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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Phantom cineraw debayer

Sean Rawls

Sean Rawls

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Hey,

Recently got certified as a Phantom tech. I'm looking into to transcoding software for Phantom cineraw files. The debayer quality of Glue Tools and Frame Cycler are apparently much better than Vision Research's own software. Since I already have a GTX 285, 120 and a Rocket I'm interested in the quality of DaVinci's debayer for cineraw. Realtime rendering? An expert in the field didn't know for sure but had heard DaVinci was using the VRI SDK which he said wasn't that good.

Anyone know more about this?
 
Actually, that is a good question, I'm also interested in this issue.
Is there any way to change de-bayering settings in Resolve like in VR software, adjust gamma etc? Good news is that Resolve is in terms of speed far ahead everything else. You can make proxies for offline with TC superimposed faster than realtime :)
 
When you render out of resolve, and it isn't r3d, resolve will ALWAYS render out in its highest quality. but the system is REALLY fast.

debayer quality for phantom cine is AWESOME. I've my friend who is a phantom tech bring over test footage, and he claims it from what he sees to be better than glue tools.

and I was getting real time rendering.

octo core mac
16 gb ram
quadro 4k
gt 120
5 bay soft raid.


i think my favorite thing to grade is phantom cine. when shot right, it's the cleanest footage i've ever worked with.
 
but just wanted to mention, at the moment Resolve doesn't have the same LUTs as speedgrade has, so you won't be able to dial in you white point like you're used to. BUT. i find that the cine raw files have so much information in them, it really doesn't matter. I had a clip that was damn near clipped with blue, and i squeezed it out naturally and easily within seconds and it looked great.
 
Hey,

Thanks for the info Tom. Just to clarify, does lacking this LUT make Davinci still workable as a transcoding solution? I'd basically rather spend my money and get a transcoding solution with a grading suite attached than just glue tool or frame cycler . . .

Also, have you used ArriRaw and those LUTs? Do they have LUTs for the LogC Prores?

Thanks again,
 
You can export the LUT from Speedgrade and import it into Davinci. We just did this for sequences shot in the Phantom 65 with a stereo lens, so we get 2 x 2k images on a single sensor.
Davinci can´t seperate the images into something something stereo viewable, but the transcoding works quite fine.

Manuel
 
Cool, so I guess do you need speed grade on set to make a lut for Davinci? Or can you just use Davinci to grade and make realtime transcodes of phantom files? If this is true than I guess it does make more sense to buy Davinci and get a whole grading system rather than glue tools. What are the transcodes like with glue tools and FCP. I looks like glue tools plug in lets you one light it on the way in as well.

Thanks,

j
 
Transcodes will be faster on Da Vinci if you got the horsepower, it's gpu accelerated, and full 64 bit, will use every ounce your computer can offer.

glue tools is limited to compressor, so it's the speed of compressor. You can dial in basic looks with glue tools, and it's actually nice speed grade and glue tools have pre set color temps and white/black points to dial in right away.

I've tried importing speed grade LUTs into da vinci, and applying it on the cine files, maybe i'm doing something wrong but it doesn't seem to do anything. So i just manually dial in the look and get the white points accurate. For a one light it's more than adequate, and the files are SO easy to grade you can dial in the looks in seconds.

You'll still need a PC on set, which is why people stick with speedgrade, you basically just stick with one system. The phantom dock connects through either ethernet or 10g. and the software to interpret the mag to system is PC based only. So you either just offload on set and do the looks and transcodes later, or what I'm trying to do is build a set up to offload via PC, and use fast network storage to connect both comps so I can instantly start transcoding and doing one lights in da vinci.

Caldigit supershare is looking to be the easiest, simplest way of accomplishing this. But then again I need more money :)

but back to the point, the debayer quality is superb, and the transcode speed for one lights are real time, maybe even a little faster depending on your specs. Don't know how fast speedgrade is, but that's pretty fast in my book. I think glue tools is the slowest, but also the cheapest cause you don't need a major hardware overhaul to get it to work. speedgrade and framecycler costs and arm and a leg.
 
Yes, i used Speedgrade on Set to export the LUT, i used the biult in calibration LUT for Phantom and exported it to use it in Davinci.
For Arri Alexa Log C to Rec 709 you can get the LUTs directly from the Arri Digital Website
http://arridigital.com/technical/luts
(i feel a bit strange posting an arri link in the Redforum, sorry for that !)

I wouldn´t count on Gluetools, and with the rewrite of FCP coming up, you´ll never know if Gluetools is still workable and supported on the new FCP whatever it will be.
 
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