I'm loving speedgrade cc 2014 version. The learning curve is not that steep Im roundtripping to it more and more. I thought I'd include this sample for anyone who is curious.

Would there be any benefit to upres 1080p footage to 4k (or any res larger than 1080p) for denoising and sharpening, and then deliver back in 1080p? Would this give a slight boost in detail since there is some "extra" interpolated data that has been modified by the denoiser and sharpening in the larger resolution?

“Making Emma was a way of figuring out the implications of HDR on set and in post,” says Daryn. “We had no way to preview the image, so I was just going by what I thought would happen. I lit with very simple lighting, knowing that we would have a deeper black and highlights that could stretch even further. I envisioned a sweet spot of exposure for areas of interest that was more like 5 1/2 stops than 3 1/2 stops. If it all works out, it will look just like how your eye sees and your brain perceives. Shadows, without DI correction, will look more natural rather than going muddy really fast. You can have an actor play dialog walking from shadow into bright sun, and it won’t look overexposed — it will just look brighter. There’s a lot we have to work out yet in terms of postproduction and tone mapping.”

http://www.theasc.com/asc_blog/parallax-view/2014/08/13/okada-tests-hdri-with-emma/#more-942

They'll just do it in post. So sad.

Question is... will they still hand out cinematography awards, like for "life of pi"?

Why would you? To get the full controls of Adobe's "ACR" set ... curves, hue sat & luminance, luminance/color noise controls, everything ... and use it on video footage. I've complained to Adobe that I do wish that Speedgrade had an equivalent of the hue/sat/luminance section of ACR, and know it's on the list of things to add ... well down the list, though.

What does the hue/sat/luminance section do that's so quick & handy? They have eight "colors" ... red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple, & magenta ... with three different controls for each: the hue, the saturation, and the luminance. It's pretty dang slick. Say your footage (or maybe the camera itself) is a bit too blue-ish in the magentas? No problem ... slide the magenta hue control towards red (away from blue-reddish/purple).

Your greens dead & lifeless? Well ... do they need a luminance lift, or do they need to be darker? Use the luminance control for the greens. Should they be yellower or bluer? Grab the hue slider & give it a try. You can use this just for the particular piece you're working on, or if' you've created a "standard" one you'd like to use for a camera/lens combo, you can save that as a preset.

I've used this in stills a LOT ... especially in Lightroom. Rather awesome tools, frustrating not to have in video.

Well ... notes the guy that did the vid tutorial, you CAN do this in Photoshop CC ... open a clip in Ps, turn it into a 'smart' object, take that into ACR (all from standard menu choices or keyboard shorts) ... then use any of the several tabs worth of controls including some pretty decent noise, grain, and sharpening tools ... then save-as to render the footage out completely when done.

So ... it would take some time to do the final output renders, which is what you would then bring into your NLE. And though you can only grade one clip at a time and the ENTIRE clip will have the one "look", you can save that look as a preset to apply to other similar clips. So ... for those of us doing things with a not-too-huge number of clips that will have realistically only one set of adjustments per clip, the ACR controls in Photoshop might be worth looking at.

I've used them on stills from my GH3, and they clean up the magenta plasticine skin quite easily, which is why it was frustrating that I had to learn to work a secondary and tweak what's "chosen" for it & how it's modified in Speedgrade, to do the same thing I can do in Lr/ACR in a couple seconds.

For some of my jobs this should work brilliantly. Can't wait to get home, get my new hot-rod computer (that's sitting by my desk right now!) all set-up with my programs loaded into it, my set of working discs installed (yea, got six discs my workflow is spread over, some internal some external, ALL going internal on the new box) ... and give this a whirl on some GH3 footage. I think it would also make a quick job of matching D600/GH3 footage for 'basic' grading.

I shot an event with my GH3 and a Sony PWM100 camera and throughout the whole event the colours are almost 100% spot on between the two cams. Unfortunately one of the speakers wore a pink dress and the GH3 captures it as a completely different colour! When I try to replace the pink and change it, her skin tons are affected as well and makes her very unflattering. I have attached photos below to explain. IF anyone can please help me I am on a deadline and need to figure this out!

Thanks,

Tyler

What do you guys think -- is he on to something? Is "dithering" an 8-bit image by adding noise really a feasible way to fix banding? The results he posted looked good, but the idea of improving an image by adding noise is not something that sits well with me.

Source: http://www.eoshd.com/content/12923/cure-banding-dslr-footage-gh4-4k-holds-key

This is a no charge upgrade for existing customers and will be available in Q3.

What's new in DaVinci Resolve 10

Resolve Live

• Grade Live incoming SDI video and save grading snapshots with metadata and stills

New Editing Enhancements for Project Finishing

• Multi track video and audio editing
• Extensive clip trimming support
• High quality optical flow image processing
• Static, lower third, scroll and crawl titles
• Compound clips
• Three point and four point fit-to-fill editing
• Transform, crop and opacity video effects
• Multiple Take selection
• Expanded XML and AAF roundtrip support
• Built-in generators for bars and test patterns
• Audio level controls with track mixing
• Matchframe linking for source and timeline viewers
• Stereoscopic 3D editing
• Media Pool list view now includes a filmstrip view

New Color Correction Enhancements

• Support for an unlimited number of industry standard OpenFX plug-ins per clip
• Unlimited Power Windows per node
• New Gradient Power Window
• Power Window presets to combine multiple windows
• PowerCurve Window freehand drawing and processing enhancements
• Copy and Paste of Tracking Data between Power Windows
• Power Window rotation available on the 4th trackball on the BMD control panel
• Motion Effects palette - In full version of DaVinci Resolve
• Chrominance control for Spatial noise reduction - In full version of DaVinci Resolve
• Temporal noise reduction - In full version of DaVinci Resolve
• Motion blur - In full version of DaVinci Resolve
• Enhanced blur with 10x range increase
• Contrast and pivot controls in 3-Way color and Primary palettes
• Split screen viewer display with SDI output
• CinemaDNG and ARRI Raw decoder options for half and quarter resolution
• Debayer and image scaling quality modes for systems with low GPU power
• Keyframe Timeline metadata now saved with Gallery Stills
• Drag and drop stills between Gallery pages
• Grab missing stills for all clips
• PowerGrades will now be append to the node editor with double click
• Enhanced Lightbox display with colour correction controls and SDI output
• Node based PTZR controls
• Corrector Node RGB/YUV selector for channel isolation
• Splitter and Combiners Nodes for single channel effects
• Optimized latency while grading complex node graphs
• Render Cache metadata is now saved with the project
• Global grade bypass for quick before/after grade review
• Auto Stabilization improvements to track shots with camera pans
• Additional External Matte Freeze and current clip settings
• Burn-in options for individual and global formatting and whether to display item labels
• User selectable LUT selection for GUI Viewer and Scopes
• Printer Light Hotkey grading
• Additional timeline filters to sort the colour and deliver timelines
• Keyboard shortcut to full screen viewer mode
• Media and Edit page viewer now includes a zoom to fit selector
• The switching clip selection now also in the node editor options menu
• Projects can now be arranged and saved within project folders for easy organisation
• Projects and project folders can be cut and pasted between project folders
• 3rd party panel improvements

Media Support Enhancements

• AVI clip decoding
• JPEG 2000 decoding
• Viewer display with side-by-side audio waveform or VU display options
• Auto Sync of Dailies audio and video using matching time code
• Edit clip metadata concurrently with audio and video sync
• User definable preset list of metadata to be displayed on screen
• Log ACES support
• Sony Slog2 IDT for ACES
• Canon C500 IDT for ACES
• Additional Media Pool fields for clip metadata includes shot, scene, take, angle, circled and camera roll #

Deliver Enhancements

• Audio tracks are now displayed in the timeline with video clips
• Audio VU meters with dBu and VU range selection
• Additional render option to JPEG 2000 for DCP generation
• Additional render resolution templates
• Render settings now include optional render job version name
• Integration with easyDCP using license purchased from EasyDCP (Available for Mac and Windows)

General Enhancements

• OpenCL support for multiple AMD GPUs on Windows
• Menu bar support on Linux
• Linux CentOS 6.3 support
• General performance and stability improvements

No issues when opening MBLooks 2.5 in Sony Vegas 13 Pro 64-bit (Windows 7 Ultimate x64). But after clicking on FINISHED button to go back to the Sony Vegas interface, it freezes Sony Vegas. Every time, even if the interface of MBLooks is not being opened, i.e. when selecting a Sony Vegas preset which includes MBLooks, the same hanging issue appears. The same issue exists even in 8-bit, especially when using LUT(!!!) "Video Track FX (Not Responding)" Any suggestions how to fix this?

That's what the system displays:

A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: vegas130.exe
Application Version: 13.0.0.310
Application Timestamp: 535adb1f
Hang Signature: ede8
Hang Type: 0
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1026
Additional Hang Signature 1: ede80a2a4e4831f92d6b096ec5dccc6f
Additional Hang Signature 2: 3836
Additional Hang Signature 3: 38369ac6e69095a6cb992d0651fd60c7
Additional Hang Signature 4: ede8
Additional Hang Signature 5: ede80a2a4e4831f92d6b096ec5dccc6f
Additional Hang Signature 6: 3836
Additional Hang Signature 7: 38369ac6e69095a6cb992d0651fd60c7

Here's the download link: http://jmp.sh/e5IXKH1

More informations here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?322805-Compositor-Addon-3D-LUT-Editor

Alexis van Hurkman states in his Color Correction Handbook that "For purposes of color correction you can ignore analog NTSC video requirements for a black signal level of 7.5 IRE, because that is an analog issue that video output interfaces typically take care of during output."

In other chapter he says that "Maximum preferred white value for most broadcasters is 235, 235, 235, which sits about 93 percent when analyzed using a Waveform Monitor."

Should I use broadcast safe limits and what are they? Googling gives me incoherent information. Thank you.

Since the introduction of Digital Cameras it became easy to film and to learn making indie films, you just grab your camera and experiment with it. However the look of the digital footage(even color corrected and graded) still leaves amateur and domestic camera impression, the digital footage doesn't look as good as straight out of the film camera.

What is it about film that people like so much? Simple - it's color. Maybe some will say dynamic range, some will say the motion and flares. But the best feel about the film is that it looks unique and cinematic. People say that film has a unique color processing that can never be achieved by a digital camera. I take a more scientific approach and after many researches I found some breaking points in simple After Effects effects profiles and LUT usabilities and achieved unique fake color caps which gives that beloved film feel. The limited color brightness is one of the most important things when trying to emulate film look.

The hardest part in grading Digital footage is that it needs to be RAW or LOG, that means a flat footage taken out of expensive cameras. Then it is graded digitally by shifting colors of keyed parts, adding tints and editing curves. Amateur and Indie filmmakers sometimes doesn't have all those REDs and Black Magics and ARRIs and other beautifully named machines and anyway they want to look pro, so what we all indie filmmakers do is not called grading we just do the color correction - just create some interesting looks by shifting and tinting video. But there is certain points and colors that will leave that digital and domestic feel in the DSLR video even when it is color corrected. The colors overbright, and oversaturated areas doesn't change with color correction. Many of indie filmmakers lowers the saturation, but what happens is that they desaturate all areas of the footage so colors in shadows becomes undersaturated. I tried to fix it by collecting some unique braking points of Adobe After Effects CS6 as known as ColorGhear techniques but instead of doing it manually I tried to automate the process. The process is not grading nor color correction - it's something very different and unique and is used as a simple preset for After Effects CS6, which will be available soon for just a few dollars ($5-$10).

So I made some tests. At first I didn’t even think that I would come up with something interesting but now I actually need your opinion, it is usable? Does it really make a difference and most important – does it make the footage look like FILM (kodak). It does certain things to a simple footage: adds color bright limit, adds saturation limit ONLY to oversaturated areas, increases saturation to undersaturated areas, makes overbright colors(not whites) more visible and appealing on screen (for human eye).

There was a guy who tried to create and then disappeared his plug-in known as "Filmvision plug-in" I think he used similar techniques.

What do you think ?

Also I will make a video with just original color limiting process because the current video also affects the overall saturation and makes it more blockbuster Blue Orange type of thing.

New user interface has been designed to be fast to use and to eliminate unnecessary clicks and settings to get working fast. New user interface improvements include a new streamlined project import, export and selection workflow, scrubbable media thumbnails to speed up shot selection, production metadata fields for entering on set shot notes and larger color control palettes to give faster access to grading tools. There are also new graphical palettes for control of power windows, keys, sizing, tracking and stabilization, camera raw .

New version features 'Log grading' in every corrector node, audio playback support up to 16 tracks per source clip and audio renders in both Quicktime and MXF, additional and faster automatic stereo 3D image alignment tool, plus new stereoscopic 3D floating windows and new 3D monitoring options.

For version 10 talks go to

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/6641/davinci-resolve-10

zoneSCOPE is designed to analyse color of choosen pixels of an image or video. It is much more than a simple color picker. zoneSCOPE can display luminance and chrominance data at the time when retouching of pictures or color correction of videos takes place. Results are based on grouping and averaging multiple pixels to enhance reliability of color information.

Bars are moving up and down and changing color to make it more intuitive to understand whats happening with brightness and color when changed. Reference points can be set and saved to support scene matching. They can also help to color correct to original or memory colors.

zoneSCOPE is a stand-alone solution and running on Windows platforms. Due to the fact that it is not a plugin, it can interplay with programs like Photo Viewers, Video Players, Internet Browsers, Photo Editors, Video Editors, Color Grading Tools and Effect Tools.

Above you see: A) Zone Analyse Display (displays luminance and chrominance values while you are grading) B) Reference Database (database for color references. Useful for memory colors and scene matching.) C) Settings Dialog (properties for color analysis) D) About Dialog (preset of shortcut keys, link to internet, manual)

Once activated, zoneSCOPE stays on foreground of all programs and evaluates color real-time in background. Together with image evaluating tools like RGB histogram, waveform monitor, RGB parade scopes and vectorscopes it helps the user to adjust the image in more effective time.

Control takes place by customized shortcut keys whereas darker and brighter image parts can be choosen with just a mouse wipe. After that you analyse adjustments precisely derived from color correction/grading or retouching programs.

Luminance, Adam Ansel zones of darker and brighter image parts as well as contrast ratio is analysed. Chrominance data of these two different zones are shown as RGB, HUE and saturation.

It's Clone function in combination with enabling/disabling shortcut key operation opens up the possibility of analysing multiple regions by simultaneously running another or more zoneSCOPE programs.

By Alexis Van Hurkman Published Dec 17, 2013 by Peachpit Press

The digital colorist’s job is no longer to simply balance, fix, and optimize. Today’s filmmakers often want to recreate the idiosyncrasies of older recording methods, or are looking for something completely new, to differentiate the look of a given project. Furthermore, end-to-end digital shooting, postproduction, and distribution means that stylizations and effects once created by the film lab are no longer photochemically available. The color grading suite has become the lab, and these sorts of stylizations are now part of the colorist’s job description. In this follow-up volume to the bestseller Color Correction Handbook, Alexis Van Hurkman walks you through twenty-one categories of creative grading techniques, designed to give you an arsenal of stylizations you can pull out of your hat when the client asks for something special, unexpected, and unique. Each chapter presents an in-depth examination and step-by-step, cross-platform breakdown of stylistic techniques used in music videos, commercial spots, and cinema. These customizable techniques can be mixed and matched for your own unique effects and include:

• bleach bypass looks
• blue-green swap
• blurred and colored vignettes
• cross-processing simulation
• day-for-night treatments
• duotones and tritones
• emulating film stocks
• flat looks
• flattened cartoon color
• glows, blooms, and gauze looks
• grain, noise, and texture
• greenscreen compositing workflows
• lens flaring and veiling glare
• light leaks and color bleeds
• monitor and screen glow
• monochrome looks
• sharpening
• tints and color washes
• undertones
• vibrance and targeted saturation
• vintage film looks

Copyright 2014, Dimensions: 8" x 9-1/8", Pages: 216, Edition: 1st, ISBN-10: 0-13-381851-9, ISBN-13: 978-0-13-381851-2

So my question is, what color grading software is best for yielding the best image - and WHY? Please be specific with how your favorite software yields a better image. All opinions are welcome and appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Just wanted to show you my latest work. A short film which I edited and graded.

If you want to read more about the editing and grading you can visit this blogpost in which I've explained everything a bit further: http://davidhjlindberg.blogspot.se/2013/04/the-road-of-life.html

The Road of Life

The Road of Life - Grading Breakdown

Just wanted to let you know that I recently launched my new site which will a bit as my old blog (http://davidhjlindberg.blogspot.se/) which maybe some of you have seen, but it will be way more active in terms of updates, competitions, posts and articles.

The same time as the launch I decided to start another grading contest which maybe some of you have been a part of in my previous ones. If you want to know more about the site and the grading contest, visit my blog and read the first post! http://lindbergdavid.com/

I've already got entries to the contest but there are two weeks left before it closes, so make sure to be a part of it!

All the best, /D

I'm wanting to get a similar look for a quirky documentary look i'm working on. I've got half way by just playing around with Film Convert but I cant get the distinctive color separation for this look between the yellow and other colors, ie it just all looks yellow.

Any practical Da Vinci Resolve advice (im a severe beginner) on how I can get this look or if I could in just my NLE?

It is not exporting the grade that I have currently done. It looks one way with in Resolve (even the preview as it exports), but the final file looks like a previous version of the grade.

I have no idea why it is doing this, can't figure it out. I deleted the previous version, emptied trash, even saved the new file in a new location, and it has messed it up twice.

http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2013/09/adobe-premiere-pro-cc-october-2013-release.html

There is a ton going on with this update, but this paragraph is what has me smiling.

"Color is becoming increasingly important throughout an entire production workflow, and the addition of the Lumetri Deep Color Engine in the June 2013 Premiere Pro CC release gave editors the ability to work with beautiful SpeedGrade grades right inside the application. With this release, SpeedGrade has fully implemented the Mercury Playback Engine from Premiere Pro, and a brand new workflow between the two applications is being introduced, namely Direct Link. With Direct Link, editors can save a project in Premiere Pro and then open the sequence they were working on directly in SpeedGrade, with no need to deal with interchange formats or any kind of conversion. SpeedGrade then opens the sequence in a familiar timeline that more closely matches how you work in Premiere Pro. You can access all the clip edit points, transitions, and layers, using the same track layout as Premiere Pro. From there, create your grades, and then reopen the same project in Premiere Pro with all your color work fully intact. This workflow uses no interchange formats and no importing or exporting – it’s just the same Premiere Pro project moving between the two applications."

A quick demo of the capabilities apparently. I guess this whole CC thing has some merit update wise.

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-at-ibc-2013/adobe-premiere-pro-cc-speedgrade-cc-direct-link

As I came to discover Resolve does not use any color management in it's preview window when editing. Tricks like limiting the output levels in the control panel of the video card driver do not have any impact on the output of the preview window. As well I don't have space or money to connect a second output interface with a separate TV to my system for proper monitoring when color correcting, let alone a broadcast reference monitor!

First I downloaded the rec 709 calibration video clips from AVS forum (http://www.avsforum.com/t/948496/avs-hd-709-blu-ray-mp4- calibration) in mp4 format.

I also set up in my video card driver settings to limit the output when playing back video in video players to 16-235 levels. This would allow quick verification on the PC of the results I was getting when playing back the files created in Resolve Lite.

I created a new project in Resolve Lite and in the settings for the project, I created 1D soft clip LUT with no reference LUT to begin with using an upper clipping limit of 880 instead of the default 940- this was trying to get as close to the calibration video clips defined upper white point- and loaded this as the 1D display LUT - but not in the output LUT! I only wanted to SEE the effects of limited output and to not bake this into the final output file.

I loaded in the calibration clips into the project. In a track node I added a point in the center of the RGB curves, ganged, and offset it ever so slightly negative to try and counter-act the gamma 2.2 of my PC display to emulate gamma 2.4 of the rec 709 spec. I then took a grab of this and saved it to a project with only this node as any CC.

The idea here was to create an output limiter with the soft clip LUT to get as close to rec 709 levels and gamma as possible with the naked eye, based on clips that are used to calibrate HDTVs in the rec 709 color space.

To see how this would work out, I loaded a separate project that had some CC on multiple clips. In the project settings I loaded the soft clip LUT as the 1D display LUT. Afterwards, I added two serial nodes to the track node (not the clip nodes- tons of individual adjustments per node). In the last node for the track I loaded the node from the grab taken in the previous project in the gallery to apply a simulation of rec 709 display levels.

This gave a rather washed-out final output to the clip as to be expected! I used the first node in the track nodes to adjust the lift/gamma/gain and tweaked saturation levels and shadows and highlights a bit in the log color wheels to get a final look that had the contrast and brightness I wanted.

In the deliver tab rendered out to Quicktime H.264 so that I could rewrap to mp4, video safe colors (NOT FULL RANGE).

Re-wrapped the MOV files to mp4 using mpeg streamclip.

Opened up the output from the grade in windows media player on the PC (which is having its levels moderated by the video card driver) and the look was very close to that as what I was previewing in the Resolve Lite preview window. Loaded this on my PS3 which has been set to output limited (rec 709) colors to an LG 37" IPS panel HDTV.

Calibrated the TV using the same reference clips as used to start creating the emulation curves in the first Resolve project, matching as close as I could by memory to the tweaks done in terms of the white clipping point specifically.

Results so far are very good- the range of mid-tones and shadows are perceptually very close to what I was going for in the Resolve preview window on the PC. I've found this method to give me close results at final viewing on the HDTV from the grades performed in Resolve Lite. Previous attempts without trying to emulate the rec 709 space were all over the board, trying to compensate with what I thought would deal with the different levels between full range output at gamma 2.2 when grading in Resolve Lite on the PC and the limited rec 709 levels output at gamma 2.4 displayed by the HDTV. That's just crazy impossible to try and do! However I don't have the TV and the editing PC in the same room or the same viewing conditions, so I'm sure I'm not 100% matched by any means because I can't view the results side by side.

I know this doesn't give near the quality results as working with a reference monitor would. However it allows some level of consistency in the grading process on the PC, getting a final look on an HDTV that is more-or-less what I see when grading using the preview in the GUI of Resolve Lite.