Sony FDR-AX100 and Filmconvert

[Larry Secrest]

Wondering if anybody has used Filmconvert with this cam?

[Peter Siamidis]

I do, I've been using them together for many months now. There is no setting in Film Convert for the AX100 and I had emailed them about that many months ago, but it looked like they had no plans to support it at the time so they suggested that I just experiment with other camera profiles to see which works best, which is what I did. I have the camera setup as Sony/FS700/Standard, and for film stock I like FJ 8543 VD at 60% with zero film grain, but that's all personal preference really.

[Larry Secrest]

Thanks for your answer.
Are you happy with the results you get?

[Peter Siamidis]

Yeah I'm very happy with it. I basically wanted a quick and easy way to give my footage a unique look and Film Convert works well for that without being excessive or too over the top.

[Larry Secrest]

I downloaded the trial version and frankly it just does stuff I could do myself in Vegas using what's available in the suite to color correct. I think like the old magic bullet look, it's a waste of time.

[James Manford]

Agreed. Most of the effects can be pulled off with simple tools already available in your NLE.

Magic Bullet Looks ... I have it. But it's laggy and live preview slows my comp down big time. But I believe a newer version that doesn't slow down the PC has come out. But I genuinely can't be bothered to upgrade as I never use it anyway. (Purchased it ages ago thinking I would use it all the time ...)

[Peter Siamidis]

I guess you guys are much better at color grading than me, I could not get that same look with the stock tools as I do with FIlmconvert, but that's just me. Same with my Sony A7s footage that I also use it with. I tried Magic Bullet stuff as well but it was a bit too over the top for my needs.

Can you guys share your stock presets to get that same look as with some of the Film convert presets? If I can get the same look without needed Filmconvert on both my Sony A7s and AX100 footage then cool I would do that but I just couldn't do it myself, it just never looked the same to me.

[Peter Siamidis]

Originally Posted by Peter Siamidis

I guess you guys are much better at color grading than me, I could not get that same look with the stock tools as I do with FIlmconvert, but that's just me. Same with my Sony A7s footage that I also use it with. I tried Magic Bullet stuff as well but it was a bit too over the top for my needs.

Can you guys share your stock presets to get that same look as with some of the Film convert presets? If I can get the same look without needed Filmconvert on both my Sony A7s and AX100 footage then cool I would do that but I just couldn't do it myself, it just never looked the same to me.

Ok so I gather no one will reply to this and thats ok, but can you guys tell me if your Filmconvert type look achieved with stock color correction tools also work globally across all types of scenes? I've had people share their presets with me in the past and aside from them never really quite looking as good as Filmconvert does, the other general problem with them is that they never work globally. What's nice with Filmconvert is that since it just emulates film stock and takes into account sensor type, picture profile type, camera type, etc, it always works regardless of what the scene looks like, so if its a bright scene, dark scene, indoors, outdoors, muted colors, pop colors, etc, it always works. With stock color correction presets I've never seen this be the case and you always have to fiddle with settings. This let me add Filmconvert to my scripts, so in one script I can do all the common tasks I do to my footage like adding a header, watermark, fades, etc and add Filmconvert with a preset. This saves me mountains of time because there is no fiddling required like with stock color tools.

That's kind of the point of Filmconvert and why many of the movie guys recommended to me, and hence why I use it now because it's plug and play, it works on every type of scene and is a huge time/money saver. But if you guys have achieved the same thing with stock color correction tools then I'd be curious to know. To date I've never met anyone that has been able to do that because of the limits of how the stock color correction tools work, meaning it's inevitable that they may look ok for one scene but look poor for another and hence require more fiddling and tweaking. I don't have time for that which is why I made the switch.

Anyways just let me know if you have achieved that, no need to reveal your presets if you don't want to but I'd love to know if anyone has somehow managed to make one stock color correction preset do what Filmconvert does and also work on every type of scene without fiddling so I could script it. If it is indeed possible then I'll go back and give it another try myself since I prefer to use as few plugins as possible, but as stated to date I've never seen it successfully done due to the limits of how stock color correction tools work, especially since stock color correction tools don't take into account what picture profile I'm using, what make and model camera I have, what sensor I have, etc...

[Larry Secrest]

Sorry, I spent a limited a time online these days.

I don't have any preset.
I use a combination of FX in my media to achieve what I like. It's all done with color correction, color balance, saturation (+ or -) color curves, and convolution kernel. I use Vegas 12 and I was able to replicate the results given by FilmConvert. I suggest you play with those FX and you'll be amazed at what you can do. I'm still playing with 4: 2: 0 stuff in 8 bits and I'm happy, so if you ever grade something better than that such as stuff out of the black magic you'll do even better
L.

[Peter Siamidis]

Originally Posted by Larry Secrest

Sorry, I spent a limited a time online these days.

I don't have any preset.
I use a combination of FX in my media to achieve what I like. It's all done with color correction, color balance, saturation (+ or -) color curves, and convolution kernel. I use Vegas 12 and I was able to replicate the results given by FilmConvert. I suggest you play with those FX and you'll be amazed at what you can do. I'm still playing with 4: 2: 0 stuff in 8 bits and I'm happy, so if you ever grade something better than that such as stuff out of the black magic you'll do even better
L.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah that's kind of what I was expecting, that it would need constant manual fiddling on different media which I definitely can't do given that I have to feed my five websites constantly with content. I think if you have time to color grade all your footage yourself all the time then cool, I don't alas and instead just need to give each websites footage a unique look via a preset that I can script and which always works regardless of content, hence Filmconvert is gold to me. I do have one website that is updated less frequently which I will manually color grade on occasion so I am familiar with how to color grade but that's about it, all the rest of my websites are scripted. In any case for people that have the time to manually color grade themselves then yeah you can stick to the stock tools. Sounds like you have the time so you're good. I'm in the other boat, there's simply no way I could manually grade all that footage for all those websites and I don't want to hire staff to do it either which is why others recommended Filmconvert to me and it's been perfect for my needs in that regard. Your mileage may vary as they always say, but that's why others that do what I do are always shocked when they hear I film, edit, post and run all my websites myself, they have no idea how that's possible by one person. That's because they don't know about things like Vegas Pro, scripting, and Filmconvert :)