Picture Profile Recipes

[Christopher Brown]

Luis,

I suggest you light and shoot a color test, then evaluate the results in FCP using the vectorscope. I lit & shot a simple Macbeth color chart and found these settings gave me problems in the reds (too orange). I then tried these settings and found the results to be much more accurate. I've the FCP video analysis tools combined with a decent monitor calibrated to rec. 709.

Nothing beats shooting a bunch of tests to understand what the STD and CINE curves provide.

[Docea Marius]

anyone know the exact color settings pp recommended by the BBC? Thanks

[Michael B. McGee]

Originally Posted by Docea Marius

anyone know the exact color settings pp recommended by the BBC? Thanks

you should IM Alister Chapman. he might know.

[Nick Wilson]

Originally Posted by Docea Marius

anyone know the exact color settings pp recommended by the BBC? Thanks

The BBC white paper is at BBC - R&D - Publications - WHP034 - Addendum 27 with a link to the pdf. However, the picture profile settings do not include any recommendation for colour beyond 'roll your own matrix'.

[Idar Lettrem]

another example of Jims PP1 i posting #11
(file 126 mb so please be patient). This is the setting I personally prefer

[Docea Marius]

color and a good fishing area, looks great :-) ,I always use the filter 486 mounted on the EX1.I did some tests with PP, used in interior settings STD4 with the BBC and outside PP BILL (TC2) CINE3

[Denny Kyser]

I have scanned through many of these pages, and hoping someone can save me some time trying to find what I am looking for.

I am looking for a good PP setting to use indoors, with low light. Nothing but standard lens.
I will probably use Doug Jensens from Vortex unless you guys suggest another profile.

[Danny Dale]

Denny, this is a good thread to check out...

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sony-xdca...tings-ex1.html

[Greg Kiger]

As a photographer, we shoot our images RAW, capturing all the data as its shot and later we grade or change how it looks, crushing blacks or blowing out highlights, to get a look we want. We do however save the RAW as shot as an "original master".

So my question here is this; do Picture Profiles change the data the EX1 records (ie Destructive), leaving some aspects like shadow detail or highlights lost forever or is it just XML data file (non-destructive) that simply changes how it looks.

thanks in advance

Greg Kiger
St Louis

[Vincent Oliver]

This is the million dollar question. I have seen so many threads (Canon & Sony) about colour correction, or profiles in-camera. Yes, you are right, these are destructive, but can help you create a look which can be played back instantly. The downside is that you can spend hours trying to restore shadow, highlight, white balance or colour saturation to footage which has been shot with the wrong profile.

I prefer to shoot a flat image, i.e. nothing applied, which is the nearest video can get to shooting RAW. Then use my NLE to apply colour corrections and curves etc. I use a Matrox RTX2 card which allows you to save all the adjustments as a preset, this means I can just drop the preset onto my clip and it is applied instantly. Of course you can make tweaks to any of the settings.

Other people will have different views on the best way of working, but my method works well for me.

[Dave Morrison]

Vincent, I might have missed it earlier in the thread, but what profiles do you use to create your "flat" footage? I've been struggling with this a lot lately and would love to use this approach. Unfortunately, I often have to hand off my raw footage to another editor which gives me NO chance to do any post work on it. But, for my own projects, shooting flat would make more sense.

[Greg Kiger]

Thanks Vincent.To echo Daves question, are the default settings essentially RAW for the EX1?

meanwhile I will look into the Matrox card, I will also look into FCP to see if I can save a palette of looks.

thanks guys

Greg Kiger
St Louis

[Vincent Oliver]

"Thanks Vincent.To echo Daves question, are the default settings essentially RAW for the EX1?"

Yes, the default settings are meant to produce a flat looking image, from here you can apply curves, colour coorections, saturation etc. Not, quite the same as shooting in RAW with a digital camera, but it will do as a starting point.

You might also want to take a look at Alister Chapmans guide to EX curves.

YouTube - XDCAM EX Gamma Curves and Knee, what they do and which ones to use.

[Kevin Spahr]

Isn't a flat picture profile very different from RAW just because of the compression down to 4.2.0 (or even 4.2.2 if outputting SDI)? So to my thinking, the closer you get your image coming out of your camera to your finished look the better final quality.

I remember seeing a hack for the DVX-100 where they took the data directly off the imager and ran it to a hard drive - sounded like it might have been similar to a RAW image file. Imagine what you could get if that type of hack was possible with the EX series...

[Vincent Oliver]

Originally Posted by Kevin Spahr

So to my thinking, the closer you get your image coming out of your camera to your finished look the better final quality.

What you want to aim for is head room. If you tweak your image to the highest point of acceptable exposure, or colour saturation, then you can't do much with the final image. However, if you have room to make adjustments in your NLE, then this must be a better option. I would prefer to make my adjustments based on the subject matter rather that a "one profile does it all" scenario.