Magic Lantern Forum

Using Magic Lantern => Post-processing Workflow => HDR and Dual ISO Postprocessing => Topic started by: jonnyginese on August 23, 2012, 08:42:21 PM

Title: Adobe Premiere/After FX HDR workflow.
Post by: jonnyginese on August 23, 2012, 08:42:21 PM
I'm looking for a way to do HDR video with native to adobe premeire and after FX CS6 tools.  I found a tutorial video on vimeo that went through it.. but I couldnt get it to work.  The video also went through other 3rd party software plugins but i'd like to do it all internally with shipped plugins if possible.

Thanks!
Title: Re: Adobe Premiere/After FX HDR workflow.
Post by: DFM on August 24, 2012, 01:07:36 AM
It's not possible to handle ML's video format with CS6 out of the box, as quite frankly we never considered the idea of exposure-interleaved frames when designing the feature sets for PP and AE - nobody else does video HDR that way and Adobe isn't able to support niche applications; it's why there's a plugin API.

To split and merge the footage you will need to use AE as your first tool, as PP doesn't work on a per-frame basis. While it's possible to do the frame remapping by hand (duplicate the layer, remove frame #1 from the upper copy, time-stretch both layers to 200% speed, etc.) you won't be creating true HDR as the overlay options for layers in AE (add/subtract/screen/etc) don't understand the exposure data in each frame. The GingerHDR 'merger' tool is free and handles this step very well, assembling an EXR image sequence from your footage where each image is a true high-bit-depth file (see the video at http://vimeo.com/39086841 for a workflow). You can then bring the EXR sequence into PP, and since PP works internally using a 32-bit floating point buffer the shipped color grading and curves tools will cope just fine with the HDR frame data.
Title: Re: Adobe Premiere/After FX HDR workflow.
Post by: nanomad on August 24, 2012, 09:09:18 AM
Looks like we have an "Adobe" guy in here. Welcome  :D
Title: Re: Adobe Premiere/After FX HDR workflow.
Post by: deleted.account on August 26, 2012, 01:28:46 PM
And if you want to have access to the overbrights in the native h264 in that 32bit float at greater than 1 and underbrights at lower than 0 then you'll need to switch off the full range flag in the original MOVs otherwise PP & AE scale the luma levels into 0-1 RGB. And of coarse use linear space in AE for best results.
Title: Re: Adobe Premiere/After FX HDR workflow.
Post by: Rehaan on September 05, 2012, 12:44:32 PM
Hi y3llow,

Could you explain what you have said in a little more detail please?


Also jonnyginese -- check out the free and very simple program "merger" that is included with Ginger HDR (http://"http://19lights.com/wp/downloads/").

It will let you choose your ML HDR video, set the exposure difference (EV) and then render it out as EXR files which can be imported into Premiere or After Effects. Once thats in your Adobe program as 32-bit files, you can do with it as you wish. Old workflow video : http://vimeo.com/39086841

There is also a newer, easier workflow that makes a tiny GNR file instead of EXRs, but that requires you to purchase Ginger HDR ($149) if you want to be able to import them.


@ y3llow -- say i import the EXR sequence after running the merger step as described above -- will i still be facing the issue you mentioned in your post above this?


Thanks,
R

Title: Re: Adobe Premiere/After FX HDR workflow.
Post by: deleted.account on September 05, 2012, 02:51:31 PM
Rehaan, first I'd say there is no issue regarding the Canon MOV's, as DFM has described above the process is simple.

But there are a couple of things I'd throw in for discussion that appear to me not quite right but others more knowledgeable may disagree. Then you can decide if it's an issue or not. :-)

The first step DFM describes is to use AE for importing your MOV's to export to 32bit RGB OpenEXR. Linear sRGB. So we'd assume our AE project will be 32bit sRGB and linearized working space as any blending of light such as merging exposures is best done in linear light and although we could use the older 'blend with linear', we are going to be exporting linear EXR's so a linear work space is not unreasonable.

In that process the Canon MOV's will be linearized, ie: the gamma removed, based on the icc profile assigned to the MOV's. Our Canon MOV's are BT709 color primaries, BT709 transfer curve and depending on Canon model either BT709 or BT601 color matrix. Typically described as 'rec709', but they have full range levels like a number of cameras such as Sony NEX5n, FS100 etc so they are not strictly Rec BT709.

AE assigns a display referred icc profile with sRGB 2.2 gamma by default for the MOV's on import, but our MOV's are scene referred and have a rec709 gamma curve. So we could use the option for compensating for scene referred source files. However I've found this still doesn't resolve the problem that follows.

Looking at the histogram, ie: Levels filter on the source files. Linearizing the source with the inverse of a 2.2 gamma curve appears to result in combing at the lower levels, suggesting to me, the wrong calculation is being used to remove the gamma ie: based on the source being 2.2 sRGB rather than rec709. The gamma curves differ between the two.

An alternative would be to tell AE to 'interpret the footage' as rec709 rather than gamma encoded sRGB in order to get the 'correct' inverse curve for the MOV's but on doing this AE assumes a levels range of 16 - 235 luma 16 - 240 chroma where as our MOVs are full range levels so we appear to again get the wrong linearizing of the source files as the histogram looks combed again. Also as mediacore handles rec709 files all options are greyed out.

An alternative is to remove the full range flag set 'on' in the h264 stream by the camera firmware / encoder. This can be done in a quick remux to mp4 with a h264 VUI Options enabled tool like MP4Box.

When we import the remuxed mp4 AE defaults to rec709 and handles the file as limited range even though it has full range levels so the linearizing appears incorrect again.

That's the point of the full range flag set on in the MOV, to signal to the decompressing codec to squeeze the full levels into 16 - 235 when decompressed ready for the NLE etc to convert to 8bit RGB. if the full levels were used RGB channels would almost certainly clip, at 8bit.

With a 32bit float RGB project the whole YCC h264 full range source can be held and manipulated in RGB, generally without clipping channels and losing data.

So when importing MOV's into AE or Premiere the full levels are scaled into 16 - 235 luma, 16 - 240 chroma, and normalized to fit within 0 - 1, ie: 0 - 255 8bit RGB so no overbrights / underbrights can exist.

Where as importing the remuxed mp4 into a 32bit space,  the RGB conversion done over the full range generates overbrights as the source is not normalized.

Which way is the right way is what I'd like to establish, for this camera source anyway.

Title: Re: Adobe Premiere/After FX HDR workflow.
Post by: Rehaan on September 05, 2012, 05:32:59 PM
Thanks - though 95% of that went above my head :)

I guess maybe you and DFM can stir up a conversation here !

Cheers,
R
Title: Re: Adobe Premiere/After FX HDR workflow.
Post by: tazztone on November 13, 2017, 05:01:50 PM
Quote from: Rehaan on September 05, 2012, 12:44:32 PM

check out the free and very simple program "merger" that is included with Ginger HDR.

It will let you choose your ML HDR video, set the exposure difference (EV) and then render it out as EXR files which can be imported into Premiere or After Effects.

Hi. i know this topic is oooold but i tried the merger, but it gets stuck at "initializing quicktime file". any ideas why?

....or is there an altogether better workflow for the Alternate ISO video processing nowadays?
Title: Re: Adobe Premiere/After FX HDR workflow.
Post by: Danne on November 14, 2017, 12:04:39 AM
If on mac you can merge HDR footage with application Switch.
Title: Re: Adobe Premiere/After FX HDR workflow.
Post by: reddeercity on November 14, 2017, 06:16:15 AM
Quote from: tazztone on November 13, 2017, 05:01:50 PM
....or is there an altogether better workflow for the Alternate ISO video processing nowadays?
Yes ,there's many I'll list them in order that I use .
1: MLVFS (http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=13152.msg127218#msg127218)  (cross platform)
2: MLVProducer: [v3200]  (http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=15271.msg148538#msg148538) (PC App , cross platform with Wine) Plus a Very Good Grading App Adobe A.E. Like
3: MLV Mystic - [Windows][OSX] MLV/RAW to DNG & Dual ISO GUI batch converter V0.5 (http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=10466.msg101344#msg101344) (you need to update mlv_dump to the newest release if using anything other then 14bit raw)
I have archived the latest version on my bitbuck download page MLVMystic_v0.5(Beta).zip (https://bitbucket.org/reddeercity/magic-lantern_10-12bit/downloads/MLVMystic_v0.5(Beta).zip) Windows version
4: BarracudaGUI for cr2hdr dual iso raw for Windows (http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=9102.msg85862#msg85862) download link here (https://bitbucket.org/0xsepa/barracudagui/downloads/BarracudaGUI_0.3.5.0_Setup.exe) ( If you have a nvidia GPU with cuda acceleration) Very fast !
You will need to get cr2hdr.exe , I have a experimental version here (https://bitbucket.org/reddeercity/magic-lantern_10-12bit/downloads/cr2hdr_experiment_2016-03-17.zip)  to work with the 5D2 with dual ISO Video as it's not officially supported and you also need exiftool.exe , just download the latest version online .

But it you are importing Cdng sequence in to Adobe then there is only one choice really ,
MLVFS as it extracts on the fly no need to waste drive space with unnecessary hard extraction of physical Cdng .

sorry I just read it's HDR not Dual ISO  :-[

I know this will not help for adobe but If you were on FCPX there's a plugin alex4d-fcpx-magic-lantern-hdr (https://blog.alex4d.com/2012/12/18/alex4d-fcpx-magic-lantern-hdr/)
http://www.alex4d.com/plugins/fcpX/Alex4D_Magic_Lantern_HDR_1.0.dmg
Title: Re: Adobe Premiere/After FX HDR workflow.
Post by: tazztone on November 14, 2017, 01:32:49 PM
thanks for your replies. however i am not on MAC and neither do I use fcpx  :D
that leaves me still looking for a way to get the "merger" by "ginger HDR" to work. or should i just use the workflow that relies on virtualdub, avisynth and enfuse  etc.? i thought it looked more complicated than the merger, which is why i was rather more interested in getting merger to work. so if anyone knows why it's stuck at "initializing quicktime file", please help me figure out. cheers