Color grading

Free Resolve Lite course

Vitaliy_Kiselev — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:04:23 +0000

Hardware Requirements
In this chapter Bob describes the hardware you’ll need to run the Resolve software
Software Install
Step-by-step instructions on how to install your software
Initial Setup
Configuring your hardware and software to get optimal results
Configuration Tab
How to configure the software to operate the way you want to work
Browse
Locating media on your system to start using Resolve
Starting a Project
Creating project folders to organize your work
Color
This chapter describes the main color grading functions within Resolve
> What is color grading?
> Viewer basics
> Primary Tab
> Curves Tab
> Qualifiers
> Window
> Key
XML Roundtrip
This powerful feature lets you integrate Resolve into your edited video
Dynamics Timeline
Adding temporal elements to Resolve settings to change them over time
Viewer
Checking your settings in full screen will provide an accurate view of your graded content
Gallery
Compare color grading settings with stills or screen grabs in the gallery
Bonus Lesson
Ensemble Designs' BrightEye 72 Setup

You can visit Class on Demand site (register and get it free) http://www.classondemand.net/online/bmd/getting-started-davinci-resolve-lite-training.aspx
or download as one file http://files.mail.ru/62UCLD .

RAIN

Vitaliy_Kiselev — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:51:07 +0000

Tonalizer Pro from Iridus

rsquires — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 08:34:51 +0000

http://irudis.com/

Not affiliated in any way but I just had to post regarding this astounding plugin for FCPX and Motion 5. It also works with FCP 7 and Express and Motion 4.

One of the tell tale signs of most DSLR footage and especially the GH2 is the lack of latitude. Shadows tend to go dark and hi-lights are usually blown out. Obviously you can shoot around this but, on a sunny day some times you don't have much choice. What Tonalizer Pro does is allow you to salvage hi-lights and boost shadows to get a more film like look. It really is amazing what it can do. Take a look at some frame grabs from some footage I shot with one of Driftwoods hacks last year. The hi-light recovery is worth the price alone in my opinion. But it really has about everything you need to truly get the most out of footage. Of course pulling detail from shadow will expose grain and noise but there are handy check boxes to allow for noise reduction and aliasing. Still the GH2 hack is getting very good at reducing noise in the shadows so I'm more confident in lifting them now.

Have a look at the images as they tell the story better than I can. I haven't been this impressed with a plugin for a long time. If you try Tonalizer Lite, I got a 35% discount which made it a more reasonable price. It is expensive but 35% off ain't bad.

all the best

rich

Related to automatic grading...

bullet2 — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:45:10 +0000

Hi. I just wanted to open this thread for us to be able to discuss something akin to PWCs automated automatic grading thread...more along the lines of randomized grading though. We have all seen instagram-like apps, but I was hoping we could compile a list of desktop applications that were particularly useful for rapidly generating "looks" and then applying them to batches of images. I have been using this process with an app called CameraBag 2, which lets you create looks quickly, then save as a preset to be applied to all images in a folder. It's not the most convenient method, but it does give you some cool looks in a hurry. Any ideas? As I see it, all an app needs to comply is to be able to process a folder of images, and be able to create saveable looks, and hopefully generate them fairly quickly as well.

GH2 color grading

bwhitz — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:41:09 +0000

All discussions about color-grading, methods, suggestions, software, plug-in's, and soon to be (hopefully) tutorials... continued from the low-GOP thread.

DaVinci Resolve 8.1.1 Lite, DNxHD and GH-2 footage

disneytoy — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:05:56 +0000

As you guys may already know, DaVinci Resolve is available (for the moment) as MAC only lite version FREE. Soon to be Windows 7 compatible!
As of yesterday the main handicaps of the lite version were the limit to 2 nodes. This prevented some very essential corrections requiring 3+ notes for tracking or power windows. But now Black Magic has lifted that limitation! So now unlimited nodes, great use of CUDA acceleration. More importantly for us Windows users, DNxHD codec use to require a $500 license. But now is FREE! The fact ProRes as a writing codec is not available to us PC users, the free Avid DNxHD codec becomes an excellent alternative.

With finalcut X loosing its luster with the current upgrade, and the highly touted Resolve coming to Windows, us PC users have much less reason for MAC envy. I do have a Mac I can try Resolve 8.1.1 on at the moment but that computer isn't part of my editing workflow.

Particularly in light of high bit-rate GOP1 hacks such as Driftwood, I'd like to hear back regarding other's workflows getting their MTS files through a Resolve grading and out. I've done some transcoding tests with 5DtoRGB which supports output in 3 flavors of DNxHD. I believe it writes a .mov file. I'm not sure but I think Resolve wants an Avid MXF wrapper. Maybe someone can report back on that. Also, any other workflows to bring our MTS files into Resolve.

For now I will leave a couple links to some good tutorials to get you started. The interface is a bit non-intuitive. But, if you follow along these should get you going.

Davinci Resolve Lite Tutorial Part 0 - Basics for Free 8.1.1

DaVinci Resolve workshop part1 (Montreal 2011) (4 Parts)

Supermeet 2011 - Part 2 -Dedo Valentic - DaVinci Resolve 8.1

And to download the free Mac version go here: http://blackmagic-design.com/support/detail/?sid=3948&pid=11735&os=mac

:

Zebras in post?

oscillian — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:53:49 +0000

Anyone has a software solution to show a treshold triggered zebra pattern on 18% grey areas when doing colour correction? It would help me to know that skintones are correct when I push around contrast and brightness.

ProRes encoding with DaVinci Resolve 8.2 Beta 3 on Windows.

dkitsov — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:53:16 +0000

In case you missed it. Today's DaVinci Resolve Posted Beta3 for Windows now Writes ProRes files. On Windows. ProRes.

Need Help! Looking for Colorist to color grade my short film.

Aksel — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:40:34 +0000

Hi everyone I am a Moroccan screenwriter director and I live in Chicago,USA right now, I have directed a short film in Morocco with no budget couple years ago with an international crew. DP Mexican, Camera AS Spanish, Sound Spanish, Actress Chilean, Actors Moroccan. the short film is a 3 short films in one. NADOR'S TRILOGY- the old man, the whore, and the shoeshiner. (dur25min) I need someone to help us with Color grading. and I am sorry I can't offer you any money, but of course your name will be in the credits and you will have a copy of the film so you can use it for your reel.

P.S by the way the film was shot in P2,HVX200.

Thank you. Aksel

Color Grading & Visual Effects Before & After - Hacked GH1 (GH13,GH17)

pixelphile — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:06:25 +0000

Hey guys,

Here is a little before and after comparison video to show how far you can push hacked footage during a color grade.

Hope ya like it,

Michael "Pixelphile"

New performance video, no grading. (was: what do I do to rescue this??)

Mark_the_Harp — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 07:16:15 +0000

I did a video of our band recently (I was playing so I had 2 camera people plus a fixed GH2 for safety). The lighting was being done by the son of one of the band members and he insisted on having quite high level saturated light on us (occasionally it would go to white on one soloist, and that looked fine, as the saturated background colours weren't so bad in that context). He was using LED lights and where we didn't have any white (or white-ish) lights, the cameras really struggled. I should have spotted this problem as we'd been using the lighting for a while but obviously he went to special lengths for this gig, and we were using a lot of new lights for the first time that night. Now I don't think I can rescue the footage - and by "rescue" I mean damage-limitation, as in, make it at least a bit watchable and less eye-raping. Everything I try to at least partially get rid of the lurid colours creates noise or some other weird effect.

Here's a screen grab from one of the moving cams (not a GH2 but I get the same prob with all of them) - look particularly at the person in the background. When I get rid of the blue you get these horrible weird bright highlights which make the whole thing look like two overlapping, slightly shifted pictures, so simple desaturation isn't the answer.

Very interseting solution to address the 8 bit banding issue

danyyyel — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 15:51:36 +0000

I have read this very interesting article link below on how to mitigate the banding issue. It has been said before but this clearly shows the result of using higher ISO that bring some noise that breaks the banding. I had started to experiment a bit with it but had no time lately, but I think the example in the post is very revealing. I hope to do some test on sky banding when I have some time to see if it works as good as in kholi wall example.

http://www.campcomet.com/archives/797

Noise. NOISE. Bad word, right? Most people hate digital noise and will do anything to avoid or remove it from their footage. The first, and seemingly most obvious choice, is to shoot at a lower ISO which tends to exhibit less noise in most digital cameras. However, as is with everything in life–generally, there are trade-offs… some you may not initially notice lurking around in your footage until you get to post.

One of these threats is Noise’s equally ugly older sister: Banding.

When the D90 and GH1 first dropped, one of the stand-out features was being able to utilize a various array of ISO increments to adjust for lighting situations. In ultra lowlight, some are brave enough to jam the ISO up to 3200. In broad daylight? Right on down to 160 (or 100 on Canon DSLRs). Unfortunately, the cleanliness and smoothness of a low ISO setting opens a gateway for banding to creep into your image.

BBC: Do you see what I see?

alcomposer — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:57:12 +0000

Just saw the end of one episode,... really fantastic! (this is just a small part...)

BIG Sale going on over at Red Giant...

rockroadpix — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:59:37 +0000

For another 16 hours, you get 40% off EVERYTHING.

Magic Bullet SUITE - $480.

Color Grading: A Conversation Starter

magnus387 — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:13:15 +0000

About a week ago there was a post about color grading Driftwoods' various GH2 hacks, and while that post will probably resurface I thought it might be fun to share some color grading tips/tricks etc.

I shoot with a hacked GH13, and have used this little "Monster" of a camera on 3 music videos, including my most recent video for Asher Roth's "Last Man Standing" feat. Akon. The most beneficial part of the hack for me has always been what I can subsequently do with the image in post without worrying about the degradation of image quality.

I generally have 2 methods of color grading, and I have included examples of both. The 1st way is incredibly time consuming, but produces very otherworldly HDR-looking results. I begin by exporting an image sequence from quicktime, then I open up one of the resulting TIFF files in Photoshop and adjust the levels to my liking. 3 rounds of unsharp masking later, as well as a boost to the Vibrance of the image, and I'm ready to create an Action and batch process all of the images. After all of the images have been batched through photoshop, I drag them onto a Final Cut sequence (making sure that each image is only is only 00;00:01 long) and export a raw quicktime movie. Obviously this is not for everyone as it drains ones mental sanity faster than you can say High Dynamic Range Video, and you may have some sync issues on longer clips because of the 23.98 and 24 fps disparity - but the results are cool and not achievable in FCP.

My second method is what I use to make video look more like 16mm film - It's fast, easy, and works with almost anything you can shoot. It utilizes Magic Bullet Looks and Final Cut's 3-way color corrector. I begin by applying "Looks", and starting off with the "Blockbuster" preset. I delete the diffusion filter, the vignette filter, and I slightly lower the highlight part of the "Curves" filter. Then I add the "3-Strip Process" filter and adjust the strength to around 6%. Based on how the image looks now I will usually adjust the the individual color channels of the "Curves" filter so that I make sure my Blacks are not too Blue, and my highlights are not too Yellow. Add some "Film Grain" at 3% and turn off the color mode, and you're done with the "Looks" part. Back in FCP, I add the 3-way color corrector and use the Auto Balance Color function to, again, make sure that my blacks aren't too blue, and my highlights aren't too yellow. Then I crush the black's slightly, raise the Mid's a touch, and actually crush the white's a tiny amount. Adjust the saturation to taste, and then I'm done.

I realize this is long winded, but I hope it starts a fun conversation, and I am more than willing to answer any questions about my process.

Magic Bullet Mojo

Vitaliy_Kiselev — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:42:20 +0000

Red Giant Software has just released their first plugin to be ported to FCPX, and it’s one of their simpler apps, Magic Bullet Mojo.
Use the coupon code MOJOFCPX for a 50% discount.
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/mojo/

Via: http://nofilmschool.com/2011/08/red-giant-releases-magic-bullet-mojo-final/

DaVinci Resolve Lite (available for download)

andres — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:02:22 +0000

Resolve 8 is a top end color grading aplication, now that Apple Color will not be upgraded ( :-( ) Resolve is a good choice for a change.
oh and the Lite version is Free

Donwnload here:
http://blackmagic-design.com/support/detail/?sid=3948&pid=11735&os=mac&leg=0

The problem is it doesn´t run on every mac and it´s design for big monitors however if you wish to install it on a 15" go to your terminal and write this:

defaults write com.blackmagic-design.davinci.Resolve AppleDisplayScaleFactor 0.75

that will launch the aplication 75% smaller, you can change the porcentage to whatever.

to undo:

defaults write com.blackmagic-design.davinci.Resolve AppleDisplayScaleFactor 1

enjoy.
ps. on my new MBP 13" it crashes for not having a propper grafic card. Those apple guy are to blame.