EditReady now supports the Samsung NX1 / H.265

[neosushi]

Yeah, top image is iFFmpeg — lower image is EditReady.

I talked with the good people at EditReady (killer customer service, by the way).  They explained that iFFmpeg is keeping the imported 0-255 luminance level in their ProRes files while EditReady converts the footage to 16-235.  So the shadow and highlight detail isn't lost completely, a simple curves adjust can bring it back.  It isn't an ideal solution, but I have found EditReady's ProRes files are much easier on my CPU / GPU.  I found that iFFmpeg ProRes files really bogged down my machine. 

​Maybe we could try with the fast color correction, setting the output to 16-235. This did the trick wit the GH4... I'll see if it works  

[Andrew Reid]

Nice to know about the 0-255 issue.

Switched to 16-235 in-camera and the problem has gone. Makes grading that bit more straight forward.

Loving EditReady. It's a beast.

[jcs]

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned in this post, but Edit ready is also based on FFMpeg. 

​They appear to be using FFMPEG elements for file reading (LGPL libraries vs. FFMPEG itself) and appear to be using AVFoundation (etc.) which is native OSX if using Apple's ProRes for final output. At which point AVFoundation supports H.265 decoding (does it already?), FFMPEG (and libraries) wouldn't be needed at all to transcode H.265 into ProRes. AVFoundation is super easy to code for (especially compared to DirectShow on Windows). If AVFoundation already supports H.265, a custom tool for H.265 to ProRes would be fairly quick & easy to create (a few hours of coding- GUI, etc. would take more time). MainConcept also has decent tools/libraries (possibly much faster than the free/GPL/LGPL stuff), though the licensing cost would up product cost.

[neosushi]

​They appear to be using FFMPEG elements for file reading (LGPL libraries vs. FFMPEG itself) and appear to be using AVFoundation (etc.) which is native OSX if using Apple's ProRes for final output. At which point AVFoundation supports H.265 decoding (does it already?), FFMPEG (and libraries) wouldn't be needed at all to transcode H.265 into ProRes. AVFoundation is super easy to code for (especially compared to DirectShow on Windows). If AVFoundation already supports H.265, a custom tool for H.265 to ProRes would be fairly quick & easy to create (a few hours of coding- GUI, etc. would take more time). MainConcept also has decent tools/libraries (possibly much faster than the free/GPL/LGPL stuff), though the licensing cost would up product cost.

​Thanks for sharing this knowledge with us

BTW fast color correction in premiere pro works very well for me to get the blacks back

[neosushi]

I dont think that in the end it changes anything regarding dynamic range.

I think it is just a way of communicating info to your nle. There was an article that described that very well I'll see if I can find it and post it :/ 

[neosushi]

Got it ! 

http://blog.josephmoore.name/2014/10/29/the-three-most-misunderstood-gh4-settings/

It was about the GH4 settings, but I have an intuition it's going to be the same about the NX1.

 

[jcs]

Got it ! 

http://blog.josephmoore.name/2014/10/29/the-three-most-misunderstood-gh4-settings/

It was about the GH4 settings, but I have an intuition it's going to be the same about the NX1.

 

​While there's no difference in the brightest and darkest pixels in 0-255 vs. 16-235, there are only 220 code values for 16-235 vs. 256 code values for 0-255. 36 code values aren't a huge difference, but could affect banding in some cases (less contrast range).

[Geoff CB]

I'm really liking my NX1, but i don't really feel like I'm maximizing its potential, especially in terms of DR and color. On just standard profiles, it looks great right out of the cam, but I haven't found a good flat setting yet. The colors seem to get messed up to my eyes in Gamma DR. Do these various converters deal with color differently?

​Don't drop contrast below -5, use black level instead. If you drop the contrast to far it completely kills the colors out of the camera.

[Brian Luce]

I'm crestfallen. Thought this was a NLE. 

[iFFmpeg]

Just dropping some iFFmpeg hints here:

You can convert 0-255 to 13-235 by setting the color range in the Advanced/Generic options at the bottom.

And don't forget the "Convert Color Matrix" video filter. Makes it easy to convert between BT.601 and BT.709.

 

 

[Colin McFadden]

Hi folks - I'm one of the developers from Divergent Media, and I thought I'd chime in a bit here.  If folks have questions about why we're doing what we're doing (IE, not remapping 0-255 to 16-235) let me know.  We *think* this is the right approach, since presumably people shooting 0-255 generally are doing so for a specific reason.  Has anyone created a basic LUT for NX1 footage at this point?  We'd be happy to help spread the word.

Just to clarify one point - while EditReady does use the ffmpeg libraries for reading MXF files and (currently) for h.265 decoding, EditReady isn't just a wrapper on FFmpeg.  We also leverage Apple's VideoToolbox framework (the framework that underlies AVF) and even old QuickTime frameworks for legacy codecs.  All the hardware accelerated / OpenCL code is custom, in-house stuff, which means we have full control of the image pipeline - all the color transforms, etc.

If folks have questions, just let me know!

-Colin

[neosushi]

Hi Colin, I've been using your software for some time, and I was wondering if there is any chance that there could be some more "advanced" options enabled ?

I would love to be able to control the bitrate for macroblocking for instance, as it is one of the flaws of the NX1 :/ 

Any opinion about that  ? 

Thanks for making this great soft, that made me the economy of quite some time  

[Colin McFadden]

We've got an update (free of course) coming in a couple weeks which will add the ability to do custom h264 (bitrates, profiles, etc) and do scaling/resizing.  So, coming soon!

[Drives]

Andrew, I ended up purchasing an NX1 a couple weeks ago to compliment my C100 after reading many of your articles on your site and watching your tests on Vimeo. Today, I just purchased EditReady.. I just wanted to know which video format would you recommend converting to? ProRes 422 or ProRes422 (HQ)?

[Ed_David]

Andrew, I ended up purchasing an NX1 a couple weeks ago to compliment my C100 after reading many of your articles on your site and watching your tests on Vimeo. Today, I just purchased EditReady.. I just wanted to know which video format would you recommend converting to? ProRes 422 or ProRes422 (HQ)?

​I'll let Andrew chime in but pro res 422 and pro res hq are both 10 bit codecs 4:2:2 - the difference is the bit rate. So grading is not much different unless it is fast-paced motion or tons of motion like filming water.

But do a test to see yourself - process one clip.

The big thing is to make sure you have the NX1 set up to output at the proper light level - so that editready doesn't export a crushed-black pro res file.

[Drives]

​I'll let Andrew chime in but pro res 422 and pro res hq are both 10 bit codecs 4:2:2 - the difference is the bit rate. So grading is not much different unless it is fast-paced motion or tons of motion like filming water.

But do a test to see yourself - process one clip.

The big thing is to make sure you have the NX1 set up to output at the proper light level - so that editready doesn't export a crushed-black pro res file.

​Thank you! I set the Luminance Level to "16-235".. Is that what you're talking about?

If I'm shooting some scenes at 120fps, then I guess I should convert it to ProRes HQ?

[Ed_David]

​Thank you! I set the Luminance Level to "16-235".. Is that what you're talking about?

If I'm shooting some scenes at 120fps, then I guess I should convert it to ProRes HQ?

​yes that's what editready developers recommend here - As I said, we’ll keep investigating and then do a writeup, but I think the best advice is if you’re not planning to go through a full LUT/CC pass, you should be shooting video range (16-235), rather than counting on your transcode to clamp your values.

 

I think in general go to pro res HQ unless you need the space.  Higher bit rate is always worth it.

[Stephen de Vere]

Can it downscale from UHD/4k files?

Just discovered it can. 

Anyone have any experience on the downscale quality (EditReady)? I don't have UHD footage to test.

Lanczos 3 algorithm would be good.

[M Carter]

5 hours ago, Stephen de Vere said:

Can it downscale from UHD/4k files?

Just discovered it can. 

Anyone have any experience on the downscale quality (EditReady)? I don't have UHD footage to test.

Lanczos 3 algorithm would be good.

Looks good to me, but it's very slow. My workflow has been editready full rez to proress 422. From there I can do trims in streamclip and output 4k trims to Prores (for shots that will get reframed, tracked, stabilized, whatever) and 1080 for general editing. Prores in excellent for doing this sort of thing, there's just no visible generation loss that I have ever seen. Plus, the H265 files are so small, I keep them around, in case I want to run one out some other way.