grading feedback?

[Sekhar]

Also, when stacking effects, I was just kind of going with my gut (after posting this and realizing order matters). You'd want like NR to be the first effect applied, then white balance, then contrast, then color wheels, then sharpening, then film grain? Maybe that's way off..

Generally speaking, you'll want the luma adjustments out of the way first as they can drastically affect color. I.e., adjust the lift (AKA offset)/gamma/gain for the overall/lows/mids/highs as appropriate first, and then work on the colors. Unfortunately, it's not a strict 1-2 order since the levels can shift too as you make color changes, but that is typically not as drastic as the effect of levels on color. So, adjust levels first, then colors, and go back/forth as necessary till you have both the levels and colors the way you want.

I agree it's best to have NR first in stacking, but you might end up having to do it last (or disable it as you grade) since the previews can be dog slow if you have it enabled.

[Liam]

that makes sense, thanks, @Sekhar

and yes @mercer, that was the perfect amount of vague

[mercer]

@Sekhar do you use waveforms or other scopes when you adjust your highs and lows, and do you use curves or wheels?

[Sekhar]

@Sekhar do you use waveforms or other scopes when you adjust your highs and lows, and do you use curves or wheels?

I use waveform and vectorscope.(YUV). I prefer waveform to RGB parade because:

1. You get the whole width for each color, whereas in an RGB parade you split the width
2. You can tell if the color is neutral for the area you want by checking if the colors in the waveform overlap at the area to show white...can't do that with parade

And I always also use vectorscope. It is invaluable for checking a bunch of things, like color casts, skin color, over saturation, etc.

IMHO curves are for still photography, not video. And I believe folks who use curves in grading are old timers who are just more familiar and comfortable with them. You can never get the kind of 12 dimensional control you can get with lift/gamma/gain x overall/shadows/midtones/highlights combination. They can be useful in some special situations though, as well as act as poor-man's LUTs that you can store and apply each time to your footage.

[mercer]

I just recently started using the waveform in Color Finale and it seems great, but I am yet to truly utilize all it's functions. For instance I thought lift gamma and gain did control my highs mids and lows, but from you explanation, it seems there is more to it than just that?

Back to tutorials. 

[mercer]

@Liam do you up the bitrate in magic lantern? If so, do you find it fluctuates a lot? I was shooting a few shots the other day and the bitrate would bounce between 35 and 65 and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason. 

Same question to @ZachGoodwin I know you are well versed in ML. 

[Liam]

I tried bumping the bit rate up just a little, but it crashed pretty fast, and I didn't feel safe with it. I have fairly cheap cards, so that could be the only issue. I didn't really notice a huge difference in quality in the footage I was able to get. not sure at all about it bouncing around by itself

[mercer]

I have been using 3.0 CBR and it doesn't stay constant, or I am just trusting their figures too much. Either way it does look better. I have been using a 64gb Transcend and it's only stopped recording, maybe 5 times out of the 50 or 60 clips I took with it. I also have been using the 3x crop and I will say, it definitely cures the canon of the dreaded moire and aliasing. With the eos-m, I think TL is unsupported and the two merged together. I'll have to check out Visioncolor. Do you need the eos utility software to load it onto the camera?

Btw, what's the encoder?