ColorGHear [PART 2]

rNeil

I've put a request over at Adobe for:

1) actually utilizing that huge blank window that shows up when you add a LUT layer in a SpeedGrade session by listing the available LUT's all at once, rather than in a pop-up box you have to scroll INTERMINABLY.

2) actually utilizing the linking to one's custom LUT's that one does in the Preferences panel to populate either that scroll-list or the big box of options requested in 1).

And ... either way ... the ability to select the LUT's that are shown, as so many of the main Adobe-list are ones you will ONLY use if you have specific equipment. Even for most of the people that will utilize some of that list, you won't use the VAST majority of them.

For those of us who love both Shian's Ghears, AND the custom LUT's we've made from them ... this would be a HUGE workflow upper. If you're running any Adobe stuff, please ... pop over to their request window and request away!

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Neil

rNeil

Shian ... with the released CC stuff today, working at learning the 'new' process/practices. Some odd changes here and there that will take some getting used to ... but the quickness and ease of going betwixt P-Pro, Speedgrade, and AE is ... slick. And the render times ... right out of P-Pro, even ... are so much faster that what would have taken say 1:45 (hours!) before is now like 10 minutes.

Still ... Speedgrade has you enter the folders of additional LUT's you may have into the interface, right? Yet ... anytime you create a LUT layer, you have to navigate to the folder to get to say, the Ghears. After you choose one, it will put it on the big pop-up list ... until you close Speedgrade, when it forgets about it again. Bit of a pain ... but wow, going back and forth is slick.

Neil

shian

So apparently now, according to one of my GhearHeads: with the aid of this $30 3rd Party LUT Utility, CG Pro users can now use ColorGHear inside of FCP X. I don't yet have any tutorials showing you how, but if you are using CG Pro in FCP 7, the workflow is almost identical.

http://www.colorgradingcentral.com/lututility?awt_l=FTfu6&awt_m=3atPD8wmAzQFX_2

rNeil

Using a GH3, yea there's that bit of 'plasticene' skin at times, and a hint of blue in some highlights, ESPECIALLY skin (how'd they manage that?) and I'm working at mitigating the issue. In stills, a bit of Lightroom's grain pretty much kills the noticeability of both problems.

But ... video. I think a titch of minus-blue in the highlights is good, doesn't seem to 'hurt' the rest of the image. But ... I think a bit of grain added in as I do in Lr would be needed to kill the plasticene look. The 'local' footage on this computer doesn't have close-in faces so I'll need to shoot some.

Any suggestions as to which grain (CG or "native" AE) to use, amounts et al that anyone else may use?

Neil

eclipp

Used ColorGHear in FCP with moon 7 in the entire thing.. I have Da Vinci but I cannot use it on my Mac Laptop because the graphic card screws up my render...

rNeil

See if they can be somehow expanded out of the download ... hmmm ... wish Apple wasn't so touchy. :)

rNeil

Cool .. I'll give it a shot ...

shian

the codecs are independent from FCP - if you can get them installed, they stay installed.

rNeil

I've read that some folks have got the Apple ProRes codecs into Windows by downloading the trial version of FCP ... and as they're installed for that, were then able to use them in After Effects on Windows.

Curious ... when the trial period ends, does Apple's knuckleheads have the codecs set up to cease and desist also?

rNeil

@shian

Yea, wouldn't mind if you got more of the CG Pro tutorials up ... I'm still trying to figure out how to get the LUT's showing up in the dialog box of all the pre-loaded LUT's. Tried filling in the 'address' in the Preferences dialog for additional LUT locations ... they still don't populate the pop-up box of LUT options.

I can hunt 'em down one by one, but ... I still think I should be able to get them to appear in the LUT dialog-box ...

And mixing and matching just takes time to learn ...

Neil

rNeil

Had I a GH2 or other 'preferred' camera to compare with, I'd likely agree with Shian ... being enough a color-picky person as I am. However, I've not 'caught' the blue problems (that I've noticed) with my GH3, and the skin looks very skin-nish to our eyes. Shooting either "natural" or Standard with most everything dialed back and the grading in post handles all we need, though we're not shooting our Major Motion Picture Event yet. :)

I've just had to move a 36" Hitachi CRT tele from my movie-room (rented that part of the house out) and am frustrated ... it's "standard" 720p HD if using the component-video inputs is a GORGEOUS 28" or so diagonal, lush and clean color after calibrating with color bars. I've no place to use it. Hoped I could find some way to hook it up for a b-cast monitor ... but alas, trying to go from a modern digital environ to an ancient (yet venerable) analog one is dicey to the point of stoopid. Sigh.

We all have our little foibles. On this monitor, though calibrated quite well for "stills", well ... I'd rather have a decent b-cast setup to check on. Then I might well notice the color problems inherent in my GH3 that perhaps I can't see now.

Neil

shian

I'd have to get them all together, but yes - I can do that...

but it's gonna be awhile, I have a ton of CG Pro tutorials to get recorded and online, I'm way behind on this. CG Pro users deserve the same amount of training and grading insight as the CGT peeps got, and I've been negligent in that regard.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

@shian

Can you develop some scientific measurement and show color difference for different cameras?

I do not mean GH3 only here, we can start with any two different cameras.

shian

@SuperSet - regarding the bluish cast and plasticine skin on the GH3: there's not much you can do, except shoot in a hazed room to soften the skin tones (which only helps ever so slightly they still suck) and use Resolve to selectively suck out the blue on like hair highlights, etc. It's a giant pain in the ass cuz the blue cast isn't like the green cast in the GH2 where it is relatively even and can be compensated by applying the GK gear to the whole image, the blue cast shows up in some places but not in others, so you have to use a secondary and hunt down the problem and neutralize it.

In Resolve with CG Pro you can use the secondary correction and a couple of minus blue LUTs to knock it out, and then save it as a LUT or a Powergrade and apply it to everything, and see if that helps.

But the extra steps really make working with the footage a hassle. Which is why I've written the camera off.

shian

For those who asked - yes I do have some free tutorials. I've added a couple more.

http://www.colorghear.com/free-tutorials

MikhailK

@shian Thanks a lot.

matt_gh2

@shian Thanks. Will check CG site for info on upgrade from CGT to Pro.

shian

@MikhailK I always ignore that warning. What they're talking about is: if you bounce between 8, 16, and 32 you'll see the image change if you are using those filters. SO what happens is you can't work in 8bit to save resources and then switch to 32bit and not have the image change drastically. That's what the warning is telling you.

I use this anomaly as an advantage in CGT. You can do things in 32bit that you can't in 8 or 16.

shian

Yes CG Pro is available in SpeedGrade.

With SpeedGrade's new timeline and round trip with PP, SG might finally be ready for the masses. It'll take some getting used to, there's some legacy stuff still remaining in SG that is annoying. BMD has done a great job of nuking all the user UNfriendly Legacy functions on Resolve to make it easier to use. Adobe needs to do the same with SG. It looks as if they're slowly doing that.

Don't know if there is a decent de-noiser in the new release of SG but there has never been one in any release I know of, so having CGT and AE for NR or Neat Video will be helpful. As well; Resolve is adding a temporal denoiser (a la AE) but no idea of it will be available in the Lite version.

MikhailK

Hi @shian, Please be kind to advise me on the possibility of using 16bpc effects along with GolorGHear 32bpc effects. For example, if I always work in 32bpc and use 32 bpc GolorGHear effects only, will it somehow screw my video in case I wanna use the 16bpc Shadow/Highlight filter along with 32bpc effects? AE CS6 warns me that using 16pbc effects may reduce precise color precision in the 32pbc environment... Do you personally use 16bpc filters in your 32bpc workflow?

matt_gh2

@shian Power windows tracking cool. Isn't this also available in Speedgrade? What do you think is better for color correction/grading, Speedgrade or After Effects? Would like to hear your opinion, particularly as I'm using Premiere Pro to edit on Creative Cloud, and they're coming out with better integration with upcoming October 15 release. (Also, is ColorGhear available in Speedgrade?). Finally getting close to finishing our current feature film shoot, and it turns out we'll begin grading mid October, so timing may work out great. Thanks.

(EDIT: Just came across this info that it looks like motion tracker is available for masks in Speedgrade.)

shian

FINALLY!!!

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-at-ibc-2013/after-effects-cc-mask-tracker

Now CGT users can track their power windows easily right from the Mask Dialogue in AE. It's not as awesome as Davinci, yet, but at least it's getting there.

shian

@B3guy - I started in AE 15 years ago, so I'm so damn comfortable in it, that anything that can't hang gets tossed aside. Motion is a fine program for titles, I just never use it, cuz it can't keep up with AE in terms of being "fully functional" in my view. But it'll get you there.

One caveat, make sure if you are using the Animation codec that once your titles have completely faded out that you end the sequence. Otherwise you run the risk of having blackness over your footage, which can create confusion. I always use PNG sequences for titles.

I hated FCP X when I first started using it, cuz it is a completely new way of working, but I love it now. I can edit 10 times faster than I ever could in FCP 7. So don't be afraid of it, just know that you'll want to smash your computer for about 3 weeks, cuz it's not the FCP and workflow you are accustomed to. And the new R3D native 4K editing on my iMac is amazing. Here's hoping they'll get around to MTS native.

smsjr

@B3Guy Actually, Avid is no longer expensive. $995. I understand that Avid is not for everyone, so I'll leave that discussion alone but if you are looking to get into it now is the time. You also get Squeeze with this as well. Pays for itself in one or two jobs. Top notch media management, ProRes is now being treated virtually the same as DNxHD, and there are some pretty seamless options for getting back and forth between FCP and Media Composer. Also, I have been finding that the roundtripping between After Effects has been improved quite a bit.

If FCP X is not your thing and Adobe has scared you away, download the free 30 day trial of Media Composer 7 and see if it is worth $995.

And just so this doesn't seem like a sales pitch, I use all of the major NLEs depending on project. I'm just amazed by this low pricing now because when I started in the 90's it was nearly impossible to afford an Avid system. An offline system would have cost me $40K. FCP broke that barrier and now Avid has come full circle to a similar price point. Interesting times.

B3Guy

It's really not that complicated. It's just that you have a few options at various stages of the process. My dilemma is that I have what is at this stage VERY old versions of FCP (5), Soundtrack Pro, Motion, LiveType, etc. so when I get new software, I'm ready to replace all of it. Which is expensive. Apple's new stuff isn't quite where I'd like it to be, Avid is still fairly expensive, and I was juuuust about to take the Adobe plunge when they pulled that cloud maneuver. It's all a bit frustrating, really. I'm pretty sure that FCX/Logic X/Resolve will work well with each other after a few more updates from Apple's end, but that hasn't happened yet. I'm a storyteller and a filmmaker first, and a computer-savvy person out of necessity. I'm not going to be doing massive VFX films all on my own, all I want is a well-organized and speedy editor, the same in an audio program, and I guess something that can do titles. Davinci already more than covers the color grading side of things.

What would you suggest for a title program? I'd rather not touch AE if I can help it. I know it can do all sorts of stuff, but it's just not my cup of tea. Motion?

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