What exactly does the black limiter do ? And the white limiter for that matter.
Can you explain it in plain english please.

Thanks.
Paul.

I believe the Black/White limiters limit the luma level of the applied detail correction edges.

Crispening works on the levels within the image not frequency. So you can choose to not apply detail correction to small picture level changes while still adding enhancement to larger changes. As noise is generally a small change in level you can use crispening to prevent detail being applied to the noise.

Crispening, as I understand it, is described here: http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/assets/f..._Sharpness.pdf

Alister, if you don't mind sharing, would you kindly provide us with the complete PP settings you are using? I can see that changing the matrix from Hisat to Cinema may, for example, require the R-G, R-B, G-R values to vary from, say, Bill's TC3 PP.

Alister and all contributors to this thread, thank you.

I second that question.

I just eyeballed a gretamacbeth ColorChecker Color Rendition Chart, via EX1 HD-SDI out into a Sony LMD-2450WHD monitor, applying Alister's Black Gamma and Noise settings, coupled with Bill's colour settings, and the colour squares in the chart appeared better colour matched using Bill's colour values, as opposed to leaving R-G, R-B, G-R etc, at 0. No science, just a quick subjective observation while testing Alister's noise settings.

Christopher,

As I don't have any sw/hw to "objectively" assess that - did you try Cinema Matrix at +35 (or the Standard one, also boosted) - against the Hisat with Bill's pair tweaking?

Piotr,

Yes, I modified Bill's PP. I changed Matrix Hisat to Cinema, and increased the Level value to +35. This increase in Level does put some of the saturation back into the Cinema Matrix which is rather flat. I am yet to do some practical test shots and review the footage. Then I continued to use Bill's values below in the Matrix, such as Phase -5, R-G +75, etc.

In the Detail section, I applied Alister's adjustment to Level -8, Frequency +30 and Crispening +20.

Back to my comparison, I was looking at the macbeth chart and then looking at the monitor, and changing between two similar PP's (PP1 and PP2), the combo of Bill and Alister's settings I mixed, PP1 having Bill's phase/colour settings, and PP2 phase/colour settings (R-G, etc) set to 0. A/B flicking between PP1 and PP2 to the monitor. Comparing the colour squares and monitor, PP1 (Bill's values) looked to me, to be closer in colour, as opposed to PP2. Just my observation, no particularly controlled environment, no DV Rack scopes.

Piotr, perhaps Alister will provide his complete PP settings in due course.

Edit: BTW, Gamma setting I used was Cine4.

Considering that I used a DSC Labs color chart to set up the one of the set of PP settings I posted, I'm not surprised at your findings. I would note, however, that if you don't properly set your white balance, your observations may be questionable.

There are, generically speaking, 4 data categories available for adjusting an image, 1-luma, 2-chroma 3-sharpness 4-gamma.

The luma settings, pretty much, define the dynamic range on an image, The chroma settings define color balance, and gamma defines how the luma values change with the intensity gradients within the image. While I attempted to define the chroma settings, my luma settings were done rather rudimentary, and I think, Alister gave these more attention than I. Sharpness, of course, seems to be a rather subjective condition. I prefer to sharpen in post, as in camera sharpening tends to decrease camera bandwidth for recording other information(such as motion), because of compression limitations. Finally, selecting a gamma setting is really difficult to do without an understanding of the dynamic range of the scene recorded. The additional variable of "auto-knee" in the EX camera series confuses the results, when one is attempting to carefully record the scene. As with any auto setting, using automatic takes control away from the cinematographer and defaults to some in camera algorithm, not always guaranteed to be the best choice.

Funny, I was shooting last week a concert and used exactly the same settings as Christopher (including the cine4 gamma for low light). The combination between Bill's settings and Alister's really compliment each other and produced very good results.
It's my first post on this forum so I'll just say thanks to all the input you folks share and give.

Bill, thanks for the explanation above, and for the PP you shared with the community a while ago. I have always used it, or part thereof.

Jonathan, similarly, I have been working on a low light project for a while and prefer to use Cine4, and may also very mildly use Neat Video plugin, if the noise is too much for my liking.

Thanks Chirstopher for mentioning the neat plugin. never heard of it before (I use FCP). checked it out on their web site and they made a version of it last month for FCP. I was really impressed by this relatively unknown plugin (at least for FCP users). I was so impressed I got it. it really makes a difference and excels where other more known plugins fail. It really challenges my Anti "fix it in post" views. Really does a good noise reduction, even with footage shot at +18 gain.

Neat Video is great

Agreed.


Dennis

Christopher,
Could you please list what your exact PP settings were so there's isn't any confusion for the rest of us? I would like to test them out myself.

Thanks,
Mike