IPP2 Premier Pro Workflow

[Josh Birch]

Hello All,

I'm just after a bit of clarification with regards to IPP2 and the Premier Pro workflow...

1. I understand technical conversion LUTs (i.e bringing it back from Log to Rec 709, Rec 2020 etc) should always be placed as the 'Input LUT'. Should this be done by adding a Lumetri effect to the master, and then adding the 'Input LUT' here? Or by applying it to the individual clips taken from that master in the Lumetri Panel?

2. If you then wanted to add a LUT which was a look, would you then add this to the 'Creative Look' on each individual clip taken from the master?

3. Finally, do people tend to adjust exposure in the Master settings, or just adjust it in the Lumetri Panel on each individual clip?

Admittedly I've been using Red Gamma 4/Dragon Colour 2 too much lately, and I'd like to completely understand the workflow before using IPP2 more. I found the below article useful.

http://www.inventome.com/blog/using-red-footage-in-premiere-and-lumetri

Thanks in advance,
Josh

 

[Aaron Lochert]

The article is pretty spot on.

The transform from REDWideGamutRGB/Log3g10 to a display format like Rec709/Rec2020 are designed to happen at the end of the chain.

Read up on the processing stages of IPP2 here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/red_3/downl...v-B RED OPS, IPP2 Image Pipeline Stages.pdf Notice in the article

As far as creative LUTs, it depends on what the LUT is designed to do, what it's expecting as an input and what it's outputting. If we're talking about philmColor LUTs or any other LUT specifically designed for Ipp2, those go in stage 2 of IPP2, after Primary Raw Development and before the output transform.

Always adjust exposure in the raw settings, as well as white balance. Lumetri is just guessing. In the raw settings, you can always be sure that +1 is going be exactly one stop. If you look at the whitepaper again, you'll see that ISO and exposure adjustment happens when it's being encoded to Log3g10, which means the curve will be right. The article also addressed some banding issues that came up from using the exposure setting in the Lumetri panel.

All this said, Lumetri's controls aren't mapped to RWG/Log3g10. It's assuming you're working with Rec709-ish material. So that's why the guy in the article is grading after the output transform, even though it's incorrect. The beauty of IPP2 putting the output transforms at the end is because during this transition phase to HDR displays, you can swap out the output transform and not have to regrade your entire movie.

 

[Josh Birch]

Hello Aaron,

Many thanks for the insightful feedback on this.

Thanks for clarifying the output transform process. So you and the article mention that Premier Pro is designed for Rec 709-ish material, how would you suggest doing the output transform when using Premier. Like the guy has said in the article? Or some way different?

With regards to the transform being at the end of the chain, when do you actually apply this then? Obviously in that article it talks about applying it from the beginning, would you do it different in Premier?

For the creative LUTS, I have been using Lutify.Me IPP2 Lots (see below) I presume they would go in at Stage 2 as well?

https://lutify.me/products/professional-package

Cheers again,
Josh

 

[paulcurtis]

Hi Josh,

Seeing as i wrote that then i can chime in here

Glad you found it useful. I don't think there is a better way to work quite yet in Premiere Pro and this works okay but there are other approaches

The way i suggest here is to start with a master red file which is RWG and LogG10, then turn this into 709 which is what the Premiere colour primaries are. In an ideal world you would *not* do this but Lumetri only functions in 709 space and by that i mean all the controls are expecting that 2.4 gamma and those colour primaries.

The ideal world would be that the controls operated in Linear or Log space and that you would

RWG -> Lumetri Controls in log/linear -> Global Output Transform

But we have to

RWG -> 709 -> Lumetri Controls

And the downside with that is that doing exposure adjustments in Lumetri is operated on images with a display transform baked in (which is what we have to do). But if we could do the first then we'd be able to balance exposure much easier. The thing with Lumetri exposure is that it is neither a math add (log) or math multiple (linear) but a transform applied through an S curve so that brights stay bright and shadows stay dark with the mids moving more - this is an utter kludge but it works because 99% of people are using 709 in Premiere Pro.

You can set up something a bit more flexible by using adjustment layers as well but that can get really fiddly on the timeline.

Hope this make sense?

cheers
Paul

 

[Chris Kennedy]

Generally in Premiere to make the look consistent I create an adjustment layer and apply my LUT on that and adjust each clip as need be with the metadata-not Lumetri (defeats the purpose of a RAW workflow). The Red IPP2 Transform LUT would have to go at the end of the chain: 3D RWG/Log3G10 footage, creative LUT, IPP2 Transform LUT

However, Premiere Pro/Lumetri doesn’t use tetrahedral 3d lut interpolation currently (hopefully soon), so you’d risk having banding in your image. Ideally for grading I export an edl and grade in Resolve-where IPP2 is better supported. Rendering a LUT on an 8k clip in Premiere Pro is literally impossible to deal with on my rig even though editing RedGamma 4/DC2 isn’t an issue.

 

[Jackson Veigel]

Great info, but do any of you all have a good method for batch adjusting all the Gamma and Color Space settings for many clips to L3G10/RWG without modifying the other settings? (eg: without modifying the color temp). My previous strat was to make a preset by right clicking the RED Source Settings in the master clip window and creating a preset for that, but that preset overwrites all of the master settings.

 

[nokipowlonski]

There is no way to do this at this time, unfortunately.. We are all waiting for an update.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Great info, but do any of you all have a good method for batch adjusting all the Gamma and Color Space settings for many clips to L3G10/RWG without modifying the other settings? (eg: without modifying the color temp). My previous strat was to make a preset by right clicking the RED Source Settings in the master clip window and creating a preset for that, but that preset overwrites all of the master settings.

You can do batch changes like that in RC-X.

And as long as you do it before loading the clips into PP, there won't be any issues.