Lumix GH5 Downloadable Footage

[Axel]

1 hour ago, SlanderShot said:

I have real difficulty for work on the shot called "Seattle Dolly" too. Can't find a decent grade for this one. I abandoned.

Isn't Seattle notorious for a grey, rainy atmosphere? I've never been there, I just liked the photography in The Killing (Netflix). Perhaps the still-washed-out V-lut image (will there be a new official lut for this 10-bit material?) is the most appropriate? hyalinejim has done a great job with it though.

1 hour ago, SlanderShot said:

I used the qualifer tool for this one, but you're right, the sky lose in contrast.

Okay, I'm monitoring this on a device with P3 color space, don't know if clipping looks nasty on sRGB monitors, please tell me. I just let the highlights reach 108% in this one:

Yes, I don't see a "soft roll-off" of the bright yellow band above the horizon, it looks kind of cut off. By very conservatively bringing highlights down to 95% I see that this sharp boarder is a thin line of clouds which disappeared through the clipping. I don't care. Whenever there is such a dominant light source in the image, my rule is to let it clip as much as I can possibly tolerate. And this one can be pushed quite far, no wonder: it's 10-bit. This belongs under subjective opinion, individual taste ...

EDIT: bad example. Too much highlight saturation. This is with 112%:

 

[André Eriksson]

Not to be such a downer but this thread really shows the importance of a professional colourist. 

Many of you at least need to learn how to use waveforms and scopes. (Including myself, I didn't really bother with them)

 

(Original Neumann film as has perfectly fine neutral "basic" grade which I think is fitting a product launch movie.)

[wolf33d]

3 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

This shot was the exception... very nice.

Not seeing much detail in the shadows but the colour is great.

Thank you. 

I don't understand what's the matter with all the horrible grades. People should shoot in standard profile if they can't grade an image which is the easiest thing ever.

I used color finale for Final Cut Pro which is amazing. 

The only thing you have to do is play with the three RGB curves independently. You make a S curve for each but adjust the S to your taste so that you independantly add or remove blue, red or green in each highlight or shadow. 

Then 20% saturation. And that's it. Add a LUT also with Color Finale and adjust opacity with the slider if needed or want a special look. 

I advice anyone here to get FCPX and Color Finale. The two best tool I have used. I tried millions of color grading techniques and tools and nothing come close for easiness of editing and grading. 

 

[Andrew Reid]

35 minutes ago, André Eriksson said:

Not to be such a downer but this thread really shows the importance of a professional colourist. 

Many of you at least need to learn how to use waveforms and scopes. (Including myself, I didn't really bother with them)

 

(Original Neumann film as has perfectly fine neutral "basic" grade which I think is fitting a product launch movie.)

Exactly.

One could be an absolutely brilliant filmmaker but produce dreadful colour from LOG footage, it takes years to learn how to be a good colourist. It's really a separate job altogether OR another thing to learn and to hope and pray you have talent for. Then there's the fact that all displays are different and you could be getting one thing on yours and people will be seeing quite another thing. I cannot believe for example that one of the guys on this thread really wanted to put saturation to the levels he did!! Must be something else going on.

This is partly why I came up with EOSHD Pro Color to sort things out so that they only require tiny, simple changes in post to get the most out of the sensor. V-LOG is nice and all that but it so often goes horribly wrong - just like S-LOG.

[Axel]

1 hour ago, André Eriksson said:

Not to be such a downer but this thread really shows the importance of a professional colourist. 

Many of you at least need to learn how to use waveforms and scopes. (Including myself, I didn't really bother with them)

Stop lamenting. Learn the scopes and then take pride in lecturing us all!

1 hour ago, André Eriksson said:

(Original Neumann film as has perfectly fine neutral "basic" grade which I think is fitting a product launch movie.)

First of, it has good colors for sure. That's not what we are here for, we are testing. If anybody wants a perfectly fine neutral basic grade he should better buy a PMW300 or something like that and stop worrying (and grading). You mix up color correction and grading. And secondly, there clearly are some stylistic choices in Neumanns original Beyond The Grid clip, as we can tell by a closer look at the few shots he let us to play with. So, no, André, you are wrong. It's not perfectly neutral.

32 minutes ago, wolf33d said:

People should shoot in standard profile if they can't grade an image which is the easiest thing ever.

Where is the dislike-button?

28 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

...  it takes years to learn how to be a good colourist. It's really a separate job altogether OR another thing to learn and to hope and pray you have talent for.

True, sadly. It certainly isn't the easiest thing ever.

32 minutes ago, wolf33d said:

I advice anyone here to get FCPX and Color Finale. The two best tool I have used. I tried millions of color grading techniques and tools and nothing come close for easiness of editing and grading. 

I advise all here to brace themselves against any harsh and arrogant critic. And not to trust any perfect stranger who tells you it's you're just using the wrong software. Maybe wolf33d is a talented colourist. Good for him. Are we here to brag about our talents or to learn something?

[JazzBox]

I downloaded the footage: the 60p (snow and waterfall) footage plays perfectly on a late 2013 iMac (Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB, 8 GB Ram, 2,7 GHz i5).
The other footage plays smoothly in FCPX but no preview was possible. Also VLC was stuttering. 

Do you know what I have to do in order to see them normally? (Never had preview problems before with BMD ProRes 422 10 bit).

Anyway in my opinion the files are great. I hope my computer can handle them when I'll buy the GH5.

Here a super quick grading test (please note that I'm not a professional colorist, I normally grade my footage since I have no budget to pay a colorist).

Ciao
 

 

[DBounce]

6 hours ago, Axel said:

Also tried this shot and find your's close to perfect. Here is why (arguable, as always, but please try to describe what you object to, not just say bad grading): You'd expect the sunset's light to be yellow or orange (there still is the choice which you prefer), you would for the sake of color contrast have shadows tinted in the complementary color, but just a hint of cyan is enough. Everything that's directly hit by the sun should be well saturated, the rest should fall off. You probably crushed the blacks just a bit, I expect the edge of the table (first few frames) to be indistinguishable. The brightest part in the image is the horizon between the branches, it may or may not clip.

All in all, this is no subject for an HDR approach in the classical sense, you don't care if the tree trunks or her rucksack lose detail. The compositional setup of this shot is the direction of the light, which is too prominent to ignore. You'd see all you needed to see if she was a complete silhouette. The tension in the image comes from the three directions of sight, her looking at (and recording) the setting sun, the sun shining in the opposite direction and the viewer looking onto this frame, framed by the dark trees, having depth of field through a stark contrast between foreground and background, known in classic landscape painting as the natural absorption of colors (air contains particles that gradually reduce contrast and saturation the farer an object is away).

I use to shoot my vacation videos with my iPhone which has no DR worth mentioning, but given that I use filmicPro (allowing me to set exposure), I dare say it wouldn't have been overchallenged with that shot. I also shot with BM 10-bit and raw and had some 13 stops to play with in post. That's when I finally realized that the best shots were those with either not too extreme contrast (which could be adjusted in post) or those I did not at all costs try to preserve shadows and highlights to show off the camera's virtues. Too many detail can come in the way of a clear and strong composition. Landscapes (because part of their beauty is related to the sky) of course sometimes need more DR.

This!

I am a big fan of van Hurkman who often contradicts professional dogmata.

And for the arrogance of many commentators see this:

To be honest, I would have been among those who dislike Faris' grades. But he is right nonetheless. Say, for God's sake, why you dislike an image. And be precise or forever hold your peace!

I agree with what Faris says here. Personally, when I grade a project it's not for color accuracy, I could use just use a faithful picture profile, check my white balance, exposure and get accurate all day long with no need for grading. Rather, I grade for stylistic reasons. It's about supporting a story... if a grade is technically accurate but too cheerful, when the story is dark, then to my eyes the grade no good. It's an artistic choice. For this reason, when I look at a log profile, what I'm really looking for is how flexible it is in allowing for me to stray from the norm, before weird artifacting starts to ruin the footage. I like to think that getting a straight none stylized image that is representative of the actual image is not the purpose of log. By right, a normal image with correctly balanced colors is what a default standard color profile should do. And such an image, ideally should require no grading. For me the power of log is bending a twisting the look and feel of an image to suite the artistic requirement.

[Axel]

11 minutes ago, JazzBox said:

I downloaded the footage: the 60p (snow and waterfall) footage plays perfectly on a late 2013 iMac (Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB, 8 GB Ram, 2,7 GHz i5).
The other footage plays smoothly in FCPX but no preview was possible. Also VLC was stuttering. 

Do you know what I have to do in order to see them normally? (Never had preview problems before with BMD ProRes 422 10 bit)

The i5 processor doesn't use Quicksync (mpeg4 hardware de- and encoding). You should use optimized media (also for Resolve, if you plan to use that).

11 minutes ago, DBounce said:

By right, a normal image with correctly balanced colors is what a default standard color profile should do. And such an image, ideally should require no grading. For me the power of log is bending a twisting the look and feel of an image to suite the artistic requirement.

That's why I asked for some standard profile comparisons some pages ago. 

11 minutes ago, JazzBox said:

Here a super quick grading test (please note that I'm not a professional colorist, I normally grade my footage since I have no budget to pay a colorist).

 

Very subtle.

[mercer]

1 hour ago, wolf33d said:

Thank you. 

I don't understand what's the matter with all the horrible grades. People should shoot in standard profile if they can't grade an image which is the easiest thing ever.

I used color finale for Final Cut Pro which is amazing. 

The only thing you have to do is play with the three RGB curves independently. You make a S curve for each but adjust the S to your taste so that you independantly add or remove blue, red or green in each highlight or shadow. 

Then 20% saturation. And that's it. Add a LUT also with Color Finale and adjust opacity with the slider if needed or want a special look. 

I advice anyone here to get FCPX and Color Finale. The two best tool I have used. I tried millions of color grading techniques and tools and nothing come close for easiness of editing and grading. 

 

So, you only work with the RGB curves and not the Master Curve? Or do you use only curves and correct your exposure with the master curve?

[bunk]

Anyone willing to share the 10 bit versions with those of us who can't open them.

Just a couple of frames saved to proresHQ or one frame per clip saved as a PNG will do.

thanks in advance.

[mechanicalEYE]

Info, and tips are what we are all here for right? or am I missing something? Neumann was nice enough to release footage for anyone interested in getting hands on with, and enjoy, and yet out of nowhere venom drenched comments get posted with only the purpose to "de-grade" someone who took a shot at grading Neumann's footage. Not too many here can claim to be a expert or professional colorist, and it's also safe to assume most do not have means to hand off Neumanns "free" pre-ship GH5 clips to a working professional colorist just to post here for peer review. 

[André Eriksson]

1 hour ago, Axel said:

Stop lamenting. Learn the scopes and then take pride in lecturing us all!

Okay, I'm way out of my league here as I'm as unprofessional as one can be, but to me you grade looks really strange. 

If I look at the scopes of your grade (top) there is a huge difference between your blues and red/green. This is also what I see in your image where the shadows looks way to blue, even for this kind of "hollywood cold shadow" look.  There is also somethings strange going on in the low mids, which could be why your image looks quite harsh. (Everything also seems to be clipped both in highlights and shadows, but I'm not sure if this is due to jpg/resolve/luminance levels.)

As a comparison I've added my own attempt with a more subtle orange teal look. I am not saying that it is perfect, but what you can see is that the difference in my levels are much smaller, which also makes for a more refined, less harsh look. Scopes are, apart from using them for color correction, also very helpful in seeing how subtle or extreme your grade is. 

Another tip is that warmth also comes from the red channel, not only blue. Your grade would have looked much better if you also had adjusted your reds, both in shadows and highlights. 

[wolf33d]

14 minutes ago, mercer said:

So, you only work with the RGB curves and not the Master Curve? Or do you use only curves and correct your exposure with the master curve?

 

I have found that the master curve just plays with contrast. As you can see in my grade, the image is almost too contrasty already so I use master curve not often. 

The independant R G B curves are much more interesting. They change contrast but colour in a nice way. Basically moving anything in the bottom of the B curve will increase blue in shadows. But you want a S shape. So the bottom goes down and the upper part goes up to get a S shape. The trick is to do different S bigger or smaller depending on the mood you want. What I did here for this atmosphere is a little bit of blue in the shadow (so a less pronounced S in the bottom of blue curve) and a little bit of red in highlight (so a more pronounced S on the upper part of Red curve) then I adjusted green curve accordingly. Doing so of course also increase contrast that's why I did not use the master curve. 

Playing with RGB curves is amazing, it gives ANY log footage a great look and can be tuned the way you like. I have compared to everything else (filmconvert, easy color in Premiere, Magic Bullet, ...) and I always got best results with RGB curve in color finale which lets you play easily with each curve then select a master opacity to adjust result. Also use sometimes the saturation and exposure sliders of Color Finale, a LUT, or the selective color corrector which is amazing (you pick red for exemple then you can adjust hue staruration of it in one click). 

All of the change have an opacity slider which makes perfect adjustment. Honestly guys try this thing and tell me if you ever look back. 

@Axel i am not a pro colorist, just an amateur doing travel videos (latest one here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qO603YjuIoY )

As you say we are here to learn and I am sharing a good tool and a good method I found to make nice grades. 

 

[jonpais]

19 minutes ago, mechanicalEYE said:

Info, and tips are what we are all here for right? or am I missing something? Neumann was nice enough to release footage for anyone interested in getting hands on with, and enjoy, and yet out of nowhere venom drenched comments get posted with only the purpose to "de-grade" someone who took a shot at grading Neumann's footage. Not too many here can claim to be a expert or professional colorist, and it's also safe to assume most do not have means to hand off Neumanns "free" pre-ship GH5 clips to a working professional colorist just to post here for peer review. 

Okay, but if someone were to post some grades here while at the same time saying something like, 'well, I just messed around with these clips for a few seconds pushing and pulling them around without the least intention of interpreting the footage', I think it's only fair that they come in for some criticism. 

[wildrym]

Here's my try!

 

There is color noise in the shadows, but as shown in the RGB parade of the ungraded footage there is room to overexpose without cliping highlights to get rid of it eventually.

ETTR might work well

 

[Axel]

8 minutes ago, André Eriksson said:

If I look at the scopes of your grade (top) there is a huge difference between your blues and red/green. This is also what I see in your image where the shadows looks way to blue, even for this kind of "hollywood cold shadow" look.  There is also somethings strange going on in the low mids, which could be why your image looks quite harsh. (Everything also seems to be clipped both in highlights and shadows, but I'm not sure if this is due to jpg/resolve/luminance levels.)

You are absolutely right, and I don't defend my grade. Regarding the clipping, I already wrote that I did this on purpose. I wrote "This belongs under subjective opinion, individual taste ...". I found the 'legal' values to look too romantic and boring, still do. I didn't use Resolve but just the very limited CC of FCP X, where you can't adjust RGB per channel with lift, gamma, gain. Should perhaps follow wolf33d's advise and use CFP in the future. I can read all scopes, and I use them for CC. If it comes to tasting the dish they don't help as little or as much as kitchen scales. Grading is not about good scrambled eggs, it's more about indian cuisine - something unexpected that explodes in your mouth and lets you forget about all traditional menus with known ingredients. But again, I don't disagree with your judgment of my results. 

24 minutes ago, wolf33d said:

@Axel i am not a pro colorist, just an amateur doing travel videos (latest one here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qO603YjuIoY )

As you say we are here to learn and I am sharing a good tool and a good method I found to make nice grades. 

Saw your Imagine Cuba, and you are talented. And you have been arrogant with your remarks. 

15 minutes ago, jonpais said:

Okay, but if someone were to post some grades here while at the same time saying something like, 'well, I just messed around with these clips for a few seconds pushing and pulling them around without any intention of interpreting the footage', I think it's only fair that they come in for some criticism. 

Fair. And mostly constructive. Like, come on, do a better job! 

[mechanicalEYE]

14 minutes ago, jonpais said:

Okay, but if someone were to post some grades here while at the same time saying something like, 'well, I just messed around with these clips for a few seconds pushing and pulling them around without the least intention of interpreting the footage', I think it's only fair that they come in for some criticism. 

I hear you, only I haven't seen a post in this topic that warranted a tear down attack masked as criticism. It should always be constructive, or it's wasted.

[jpfilmz]

Thank you Luke for these files.  They are really nice.  With proper node work you can push these file around quite a bite in resolve.  

 

[Emanuel]

17 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

You only have green, brown and black in your grade.

The blacks are crushed big time.

I'd recommend starting from scratch and reading up on how to grade properly.

There's already too much crap out there that has been graded terribly.

You don't want to add to it... trust me.

Isn't grading a color science? ; )

Your posts coupled to a few *cough cough* likes (what a bitch they are : D) are an exponential growth. Here is why we're unlikely able to see a pre-production review over here... LOL

[SuperSet]

That'll teach you fellas not to post your color grades in the same thread as Luke Neumann. I hope you all learned your lessons.