Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests

[Chris Barcellos]

First, as it was expleained to me, the benefit of appling change to the Cineform format is that it is done in 10 bit color space.

Second, you can apply a film look, and then do your adjustment in the NLE. And yes you can change the .lut in post if you want.

Third, the footage on the NLE timeline is affected instantaneously, and you can have the NLE open to monitor changes instantaneously.

By the way, I am not a Cineform shill. But I think it does a great job, and some here are not giving good information about Firstlight does, and you should really find out more about it. Here is a video that explains a bit.

Introduction to FirstLight (part 1) - VIDEO TUTORIAL : cineform support

[Chris Barcellos]

I did this test with my Canon 5D and Canon T2i, comparing, and using CIneform. I used a .lut in Cineform and also added 50% sharpening in post.

Technicolor Cinestyle tests T2i v. Canon 5D Mark II on Vimeo

Note that David Newman has now posted a Cinestyle .look file for download. It looks pretty good. Download it here: http://j.mp/iSidLT

[Olivier Depaep]

Very pleased with the new Technicolor profile but I wouldn't use it for every project.

Technicolor Profile / 5D Mark II on Vimeo

[Pat Reddy]

Chris and Olivier,

Nice footage. It certainly looks like there is a lot of dynamic range with Cinestyle. I'm not seeing a lot of aliasing in either clip. Is Cinestyle helping with that or is that the result of turning down the sharpening in camera?

Pat

[Chris Barcellos]

Hey Pat:

The roofs on the homes across street are exhibiting moire, which is, in my understanding, a type of aliasing. If you down load my uploaded files, it will show up better than what has been rendered by Vimeo...

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Olivier Depaep

Very pleased with the new Technicolor profile but I wouldn't use it for every project.

Why wouldn't you- except in those situation where no post grading is going to be done. My understanding of the Technicolor Cinestyle Picturestyle is it opens up your file closest of any Picture Profile to actual raw images--- as close as what can be attained with the codec.

What we fail to remember sometime, is that anything we add on in the camera (saturation, sharpness, contras, etc.) can be added in post, probably with a greater degree of control, and with better results. In my case, I convert the file to Cineform which actually lets you work in (if their claims are accepted) 10 bit color space. And with use of Firstlight, I can instantaneously apply what I might have wanted in the camera in a simple batch process to the original footage, but with much greater degree of control.

[Olivier Depaep]

Hi Chris,

Since you need to grade every shot I wouldn't use the profile for less expensive projects. Personally I would but sometimes the customer doesn't have the budget.

[Mike Calla]

Originally Posted by Charles Papert

Here's a question for everyone: 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've often wondered if it's one of those weird Quicktime quirks. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Hehe, i think your colour correction workflow is vastly different...in quality of workflow! than most here :)

Up until now I've been working mostly with a slightly burnt in camera color + grading for natural to slightly exaggerated looks and its been fine, but for more extreme pushes of colour i do find it helps to desaturate a bit. but I'll add that i do get my burnt in camera looks first and then desaturate a bit if needed for post.

something else i noticed with respect to the inherent 5D/7D quirks, such as moire or blocking is they seem to disappear more the bigger the screen gets.

I have a little 14 inch jvc crt pro monitor that shows most flaws quite easily, that in the beginning when using the 7D it was driving me crazy when editing/colour correcting - but then i found when even on a 25 to 30 inch screen most of the minor to medium issues were gone, for the most part - on a 50 or 60 inch it feels like a movie theater. Great little cameras!

[Wayne Avanson]

Footage looks great Chis, I am downloading now for a closer look. I like the doorway in shadow across the street and the black bits on the car not being lost to black, as well as the sky not blowing out.

Liking this a lot.

[Nigel Barker]

Technicolor have released a new 3D LUT that is compatible with the LUT Buddy plug-in and Apple's Color & prevents FCP crashing when the clip is rendered

CineStyle, Digital Printer Lights, Filmmaking - Technicolor

Unfortunately FCP still takes an age to render the footage to which you have applied the LUT using LUT Buddy (3-4 minutes for a 20 second clip on my 2.5GHz MBP).

[Jad Meouchy]

Originally Posted by Olivier Depaep

Very pleased with the new Technicolor profile but I wouldn't use it for every project.

Technicolor Profile / 5D Mark II on Vimeo

I'm sorry, maybe it's just me, but I see almost no shadow detail in that video and the highlights look strange. I'm not sure this technicolor profile is to be used for high contrast scenes..

[Sterling Youngman]

Folks,

I must be retarded. I installed the profile on my camera, and LUT Buddy on CS5, but LUT Buddy is looking for a .3dl file. The file that Technicolor provides and says works with LUT Buddy is an .mga file.

Have I missed something? Is there a place to download LUTs that work with LUT Buddy?

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Sterling

[Justin Benn]

I think this profile is a boon but emphasises the need to be considerate of the 5Ds foibles when (thinking about) lighting.

Here are some grabs from a recent trip to Uganda a couple of weeks back, where interviews were conducted in remote refugee settlements, usually outdoors and in a hurry (nobody likes to hang around in near 40 degree heat). What is most impressive to me is how this picture profile (pp) hangs on to darker skin tones and interprets them with apparently more accuracy than previous pps I've used. Clearly, some areas I just needed to blow out, given the huge dynamic range. But there seems to be far less noise in out-of-focus dark/darker backgrounds too and a resistance to macro-blocking.

The first two grabs need colour matching (change in lighting conditions/colour temp from the silo door/opening behind me). The last grab below I thought would be particularly trying. It still needs lifting on the main figure on the right but given how harsh the sun was (see his left arm) I'm surprised there was any tonal definition left in the shadows on his face at all. I could have used an assistant with a reflector for that one.

[Wayne Avanson]

These look good Justin, I wish I could use it next week shooting a doco in the States but I have to match with existing footage and other cameras for the project as much as I can, so I have to play safe with the images I supply as I won't be there for the edit/grade.
Shame…

[Justin Benn]

Thanks Wayne. One thing that struck me about using this pp and the consequent LUT is just how faithful to the original scene the footage was. I think the workflow will be key here. But my impression is that the application of the LUT on a clip has a fairly light footprint on the codec, to which further grading could be usefully applied without noticeable 'destruction' of the codec. Clearly, your project's post-flow will determine what you can do here.

Incidentally, anticipating lots of red tones, I decided to use the 5DtoRGB conversion process on the footage for greater transcoding accuracy of reds to a completely OTT ProRes 4444 editing codec. It may be false and hopelessly erroneous but I theorised that this might help the pp/LUT to reveal its full potential without attempting to unnecessarily cramp or compress it into a ProRes codec with less bandwidth. Anyone else try this?