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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 :)

What is the New Color Science?

S

Steve MacMillan

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I understand that RED has changed the way build 20 handles gamma? But I'm not finding answers when I search for "New Color Science". What exactly is it? Plenty of posts, but no clear explanation and nothing in the build 20 manual.

STeve
 
Colour Science is the math behind how we turn the colours the image sensor sees into the colours you, the end user sees on the EVF, LCD or computer monitor.

The NCS is an advanced calibration of the colours the camera produces for greater accuracy, lower noise (especially under tungsten light) and more accurate calibration of the white balance kelvin and tint numbers.

Graeme
 
Thanks for that.

So I gather from piecing together posts I've read, that Red Alert build 20 interprets the RAW footage in a different and improved way during transcodes. What about the Quicktime codec, does it also interpret footage in a new way? Are we talking about only RAW footage produced by a build 20 camera? What are the ramifications of mixing NewColorScience footage with older build 17 footage?

Thanks,
STeve
 
All footage from all builds can benefit from NCS. That's the benefit of shooting RAW.

Quicktime Codec is not quite ready with the NCS, but it's coming.

Differences are how the white balance is handled so you may need to re-balance pre-B20 footage. Other than that, just enjoy the more accurate colors and lower noise.

Graeme
 
Graeme,

Can you explain why build 20 looks so warm? Under 5600K lighting, the image appears as if I had put a tobacco filter in front of the lens. In order to get a proper color balance, I white balance the camera to 4200K, which looks normal under 5600K lighting conditions. The images look fine in Red Cine, but the quicktime proxies are quite blue.

I should add, even when white balanced to 4200K, the viewfinder still looks too warm.
 
Build 20 being a Beta, could there be problems unforseen that could leave me redfaced in the middle of a shoot? I am scared to use 20 because it is a beta
 
Old news. Build 20 is not beta any more. It's the release build.
 
Chris, what 5600k light source are you using? I've shot or had shot for me RED under a variety of light sources, from 2800k to 5600k and when auto-white balanced, they always look neutral, and the kelvin readout is very close to what my color temperature meter says the light source is.

Graeme
 
Hi Graeme,

I just finished a shoot this morning. Lit with Arri HMIs, the camera white balanced to 4300K. The viewfinder still looked warm to my eye, my Panasonic 1700 HD monitor looked correct.

Is there an issue with my camera?
 
I'm not sure if there's a camera issue or not. But the EVF should be showing the same color balance as the LCD as an external monitor.

Graeme
 
The overly warm tones apply to older footage which I view in RED CINE as well. If I reset the shot to color science, it looks very warm.

Am I the only one seeing this issue?
 
If you re-white balance, all should look neutral.

Graeme
 
So the correct way to "convert" an old clip into the NCS is to load it up in RA 20+, re-whitebalance (just set it to 5600/3200 again?) and then generate QTs, am I right?
 
Hi Chris,

I see the same thing with a lot of footage shot on Build 17. We haven't gone to Build 20 yet, so maybe that will change things, but with Build 17 exteriors from Glacier National Park and other locations, we've seen Red Alert white balance a lot of footage I expected to be around 5600 to between 4200 and 4800. In the past, we often had exteriors look more neutral around 6500 to 7000, so it is quite a change. This is with footage in Redspace coming from 3 different cameras.

Of course it looks much nicer with the new color science, but it is puzzling. I'll be interested to see what it looks like when we go to Build 20 after a shoot next week.

Walter


Chris Bell said:
The overly warm tones apply to older footage which I view in RED CINE as well. If I reset the shot to color science, it looks very warm.

Am I the only one seeing this issue?
Click to expand...
 
I just finished viewing a weeks worth of footage with an editor. He had complained that all of the footage we shot was very blue. On his system, an 8 core mac, I opened several r3ds shot both build 20 and build 17 and they looked neutral in RED Alert. When I made proxies, they ALWAYS were much bluer than what I was seeing in RED Alert. I tried making dramatic changes to the image to see how that affected the proxies, including moving the blue gain to zero, and the image, which appeared yellow in Red Alert looked green in the proxy, as if blue had been added.
 
cinefisch said:
I just finished viewing a weeks worth of footage with an editor. He had complained that all of the footage we shot was very blue. On his system, an 8 core mac, I opened several r3ds shot both build 20 and build 17 and they looked neutral in RED Alert. When I made proxies, they ALWAYS were much bluer than what I was seeing in RED Alert. I tried making dramatic changes to the image to see how that affected the proxies, including moving the blue gain to zero, and the image, which appeared yellow in Red Alert looked green in the proxy, as if blue had been added.
Click to expand...

At the moment, the quicktime proxies don't support the new color science. So the extra blue is to be expected. Your new color temp settings take effect, but since QT is old color science, those new settings end up looking significantly cooler.
 
Graeme Nattress said:
Colour Science is the math behind how we turn the colours the image sensor sees into the colours you, the end user sees on the EVF, LCD or computer monitor.

The NCS is an advanced calibration of the colours the camera produces for greater accuracy, lower noise (especially under tungsten light) and more accurate calibration of the white balance kelvin and tint numbers.

Graeme
Click to expand...

Although Jim and Jarred prefer to call NCS "Graeme's Magic" :cornut:
 
cinefisch said:
Does this invalidate the work flow of using the QT proxies to edit in FCP in build 20, since the color will not match what was viewed on set?
Click to expand...

Not if you color grade anyway. You'll just have to accept the wrong colors while editing.
 
I, too have been seeing the warmer than expected color. Using both window light, mixed with HMI and daylight Kino Flos, all metering around 5700k, the image I was seeing under a Daylight preset white balance appeared almost sepia across the LCD, EVF and external Panasonic monitor. Adjusting the white balance manually to 4200K brought the most natural looking image. Ironically, and this addresses my last post. If I record the image with the warm balance, the QT codecs look pretty good.
 
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