BEST X70 Picture profile settings

[Paul Anderegg]

I have finalized my "I don't think I can improve upon this any further" favorite "direct to air" custom picture profile. I have tested this in daylight, dawn, and night, and have not been able to identify any color oddities or levels issues. I have vetted this out fully in 4K mode, but these settings should work well in HD modes as well. So here they are..........and these are a massive imrpovement over my original REC709 settings.

BLACK LEVEL: 0
GAMMA: CINEMATONE 1
BLACK GAMMA: HIGH +7 DAY / LOW +7 NIGHT
KNEE: AUTO 90% HIGH SENSITIVITY
COLOR MODE CINEMATONE 1
SATURATION: 0
COLOR PHASE 0
COLOR DEPTHS: 0
COLOR CORRECTION: COLOR REVISION
MEMORY SELECTION: 1&2
MEMORY 1 COLOR
PHASE: 9
PHASE RANGE: 4
SATURATION: 0
MEMORY 1 REVISION
PHASE: +8
SATURATION: 0
MEMORY 2 COLOR
PHASE: 18
PHASE RANGE: 7
SATURATION: 0
MEMORY 2 REVISION
PHASE: -15
SATURATION: 0
WB SHIFT
FILTER TYPE: LB-CC
LB [COLOR TEMP]: 0
CC [MG/GR]: +1 (you can try this at 0, go +1 if anything looks a little green)
R GAIN: 0
B GAIN: 0
DETAIL
LEVEL: 0
MANUAL SET: OFF

Below is a full 4K YouTube video of a story I shot last night using these settings. I also posted a daytime video in the PP post also using these settings. You should not be able to pick out any colors that are off, except for the typical Sony greenish/cyan blue police LED's, and slightly orangish intense red lights. The footage below is directly from the camera, no processing in post. Blacks are just above 0IRE. Low +7 black gamma lifts the shadows, but keeps the mids from down. In high contrast scenes, if you shoot high +7, you will end up gaining down to keep them properly exposed, and burrying your shadows. Because this is a Cinematone color mode setting, you may notice it looks nice, but could, or could not, use some "pop" to it. IMHO, it's a very good default profile to put in your camera as a starting point, but good enough that you should feel confident of putting this stuff on air raw or live.

Exporting out 0 detail 4K needs a slight sharpening filter in post outputting to 1080 HD, unless you are going for the soft slightly out of focus look! And if you can imrprove on these settings, please let me know! As stated, I can't do any better, doesn't mean you can't. :-)

YouTube (Short URL)

[Jeff Krepner]

Paul, this fantastic of you to post these settings. I/We owe you a drink!

Some of the live footage you captured and posted looks cinema or broadcast narrative (as in that it looks like it was staged and lit). I didn't pixel peep but I'm starting to judge image quality vs. the time and effort it takes to get those images.

I attached a screenshot of the cop near the end in your video as an example--I think it looks like something shot for House of Cards on Red. Sweet!

Thanks,

[Yuri Gershberg]

impressive.
thank you.

[Tobias Meinken]

Paul,
thanks for all your efforts and sharing your insights. Much appreciated!

[Robert Young]

Thanks, Paul
I'll crank in these settings tomorrow and give them a whirl.
Really appreciate all of your hard work on this.
I, like you, am looking for settings that give me the look I want right out of the camera, so this is great!!

[Paul Anderegg]

Robert, you are one of the lucky ones who can watch X70 footage every morning on 10News. :-)

I am working on updated black level for better blacks, right now it's a few % above absolute zero, but for no grading, you would want pitch black nothing to sit right on the 0IRE on the waveform. Also working on a separate post relating to detail adjustments. Obviously that will be more of a tutorial on how to determine your best settings, and not a real settings recommendation, as I export out 720p for news from 4K and 720p raws, and most people here would be interested in 1080p. I am finding that detail on, 0, crisping +3, and B/W 1 looks nice in a 4K to 1080p timeline......just enough edge detail to separate pixels without blur or black/white lines.

Paul

[Paul Anderegg]

Did some 4K shooting overnight. Happened upon a double fatal crash in the rain. Shot all handheld, but this was all shot on my REC709 custom color correction PP settings listed in the other thread. I will list the exact settings used for this shot below, and the 4K YouTube upload is 100% raw camera video, no grading at all. If you are happy with the colors, simply pop the settings into your X70 as a selected PP. I should mention the detail settings were set ultra low, to reduce noise, and I have to add a bit of sharpening if I export out as HD. The YouTube clip should play back at higher bitrate if you select 4K option on an HD monitor.

REC MODE 2160P30
BLACK LEVEL: 0
GAMMA: ITU709
BLACK GAMMA: HIGH +7
KNEE: AUTO 90.0% LOW
COLOR MODE: ITU709 MATRIX
SATURATION: 0
COLOR PHASE: 0
COLOR CORRECTION: COLOR REVISION
MEMORY SELECTION: 1&2
MEMORY 1 COLOR
PHASE: 10
PHASE RANGE: 4
SATURATION: 0
MEMORY 1 REVISION
PHASE: +8
SATURATION: 0
MEMORY 2 COLOR
PHASE: 19
PHASE RANGE: 7
SATURATION: 0
MEMORY 2 REVISION:
PHASE: -14
SATURATION: 0
WB SHIFT
FILTER TYPE: LB-CC
LB [COLOR TEMP]: 0
CC [MG/GR]: 0
R GAIN: 0
B GAIN: 0
DETAIL
LEVEL: 0
MANUAL SET: ON
V/H BALANCE: 0
B/W BALANCE: TYPE 1
LIMIT: 7
CRISPENING: 1
HI LIGHT DETAIL: 4

For HD, change WB SHIFT CC [MG/GR] to +1, 4K leave at 0. Previously listed master PHASE: -3 may still be considered. If you look at this footage on a vectorscope, you will see red a bit toward magenta, blue a bit towards cyan, and some neon green right on yellow. This is easily changed in post as well, about a -4/-5 phase adjustment. B/W TYPE detail adjustments change the way the black and white edging appears, lower values make the B/W edging thinner, which looks very sharp if you view the 4K footage raw, but will look somewhat soft in a direct HD transcode.

YouTube (Short URL)

[Paul Anderegg]

Here is another video clip demonstrating what the color correction settings can accomplish. I toggled between stock PP4 and PP4 with color corrections and color depth changes. The red is a notch too magenta, fixing that now, but wanted to give a visual demonstration of how important color correction settings can be in altering hues of any subject. That is a $130 DCS CamAlign chart, each color is EXACTLY the hue of the boxes on a vectorscope, so when you get it right, you get nice pretty straight lines into boxes on the scope, even in FCP or whatever NLE you use. :)

YouTube (Short URL)

[Ignacio Rodriguez]

Man I just wanted to say Thank You. After applying your suggested (first post in this thread) settings, doing some proper white balancing and applying a slight curve to bring up the mid tones in Catalyst Browse, it is quite amazing, I never though I would be able to get such good footage without professional lighting. I usually shoot musicians playing at weddings (my wife's business) and finally I am able to provide something which does't look amateurish and at the same time is not overproduced, so gives a good sense of what the real world experience will be for her customers. Thank You again. This forum is the best.

[Paul Anderegg]

The X70 is definitely one of those cameras (like the A7s!) that pretty much REQUIRES fiddling with menu selections to get a worthy picture out of it. Sadly, the same can often be said for the full size broadcast cameras these companies put out as well, but people who buy a $25000 camera are expected to have the tools and resources to get it fiddled properly for their shooting style, these little cameras should work for REC709 right out of the damn box!

Paul

[Mike McKay]

Regarding white balance, is the push-to-white blowing out these settings? How do you handle white balance. I thought I read somewhere that people where pushing to get a Kelvin idea and then manually dialing in Kelvin. I tried that and manual kelvin looked worse than push-to-white, still trying to figure out decent WB.

[Paul Anderegg]

The X70 is VERY sensitive to magenta/green color hues. I personally push to white to get the proper color temp, them set that into my manual white balance. When you set the correct color temp (blue/yellow vector), then the only other thing top deal with is the green/magenta vector, which you should deal with in POST IMHO. If you push to white, the camera is then placing white anywhere and everywhere on the vectorscope, and that makes color correcting in post more difficult....again, IMO. LED and street type lighting, also florescent, will add green/magenta shifts. As long as your manual kelvin is correct, then you only need to push magenta and green up or down to get the colors right again. Push to white in the X70 will shift all colors, meaning if you have a magenta tint Neewer LED on your subject, the background will be cast heavy GREEN (including your blacks!) as the X&0 applies a green mask WB to compensate for the pink magenta LED source.

You can set manual kelvin and make these G and M or even B and R alterations, heck, color temp also, in the X70 PP WB menu. I do find that for non incandescent lighting, the X70 AWB works very well. It is programmed to work in daylight and blue lighting, like bare LED's, so it will ALWAYS push orange when used with 3200k sources, sucks balls.

Paul

[Mike McKay]

Thanks, it's definitely got some quirky magenta stuff going on, I'm seeing it with skin quite often. Haven't had a chance to really check your new settings, but quick tests are looking good.
More intensive tweaking in post just seems like the way it is with this cam.

[Paul Anderegg]

The calibrated color correction settings were all done using studio halogen 3200k incandescent lighting. Almost all LED lighting will have a green hue shift. The Neewer CTO's I use introduce a magenta hue shift, but most common LED CTO's will still show a green shift. When you hit AWB on the X70 with green LED lighting, it will push the entire color profile MAGENTA. To see what effect this has, set your manual kelvin, then dig into your PP WB menu, select LL and MG/GR, give it a few clicks + or - and you will see how even one little click of green or magenta can seriously affect what the whole image looks like. Keeping in mind even the smallest adjustment there can look as you will see, imagine leaving that adjustment value up to the push to white button! :-O

Paul

[Ray Paula]

A HUGE THANK YOU Paul!! I can't wait to use your settings!! You are sincerely appreciated for all your time and effort that you have given! I wish you and yours a Very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!! :)