FCPX - apply LUTs / color to original media or optimized ProRes?

[Andy_Johnson]

Hey guys, just like the title says - is it best to apply my LUTs and grading to the original media (GH4 4k h.264 MOVs) or apply to the optimized media (ProRes)?

Thanks for the tips!

 

[Marc Wielage]

I wouldn't grade at all in FCPX, but it depends on what you're trying to do. What's the nature of the project? Where is it going to be seen? Has the client given you any delivery specs?

The biggest problem with trying to make changes in FCPX is: you need an accurate, calibrated monitor to know what you're seeing. Great scopes are important, too. Having lots of still frame references of other scenes for matching is mandatory.

 

[Andy_Johnson]

Thanks for the quick input - this is just for personal use/hobby. I'm editing on the 5k iMac which I would assume is (somewhat) calibrated, but I can't say I've confirmed the correctness.

I just use FCPX because for the type of work (my signature for an example) I'm doing with the GH4, it doesn't require to crazy of edits or adjustments. I would love to learn something else like Resolve but I just see that as overkill until my real RED arrives.

 

[Kalechi Noel]

To the best of my knowledge , "optimized Vs original" will not magically give you more quality than what was already there. That being said , working with gh4 footage , I never create optimized footage because my machine (and I assume yours ) , can handle working with the original h264 4K footage no problem . So I work with , edit and grade the original footage . Never create optimized. If the machine does start to slow down, you can edit in proxy , but switch back to original for color grading .

Also, you should consider trying colorfinale for more advanced grading right in fcpx . It's powerful and allows you to fine tune your grading .

 

[Terry VerHaar]

IMO, I just wouldn't work with h.264 even if your machine can "handle" it. It's a clunky codec made more for playback than editing.

I agree with Kalechi, try Color Finale, it is excellent and is likely to give you much better total control for your grading. Denver Riddle, the inventor of Color Finale, graded a recently released feature on FCPX in Color Finale, called "Just Let Go." You can find info on Youtube. Chris McKechnie, a very talented REDuser who posts here a lot also helped test and refine it and does his (very excellent!) work in FCPX/Color Finale.

Marc works in the stratosphere of CC, doing big budget projects in a world unlike that which most of us inhabit. For "the rest of us" I think a 5K iMac has an excellent reputation for color fidelity. (FWIW, I plan on making it my next machine.) Use a Spyder color correction device (or similar) to calibrate your monitor and I doubt you will ever have a problem. Use the very capable scope in FCPX and you can confirm what you are seeing.

 

[Andy_Johnson]

Nice, thanks guys. I do use Denver's other FCPX tool - the LUT Utility. I will definitely look at Color Finale. I remember seeing his emails about the release but haven't checked it out yet.

 

[Andy_Johnson]

Uhhhh so I just checked out Color Finale... wow! Thanks again for the suggestion. I'm going to grade on optimized ProRes instead of the h.264 - it just feels 'better'.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Thanks for the quick input - this is just for personal use/hobby. I'm editing on the 5k iMac which I would assume is (somewhat) calibrated, but I can't say I've confirmed the correctness.

No, the iMacs (and the Apple monitors in general) are not accurate for judging color. If this is just a hobby, anything will work if it makes a picture. Just be sure to check scopes as you go.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Andy - forget what I said. Make sure you go out and buy a calibrated monitor. Spend no less than $25K because everything else is shit ($40K would be better). As a matter of fact, no matter the end use, instead of trying to learn this stuff yourself, be sure to hire a top end professional colorist because you don't know shit.

Oh, and when it come to sound... whatever your budget for the film, be sure to get a professional sound guy with top end equipment... because otherwise your sound will always be shit.

As for me... the hobbyist who doesn't know shit... I have edited and graded a few short films on my calibrated Apple monitors and, when shown in the theatre, they looked pretty much like they did on my monitors. But, of course, I don't know shit. :001_tongue:

 

[Andy_Johnson]

Hahaha thanks Terry - I will be sure to do those!

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Terry, the parade doesn't help Andy. Marc's advice does.

And yes, if sound is not captured by a professional sound guy with at least mid range gear, and mixed & mastered by an experienced professional, it is likely to be shit in broadcast and in cinema theater especially.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Andy - forget what I said. Make sure you go out and buy a calibrated monitor. Spend no less than $25K because everything else is shit ($40K would be better). As a matter of fact, no matter the end use, instead of trying to learn this stuff yourself, be sure to hire a top end professional colorist because you don't know shit.

Well, there's shit and then there's shit. The key is to know the difference between shit and shinola. Without that, you won't get very far.

There are affordable monitors right around $2000 out there, but the key is the calibration and having a color-managed signal path going to the monitor. Trying to do it all inside the iMac is fraught with problems, because you're at the mercy of what the internal OS believes sRGB is. And if that's not calibrated, all bets are off.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Marc, your air of superiority is tiresome.

Andy - here are a couple of examples of people using iMacs with good results. One for broadcast, one for the web. I stumbled across them yesterday; didn't even have to search. lol

http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/art...broadcast-job-real-editing-and-real-deadlines
http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/articles/1770-fcpx-the-faire-est-of-them-all

 

[Stephen Nguyen]

+1 for ColorFinale. Great tool for grading and works seamlessly with R3D footage.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Marc, your air of superiority is tiresome.

That's all in your head. Sometimes the truth is hard to hear, but it's sad when people don't want to hear it or believe it.

I see five years of credits for you in IMDB. Did any of this directly involve color correction? Did you actually do any of those projects on an iMac? Do you genuinely believe you can use an iMac for critical color correction?

Again, note that I'm not telling people they have to spend many, many thousands of dollars on a huge broadcast 4K monitor like a Sony or a Dolby or something. I'm saying there are "affordable" options that can make sense for modest low-budget projects; Eizo and FSI would be on that short list. As long as the monitor calibrated and you can trust it, and it uses a color-managed signal, you have a fighting chance of being able to believe what you see. Without that, you're gonna sail right off the cliff. To misquote Neil deGrasse Tyson: "the good thing about science is that it's still true whether or not you believe it." And I think that particularly holds true for color science.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

That's all in your head. Sometimes the truth is hard to hear, but it's sad when people don't want to hear it or believe it.

I see five years of credits for you in IMDB. Did any of this directly involve color correction? Did you actually do any of those projects on an iMac? Do you genuinely believe you can use an iMac for critical color correction?

Again, note that I'm not telling people they have to spend many, many thousands of dollars on a huge broadcast 4K monitor like a Sony or a Dolby or something. I'm saying there are "affordable" options that can make sense for modest low-budget projects; Eizo and FSI would be on that short list. As long as the monitor calibrated and you can trust it, and it uses a color-managed signal, you have a fighting chance of being able to believe what you see. Without that, you're gonna sail right off the cliff. To misquote Neil deGrasse Tyson: "the good thing about science is that it's still true whether or not you believe it." And I think that particularly holds true for color science.

Marc - I am not disputing the advice you give, as far as it goes. Using the best equipment and hiring the best talent is always good -and safe -advice. But you tend to look right past the questions people are actually asking. You work in a world where a $2K monitor - or a $10K+ monitor - is proper and necessary - and affordable. If you are delivering House of Cards or Game of Thrones, are you going to use an iMac? Hardly.

But those usually aren't the questions people are actually asking. Most of them are citing limitations - "Can I get a decent picture with just an iMac?" or "If all I have is a Zoom recorder, how can I capture the best possible sound?" Etc. It's fine that you guide them to better equipment and more professional solutions. But, when someone else offers them encouragement that might help them get better results UNDER THE ACTUAL CONDITIONS THEY CITE," you go all "That's bullshit." on them.

In the last 6-8 years I have worked on more than 50+ short films (yes, I am relatively new to the game). And, I'd say my role in those 50 projects was rarely exactly the same from one to the next. Are you a better colorist than I am - without any doubt. You have undoubtedly gone through the same process over and over and over again until you can do it in your sleep. But have you ever actually challenged yourself to do a color grade on an iMac just to see if you can? Have you tried to capture sound with just a Zoom H4 and a Rode mic? Probably not because it doesn't serve your professional interests. That makes sense.

But, if you say that a decent image can't be made with an iMac, I say you are wrong, as indicated by just the two examples I cited previously. Is it the "best" approach, no. But it does work. And you also seem to ignore the fact that, in delivering to the web (or, in my case, even to the local theatre experience) that the screens you are delivering to are rarely calibrated and uniform. I'd be the first to say you shouldn't give up on standardization because of that but it is a fact, as frustrating as it may be.

So, in this case, I am offering the suggestion that our OP can use a color calibration unit for his iMac (I use a Spyder.) And yep - I am guilty of suggesting he spend money, too. And maybe he can't or doesn't want to spend even a few hundred dollars; that's always possible. But that is the beginning of a "poor man's" color managed workflow. And, while I know it to be true in FCPX I believe it is also true on the Mac OS, the color is managed internally by ColorSync, and the iMac itself (at least the latest ones) has a wide gamut display and the OS has several wide gamut color profiles included. (Here's an interesting read: http://blog.conradchavez.com/tag/final-cut-pro-x/).

So, is the guy color grading his footage on his iMac likely to take your job away any time soon. I doubt it. Of course, that has to do with a whole lot other than the monitor you grade on. But, can he/she deliver a reasonable image on the web or even to the theatre using an iMac. Yes.

 

[Mike P.]

Andy, I'd definitely grade from the optimized prores; it'll be less heavy on the system (though that's likely moot, but rendering will be faster) and will be applied to a 422/10bit file instead of 420/8bit (no, it won't magically give you better colour than the source files, but it'll allow you more breathing room to maximize what is there.)

 

[Marc Wielage]

But, if you say that a decent image can't be made with an iMac, I say you are wrong, as indicated by just the two examples I cited previously. Is it the "best" approach, no. But it does work. And you also seem to ignore the fact that, in delivering to the web (or, in my case, even to the local theatre experience) that the screens you are delivering to are rarely calibrated and uniform.

But if they are not calibrated in any way -- not even to sRGB -- then you'll have the terrible potential for going right off the road in going down the wrong path.

I have a tendency to run into a lot of people on this forum who ask for advice, but then they don't like the advice when it boils down to: "spend more money, learn your craft, and understand that there is a point where if you try to go below it, you're going to wind up destroying your project." In many cases, what happens is it's not one particular thing, but dozens, maybe a hundred small things that all add up to having a devastating effect on picture quality. There is a downward spiral when you start ignoring "little things that don't matter" (like monitors), and once you reach critical mass, it spirals downwards very quickly.

It's sad to observe that there's a lot of users here who are desperate to spend $40,000+ on a camera and shoot in 4K, 5K, 6K, even 8K, but they fight me when I tell them that the $400 Samsung "Retina" display in an iMac is not really good enough for judging picture quality. In truth, a $1200 Eizo might get there adequately -- especially for the web -- but the real key is the calibration and color-managed connection. The calibration is the hard part, and that represents the line between seeing the truth and seeing lies. A high-end Samsung TV set would actually be a better choice, and those are far from expensive.

I would equate this to trying to do a sound mix on a project on $50 speakers on a desk in a noisy computer room, vs. mixing on expensive, full-range loudspeakers in a quiet, acoustically-designed room. The problem is if you try to do it on the former, you have no idea what you're hearing and this will have a drastic effect on the balance, EQ, and dynamic range of what your audience hears (or doesn't hear). Similar problems also happen with color and brightness.

Ignore my advice at your own peril. I have no dog in this hunt, since I make a living regardless of whether you make good movies, bad movies, beautiful movies, or ugly movies. But when I see somebody flailing around blind on the web, I don't have a problem stepping in and giving free advice just to help. Tooting my own horn is not part of it; shining a light on ignorance is my intent. If you doubt me, read Alexis Van Hurkman's Color Correction Handbook, Steve Hullfish's The Art & Technique of Digital Color Correction, and David Stump's Digital Cinematography. All of them touch on the importance of using a monitor you can really trust. To overlook the importance of a decent monitor is very foolish, particularly when you're doing so solely on the philosophy of being cheap. There are always inexpensive alternatives, but not using a color-managed display for critical color and picture evaluation is suicidal. If you haven't discovered this yet, you eventually will.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Marc - you love to her yourself talk but you don't listen. You answer questions people aren't asking. I never asked for your advice but you love to lecture. You assume people are ignorant rather than consider the fact that they have reasons to disagree with you. Consider the fact that people have read the books and studied the literature and come to a different conclusion because they have a different frame of reference.

You strike me as someone who, instead of having 20 years of experience, has one year of experience 20 times over.

Keep doing what you're doing. I am sure it is working.

As I tried to tell you, the advice you are giving is credible, it just isn't helpful.

 

[Andy_Johnson]

All good guys - when I'm reading the forums here, I'm like a sponge. I soak up everything I can. I appreciate every single word that someone takes the time to write and reply to my question.

Even if a suggestion is not currently feasible (either by financial or logistical reasons), it's still good information. Another reason why I love this forum is that there is a myriad of experience, areas of expertise, and stages of careers among contributors. It's cool to know how the "pros" do it because that's something to shoot for and keep in my back pocket, while learning the tricks I can apply to the average Joe (myself).

So thanks again to all of you - I can guarantee I will have more questions