Messages

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: January 24, 2014, 04:55:49 PM »

The next two video tutorials are up and ready to view...

Tutorial #4 introduces the lift, gamma and gain colour wheels for primary colour correction... and how to reset them (as there are three different ways to reset these controls, and each has a different effect, it's worth knowing which one to use!).

Tutorial #5 introduces the camera raw settings.

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: January 19, 2014, 06:16:39 PM »

Thanks for all the contribution. I,m about to dig in and learn the program so this is hopefully spot on. About the videos. Are the numbering corresponding to the steps on your page?

Good luck - and I hope the videos and written tutorials over at http://www.davidvickers.co.uk help you find your way around. There are more tutorials planned, but I have to fit them in around my work schedule (which is pretty hectic at the moment). The video tutorials roughly follow the overall sequence of the written stuff, and you can read the tutorials then get a slightly more in-depth view from the the videos.

Video tutorial 5 is complete, but I need to finish off video 4 still - then I can post both of them up. So keep posted - I've currently got 12 video tutorials planned...

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: January 19, 2014, 05:40:13 PM »

I've been putting the tutorial videos up on a new Vimeo channel at https://vimeo.com/channels/653502 - there's a couple more videos that haven't appeared here and a couple to go up...

Video tutorial 2:

Video tutorial 3:

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Share Your Videos / [600D H.264] The Textile Gallery

« on: January 17, 2014, 10:44:34 PM »

I shot this video as part of my Farnham360 project - a personal project to document life in Farnham, Surrey (UK). This video focuses on Jo, who has just opened a textile gallery.

It was shot with a Canon 600D, using my own picture style (first time I've tried it out properly), and ML2.3 with the CBR at 1.3 (H.254 recording). This video has had no colour correction, grading, sharpening applied - it is straight out of the camera.

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: MLV to RAW conversion on OSX

« on: January 13, 2014, 08:56:53 AM »

mlv2dng.exe file.mlv [prefix]

 => will create prefix000000.dng, prefix000001.dng and so on.
Johans-Mac-Pro:~ mac$ cd /Users/mac/Movies/
Johans-Mac-Pro:Movies mac$ ./mlv_dump --dng <M28-0536.MLV>
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'
Johans-Mac-Pro:Movies mac$


This is my terminal. I also have Mountain Lion 10.8.5, it says the same.

Don't put your filename within the < and > symbols...

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: MLV to RAW conversion on OSX

« on: January 13, 2014, 08:47:23 AM »

All of the tutorial videos on how to process Magic Lantern RAW files into DNGs show people with cameras that automatically produce .RAW files while my camera (Canon EOS 60D) produces .MLV files that when I put into converters either produce empty folders with now .wav files or .dng files OR an error message comes up saying that something is wrong. I have used RAWmagic, mlv2dng, MLVConverter, RAW2GPCF, etc, and some of these involve coding in Terminal which is way above what I can do. All I want is an application that can process my MLV. files into DNG. or other editable files so I can use them in Premier Pro CS6 and Da Vinci Resolve 9. Help would be greatly appreciated!

In that case, are you using the mlv_rec module rather than the raw_rec module?

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: CinemaDNG files with RAWmagic are blue and can't be use in Resolve...

« on: January 12, 2014, 02:01:28 PM »

I used to shoot in raw (with 600D), then RAWMagic to give the DNG files, then import into Resolve. I also export proxies to FCP for editing, then back into Resolve before creating a 'master' that I would then import back into FCP for the finals - audio / music / titles. In fact, the very workflow I think that you mentioned.

There's some goo dnews, and some not so good news...

I updated from FCP 10.0.8 to FCP 10.1, and Apple 'improved' the XMLs to version 1.3... but Resolve doesn't like those, as it wants version 1.2. So XML files will need to be converted to version 1.2 first.

Why not just use Resolve for editing as well. It does it - perhaps not as easily as using FCP but it can be done, as well as all the audio stuff.

Right... now to the real point of your original question. The dots are hot / dead pixels (apparently) and I had the exact same trouble; in the end I stopped using raw! However, there is another way if you want to get rid of the dots and stick with shooting raw, and that is to use RAWTherapee to batch process the DNG files. You will end up with 16-bit TIF files instead, which take up more space, but Resolve is happy to import these and they can be graded without any real issues.

I use an iMac, 16GB RAM, Resolve 10 and FCP 10.1.

If you want any more information, let me know.

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Shoot Preparation / Re: Contrast and picture styles, the real scoop.

« on: January 11, 2014, 04:40:31 PM »

I think this is interesting too!

I've been using raw recording on my 600D, and whilst it is amazing to be able to do that, I was plagued by dots across the whole image. Although I could get rid of these, it was another step in the raw workflow that I could do without. So, whilst I like shooting a little bit of raw, I went back to H.264 and picture styles.

I figured that by selecting a flatter style when faced with a contrasty image, or a more contrasty style in flat light, I'd gain back some control and this could be done in camera. I also thought that by using the contrast setting within a picture style would provide a level of control as well.

Finally, I thought I'd create a new picture style with a little bit of an S-Curve built-in. This is the result... no post-processing done to the video at all (this is just a stills frame straight from the MOV file). CBR set to 3.0.



If anyone fancies trying the picture style, it can be downloaded at http://www.dropbox.com/s/hvkwekdoseieen7/S-Curve.pf3

I'm happy with the result, and probably keep to H.264 for now! I'm filming an interview this week, so it'll get tried out properly then.

Finally, in my new Davinci Resolve video tutorial about working with audio and video  - I filmed a piece to camera using H.264 and there seems to be no issues with levels of detail there. I'm beginning to wonder if I've fallen foul of the mad rush to use raw... well, just because I could! The H.264 quality seems plenty good enough for my uses.

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: January 11, 2014, 12:16:45 PM »

I've put up another video tutorial on Vimeo - it's out of sequence, but as I was asked about it specifically, I've put it up - it covers synchronising audio and video within Davinci Resolve...

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Bad (hot,stuck) pixel(?) with 50D raw video in Davinci Resolve

« on: January 07, 2014, 11:47:47 PM »

Yep, that's a quick way to do it for a few DNG sequences, but I use a command line as I can build it into a script to apply the same PP3 file to lots of directories, and have the output TIF files also put in specific directories.

However, your way is quicker for a couple of clip sequences

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Bad (hot,stuck) pixel(?) with 50D raw video in Davinci Resolve

« on: January 05, 2014, 11:16:36 PM »

Looks like you will need to use RawTherapee - it's certainly what I use when I shoot raw on my 600D and it does a good job

I use RAWMagic to create the DNG sequence, then open up the first one on RAWTherapee, select  the option to remove dead pixels and then process it. That gives a 'corrected' 16-bit TIF file and a .pp3 file that can be used in the command line to do all the remaining DNGs.

If you are on a Mac, you can use

/Applications/RawTherapee.app/Contents/MacOS/rawtherapee -o "output_dir" -t -p "dir/filename.pp3" -c "input_dir_containing_DNGs"

You can import the TIF files into Resolve with no issues.

Hope it helps?

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: January 05, 2014, 09:32:21 PM »

The extreme top left end of the Color screen in DVR10 is showing a variable fps ranging from 19-29fps. What can I do to keep the rate steady?

That change in variable frame rate is when you play back your footage - it is showing you what rate the frames are being played. The only way to up this and get a good frame rate is a bigger, more powerful, machine!

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: pink highlight removing/noise reduction and sharpening in Davinci Resolve Lite

« on: January 05, 2014, 11:54:00 AM »

You can use RawTherapee (command line) to process the DNG files, remove bad pixels and then import the resultant 16-bit TIF files into Resolve...

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: January 04, 2014, 12:10:35 PM »

So, to accompany the tutorials over at http://www.davidvickers.co.uk, I've just created the first of the training videos - see what you think...

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: January 03, 2014, 09:46:40 PM »

That does help a lot.
Thank you very much.

Can't wait for you to go into more detail though.

Great! Don't forget the shortcuts too...

Alt+C adds in a serial node and a circular power window at the same time.
Alt+Q does the same, but gives you a rectangular window, and...
Alt+B does the same but allows you to build your own shape by adding points.

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: January 03, 2014, 03:22:39 PM »

Okay - nodes can be confusing - serial, parallel, outside and so on. I'll be taking a look at those in due course, next week we finish off on our tour around the Color window (making some adjustments as we go), then the following week I'm hoping to start colour correction and grading (and that means adding nodes).

It may help to think of serial nodes as layers, as you would find in other photo / video editing packages, so you might want to do your basic colour corrections in Node 1, then apply some grading in a new serial node (Node 2), then add another serial node (Node 3) and an outside node (Node 4).

Select Node 3, add in a power window to select part of the image and make your adjustments - they will only affect what's inside the power window.

Now go to Node 4 and make some more changes... Node 4 is an outside node, so it will only affect anything outside of the power window you set in Node 3.

Does that help a little bit?

Parallel nodes are also really useful, and I sometimes use them for dealing with skies - but more on that later

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: January 03, 2014, 01:45:23 PM »

To make things a bit easier on finding the tutorials, I've now added a dropdown list on the right-hand side of the website at http://www.davidvickers.co.uk - I've also written a few more and these will be coming out over the next few day. They are looking at the color wheels and we start making some basic corrections to the clips.

If you use the tutorials, please do drop me a quick line to let me know how you are getting on with them or if there's something you want covered in this beginners series.

All the best,
David.

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Share Your Videos / [600D RAW] Is Farnham about to flood?

« on: January 02, 2014, 08:19:34 PM »

Part of my Farnham360 project to document the life and people of my home town.

Today I took a walk through the Bishops Meadow on my way to collect my wife's car, and figured I would take the short cut through the Bishops Meadow. It's been raining here for days, and today is stopped and the sun came out (for a bit anyway), before the next tranche of rain coming in tomorrow for the next two days! I had my camera with me, and this is what I found...

Camera: Canon 600D, running ML 2.3 nightly build for raw recording.
Edited and graded in Davinci Resolve 10 Lite, titles and music added in FCP X.

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: January 01, 2014, 08:30:03 PM »

If you are new to Davinci Resolve, then this might interest you - just to show the sort of thing you can do with it...

Although this is somewhat jumping ahead in the Davinci Resolve tutorials, I'm adding this one in as I was asked how to deal with a problem one videographer had had when shooting a differential focus. The foreground object had been lit properly and resulted in a well-exposed subject, but when shifting focus to the background subject it was found that it was under-exposed.

What was needed was a solution that allowed the exposure to be brought up on the background object, without over-exposing the foreground. The easiest way would be to set up a qualifier to only affect the background object, but I thought that a nicer solution might be to have the exposure increased on the background, and brought down on the foreground, as the focus shifted. This would have the effect of supporting the focus shift.

To find out how it was done, read on...

In order to provide a solution, we were going to need qualifiers and keyframes - how would you solve this problem?

Watch the video to find out how I did it...

Find more tutorials at http://www.davidvickers.co.uk

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: January 01, 2014, 04:07:55 PM »

I so pleased that people are finding it useful - Resolve is an amazing tool, and so powerful. I'm amazed that the Lite version is free! Anyway, been busy again and added some more tutorials that start moving us towards colour correction and grading.

Davinci Resolve: Part 09: The Color window (preview pane) - http://www.davidvickers.co.uk/2014/01/davinci-resolve-part-09-color-window.html
Davinci Resolve: Part 10: The Color window (waveforms) - http://www.davidvickers.co.uk/2014/01/davinci-resolve-10-color-window.html
Davinci Resolve: Part 11: The Color window continued - http://www.davidvickers.co.uk/2014/01/davinci-resolve-part-11-color-window.html

Happy New Year to all of you!

David.

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Pomfort ClipHouse

« on: December 31, 2013, 08:42:40 PM »

I'm having the same problem as was mentioned by PressureFM. Whenever I try to import, I get the Ingesting box, and then the program goes unresponsive.

Same for me too - just sits there ingesting and I have to use Force Quit to close the program down.

Trying to ingest ML .RAW files on a Mac running Mavericks if that helps?

DV.

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: December 31, 2013, 07:43:06 PM »

I've now added a further group of tutorials to help beginners to Davinci Resolve; they are:

Davinci Resolve: Part 06. Media window basics. http://www.davidvickers.co.uk/2013/12/davinci-resolve-part-06-media-window.html
Davinci Resolve: Part 07. The Edit window. http://www.davidvickers.co.uk/2013/12/davinci-resolve-part-07-edit-window.html
Davinci Resolve: Part 08. Adding to the timeline. http://www.davidvickers.co.uk/2013/12/davinci-resolve-part-08-adding-to.html

At the time of writing the tutorials get you to a point where you have setup your libraries, added clips to the media pool, created a timeline and added clips to it. The next series of tutorials will be looking at the Color window where you can start colour correction and grading.

Let me know if there is anything you would like me to add, or if there is something that you want to make sure I cover.

Good luck,
David.

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: Tutorials: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: December 30, 2013, 03:25:50 PM »

No worries, I'm glad you found it useful

Further to my earlier post, Part 5: Finding Your Media is now available at http://www.davidvickers.co.uk/2013/12/davinci-resolve-part-05-finding-your.html. This takes a look at how to add new libraries that contain your media files into Resolve.

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Tutorials for Beginners: Davinci Resolve 10 Lite

« on: December 30, 2013, 08:38:00 AM »

Hi everyone,

I've been asked some questions about using Davinci Resolve to grade raw footage from the raw recording of Canon + ML, so I've started to create some tutorials about how to get it working.

Resolve is just amazing, but if you are a first-time user of it, it can be completely overwhelming and you can spend hours looking for information on how to complete the most basic of things - like finding your media files to include in your project, or setting up the project defaults.

There will be odd little snippets of useful information too - like using the BMD Film colour space to get a good starting point for grading the raw image, etc.

The tutorials are / will be based on Davinci Resolve 10 Lite, and clips shot with a Canon 600D running a nightly build of ML.

You can find them at http://www.davidvickers.co.uk, and more specifically the first four are up...

Davinci Resolve Part 01: Creating a project (link - http://www.davidvickers.co.uk/2013/12/davinci-resolve-part-01.html)
Davinci Resolve Part 02: Configuring master project settings (link - http://www.davidvickers.co.uk/2013/12/davinci-resolve-part-02.html)
Davinci Resolve Part 03: Configuring camera raw settings (link - http://www.davidvickers.co.uk/2013/12/davinci-resolve-part-03-configuring.html)
Davinci Resolve Part 04: Renaming a project (link - http://www.davidvickers.co.uk/2013/12/davinci-resolve-part-04-renaming.html)

Hope these, and the future tutorials will be useful to someone!

All the best,
David.

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Raw Video Postprocessing / Re: DNG preview in Mavericks (10.9) Finder

« on: December 30, 2013, 01:07:37 AM »

RAWMagic