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ColorGHear TOOLKIT- color grading SYSTEM for AE
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  • @stonebat at $30 QT Pro is a steal, and a must have in my opinion. I don't know that I have time to do side by side comparisons of all the different ways of exporting from AE vs it's QT Pro equivalent. I'm busy putting together the film school shoots. I want to get those off the ground before the end of the month when I could get crazy busy again. And the CGFS will undoubtedly unleash the creativity of everyone who watches and learns, and I promised to give you the tools you need to start telling your stories with greater production value...I intend to deliver.

  • Thanks. I will check it out. I'm liking 5DtoRGB transcoding. The free version. I might pay for the batch version.

    Do the settings look ok to you? If I blank out the Gamma Correction field, it gives almost peach black output. I presume "1.0" doesn't alter the gamma setting.

    Thanks in advance. Awesome tutorial as usual.

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  • 1.0 is totally flat. Those are my exact settings. The tutorial I did before was on a earlier version. I now use the full paid version, which has the same interface. And it rules!

    Did make an interesting find. 422 HQ transcodes are flatter than 444, but 444 has better detail and sharpness.

    Also notice that at the bottom it tells you the bitrate of your clip as well. So if you don't have any of the streamparser type apps, you can at least see what the actual bitrate is of your clips. This was how I decided to stop using EOSHD's patches. They may work for him, but they don't hold up for me. They performed abysmally in my tests, and once I peeked at the data rate I knew why. They claimed to be 88Mbit and 44Mbit patches but only yielded a max of 40 and 19 Mbit streams respectively, and with fog/smoke they dropped to 25 and 11Mbits which created a TON of artifacting. I now only use Quantum 9b. While it doesn't span on my cards, it does give me consistant 149Mbit/s streams (146 with fog) that are a dream to grade!

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  • If I'm right, the default, or assumed gamma setting in camera is 1.8. Hence why 1.0 from the 5D2RGB output is completely flat, i.e. linear.

    Not sure why 442 is flatter, but can concur that 444 at 1.0 Full Range yields the best results for grading in AE.

  • Prolly 444 would help render output faster, too.

  • Just finished grading the title credit for TRUE STORY I used dynamic link to send the clips to AE and besides being slow as crud (4gb ram on my mbp mind you) it worked really well then I just sent the render to media encoder via premiere and out "True Story" is a short feature 60min ALL GH2 shot Aquamotion V2 with CG in Color Ghear...I will post the opening as soon as I have a version ready share... .... cant wait for the102 lvl course, lol...Thx again Shian!

  • Here's a new music video I just did for my band -- While it may not be the best grading job ever, I never would have gotten it looking this good without ColorGHear and the tutorials -- thanks @shian (and of course VK & Driftwood).

  • @hunter Nice, dude. Lemme guess, CineGHamma, Toner, Spectral, and Steel Dirt? (not necessarily in that order)

  • @shian More or less. Some power windows with levels and exposure, too, to get the sky shots closer. Thanks again.

  • Interestingly I couldn't find QuickTime Pro 7 from the Mac App Store. QuickTime X comes with OSX Lion installation, and it has similar export feature. Lion upgrade is only $30, but I heard it runs slower on older models.

  • FYI the Mac App Store has the latest 5DtoRGB free/batch versions.

  • Quicktime 7 - http://support.apple.com/kb/DL923 Pro Upgrade - http://www.apple.com/quicktime/extending/

    This is all now on the Helpful Links page.

    With Lion, 7 comes installed (well mine did), all you have to do is apply your serial number to upgrade. If you already have QT 7 on Leopard, Snow Leopard, or Windows, just purchase the pro upgrade linked above, and follow the instructions to upgrade. (It usually is located under one of the top menu options. For Mac it's under "Quicktime 7", for PC usually in "edit" or "help")

  • @shian thanks for the help. I must upgrade to Lion anyway. The latest QT X (v10.2) has Vimeo/Youtube sharing option and can trim ProRes MP4 file from 5DtoRGB without any loss. If that doesn't suffice my need, I'd get the QT 7 Pro.

  • I'm interested using colorghear but I'm uncertain about the workflow. I have been using Sony Vegas Pro.

    1. Do you use AE also for cuts, sound editing etc., or just for color correction?
    2. If just for color correction, should I export the video from vegas as uncompressed avi for AE?
  • @tonalt just for color correction. All sound and editing should be completed in your NLE. The only exception might be if you want to do flash or bloom cuts. I do those in AE, but I use FCP to determine the cut point, do a straight cut, and then fabricate the bloom in AFX. I also export all my sound mixing into a separate WAV or AIF file and either marry it in AE or in QT Pro.

    In Vegas, you can save the project using the "Save As" function, and save it as an AVID AAF file, and then import that AAF into AE. It should work the same way as exporting an XML from FCP, in that all your footage and edits will be brought into AE, and then the CGT tutorials will tell you how to work with your timeline.

    I'd test this workflow first between Vegas and AE before purchasing, just to be sure.

    PS I tested AAF import in CS5, and you'll need to install Automatic Duck for AE for it to work. It's free. Links to it are on the ColorGHear website.

  • this plugin needs to be ported to nle's. ps i use avid.

  • @cls105

    Well.. now it's more like a series of helpful presets for AE. Not a UI plugin or anything like that. It needs more developers, coders to do that as @shian said.. so maybe in the future. But I think far future from now. Still, the NLE-AfterFX workflow is not bad at all at this point.

  • So, as a result of my most recent gig, I was invited to quite possibly the most interesting gathering I’ve ever attended. You see, when you shoot television, the dailies get sent to the network that following Monday, and are viewed by a great many people... and people have a tendency to talk, and so my imdb page ranking exploded, and I got a phone call inviting me to come out last night, and hang out with a few very respected Cinematographers (one of which I have long considered a hero). And so sitting in a private club, drinking wine, and talking shop with these guys was just the coolest damn thing that has ever happened to me. It was almost an unspoken, “Welcome to the club, kid.” At one point the discussion turned to my work with the GH2, and how I combat the highlight wall (those 3 stops above 50% before total blowout), and then to the subject of Genesis vs RED vs Alexa vs Film, and what exactly is 4k, much of it I knew, but I did learn quite a few things I didn’t know when I went in. So, after leaving there with my head buzzing (both from the wine and the discussion) I came home and found this article which details much of what was discussed. It’s a few years old, but lays out some of the common misconceptions about 4k (most of which I already knew, but some VERY interesting things I didn’t.) I think it’s a MUST READ for everyone shooting on a DSLR and suffering from 4k envy.

    http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/the-truth-about-2k-4k-the-future-of-pixels

    and then this one.

    http://www.xdcam-user.com/2011/01/when-is-4k-really-4k-bayer-sensors-and-resolution/

    Needless to say, its been quite a lot to process, and I gotta tell ya: I’m going to seriously rethink my approach to the GH2. I think I might actually be able to get even more out of the camera than I have been already. I will, of course, pass that knowledge along to the CGT community. And I will likely tweak quite a few of the GHears accordingly.

    BTW I still suffer from 444 envy, but not so much 4k.

  • Someone posted the first link here last month. I prefer 4:4:4 over 4k. Huge IQ improvement on the same 1080p TV.

  • yeah i saw that article i while ago very interesting, and gives real consideration to where image quality is heading i been amazed by gh2 with sedna quality it might not be 4.2.2 or 4.4.4 but how the image is cut in such fine detail gives a unique look. defenitly a beast gh2. im still learning cc but to have this high bitrate yields much more space to play which i couldnt do years ago with dv cameras.

  • @shian have you tried AE CS5's Unsharp Mask on GH2 footages? Any plan for ColorGHear Sharpening?

    I set the film mode sharpness at -2 and used Unsharp Mask in AE CS5. It gave nasty halos.

    Here's an interesting article. The second example talks about sharpening only Luma channel. http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/cmg_keyframes/story/luma_processing/

    "To avoid these halos, Photoshop power users convert the image into LAB color space (akin to YUV), and sharpen just the “L” - luma - channel. These trick is easy to simulate in After Effects: Follow Unsharp Mask with the Channel > CC Composite effect, and set its Composite Original popup to Color. This says to use the color information of the original image, and the luma information of the effected image."

  • I WISH After Effects had LAB color. There are a whole host of looks I can do with it that I used to do in Photoshop as a batch process. Maybe we'll get LAB in CS6. We've been asking for it for years along with scopes.

    No plans for sharpening as of yet. It is a lost cause in my opinion with 4:2:0. Works okay on 4:2:2 and 4:4:4, but all attempts with GH2 footage to add sharpness has produced halos.

    Also, I find GH2 footage to be so much sharper than other DSLR footage that it seems a moot point. If the image isn't sharp it's either the lens or the operator.

  • Ok, one request: Your tool is awesome and in this topic it's possible to find great examples from you @Shian and others like @Stonebat, showing comparisons of original and processed files. But that is exactly what I am missing on your website.

    Although there are videos (the same as those from your first post here), there is no comparison showing original and processed footage in a side by side view.

    So just as an suggestion (and I think others "complained" about that also before): Show some before and after pictures/video on your Frontpage (or a special sub-page). Why? Well, if I was looking into your software, that was what I wanted to see on your website. But there isn't any of those comparisons available. So where should a random visitor know from what your software really is capable of, if the original footage can't be checked to compare or if there is no half/half picture/video showing before/after? Without that, I most likely would leave the website again without buying the software.

    Besides that: Great work - makes me envy all the After Effects users...

  • @Jodan a new site design is coming, with images, before and after, etc, and a forum. But the first teaser video I did does have before and after in it - in fact the whole 2nd half of the video is before and after comparisons.

    (Actually replying to your PM in another window right now.)

  • The first video on your website or in this thread?

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