Ideal settings for GH3? (color grading and a first example)

[/p/]

the goal is to adjust the colors how "YOU" want and not let the camera decide for you.  That's why shooting as flat as possible works best in post.  If you really want to make your gh3 footage pop using either 50 or 77mbs, throw a SLIGHT amount of "unsharp mask" on it in post.

 

If you want, you don't have to turn noise reduction all the way down, that way whatever noise reduction you use doesn't struggle too much.

 

Have you done any before and after color grading GH3 footage? I'v also been playing around with the picture profile on my GH3, but I am inexperienced for grading footage. 

[GravitateMediaGroup]

Have you done any before and after color grading GH3 footage? I'v also been playing around with the picture profile on my GH3, but I am inexperienced for grading footage. 

 

that is what my before/after pictures are in a earlier post, although it was just a quick 30 second example, if I spent more time it would look even better.  IMO it's pretty import for a person to do a little experimenting with grading because not EVERY shot will have the end result that you predicted, and it's just a good thing to know.  If you are taking the time to learn how to work a camera, and use a NLE,  you need to learn all the other stuff that comes with it.  So by shooting FLAT on every clip, in theory would make the grading process easier.  even if it's just creating your own custom preset and applying it to your footage, and then go tweak other clips that may need a little more attention.

 

no pissing war needed, I don't have to piss right now.  to shoot -5 all the way rules out all of the -2-3-4-1 or -1-3-5-2 garbage from everybody who thinks their opinion is more important than the next.  shot flat, create your own look, end of story.  at least in the end you can set back and say "I DID THAT" and not say "my camera does all my color work for me"

[XXX]

 shot flat, create your own look, end of story.  at least in the end you can set back and say "I DID THAT" and not say "my camera does all my color work for me"

Getting a certain look in-camera always was the DPs job, be it for movies or documentary. Not saying that things shouldn't progress and there are A LOT of situations I`m happy to be able to shoot flat. But for Blanche´s situation, travel documentary, I´d opt for the best in-camera look, expose properly and roll.

And then you can really say "I did that." ;)

[GravitateMediaGroup]

Getting a certain look in-camera always was the DPs job, be it for movies or documentary. Not saying that things shouldn't progress and there are A LOT of situations I`m happy to be able to shoot flat. But for Blanche´s situation, travel documentary, I´d opt for the best in-camera look, expose properly and roll.

And then you can really say "I did that." ;)

 

editing on the fly is never a good idea

do you want to be able to say

"I wish I wouldn't have rushed and took my time to make it look the best I possibly could"

or

"I'm glad I did things the right way and i'm 100% confident I did things to the best of my ability"

[nahua]

Getting a certain look in-camera always was the DPs job, be it for movies or documentary. Not saying that things shouldn't progress and there are A LOT of situations I`m happy to be able to shoot flat. But for Blanche´s situation, travel documentary, I´d opt for the best in-camera look, expose properly and roll.

And then you can really say "I did that." ;)

 

I agree 100% with XXX here.  The point is that Blanche is traveling and wants the best compromise - least amount of disk space used, good quality and least amount of post work.  Let's face it, we all want to shoot more and edit less.  Think about the amount of clips in the short she created.  Must be 30 at least?  Who wants to color correct EVERY clip?  This isn't for Cannes (well maybe in the future :-)  ) so I think less editing is more.

 

1) AVCHD - the quality is outstanding.  You would be hard pressed to tell the difference between 50mbit/72mbit/AVCHD 24mbit.  The main issue is transcoding (even FCPX does it in the background).  There is a difference between file sizes for 50P vs 24P/30P.  I say use 30P since your delivery is the web via Vimeo.  Use 60P when you want to do slow motion effects.

 

2) The Profiles and settings are really a matter of taste.  Again how much post work do you want to do?  Do you want to really adjust 30+ individual clips and spend days to fix each and every one of them?  Again, I suggest you try it out.  What I've said is my settings only, and it's for my workflow.  In the end try just a few, and if you like the results then just go for it.

 

Again I hope this helps.  I didn't want to get too technical because this can get in the way of shooting.  Go out and do what you do best!

[Wit]

Haha not too technical. The more I learn about filming the technical it gets. Now I'm diving into the audio technics. I think you need to understand the technical part too. 

 

I will do my next project at home flat and dive into the world of color grading. Keep you posted about that. For my trip I will stick to flat AVCHD doing the rough editing parts and sorting on road  and fine tune edit and post at home - but first have to cycle 14 months. Time to start preparing the trip and work out my outline script 

 

Again thanxs all for the tips!

[GravitateMediaGroup]

who said anything about grading EVERY single clip?

if you have 20 shots under the same lighting or sunlight, and so on, you would create a preset and drop that 1 preset on the 20 other clips.

 

and you would not be hard pressed to notice a difference in avchd, 50 & 72.  I'm doing a test of this right now and there are some obvious differences, mainly compression.  a 1 TB external HD isn't that expensive now day, so to worry about storage space is irrelevant, and to travel on the road, with all your files on the computer and no backup source has BAD NEW written all over it.

[Wit]

who said anything about grading EVERY single clip?

if you have 20 shots under the same lighting or sunlight, and so on, you would create a preset and drop that 1 preset on the 20 other clips.

 

and you would not be hard pressed to notice a difference in avchd, 50 & 72.  I'm doing a test of this right now and there are some obvious differences, mainly compression.  a 1 TB external HD isn't that expensive now day, so to worry about storage space is irrelevant, and to travel on the road, with all your files on the computer and no backup source has BAD NEW written all over it.

 

Yep I already knew I can copy paste in grading and yep I also know I have to make backups of my footage on my trip. I do this at home as well. I may be a beginner on certain levels but not completely blond   :P

Anyway Gravitatemediagroup wonderful how you helped out and I'm looking forward to your test - hope you'll give me a notice when it's done. Thinking of doing a test myself with all the camera settings. 

[GravitateMediaGroup]

lol it's a pretty boring test, and you may have to skip back and forth around the video to really make comparisons 

it's kind of a gh2 vs gh3 test, but it just has a little bit of each setting of the gh3 with the same lighting and same subjects for the most part

[nahua]

Here is my test I did today.  There are a few notes to be aware of:

 

1) There is moire evident when set at 0 (roof of the pavilion).  At -5 there is none, although the compression of youtube introduces moire.

2) Excessive sharpening in post is akin to sharpening in-camera by re-introducing moire.  Not only that but it also exacerbates banding as well.  The last shot of the sunset, you can see a sort of "pulsing" wave above the sun.  This is not present in either the 0 or -5 setting, although you can see some banding in the 0 setting.

3) There is a lot of noise at -5, but there's more detail too.  Proper noise reduction will help.

4) Contrast isn't easy to fix.  I made a bunch of other shots, however I wasn't able to match them.

 

Never forget we're dealing with an 8 bit codec.  You can grade the footage, but only so far.  And trying to fix things in post could result in worse problems.  The banding was especially surprising, and it looks worse in the ProRes version.  I think it best to find the right compromise for the type of shooting you do.  And you have to get your exposure and contrast as close to final version as possible.  The GH3 is better than the GH2, and you have some room to adjust, but it still isn't a whole lot. 

 

http://youtu.be/qxxFe_y-2y4

[GravitateMediaGroup]

@nahua thats why you don't ned excessive sharpening, the gh3 detail alone is fine, but to match it with a hacked gh2 you would need to add a PINCH.

 

and moire is something that will probably be an issue for a few more years to come.  I see broadcast cameras suffer from it also.

 

and I really hope you aren't considering "boosting" the saturation 150% on 8bit color your grading process

[Wit]

Great trial @Nahua, thanxs!

[Matt]

Hi Blanche,

 

I think if you are going to be shooting for that long you will come back as a professional and teach us all some tricks.

 

May I make a couple of suggestions.

 

1) You should learn a little about 'in camera editing' techniques.

Basically this is shooting with a rough edit in mind.

So shooting 'establishing shots', 'cutaways', holding shots for 10 seconds.

You will probably learn all this yourself on your trip but a little bit of prior knowledge would help a lot.

It would help you by reducing the amount of footage you shoot and help you decide what would be useful to film.

 

2) Look into 'cloud' based storage. This is where you upload your footage, your data, to remote servers.

I don't really know too much about this but I certainly agree with others that carrying all your footage on external hard drives has 'disaster waiting to happen' written all over it.

Maybe look into some sites like 'dropbox' and 'clesh'

[GravitateMediaGroup]

@Matt

 

I think she is fine with keeping everything  on external, just don't keep EVERY thing on the laptop/pc that you are using.

And what would be REALLY nice is if you had 2 externals, and every so often send one back home, have somebody dump it, and have it sent back.  Not sure your situation or how easy it would be to send/receive mail,but it's a thought. 

 

Also, with massive amounts of footage I don't think cloud storage would be the best options because it would take FOREVER, unless you had some pretty seious internet. 

[Matt]

I think with massive amounts it wouldn't work.

It is just an idea.

We don't know how much footage is intended to be shot.

Can you imagine having an external drive with 10 months footage stolen or lost.

 

I did think maybe buy 5 or 6 external drives and sending one back every so often.

I like the idea of someone backing it up for you so you know the footage is safe and not on a drive that got damaged in the post.

[GravitateMediaGroup]

yeah, 500gb - 1TB dirves aren't too terribly expensive anymore.  If you are trying to keep your footage safe, spare no expense.

I've learned that the hard way and now.......

I have everything on my main PC HD, I have another HD that mirrors my main PC. I'm about to install another 2TB internal to drag and drop to, and periodicaly I backup to an external, and for stuff that I REALLYYYYY don't want to lose I store to to what would be a 5th HD (external)

Like I said, I've learned the hard.  Its a bit excessive, but it's ALOT easier to delete old footage from a HD than to recover a corrupted or fried HD ; )

[Wit]

Hi Blanche,

 

I think if you are going to be shooting for that long you will come back as a professional and teach us all some tricks.

 

May I make a couple of suggestions.

 

1) You should learn a little about 'in camera editing' techniques.

Basically this is shooting with a rough edit in mind.

So shooting 'establishing shots', 'cutaways', holding shots for 10 seconds.

You will probably learn all this yourself on your trip but a little bit of prior knowledge would help a lot.

It would help you by reducing the amount of footage you shoot and help you decide what would be useful to film.

 

2) Look into 'cloud' based storage. This is where you upload your footage, your data, to remote servers.

I don't really know too much about this but I certainly agree with others that carrying all your footage on external hard drives has 'disaster waiting to happen' written all over it.

Maybe look into some sites like 'dropbox' and 'clesh'

 

 

- Thanxs for your tips but I know already know scripts  and are using it (except the last Panasonic Trial)  - I followed a short course camera journalism and almost finished the book Directing The Documentary. Besides that I watch documentaries, analyzing the scripting and reading about a lot in my spare time. Lately I'm practicing scripting and storytelling with camera interviews. My latest is about a man who makes glass art made with a canon hf 100.

 

- Yeah could based storage would be great but I will travel mainly in a region where the internet connections ar not that fast Central Asia, Iran, the Himalaya and parts of China. So uploading will be a pain in the a....  :rolleyes:

 

- Gravitade. - Yeah I know, and I will create two backups all on solid disks. Thinking of sending one disk home and when it arrives home and a friend mad a back up there, deleting the back up I have on the road. (edit) O I just red some of you also suggested this. 

 

 

Next thing on the preparing-for-filming-list = have to find out if I can do a pre -edit and aftherwards save and re wrap my footage into comprimized stuff and reconnect it again at home. I hope it works. 

 

 

 

 

[GravitateMediaGroup]

This isn't as much of a vs test as it is a detail/low light test. Remember "unscientific"

See if this works
http://youtu.be/OBonpl7fCqM

[Axel]

@Blanche

View some tutorials on color grading with the on-board tools of FCP X (skip the ones that suggest you can do without the scopes or use automatic functions or match colors). I disagree with every single post that says you create one preset and paste it. Why? Because your already good images can be so much improved by thorough grading. Do it as the last step, after editing is finished. It should take a minute or two for every clip.

 

NEVER 'share' your film directly 'for vimeo', because that means, that the inferior Quicktime H.264 encoder is used, and the film is simplified too much. The fade in at the beginning shows 'temporal banding'. You can avoid it completely, if you put a very subtle amount of grain on top of this clip, export as ProRes master and encode an x264 mp4 (for the vimeo upload) with the free x264 encoder from the high quality master.

[Wit]

@Blanche

View some tutorials on color grading with the on-board tools of FCP X (skip the ones that suggest you can do without the scopes or use automatic functions or match colors). I disagree with every single post that says you create one preset and paste it. Why? Because your already good images can be so much improved by thorough grading. Do it as the last step, after editing is finished. It should take a minute or two for every clip.

 

NEVER 'share' your film directly 'for vimeo', because that means, that the inferior Quicktime H.264 encoder is used, and the film is simplified too much. The fade in at the beginning shows 'temporal banding'. You can avoid it completely, if you put a very subtle amount of grain on top of this clip, export as ProRes master and encode an x264 mp4 (for the vimeo upload) with the free x264 encoder from the high quality master.

 

Thanxs - I have entrance to verry good lynda.com grading tutorials on FCP-X so that's got me going.

I don't really know if I understand the uploading suggestion you suggest. 
- how do I add grain? 

- how do I export as ProRes master

- and encode this precisly to x264. Sorry for being a bit lazy, I haven't got time and access opportunity to try it out with FCP-X right now.