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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 :)

Live Grading on Dragon

Hi Jesse,

One avenue you might want to look at would be to use an ACES approach. This removes all of the various gamma curves from the equation. You would need to develop an IDT that is common between your live and your dailies system (if you're using Colorfront products that's not an issue) and you would need to set the cameras to output ACES proxy on SDI, but all of that is do-able and it will give you a consistent result provided you set it up correctly. Without going into any more detail (that might get into some IP that I cannot talk about here) we are doing that on a fairly large movie in London at the moment. We kind of fell into it because the use of an ACES pipeline had been decided before they introduced Red cameras into the mix (it's primariiy an Arriraw show) so we had to accommodate all cameras into a common pipeline, and it just happened that using this approach worked.
 
Jesse Korosi said:
So Mark, when you were live grading I am assuming that means you were not seeing the same image live on your monitors that you would have been rendering for dailies... I assume you considered what you had delivered as a look (CDL) for dailies processing, a "starting point" for your colorist or DIT? This kind of defeats the purpose of live grading if you ask me.
Cheers,
Jesse
Click to expand...

3D LUT on top of RLF SDI output. On set monitoring is through the 3D LUT. RFL + CDL + 3D LUT can be made to exactly match rendered RFL + CDL + 3D LUT. Yes, it would be great if the SDI was matched more closely - but you can get it where you need with a 3D LUT. And again - it would be great if Graeme just released RED's default 3D LUTs so we wouldn't have to Frankenstein 'em up and test them all the time.
 
Mark, which lut box are you using and what grading tool?

it may be a legal vs extended range scaling issue.

let me see if I have time to do some kind of side by side scoped comparison with images. Wish I thought of this earlier as I had an excellent opportunity to do so two days ago. Durp.
 
Dan Kanes said:
Mark, which lut box are you using and what grading tool?

it may be a legal vs extended range scaling issue.

let me see if I have time to do some kind of side by side scoped comparison with images. Wish I thought of this earlier as I had an excellent opportunity to do so two days ago. Durp.
Click to expand...

Currently - the Dragon (all DSMC cameras for that matter) only outputs LEGAL (black comes out the SDI at 64 and white at 940) .

Best LUT box IMO - is Fuji IS-mini - second best is PLUTO - a very distant LAST PLACE - but sadly used by MOST DITs in the biz is the BlackMagic HDlink - one of the worst hardware products I've ever experienced.

Here's a nice enjoyable read on the HDlink - http://www.lightillusion.com/forums/index.php?action=vthread&forum=13&topic=34
 
Hey Dan,
I don't think its a scaling thing as ExD from ColorFront which I was using, will have been outputting Legal as well. Worth a second look I suppose though...

Cheers,
jesse
 
Quick update on this thread. As per the question above about whether it was a scaling issue or not, no, I don't believe it was after running some more tests. After running the same test on a camera with a newer firmware (5.1.55) however, the difference is actually much more minimal which is great news. And as per the suggestions above of creating an offset LUT that calculates this difference, this does indeed get you much closer, but this is a bit ridiculous. For now though, while RED ACES (or what ever it ends of being called) remains a secret, this is the best we got I suppose.

Cheers,
Jesse
 
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