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Messages - QuickHitRecord

#1
Just for fun, I started a new group on Facebook if anyone is interested. Here's the write up.

QuoteLow resolution? Compression artifacts? Clipped highlights? One person's image quality nightmare is another person's sought-after look.

This group is for filmmakers of all levels who want a little break from thinking about image quality -- or who never focus much on it to begin with. Whether you're someone who enjoys the challenge of trying to shoot something with less than adequate tools, or you just like the lo-fi texture of older point-and-shoots, early smartphones, CCD camcorders, or industrial/security cameras, this group embraces the cameras that serious filmmakers would NEVER use...

Or would they?

Spend as little as possible or use what you already have. Learn the quirks, make something interesting, and experience the creativity that comes from working within limitations.

I'm hoping that this group can be a soothing balm for those that feel like there's too much emphasis on new and better gear, or those who just want to shoot something for fun without worrying so much about image quality. It would be great to see some of you in there: https://www.facebook.com/groups/junkcameracinema
#2
QuoteThis is to be expected: Log saves your shadows and highlights at the cost of midtones (which get compressed by the log function). So it is better to grad 100% in MLVApp or 100% in another app. In MLVApp you could also apply .cube LUTs. This should look better and should not bring those artifacts, because processing is 16bit instead of 10bit if you apply it in Premiere on a ProRes file.

Thank you. I am getting much cleaner results applying the LUT in MLV App.
#3
I haven't been using ML or MLV App lately, but in the wake of our recent quarantine, I decided to try them out once again. MLV App is a wonderful piece of software. I have one question though. When I set the profile preset to "Alexa Log-C" and then export to ProRes for grading later, I get some crazy banding in the resulting clips when a simple Log-C to Rec709 LUT is applied. Here is an example:



I seem to remember having problems with this in the past as well. Is there a way to export without this issue? In my case, I am using MLV App v1.11 and applying highlight reconstruction, making color temperature tweaks, and then exporting to 4K ProRes HQ. Then I'm bringing it into Premiere and applying the standard ALEXA_Default_LogC2Rec709 LUT in Lumetri. The camera is a 5D3 with 1.23 and a build from 2017.
#4
Share Your Videos / Re: C-mount lenses on the EOS-M
February 09, 2019, 08:48:23 PM
Reviving an old thread. I recently came into a few C-mount lenses that I would like to try out, but I've been out of the ML loop for a bit. What is the state of EOS-M crop-mode shooting in 2019? Am I right in understanding that there are now two modes that allow pixel to pixel cropped recording? If so, what are the advantages of each? Thanks.
#5
Really nice, Jan.

What transition pack did you use? They added a lot of energy to your edit.
#6
Just shoot raw and compress to ProRes for editing. You can probably use your current machine and the images will still grade much, much better than H264.

ML Raw Compression Ratios

10-second clip

Original MLV: 872MB
RawMagic Compressed CDNG: 466MB (47% reduction)
Davinci Resolve ProRes4444XQ: 479.2MB (45% reduction)
Davinci Resolve ProRes4444: 316.4MB (64% reduction)
Davinci Resolve ProResHQ: 222.9MB (74% reduction)
Davinci Resolve ProRes422: 92.2MB (91% reduction)
#7
It was the first time I dared attempting to shoot interviews with ML raw. It didn't let me down! My longest clips were recorded as an MLV followed by a bunch of M00 files. I mounted it in Resolve with MLVFS and exported to ProResHQ to cut down on filesizes. I can't remember what those were, but an hour MLV footage (1080P, 23.978fps) comes to about 315GB. I had an hour of interview footage, and probably two hours of b-roll when all was said and done. So, close to 1TB before converting to ProResHQ.
#8
Let me know what you think:

https://vimeo.com/207563529

Note: I recorded over an hour of interview footage with ML raw to make this. I think my longest take was over 30 minutes. There weren't any glitches or pink frames to speak of!
#9
I have a question. I spent an hour looking for the answer on these forums, but haven't been able to find one.

Note: This may be an ML issue, or possibly just a Canon issue. Or maybe even Atomos? I'm not sure.

I recently went to firmware f1.2.3 and everything has been good so far, except for one thing. I have a monitor (in my case, an Atomos Ninja Blade -- used only as a monitor) plugged into the camera via HDMI. Mirroring is off.

When I turn the camera and monitor on, I get a blank screen on the monitor. Unplugging the monitor brings up a prompt on the camera's LCD to hit "Start/Stop" to enter recording mode. ML does not seem to load. Hitting that button does nothing and I have to restart the camera.

Whether I turn the monitor on first, then the camera, or if I do it the other way around, I get the same result. The only workaround has been to let the shutter go up and ML to load, and then plug in my camera. It's kind of a nuisance, especially since I plan to run both camera and monitor off of the same battery.

Any ideas?
#10
That is definitely someone else!
#11
Thanks! I just exported everything as BMDFilm color space in Resolve (11), and then added FilmConvert in Premiere and some tweaks via Lumetri. Took me about 30 minutes to do the whole thing.
#12
Shot very hastily, but I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. ML raw continues to create a very pleasing image:

https://vimeo.com/206512845

Lenses used:

  • Nikkor AIS 28mm f/2.8
  • Nikkor AIS 50mm f/1.8
  • Nikkor AIS 85mm f/2
#13
@DeafEyeJedi

Thanks. You are too kind. The 35-70mm is the only parfocal lens I have, so it was the obvious choice for this.

I had a big 5x7 diffuser offscreen, and a reflector on the other side. I didn't really use ETTR on this one. I exposed for the skintones and blew out the cloudless sky, but grabbed a reference shot and was able to add color detail back in post. I used MLVFS and tried a few CineLog transformations but liked what I was getting manually with BMDFilm 4K as a starting point more. I added FilmConvert into the mix at the end (just color, not curves).

It's all one big, fun learning process!

I've been following the crop_rec development and I'm very intrigued, but I'm usually a pretty late adopter on these things.
#14
https://www.youtube.com/embed/el3uVb5Mgko

Shot with an Olympus 35-70mm f/3.6 with all natural light and a few modifiers. Graded in Resolve 11.3.

Let me know what you think.
#15
I've also found that ACR is better at recovering highlights, and that is really valuable to me. But I've experienced a quirk that has kept me from using ACR (in Photoshop CC 2015.5). When I apply my adjustments to a single frame and then attempt to "sync" to the rest of the thumbnails in the left column, the adjustments will not be applied unless I scroll down so that they are visible in the left sidebar. I end up having to do a lot of scrolling for every clip! Anyone know how to get around that?
#16
I haven't had this happen with MLVFS before. Every time I try to mount, the web browser (Firefox) gives me this:

QuoteUnable to connect

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at localhost:8000.

    The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.
    If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection.
    If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

Any idea why this is happening?
#17
I 've already ordered a 1200x. I'll see how it stacks up when it gets here.
#18
According to the item descriptions, the 1066x card has a write speed of 155MB/s and a read speed of 160MB/s. The 1200x gets a slower write speed of 140MB/s and a faster read speed of 180MB/s.
#19
I need to get a second card for raw recording on my 5Diii. I've been happy with my KomputerBay 1066x card, but there have been some negative reviews regarding quality control posted on Amazon since I bought mine two years ago. The 1200x doesn't have any such negative reviews, but its write speed may be slower.

Since they are both priced about the same, which would you get?
#20
General Help Q&A / Re: April's fool
April 02, 2016, 08:46:55 AM
You devs got me with this one today while shooting stills. I almost bricked my pants!
#21
My friend and I did a quick (and unscientific) side-by-side test between these two cameras with a single LED source shooting in through the window. I focused on matching the framing, focal length, and background rendering as much as possible. In a perfect world, the 5D could have used a little more light because it doesn't "see" as much light as the Sony, and it also needs to be exposed to right even more than the Sony for optimal results.


There's more of a write up over on Vimeo if you want to know more about my workflow.

Personal notes: The a7R ii is easier to use in almost every way, but I greatly prefer the image from the 5D3 shooting raw. SLOG (in this case, SLOG2) is well implemented in the higher-end FS7, but I struggle to get passable skintones from it in their mirrorless hybrid cameras, especially with fair-skinned subjects. Bumping up the saturation of gray just gives you more gray. I know it can be done, since I've seen in other examples. But I'm assuming that it takes a lot of work to get it there, and probably multiple windows. The irony is that the raw footage from the Canon is very flexible in terms of grading, but it needs very little (if any tweaking). I think that's worth a lot.

I'll be hanging onto my 5D3. It's a 2012 camera, which makes it a dinosaur, but with Magic Lantern's incredible hack, there's a lot of life in it yet.

Thanks to baldavenger for providing some useful guidance with the grade.
#22
Thanks. It's the initial setup that really trips me up. I don't want to leave any color information on the table.

I'll bring Cinelog out of retirement. My most recent download is the "01UPGRADE" pack. Does anyone know if this is the most recent version?
#23
Particularly with Resolve 12, I'm finding that working with Raw DNGs really chokes my computer and I cannot scrub in real-time. I'll probably have to get a new one at some point, but for now...

If I want to use MLVFS and Resolve 12 to export ProRes (HQ/4444) for editing AND grading, what can I do to give my colorist (assuming that it's someone else) the best possible starting point?

Thanks.
#24
You may get more responses in a forum like EOSHD or DVXuser. Magic Lantern is more about the software.

That being said, fast lenses will give you a super shallow depth of field, which when used in a succession of shots is usually a dead giveaway that someone couldn't afford/didn't bother to use any lights, couldn't afford/didn't bother to secure an interesting location, or both. I rarely shoot with aperture faster than f/4.

I think that the other posters have it right. Do an eBay search for "Colortran" or "movie lights". You'll find a lot of affordable options that you can couple with a cheap 5-in-1 diffuser from Amazon to get some pretty good results.
#25
Quote from: DeafEyeJedi on March 04, 2016, 09:56:31 AM
Maybe you forgot to 'refresh' the Web interface after making your adjustments checked? I've had this happened to me occasionally whenever I forget. [emoji6]

You were right. Thanks for the tip. I re-did the test, and expanded on it:

https://vimeo.com/157694455

Some takeaways from this exercise:

  • If I don't hit refresh on the web interface (even with none of the boxes checked), I seem to get crazy dancing bad pixels and just more noise in general.
  • The 5D Mark III seems to be a native ISO 400 camera. There is a lot of additional noise introduced at ISO 800.
  • Bad pixel fix works great. Aggressive bad pixel fix didn't seem to yield any different results. Maybe this is useful for the Rebel and EOS-M lines that seem to have more bad pixel issues.
  • Fix pattern noise helps a lot, and seems to eliminate vertical stripes as well.
  • Vertical stripe fix doesn't seem to do anything.
  • Chroma smoothing adds a lot of noise. I don't think that I will be using this.
  • RawMagic displays vertical stripes, even with vertical stripe correction on.
  • Footage from RawMagic is about a stop brighter by default.