Tim's Superwide scene file. How to use it ?

[Fabrice Hoffmann]

Hello Everybody.

I first want to thank Tim for his scene files. I all the time work with the DSC CDM28 scene on my hd251.

Thinking on massive color correction for future projects, I wish to understand how to use the Superwide scene. I use Final Cut Studio, so i can color correct with Color and Magic Bullet Looks.

From the images i can shoot with Superwide, how can i go back first to real color (because applying the look i want) ? How can you say to the software : you see this color as a "light blue", but no, it's a "strong blue".

Do you have the color informations of each color that can be seen on the DSC chart, and do some matching in the software ? How all this works ?

Thanks,

Fabrice.

[Liam Hall]

Fabrice,

Tim's scene file is designed to get as much information down on tape as is possible. Decisions over the final look should then be made in post. What you are describing is secondary color correction. It's a breeze to do in Apple Color or with the 3-way color corrector in FCP - just use the 'limit' function to isolate the color range and luminosity that you wish to affect and off you go.

[Tim Dashwood]

Thank you for the kind words Fabrice.

I concur with Liam.

You could also shoot a few seconds of a 18% gray card (very inexpensive) for each camera setup and easily correct the white point with the eye dropper color-match tool in the 3-way Color Corrector. There are similar tools found in Apple's Color and Avid Symphony.

Keep in mind that my DSC CDM28 setting is just a starting point to get you in the zone and if you want precisely accurate reproduction in-camera you really need a scope on-set. I cannot guarantee that each camera will react precisely the same way to that setting because of other minute analog calibrations made by JVC engineers during QC. No two cameras are going to give you the EXACT same response, but that's what color correction is for, right?

The DSC CDM28 setting was created using a ChromaDuMonde 28R, a HD250 and my Magni NTSC scopes connected to a downconverted live output as well as the HDV signal connected to DV Rack. The 709 and 601 responses differed slightly (as expected) so I favoured NTSC (the lowest common denominator) since almost everything most of us shoot eventually finds its way to standard def DVD or broadcast. Hopefully this means you won't have the NTSC-illegal reds you may find if you only use DV Rack and HDV/1394 to calibrate to a DSC chart.
It was actually pretty difficult to fine tune the matrix to get as close as possible to the theoretically "perfect" response as shown on DSC's website. The 28 colours are very helpful and I would recommend that anyone in the market for a DSC chart try to buy the most colours you can afford. A 6 or 12 colour chart is not going to help you zone in on the some of the problem colours in the blue/magenta zone as well as 24 colours will. The vectorscope may look correct with less colours, but in reality certain shades may be way off. Michael Kent at DSC wrote a great article about this recently. I'll post a link if I can find it.
I also want to stress that calibrating to a DSC chart (even a Toni with cavity black) does not necessarily mean you will be capturing the 'maximum' dynamic range possible on the camera. It might be close, but any front lit chart has its own maximum dynamic range and many cameras can exceed it.

The goal of the Superwide setting is very different and really boils down to utilizing manual knee, a lowered cine gamma and black stretch to produce a low contrast image that can offer maximum manipulation in colour correction. Please consider it a proof-of-concept or a learning tool and experiment with knee, gamma and black stretch for your scenes and then fine-tune your colour with the matrix.

I've attached some before/after samples of the low-contrast in-camera capture (left side) and final color correct (right) using the "Ciné Wide" setting on an HD100. These are from a film I shot called Bull. You can see how the low-contrast image is not very pleasing to the eye, but gives us lots of room to play in post, even with white furniture, white wardrobe and windows.

[Fabrice Hoffmann]

Thanks for this detailed answer Tim, and sorry for my delayed one (i was on something else).

I understand that Superwide is intented to give you the best for color correction.

Since now i only color corrected my footage with the 3-way color, just to correct the black, or the "normaly" too yellowish color of my old xl1. Few month ago, i started to use Magic bullet looks' presets (and i'm more than a newbie with Color). The reason why i wanted to know if there was a way to go from Superwide to "real life" color is : because Magic Bullet preset's are built to be use from some "standard real life color" images, i thought the good way to use this software with your scene was to first color correct my images from Superwide to real life color, then apply the Magic Bullet looks.

Am i wrong with my workflow ? I understand that if i can do my correction from Superwide directly with Color, it's the best. But from now i can't do this.

I will probably try to use Magic Bullet directly on Superwide's images, but i wanted to know if color correcting to "real life color" first makes sense ?

Thanks,

Fabrice.

[Tim Dashwood]

Originally Posted by Fabrice Hoffmann

...i thought the good way to use this software with your scene was to first color correct my images from Superwide to real life color, then apply the Magic Bullet looks.

Am i wrong with my workflow ? ...

That should work. FCP uses a top-down hierarchy so the topmost filter will be applied first and the second filter will be applied to the result (and so on.)