GH5 to Alexa Conversion

[Attila Bakos]

1 hour ago, Sage said:

I can say, several pieces of software in chain. However, I will be coding something that will fine tune the process, and simplify it to one.

Is that by any chance 3D LUT Creator? I tried to do profile matching before and I didn't find anything better for that purpose, but I'm interested in more experienced people's recommendations.

[Oliver Daniel]

21 hours ago, Sage said:

"GH5 V-Log and Hybid Log-Gamma are transformed to precisely match the color science of the Alexa, without compromise."

"The GH Alex conversion completely transforms the GH5 image, addressing every nuance of color reproduction (from shadows to highlights, low saturation to high saturation, for every possible hue). This includes an organic rolloff which fully eliminates channel clipping."

EmotiveColor.com

PDF

 

YouTube

 

Lovely work Sage. 

I'm using the GH5 regularly at the moment and I've found it to be a very interesting camera. 

I've found that it has bias to green and I'm forever trying to correct it in post - loos like you've got some really nice seperation with the colours here! 

Also I do find the GH5 highlight rolloff a challenge (as I've been used to Slog3) - looks like you've got some great results with this too. 

. On the price, I feel if you offered it as a bundle for $49 at the most (I'd get it for that), you'll get more buyers. Too many of us have been stung with expensive LUT packages that aren't actually very good (not that yours isn't!)

p.s I've been making my own GH5 LUTS, and it's certainly tricky to get universal consistency between different shooting conditions, so I appreciate the time and effort you've made. 

[Sage]

7 hours ago, majoraxis said:

@sage Great work!  When not recording in RAW, there are many choices/compromises that have to be made in post to make the footage look as good as possible considering the limitations for the recording format etc.  I have stopped looking for perfect and have been hoping to find good enough.  I think we are there with your LUT.  Please take good enough as big complement.  I have also found that the Logarist input and output LUTs combination significantly help the footage hold together better with color correcting.  Any advice on using your LUTs with Resolve and Logarist?  Thanks!

Thanks Majoraxis. With the LogC conversion, V-Log L effectively becomes LogC, so you can then use the footage as you would Arri LogC. In the case of Logarist, they support LogC directly. Though, I think you will find the results of the Main and Soft conversions to be ideal. In terms of special Resolve considerations, it is important to ensure that your clips are set to 'Full' or 'Data' luminance levels, under Clip Attributes. And, as with Premiere, place any white balance correction before the conversion node in the chain (and use the tint and temperature controls to alter white balance). All other color alterations go after the conversion node.

7 hours ago, Attila Bakos said:

Is that by any chance 3D LUT Creator? I tried to do profile matching before and I didn't find anything better for that purpose, but I'm interested in more experienced people's recommendations.

The software I'm referring to there is my own, geared to a very particular task

6 hours ago, Oliver Daniel said:

Lovely work Sage. 

I'm using the GH5 regularly at the moment and I've found it to be a very interesting camera. 

I've found that it has bias to green and I'm forever trying to correct it in post - loos like you've got some really nice seperation with the colours here! 

Also I do find the GH5 highlight rolloff a challenge (as I've been used to Slog3) - looks like you've got some great results with this too. 

. On the price, I feel if you offered it as a bundle for $49 at the most (I'd get it for that), you'll get more buyers. Too many of us have been stung with expensive LUT packages that aren't actually very good (not that yours isn't!)

p.s I've been making my own GH5 LUTS, and it's certainly tricky to get universal consistency between different shooting conditions, so I appreciate the time and effort you've made. 

Thanks Oliver. The native color science is indeed difficult, especially tungsten. I may introduce something next year that will be a simplified, budget conscious option

[AaronChicago]

@Sage I agree with @Oliver Daniel 

$49 might be the magic number. Not that your price isn't worth every penny, but it's more of a mentality for people.

[Attila Bakos]

10 hours ago, Sage said:

The software I'm referring to there is my own, geared to a very particular task

Oh that's cool. I wish I had the skills to do something like that. In theory, could you use a wide gamut monitor, record thousands of patches with camera A, then use those measurements as reference, then measure the same patches in camera B and build a conversion LUT the way monitor calibration softwares work? Or is this a completely bad idea?

[Sage]

2 hours ago, Attila Bakos said:

Oh that's cool. I wish I had the skills to do something like that. In theory, could you use a wide gamut monitor, record thousands of patches with camera A, then use those measurements as reference, then measure the same patches in camera B and build a conversion LUT the way monitor calibration softwares work? Or is this a completely bad idea?

Go you Attila! That's actually a pretty close description of my first process.

What I've done since is the hush hush part  ; )

3 hours ago, AaronChicago said:

@Sage I agree with @Oliver Daniel 

$49 might be the magic number. Not that your price isn't worth every penny, but it's more of a mentality for people.

Hang in there. Indeed, I intend to beat that price ; )

Its a tale of two markets; before I added HLG support, which reduced the effective price by $100, people told me the price was low. After HLG, it seems that the market opened to those who wouldn't have considered it before because V-Log was a no-go (it was originally going to be V-Log only)

Its best that the market for the pro variation is smaller. A neutral color science shift is a subtle thing, and only those who feel that this price is a giveaway, have worked with Alexa footage and know what to expect should get it. I want to include powerful looks with the lower cost version, as well as reduced technical complexity.

[Attila Bakos]

4 hours ago, Sage said:

Go you Attila! That's actually a pretty close description of my first process.

What I've done since is the hush hush part  ;

I'm actually a programmer but only a web programmer and I think the math required for this transformation is beyond my skills. I think I would even pay for someone to teach me that, I don't even know where to begin The other problem is the gamut of the displays available today. The one I have only covers sRGB, but even if I get one with Adobe RGB, is that enough for a such a conversion?

[Sage]

11 minutes ago, Attila Bakos said:

I'm actually a programmer but only a web programmer and I think the math required for this transformation is beyond my skills. I think I would even pay for someone to teach me that, I don't even know where to begin The other problem is the gamut of the displays available today. The one I have only covers sRGB, but even if I get one with Adobe RGB, is that enough for a such a conversion?

C++, I'm trying to improve at this as we speak

- It won't.. The problem with that first effort was that I failed spectacularly I invested so much into it, and I almost gave up at that point

[tihon84]

Hi, thank you for this work. Looks really cool! 

What about 10bit vlog source? Will i get good color matching to alexa? Or i should to do some adjustments?

And one more quaestion: what lenses did you use in video?

Thank you

 

[Sage]

1 hour ago, tihon84 said:

Hi, thank you for this work. Looks really cool! 

What about 10bit vlog source? Will i get good color matching to alexa? Or i should to do some adjustments?

And one more quaestion: what lenses did you use in video?

Thank you

 

Thanks tihon84;

Yes, it's a very close match to the Alexa. The only thing closer is the Alexa You won't have to make any further adjustments to improve the match, other than an accurate WB ahead of the conversion. And you can subsequently grade it to the look that you intend.

The lenses were Nikon Series E, 24, 35, & 50, with .64 Speedbooster.

[tihon84]

4 hours ago, Sage said:

Thanks tihon84;

Yes, it's a very close match to the Alexa. The only thing closer is the Alexa You won't have to make any further adjustments to improve the match, other than an accurate WB ahead of the conversion. And you can subsequently grade it to the look that you intend.

The lenses were Nikon Series E, 24, 35, & 50, with .64 Speedbooster.

This combo is awesome!

can you tell ne, please, what was your start image? What program was used to get gh5 image to work with matching.

If you use differents versions of AE you will have different original images in case of colors and contrast...

i tried AE2014 and AE2017 and got really different start point image...

just want to know your startpoint image nle to get top match.

thanks

[Attila Bakos]

16 hours ago, Sage said:

- It won't.. The problem with that first effort was that I failed spectacularly I invested so much into it, and I almost gave up at that point

Then how do you match with a monitor? You ignore the colors your monitor can't show?

[Sage]

8 hours ago, tihon84 said:

This combo is awesome!

can you tell ne, please, what was your start image? What program was used to get gh5 image to work with matching.

If you use differents versions of AE you will have different original images in case of colors and contrast...

i tried AE2014 and AE2017 and got really different start point image...

just want to know your startpoint image nle to get top match.

thanks

The latest page to the PDF is attached. The problem, I believe, is that GH5 VLog L footage has an unusual full luminance flagging for video footage. This was corrected to read correctly in Adobe programs in May of this year. The key for VLog L and LogC footage is that full white (pointed into overblown light source) places below 768. If its above 768, the levels are set to video (which need to be set to 'Full' or 'Data' in Resolve)

2 hours ago, Attila Bakos said:

Then how do you match with a monitor? You ignore the colors your monitor can't show?

I can't give away my secret sauce

[buggz]

@Sage, does Vimeo and Youtube do something to change the colors?

On my calibrated NEC PA272W, the Emotions II videos show a LOT of red, way too much so.

[Sage]

2 minutes ago, buggz said:

@Sage, does Vimeo and Youtube do something to change the colors?

On my calibrated NEC PA272W, the Emotions II videos show a LOT of red, way too much so.

Mmm, that is a good monitor. Could you send me examples or timestamps? Web encoding does change the appearance of videos, but more so a contrast shift, depending on the original format. Emotion II was graded further on top of the conversions, to add a lot of punch

[buggz]

Okay, I hope to get to this today.

Though, it could be the new stupid Firefox, 57?

Hmm, I'll try IE and see...

14 minutes ago, Sage said:

Mmm, that is a good monitor. Could you send me examples or timestamps? Web encoding does change the appearance of videos, but more so a contrast shift, depending on the original format. Emotion II was graded further on top of the conversions, to add a lot of punch

 

[buggz]

This is strange, your screenshots posted here look awesome.

Here is what I am seeing from Youtube in windoze Firefox 57, if this works...

 
 
 

Bummer, sorry, don't know why it keeps loading two of the same...

Same result in IE.

Downloading vid from Youtube, I will try different players to see if any differences...

Just loaded the downloaded vid from Youtube and played in Resolve Studio 14.1.1, same red colors.

Am I the only one who has this problem?

[buggz]

So, playing with the video in Resolce Studio 14.1.1, I can adjust the black and white points, and the WB, but the skins remain red.

Youtube and Vimeo has messed up the videos?

[Sage]

Here are the core conversions, without my punchy grade. I tend to grade red, and I think in a couple of these shots the red shirts cast a glow on their faces:

 

[tihon84]

31 minutes ago, Sage said:

Here are the core conversions, without my punchy grade. I tend to grade red, and I think in a couple of these shots the red shirts cast a glow on their faces:

 

Did you shoot this examples using 8 bit codec? A see many blocking and color artefacts. 

Any 10 bit examples?

But colors and contrast are amazing.