Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Posting a 5DMKII/RED ONE shoot

A

AaronPicot

Well-known member
Joined
May 21, 2009
Messages
129
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Location
Los Angeles, CA
It seems to me that 5/7Ds have become close at hand on RED sets. In fact, a few weeks ago, I shot some interviews using a R1 and a 5D. 1080 finish, for SD DVD and web only. Maybe Blu-Ray someday.

Anyway, I'm just curious to learn from others out there who have posted this type of project before. Tips, tricks, warnings? I have the offline edit completed (until the client makes revisions of course) and I'm just starting to think about color and on-lining.

The 5D's footage is super contrasty and really sharp, looks great! Little noisy. Obviously a little different from R1. Used Nikon glass, just fyi. Is anyone using filters that are great for matching these two after coloring?

Maybe just discussions/anecdotes about matching these two cameras? Is there an existing forum which covers this already that I've missed?

Posting with Final Cut Studio 2. I know, I'm a little behind, what are you gonna do....

Thanks,
Picot
 
I would recommend using the 5d for tight shots with little fine detail. The first place these things break down is when there are fine details. Like shooting a wide exterior things like telephone cables in the background look like stair steps.

I am out in Prague right now with red and 1D and before the shoot we shit some tests and took them to the final grading house for a look see. I would highly recommend this heading into a project as I have seen many times where this kind of test resulted in a change of plans to shoot more RED and less canon.

As for matching them while grading I can't help u there but a good colorist should have no problem as I've seen several shows do this.
 
Cool, thanks Chris. This is exactly what I did, I used the 5D for the tighter shots, looks great. Shouldn't be a problem matching color. I don't have the greatest grading tools out there, but I understand CC enough that I'm not at all worried about it.
 
One place where you might end up stumbling is grading, depending on your workflow/tools. I know Color *sometimes* stumbles on mixed-media timelines. Then again, sometimes it pulls through like a trooper. And I have yet to determine what causes the problems.

Make sure your 5D2 files are transcoded to ProRes for finishing. That should be a given at this level of production, but I've run into enough people who don't do it that I always make the suggestion.

Know the limits of the material. 5D2 footage is very gradeable, right up until you hit a point where it all falls apart. I always suggest that first-time SLR graders take a piece of test footage and tear it apart. Crank the highlights WAY up (Like beyond anything you would reasonably actually do), stretch the shadows out, do painful things to your colors. That way you know where the issues will start occurring *before* you sit down and do a real grade.

Matching RED/5D footage can be tricky, or it can be a walk in the park. Depends on the footage, of course. Depending on your style white balance will either become more or less useful. I actually usually use white balance as part of my creative toolset with RED footage, but when I'm matching to 5D (Or really to anything non-RAW) I pick the WB for the lighting and let it ride, doing most of my grade on the other tools.
 
Yeah I'd push everything to ProRes to keep it really simple. Bring in some Clipfinder and some Grinder for the transcodes and you'll save a lot of media connection headaches...

Noah
 
Thanks guys. Yeah I definitely started with the ProRes transcode. Spent a lot of time dealing with codecs and I know the one-codec timeline is the only way to go.

Actually did just a little testing with the camera. Was testing for panning and the rolling shutter effect, those kinds of things. Did a quick CC test as well, didn't raise any flags.

I think I might have to delve into some skin softening in Color. The Red footage looks just the way I want it to, but the 5D looks like extremely sharp footage showing tons of detail in the face - like every pore. Any suggestions for blending these two different looks?

Thanks for the discussions, fellas.
 
AaronPicot said:
I think I might have to delve into some skin softening in Color. The Red footage looks just the way I want it to, but the 5D looks like extremely sharp footage showing tons of detail in the face - like every pore. Any suggestions for blending these two different looks?
Click to expand...

It's probably too late on this project, but definitely look into turning the sharpening down on the 5D. Out of the box it's a bit crispy for most people's tastes. See: http://prolost.com/blog/2009/8/3/flatten-your-5d.html for some suggestions.

You can set up a skin soften using the Color FX tools in Color. I've never really done it, so I couldn't tell you exactly how, but I would maybe start with one of their highlight glow presets and tweak from there. Or there may well be a skin-soften preset built in. I never really use the ColorFX.
 
Cool, thanks Ben.

Hypothetically speaking. Is it better to color correct the h.264s that the camera acquires, or to transcode to ProRes first, then CC? Could you actually lose anything in the transfer?

How come h.264s look brighter in Quicktime than the ProRes transcoded version of the same video clip? Gamma shift issue I'm sure. Which is correct? Either? Neither?

Damn u, Quicktime....
 
AaronPicot said:
Cool, thanks Ben.

Hypothetically speaking. Is it better to color correct the h.264s that the camera acquires, or to transcode to ProRes first, then CC? Could you actually lose anything in the transfer?

How come h.264s look brighter in Quicktime than the ProRes transcoded version of the same video clip? Gamma shift issue I'm sure. Which is correct? Either? Neither?

Damn u, Quicktime....
Click to expand...

I've never noticed much in the way of gamma shifting. Odd.

Color won't accept an h.264 file, so if that's your grading destination, it's really a moot point. Plus editing h.264 is a pain in the butt, so you're better off transcoding first regardless.

Plus, as you mentioned before, a single-codec timeline is a good thing, especially in Color. Which means you may want to look into doing a one-light render of your RED footage before grading. Don't necessarily have to do it pre-edit, as I've mixed RED and ProRes on a single timeline before without problems in FCP. But for Color it's a good idea. When you do your one-light, you should, at least in my opinion, do your scaling as well. Opinions differ on this one, but I've found that Color chokes on multiple-resolution timelines more often than multiple-codec. So you might be better suited running all your RED stuff off as a one-light 1080P ProRes to match your 5D stuff.

You may well get away with mixing formats. I've done it. Just finished a RED/5D2 music video where the deadline was too tight to render out the RED footage, so I had just ran them through Color RAW. It worked, but then again I've done other projects where Color's been petulant and refused to cooperate. Better safe than sorry.
 
I'd suggest to get yourself familiar with the Pictures Style Editor from Canon and "pre-grade" for any looks that might need massive changes. The Picture Styles are applied before compression and can save a lot more of the sensor data for post if you already tweak them in the right direction. Even somer extreme color changes are possible, which would get very speckled if done after compression.
Plus, I found MPEG Streamclip's batch mode to be the fastest when transcoding to ProRes. Grinder is pretty slow, and Compressor still hangs if you throw many clips at it.
 
Uli Plank said:
I'd suggest to get yourself familiar with the Pictures Style Editor from Canon and "pre-grade" for any looks that might need massive changes. The Picture Styles are applied before compression and can save a lot more of the sensor data for post if you already tweak them in the right direction.
Click to expand...

I am assuming you are doing this in-camera before shooting? How does this apply to an H.264 file once recorded and compression is already applied? Does the Pictures Style Editor allow for an output of 4:2:0 8 bit in REC601 color space for preview? Something along the lines of what Steve offers here: http://www.lightillusion.com/canoncurves.htm


Michael
 
MichaelP said:
I am assuming you are doing this in-camera before shooting? How does this apply to an H.264 file once recorded and compression is already applied? Does the Pictures Style Editor allow for an output of 4:2:0 8 bit in REC601 color space for preview? Something along the lines of what Steve offers here: http://www.lightillusion.com/canoncurves.htm


Michael
Click to expand...

Those curves that Steve offers are in-camera curves. At this point there's no way to do anything besides a normal grade to the post-compression footage.

There's a lot of discussion about how much use specialized gamma curves (Like the lightillusion ones, or other more severe curves) really are. Having tried a few on my 7D, I'm firmly in the "Don't use them" category. I flatten the image using Stu's settings and that's it. The various superflat and other gamma curves actually make things *worse* in grading, in my experience. Yes there's more detail, but the image falls apart faster.

I've never tried doing an on-site grade, I.E. setting the picture style for a precise lighting setup, so I can't really speak to that. It seems like a decent idea, but also like a decent amount of work. Might be worth trying.
 
Well, getting any serious quality out of these IS a decent amount of work…

Once the image is compressed, the damage is done and you can only add minor tweaks in grading before it falls apart.

I second the notion that a curve like "Superflat" is more damage than advantage in most cases. Only scene specific "pre-grading" can help to some degree.
 
5D + RED Grading workflow

5D + RED Grading workflow

I have graded a few commercials shot on both of the camera's.

First you need to decide if you want the film to look as if it's shot on one and the same camera or if you want to see the difference. It could be an artistic choice to shoot on 2 different camera's. For this workflow I'm assuming you want the shots to match as closely as possible.

I've found it's best to set your 5D to the most neutral setting during the shoot. Most of the custom Picture Profiles online change your colors too much. The image looks a bit like a log file, but it's got nowhere near enough data to be used as one. So just move color/sat/sharpening to 0 and you're set. Also ISO ranges based on 320 seem to get the lowest amount of noise (320/640/2180). Getting your white balance right the first time is pretty much a requirement on the 5D, if you need to correct that you're already shifting the colors pretty hard, and in doing so adding artifacts/noise.

First I convert the 5D .H264 to ProRes 422 (HQ). This doesn't decrease the quality in any way. You're going from +- 45 mbit .H264 to 220 mbit ProRes, and the ProRes is a much cleaner compression than .H264 in the first place, plus Color can't handle the .H264 that good anyway. You can do this using Compressor which works good most of the time, or you can use Rarevision's 5DtoRGB (http://rarevision.com/5dtorgb/). It's a freeware application that resolves more detail from the original files than quicktime, this is mostly noticeable when you need to use 5D material for keying. It's extra detail/sharpness, there's not that much of a difference in color. The only downside is that you can't batch your files.

Grading the 5D shots first seems to be a good starting point. The 5D material gets noisy/artifacts/moire really fast if you start grading. You don't want to have an awesome grade on your RED footage and then not be able to match the 5D shots afterwards. Your best shot at matching the material is degrading you RED material a bit (clipping shadow/highlights to match the 5D's DR). I know this is unfortunate, but in my experience this does help bring the shots together better.

In color I usually start with a primary grade on the 5D shots, correcting any color shifts and exposure issues. Then I start working on the R3D files, it's pretty easy to match the 5D primary because of the raw tab in Color. If you really can't get your 5D shots completely neutral, try and shift your RED shots more towards the 5D shots, instead of the other way around, that way at least your shots will match. The same goes for the exposure. You can try clipping the highlights/shadows of the RED shots a bit to compensate for the 5D's low DR. This way you should be able to get a decently matching image. When you've got the shots matched in white balance and exposure, then you can go and start creating a look.

When you're working with both these camera's you need to realize that you need to compromise on the quality of the RED shots to create a balanced image. That is, if you want your shots to match as close as possible.

I hope this is of any use to you, and good luck on the project!
 
Hi Beer, I second most everything you wrote here, but I noticed you advise setting sharpening to "0".
In my understanding this is still sharpening, I tend to turn it down all the way and apply it to taste in post. Easier to judge there and better algorithms available as well.
 
Uli Plank said:
Hi Beer, I second most everything you wrote here, but I noticed you advise setting sharpening to "0".
In my understanding this is still sharpening, I tend to turn it down all the way and apply it to taste in post. Easier to judge there and better algorithms available as well.
Click to expand...

Ah my bad, with 0 I meant all the way down. So then there's as little post processing done in camera as possible. Totally agree on the "avoiding-all-in-camera-processing" (at least with the 5D that is, *drooling* on HDRx!)
 
Thanks Beer, that is awesome! Lots of great info there.

Has anyone ever published a solid, works-every-time workflow with RED footage Final Cut - from the start of post to delivering? I know I've read countless threads on here on the subject.
Sub question - Is Color 1.5 totally worth it? I am currently stuck with Final Cut Studio 2, which doesn't have 1.5. Seems like there is a lot it can't do, especially when it comes to RED. 4444 ProRes, etc. Does anyone know if Apple plans on releasing an updated 'Studio within a year that I might wait for?
I mention this because on this project, I had real problems with Color handling my RED footage (not with 5D stuff mixed in). I could utilize the RED tab and everything, but it wouldn't let me export in 3K. Is that cuz of the early version I have?

Thanks,
Picot
 
I'm not sure about Apple releasing a new FCS, but there are rumors....
FCP and Color are still in written in "old" code (carbon or cacao I always forget which of the two is the old one) and people are assuming there's gonna be a new release soon.
Especially because the FCS3 upgrade wasn't all that amazing, and more a "side-grade".
Although the Color upgrade is nice, and I love colored sequence tabs in FCP :)

And to be honest, Adobe Premiere is taking over FCP in functionality and speed. We need some multicore + gpu support in FCP :P

If you're not in a hurry to upgrade, by all means wait it out for half a year, maybe something is announced by then (MacWorld 2011?).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top