[John Vincent]

Hey guys, few novice type questions if you please:

1. Shot with it in a dark basement. Clearly it helps in bright daylight, but I'm not sure you should use something like this for dark conditions - or am I way off base?

2. Much more difficult to focus - I thought I broke my lens at first. Any way to avoid this (other then having a different style programed in)?

3. If you're happy with the basic image coming from the camera shot with "normal" styles, should you still consider using a super-flat style?

Thanks -

[Jad Meouchy]

Originally Posted by Charles Papert

I have often found that while these cameras have that "crushed blacks" look to them, the footage will easily open up in color correction to where it "should be" without any penalty (macroblocking or noise). I know people SAY that will happen, but my experience is otherwise.

I agree and I'm not sure what is the point of shooting low contrast and then crushing back the blacks in post. You are always better off getting your look in camera or optically. If your intention of shooting low contrast is to crush the blacks in post, then you will actually decrease the picture quality than if you had just shot with crushed blacks from the beginning.

Either underexpose to save highlights or overexpose to save shadows. I frequently shoot a stop under with these cameras because the shadow detail is recoverable but the highlights are not.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Jon Fairhurst

I agree that the LUT isn't technically required. Any picture style will provide 8-bits of information on the card. The key point is to decode this properly. In other words, don't use Quicktime or any NLE that relies on QT for its h.264 decoding. All you need to do is decode the 8-bits properly into a 16-bit or 32-bit NLE at which time you perform grading. For even better results, insert a noise reduction plugin right before your color corrector as it can smooth out gradients and provide an output with more than 8-bit resolution. (Yes, the resolution is "fake", but can work really well on smooth surfaces like the sky or a balloon.)

My workflow is to transcode to Cineform for my initial edit. Once I know which clips I will use, I process the original MOVs in AE in a deep-bit mode with NeatVideo and Colorista II. I render the result to Cineform and replace my initial Cineform files. Open up the NLE and your edited footage is now graded. Continue editing, compositing, and re-grading to taste. Render a final Cineform master. Encode to your delivery formats and distribute.

I can't wait to try Cinestyle on a real project!

John, how long does it take you to process a minute of video with this workflow? I find NeatVideo really slow to render & only use it when I really need to rescue some noisy video. The idea of applying it to everything doesn't seem practical.

[Leo Baker]

Hello Chris,

I am getting that same problem loading the Technicolour s-curve LUT into Cineform's Firstlight and getting just red when I apply the LUT. I have reported this to Cineform Support and they are testing it out.

Leo

[Jon Fairhurst]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

John, how long does it take you to process a minute of video with this workflow? I find NeatVideo really slow to render & only use it when I really need to rescue some noisy video. The idea of applying it to everything doesn't seem practical.

You're right. It's slow. I don't use this on fast turnaround stuff or stuff that doesn't need strong grading. In fact, I wouldn't use Cinestyle for fast turnaround, natural looking stuff either. Just get it close in the camera, transcode to Cineform, adjust levels when needed for matching, add a bit of sharpening, and deliver.

But when I want strong grading and best results, I go with the MOV -> NR-> 16-bits -> Colorista II -> Cineform route.

Speed is one of the reasons that I do a rough edit first. I only correct the footage that is used in the final project - not everything that is shot.

[Chris Barcellos]

Leo, thanks. Can you PM or post if you hear of a resolution.

Jad: My view: Red and all the other major digital film cameras shoot a low contrast image to extend the camera latitude. This is well known. All the camera is doing when you increase saturation, contrast, or sharpness in the camera is locking in potentially image damaging treatment, that will make color color correction more difficult.

Jon:

This is the great thing about Firstlight, and the applications of .luts. You should try the Cineform trial of Neo.

Work flow is simple. Shoot your footage in Technicolor Cinestyle, or other low contrast style. Transcode your footage to Cineform as you normally would. Take all of your footage into Firstlight, and process it to conform to your basic film requirements. .luts are there to give treatments to meet certain film stocks. You can adjust any number of factors and create your own .lut. There is no rendering, the change to each file treated is instantaneous. Then you go to your editor and edit as normal. If you want to change what you did in First Light, you can have it running in background, and synch it to your editor.

[Jon Fairhurst]

I'm not sure that a LUT workflow would work in all cases. In general, I want to first adjust each image to correct for exposure differences and then perform any shaping after that. A LUT would only work well where the exposure is what you want up front.

Also, can the LUT be customized to the level of true grading? Often, I want to push my darker colors towards blue/teal/green and the lighter colors toward yellow/orange/red. And I usually want to do that after any re-lighting (push faces, pull backgrounds).

For fast turnaround, natural stuff, a LUT sounds great. For cinematic work where you finesse each image, I don't see the benefit - unless it can be applied at the end of the chain and unless the tools allow it to be designed to bend the darks toward one color and the lights toward another.

[Osmany Tellez]

Originally Posted by Chris Barcellos

Work flow is simple. Shoot your footage in Technicolor Cinestyle, or other low contrast style. Transcode your footage to Cineform as you normally would. Take all of your footage into Firstlight, and process it to conform to your basic film requirements. .luts are there to give treatments to meet certain film stocks. You can adjust any number of factors and create your own .lut. There is no rendering, the change to each file treated is instantaneous. Then you go to your editor and edit as normal. If you want to change what you did in First Light, you can have it running in background, and synch it to your editor.

Chris... i never research this before..but i'm curious now. I'll look into it but would like to ask you first. Can FCP work with cineform files? what do they make avi?

I'm reading of all the destructive way that FCP deals with 8bit footage and wish I knew more about it before to find a better route. I've been using Prores and for easy to do. I would change to PP now but I'm thinking that the new FCX is fixing most of the important issues now and adding some good ones..so I'm stick with it.

meanwhile..wondering if using cineform in FCP is a good way to go...or stay with my proRes.

Thanks

[Osmany Tellez]

also..to answer some previews question.

the real advantage to shoot with cinestyle is first to get a better H.264 compresion out of the camera...and then also get more dinamic range.....

i read it somewhere and it makes sense.

will quote him but can find him now...

[Chris Barcellos]

I don't use Macs, but Cineform does have a MaC Version, from their site:

"With versions for both Windows and Mac, CineForm’s Neo delivers a real-time digital intermediate workflow, even up to 4K spatial resolution, that is compatible with most NLEs — including from Adobe, Apple, Avid, and Sony — enabling cross-platform compatibility for 2D and 3D editing and effects applications that has never before existed. A CineForm DI workflow begins with the underlying CineForm Intermediate compression acclaimed for its high visual fidelity, and which is used routinely as the mastering format for 2D and 3D film, televison, and archive workflows. "

Cineform Neo4K

GoPro bought out Cineform, and now Changed name from Neo4k to straight Neo. For $ 299 you apparently get all features that originally cost $500. For Jon and others, should be an upgrade from NeoScene too.

[Greg Fiske]

Get magic bullets lut buddy:
Red Giant Software: Downloads - Free Products Download Form

I'm going to run more test tonight, but still seemed to be some grey in skin tones.

[Evan Donn]

Originally Posted by Jon Fairhurst

For fast turnaround, natural stuff, a LUT sounds great. For cinematic work where you finesse each image, I don't see the benefit - unless it can be applied at the end of the chain and unless the tools allow it to be designed to bend the darks toward one color and the lights toward another.

My impression was always that LUTs are designed to allow you to shoot a flat image then edit proxies with the LUT applied so that you aren't cutting with muddy grey footage - then the colorist can go back and do a proper grade from the log-encoded source (possibly using the LUT as a starting point). From that standpoint the First Light workflow makes sense, in that it's not baking in a change to your footage, you can cut with something approximating the final look but still retain plenty of info for your grade. But if the workflow is to shoot technicolor, then render everything through a LUT and end up with contrasty footage you might as well just shoot that way in the first place.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Evan, that makes sense. I could use that on my first "cuts only" pass, then I would still bring the MOVs into AE and apply the magic. I would encode from AE to Cineform without any processing.

Still, I could also apply an effect to the master output of the NLE for quick cuts. I guess it's a tradeoff between CPU load and wallet load, since I don't own Neo. ;)