Beauty in Nature (5D Mk3 RAW)

Started by Andre Meyer, October 23, 2013, 01:27:02 PM

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Andre Meyer





After five trips to the game reserve, some test footage and a 10 day holiday in Mossel Bay we ended up with 1 terabyte of raw stock footage. I've now edited this down to 3 minutes.

Everything was graded with the new Resolve 10. Finally the pink fringing problem is completely gone with Resolve 10! Another great new feature is a special RAW sharpening tool designed for RAW footage that really improves the quality.

After filming and grading 1 terabyte of footage with zero drop frames or any problems whatsoever I am starting to trust Magic Lantern RAW firmware more and more. I am still running an old build of 27 July. It can only get better from here on!

Once you get to know the workflow, working with RAW footage is a breeze. I think of RAW as Proress 444 with a conversion step in between.

I used the 3x crop mode on a lot of these shots. I discovered that the crop mode has the same effect as the 2x extender in that it magnifies the image, so any imperfections of the lens get more noticeable, although this is hardly noticeable as you will see from the footage. Turning my 200mm 2.8 into a 600mm 2.8 with a click of a button was really great. All the wildlife shots were filmed from a car with a big pillow rested on the window.

Workflow:
Import into Davinci Resolve and export proxies. Edit sequence in FCP. Import xml into Davinci. Automatically relink to original RAW files. Grade and export beautiful proress 4444 sequence.

The part I loved most about Resolve's workflow is that you can apply the BMD Film color space and gamma to all the clips which turns them into super flat gradable footage. An excellent starting point.

For archive of the footage I decided to render all clips in Resolve to Proress 4444 with the BMD super flat color space applied to it and the white balance and exposure set as desired. I did a few tests and applied the exact same grade from a RAW clip on the same Proress 4444 clip and even at 400% there is no difference at all. The only difference between RAW and Proress 4444 is that you can change the white balance and recover exposure, so do this before you export to Proress 4444.
By archiving Proress and not RAW you save 60% on storage. Proress HQ is just not good enough as you can see the difference so be sure to use Proress 4444.

Tech Spec:

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III

Lens: 70 - 200 2.8 IS II & 24 - 70 2.8 II

CF Card: 2x 32gb Lexar & 2x 64gb Lexar (all 1000x)

HDD: NextoDi NVS1501 750gb

Support: Tripod & Pillow :)
Software:
 DaVinci Resolve 10 & 
FCP

LucaBrasi

Nice description, thanks! During your shooting and post-productions have you stumbled across any do's and don's that you would like to share? Always nice with tips from people who actually used ML extensively in field :)

dude

may i ask what kind of export settings you used for vimeo?

Andre Meyer

I used an adobe media encoder CC vimeo 1080P template but changed the target bitrate to about 15. Overkill I know but for a 3 min video its only 500mb. I also check "render at Maximum Depth" and use maximum render quality"

dude


Andre Meyer

Quote from: LucaBrasi on October 23, 2013, 01:48:05 PM
Nice description, thanks! During your shooting and post-productions have you stumbled across any do's and don's that you would like to share? Always nice with tips from people who actually used ML extensively in field :)

Thank you. There are quite a few steps... Make sure you use the resolve raw sharpening tool. Always work in Proress 4444. I cant really think of anything else. Raw filming is the same as h264. You shoot stuff, convert it and edit. Let me know if there is anything specifically you want to know.

dude

Speaking of sharpening, is there a way beside resolve?
i don t know if it is a good idea to sharpen in acr, and in ae or premiere you only have the unsharp mask

5D3shooter

Quote from: dude on October 23, 2013, 02:34:51 PM
Speaking of sharpening, is there a way beside resolve?
i don t know if it is a good idea to sharpen in acr, and in ae or premiere you only have the unsharp mask

DONT SHARPEN IN ACR!!! looks like crapola

Great video, Andre!!!

Andre Meyer

Quote from: dude on October 23, 2013, 02:34:51 PM
Speaking of sharpening, is there a way beside resolve?
i don t know if it is a good idea to sharpen in acr, and in ae or premiere you only have the unsharp mask

Davinci resolve is the way to go. Its made for raw video. Davinci has two methods, the normal way and a special raw only way. I wouldn't sharpen it with any other program

dude

hm, i have to finish a big projekt within the next days, to learn davince would take to much time. i am cutting with pp and ae for 15 years now, so including davinci would double the time i need..

Bassaidai

GREAT video, Andre! Superb sharpness and grading. Man, you had to dig through some piles of data there....

How did you catch the bird @ 1:27? Prefocussed and just waited? :-)

Did you use DavinceResolve 10 standard or the free lite edition?

Cheers,
Bass

Andre Meyer

Quote from: dude on October 23, 2013, 03:47:41 PM
hm, i have to finish a big projekt within the next days, to learn davince would take to much time. i am cutting with pp and ae for 15 years now, so including davinci would double the time i need..

All you need is to dedicate 11 hours and purchase Davinci Resolve Core Training - Ripple Training by Alexis Van Hurkman. He is a excellent teacher and you will master resolve after this. You will also have to watch raw - resolve - PP roundtrip tutorial videos on youtube

Andre Meyer

Quote from: Bassaidai on October 23, 2013, 04:28:26 PM
GREAT video, Andre! Superb sharpness and grading. Man, you had to dig through some piles of data there....

How did you catch the bird @ 1:27? Prefocussed and just waited? :-)

Did you use DavinceResolve 10 standard or the free lite edition?

Cheers,
Bass

Thanks man, yeah it was 1tb of raw footage. Now its all sorted out, trimmed and archived proress 444 and its sitting at 250gb of good usable footage.

That bird at 1:27 kept on flying off and landing over and over again on the same spot. I got it taking off and landing a couple of times, wides and closeups. Its a bee eater. Sometimes luck is on your side :) most times with animals not so much.

I used Resolve lite free. The only limitations I am aware of is a noise remover function and the ability to grade over 1080P.

soundsubs

great looking shot, Andre!

regarding workflow, will Davinci Resolve allow you to import straight RAW files, or do you have to convert with raw2dng first?
Canon 5D iii / 8-15mm, 16-35mm, 50mm 1.2, 85mm 1.2, 135mm, 24-70mm ii, 70-200mm ii

Andre Meyer

Thanks soundsubs. You have to covert to DNG 1st. I switched to the program called "Son of Batch" and convert straight from the CF card or nexto DI hard drive to a local HDD. Over all, way better than raw2dng

AlexZapp

Nice work Andre!Thank you for sharing your experience and waiting for new work. What was the longest shot by time and do you had some problem with limits of file capacity?

Danne

Doesn,t get much better than this. Well done!

pascal

Wow, this was brilliant. The colors are beautiful. The scenes are a blast. Thank you for the tips in the description too.
One critique though: your logo is way too large on the video and takes away little quality.

Andre Meyer

Thanks for all the comments.

Pascal, I know it is distracting unfortunately, but I wanted it big enough to spoil the shot in case people download it and use it as their own. All these shots are up for sale at Shutterstock and Pond 5.

Andre Meyer

Quote from: AlexZapp on October 26, 2013, 11:27:33 PM
Nice work Andre!Thank you for sharing your experience and waiting for new work. What was the longest shot by time and do you had some problem with limits of file capacity?

Thank you Alex. There is no limit on the CF cards but unfortunately my NextoDi can't be formatted to exFAT yet, and that limits it to 4gb. NextoDi will be releasing a firmware update to enable exFAT.
You can do the maths, every 10 - 12 seconds amount to 1gb.

pascal

Quote from: Andre Meyer on October 27, 2013, 02:44:11 PM
Thanks for all the comments.

Pascal, I know it is distracting unfortunately, but I wanted it big enough to spoil the shot in case people download it and use it as their own. All these shots are up for sale at Shutterstock and Pond 5.
Ok I understand that makes sense. Does footage like this sell good on stock websites or is this a rather small market?

mva

Quote from: Andre Meyer on October 23, 2013, 04:51:55 PM
The only limitations I am aware of is a noise remover function...

Beautiful work, Andre. Very inspiring!

I'm curious whether you use any other tool for noise removal, and if so where you fit it into your workflow.

pholler


Andre Meyer

Pascal, I don't know how good it will sell. Started uploading 2 months ago and only sold one clip so far.

Mva, Thanks man. I did not use any form of noise remover because it was not necessary. If I have to apply noise removal, I will use Neat video in fcp after grading.

jafa