Messages

ginger crashes every time twixtor is applied to the clip

That seems a little strange.  I'll try it out.  Can you contact me directly at jhable at 19lights dot com and let me know what OS and version of Premiere/AE you are on?

Hi! Since the rawstream doesn,t include any hot/dead pixelremoval like when processed as dng,s I wonder what to tolerate here. Especially when in 5x mode and on high iso I have som dead pixel showing up. Anybody experiencing something similar?

Hi Danne.  I'm looking into dead pixel removal but don't quite have a solution yet.

John,
Thanks, but the shot I'm talking about wasn't taken for proper exposure of the interior since I was only playing around with bringing out the highlights of the sky and brought up the darker areas to test where they stood, only.  I was really just seeing how long the 5DmkII could record on my CF card on the newest build. (over two minutes on a 60mb/s card until the card was full!! Very impressive.)

My concern with the image, which is by no means clean and well exposed, is that it looked much worse when processed through Ginger, than ACR, when rendered out in after effects. As you can see by the two examples I posted, the first being from Ginger, there's a large difference in amount of grain or noise and I simply wanted to figure out why. I'd love to be able to use native dng support in both AE and PPro, but there's no way I could do that currently with the way it added noise to my files. I don't believe Ginger's clean version of the raw file is it, either, as the files looked better in a image preview than when they were imported through the wrapper. And the same files, when opened with only ACR's base processing, looked about the same as the preview. Ginger added noise and color distortion.

I'm hoping it's simply a setting I haven't set properly.

Thanks!

Hi.  Sorry for the late reply I was trying to figure out the right way to explain this and then got distracted.  Anyways, ACR is not showing you the data that is actually in the file.  Rather, it does lots of correction.  Some of that is good, some of that is bad.

To see what the true image looks like, in the basic window you have to set black, contrast, and brightness to zero.  I'm on Process 2010 by the way.  Then under noise reduction you have to set all those to zero as well.  If you do those, then you will get a true version of what your image looks like.  That's what this image is:

http://www.19lights.com/downloads/scratch/M000269_v1.jpg

Then you can increase the exposure to 4.0 and it looks like this.

http://www.19lights.com/downloads/scratch/M000269_v2.jpg

There are several ways that ACR removes noise.  One of them is noise reduction.  Another one is by increasing the blacks and contrast setting.  ACR is throwing away in the bottom end of your histogram, which makes the image look less noisy.  But if you were doing a shot that had detail down there then ACR would lose it.  You could achieve a similar effect by doing a levels operation after importing with Ginger HDR.

Any time you shoot you will have some noise.  Ginger HDR is not adding grain to your image.  Rather, it's not removing the grain that is already there.  If your image is properly exposed then this tends to be a non-issue.  But if you have to bump the exposure it will amplify the noise, especially in the blacks.

Ooops.  Double post.

they were all in the plug ins common folder as you've listed.
I had to move two files
GingerWrapper-PRM-mac64
and another one that looked like the one I just listed but had AE in it as well. When I did that it worked!
When I left those two files in both folders I got a warning stating that they were on my system twice.
How do I move them both to the AE folder, but still leave them so that Premiere may use them?

Hi aaphotog:

First the short answer.   Don't put them into MediaCore.  It's counter-intuitive, but that's the trick.

In Premiere Pro, you want to put the plugins under:
Applications/Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.0/Contents/Plug-ins/Common/

In After Effects, you want to put them under:
Applications/Adobe After Effects CS6.0/Plug-ins/Effects/

Now the long answer.  In CS5.5 and earlier, After Effects and Premiere plugins were completely separate.  GingerWrapper-AE uses the AE interface and GingerWrapper-PRM uses the Premiere interface.  And life was good.

Then in CS6.0 Adobe decided to let After Effects load Premiere-style plugins if they are in MediaCore.  So if you put the files into the AE directory listed below, then AE will use AE plugin, it will ignore the PRM plugin, and everything will work.  But if you put them into MediaCore then AE will try load both the AE and the PRM plugin, and get confused.

I second that wish.
Is there a slight posibility to activate the adobe camera raw to the native raw clips or does it have to be extracted dng,s? I believe those sliders are giving the fastest and best results when doing the basic grading.

Hi Danne.  Unfortunately, that's not possible.  The ACR window is tightly integrated with their raw file loader and there is no way for external developers to integrate with it.

I would love to try it, but I have used my 30 days of trial some month ago. Since the plugin is used for a completely different task no i was hoping for a retry

Hi breaker.  No problem.  Email me directly (jhable at 19lights dot com) and I'll help you out.

Since we probably won't see sliders for a good chunk of time, how hard would it be implement a log output for the time being? I think that'd be good for dropping the , .gnr, .raw, .dng files in media encoder and exporting to prores or dnx. This gives an alternative to CineForm. You have a fast, decent looking debayer.

It's possible, but it's actually about the same amount of work as putting sliders together.  The time consuming part is putting together a window that gives you options to change.  Some people would want linear data, some would want log, some would want an S-curve, etc.

Looking very good! Haven't tried it myself yet, but definitely very interesting. I wonder though, what would be a good grading workflow? You could edit in Premiere and export to Prores 444 and go into Resolve maybe, but is there a possibility to export as .raw again, or dng or even better cinema dng...?

Hi Julian.  You can't really go back and forth from graded footage to RAW/Cinema DNG.  If you want to grade in Resolve then you are stuck with doing a one time conversion of everything.

Sure,

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-tH0mvjEp1Ka2M1ajl1TjJ4X2M/edit?usp=sharing

I forget the ISO exactly, but it was fairly low for how grainy the image is. I've found that it looks bad in whatever image viewer I have for Windows, but renders, normally, out great in After Effects, or at least very decent. It's possible it's something to do with the processing.

This was my first attempt at a long recording. With the new ML build I got near continuous shooting on the 5DmkII at 1880x800, so this file was spanned over a few clips, and then processed using Rawanizer. Maybe somewhere down the line it had grain added, but as of now when I import the same file into AE, without the wrapper, I don't get all that noise. And since there is a bit of noise reduction added in ACR it looks much better than the normal image viewer preview.

Thanks for your help!

Hi dandeliondandy.  I checked out your files and noticed a few things.

First off, the shot is actually pretty underexposed.  Like, 3-4 stops.  To get to the brightness in the image you have, it must be significantly brightened which brings out the noise.  So the first thing I'd say is try to have a longer exposure/ wider aperture.  Also, shooting at the ISO that gives you the best image is better than shooting at a lower ISO and bringing it up.  I.e. shooting at ISO 800 will give you cleaner results than shooting at ISO 100 and raising it 3 stops in post.

Also, we all know ACR does noise reduction (at least I hope everyone knows that).  But it also clamps out your blacks, whereas Ginger HDR gives you as much data as possible.  Even when "blacks" is set to zero it still seems to clamp out some data.  If you import with Ginger HDR and then do a levels it will give you similar blacks to loading in ACR with no noise reduction.

Hey,
I am/was pretty excited about this workflow and I've been playing around with it. However, a recent video I shot, which looks fine in the ACR editor, when imported into premiere looks extra grainy. When imported into AE, it looks really bad. Is this something that's on-going or is it something I could fix/change about the workflow? The DNGs were first edited through ACR and then imported into AE with the GingerWrapper.



https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-tH0mvjEp1Kbm5WSGI4Sko2Njg/edit?usp=sharing

Can you put one of your DNGs online?  What ISO were you shooting at?

I wonder if it would be possible to actually make ml write the WB info into the RAW footer? See http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5853.0

YES!!!   Getting the color temperature and G/M shift into the metadata would be a huge help.

The flickering in ACR is making highlight recovery and even exposure corrections impossible, is that something that could easily be fixed or would it require a major rewrite?

I'm not sure.  You'd have to ask Adobe.  (-:  I'm not entirely sure what corrections ACR makes automatically, but I believe it does an analysis of the histogram and tries to maximize the range out of it, but can make it unstable.  In theory there are ways you could make it more stable, but ACR is a black box that external developers have no access to.

John, great work.

At 1/2 res on the timeline I get fluid playback on my Mac Pro with CUDA accelerated Mercury engine, GTX 560 Ti in Premiere CS6.

At 1/2 res the magenta highlights disappear but they are there on the full res debayer.

There's something else wrong too as I can't get the same latitude as I can on the DNGs.

The shot above was overexposed and I was able to bring it down fine in ACR. When I do the same in Ginger with the Manual Exposure setting, or any of the colour grading controls under Filmic Curve I get clipped highlights as if a lot of the dynamic range just isn't accessible.

I also think the UI needs an overhaul for this to become a really popular tool. I think it should show the full metadata, and have graphical dials and sliders for kelvin, ISO, exposure, tint, shadows, highlight recovery just like Adobe. I can't get a 'feel' for my image as I change it by having to type the digits in, and the sliders are way too sensitive and not responsive enough in the rate at which they change the image in the monitor.

One other point - although I get a clip preview in the project manager thumbnail gallery, nothing happens when I double click the raw file to bring it up in the source clip monitor. It works fine on the timeline but not in the source clip viewer.

This is all on Premiere CS6 under OSX Mountain Lion.

Cheers!

Hi,

First off, there's a new version on site:
http://19lights.com/wp/downloads/

It's labeled June 12.  In the past I've had slight problems with false color artifacts but it's never been a big issue.  But it's a major problem on Magic Lantern RAW video because the data is point sampled.  So I had to do some reworking of the debayer code.  Please try it out.

This might sound strange, but the Tonemapping effect was never actually designed to be a RAW processor.  The Tonemapping effect came first and Ginger HDR was first used for processing HDR timelapse footage.  As time has passed we are getting more and more dynamic range out of sensors, so I've been moving into RAW processing.  The Tonemapping effect assumes that its input is clean, HDR footage with a proper white balance.  But since it was never designed to be a "RAW Processor" it's missing a few things that you need.

The proper solution is that there should be a menu that pops up in advanced settings (like ACR).  You can't get an exact fix for white balance after loading the file because it ideally needs to happen before the color matrix.  This hasn't been an issue with the BMC/Ikonoskop because they have WB data in the file, but since there's no WB in the Magic Lantern RAW data it can be so far off that it's difficult to correct.  The only solution is to have that menu in the importer.

In terms of dynamic range, it's a longer discussion.  In the current setup you lose some dynamic range during the initial import into D65 white balance, and you lose some more dynamic range if you shift the white balance away towards something else (like cloudy or indoor light).  This would be solved by putting the WB in the importer.

Another feature that ACR has (and some other RAW processors) is better highlight recovery.  For example, if your highlights become magenta, it can extrapolate the green channel to balance it out.  The one thing I'm paranoid about is temporal coherency.  Extracting the highlights sounds great until your footage starts flickering.  So it could be done, but would have to be in a menu.

The big takeaways are:
1.  Color Temperature, Tint, and Exposure need to be in a menu for the importer and should happen before the color matrix conversion.
2.  The current Tonemapping effect is too complicated for a typical one light.  And it has several other issues as well.  I'm currently in the process of breaking it up into several smaller effects, which will make them faster and more intuitive.
3.  While these will get fixed eventually, it will take some time.

One more thing EOSHD: Can you put one of those DNG files online somewhere?  Thanks!

http://ge.tt/api/1/files/9j1YVAj/0/blob?download

cheers

Thanks for the file.  It really helped with testing.

Hi John,
Ginger HDR works perfectly with daylight shots. But with artificial light is problem. I can't set WB correctly. Here is the link on .RAW files (3-4 frames each, wall and keyboard are white) http://d.pr/f/T2gn/3vK7jPoe. So if you can correct this in your debayer it would be perfect tool (getting negative values of blue in 32bpc mode) I have realtime playback of RAW files (straight from camera) in Premiere CS6 on 1/2 res on MBP 17 w. 16GB RAM.
Love your plugins for HDR, nice tool for correcting RAW files. Especially Fix Thin Lines, Highlight Contrast and Highlight Recovery
All best

Hi Mido,

Thanks!  The white point is an issue that I've noticed as well.  The plugin doesn't have any controls for color temperature or tint in the importer.  This hasn't been an issue for other cameras (like ikonoskop and BMC) because I just use the white balance in the DNG.

But I've seen the same problem you're talking about.  It seems to be that with really low color temperatures (like tungsten lights around 2400k) that there is almost no blue left in the image except for noise.  By dropping the ceiling you just end up with blue noise.

There is a partial solution.  There is another effect called Color Temperature.  Set the temperature to a really low value, and then apply the white balance to fix it the rest of the way.  It seems to work better.

The ideal solution would be to have WB information in the RAW file, or at least a control in the importer.  But for now the color temperature effect plus WB effect is the best I can do.

Hey dude! Yeah I'll sort it later for you. I think you are probably right though... This is an area that suffers from moire/aliasing issues but seems more subdued in ACR. I'll share the originals when I get home anyway. Thanks again man. Seriously loving this 

Noisyboy, can you still make a DNG available?  I'm changing around the debayer and I'd like to get a closer look at your moire/aliasing issues.

John, great work!  Here's a DNG that had some magenta in the highlights on my end, hope this helps.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9NGeifIx8I5dW5CM01pTEo2WDg/edit?usp=sharing

In terms of the magenta highlights in clouds, the plugin is in fact using the proper clipping point.  I've seen this before on many cameras.  Essentially, it seems to step from being too aggressive with using the whole range of highlight headroom.  To get rid of the problem, all you have to do is apply a levels operation (or the ceiling in the White Balance) effect and it goes away.

John-  I'm just seeing this now, but your work on this is fantastic.  Do you do any Mac development?  FxPlug for FCP X/Motion integration would be super.  I've hacked up an effective yet ugly combination of bash, sed, and php to get .RAW files into Prores in automated fashion, but it's clunky and time consuming.  I'd dump it in a second for drag-and-drop right into the timeline.

Hi Hazer.  Thanks!

To answer your question, FxPlug support is on the todo list.  The problem is that I just have too much to do and not enough time.  And I tend to get distracted by things like, you know, RAW support for canon cameras coming out of nowhere.  (-:  I'd like to support  FxPlug, as well as OpenFX, but I don't want to make any promises because there are a lot of things to do first.

Hey Noisyboy, is it possible to make the .RAW available, or to run raw2dng and put one of the DNG frames online?  It looks like the magenta issue might be related to moire.  I'm always tweaking the debayer so it would help to have a RAW/DNG to take a look at.

Lol 

Hey man! Yeah - I also had to remove Ginger when the raw silent pics breakthrough first came about as A) I was getting a weird pixilation with the raws I imported to AE and B) I couldn't get ACR to come up when I would import a DNG sequence to AE. As soon as I removed Ginger both issues were fixed. I can't remember exactly which folder it was installed to so maybe as you say there was an issue there. I shall have to check as I would rather like to have it installed again.

I'll let you know how I get on tomorrow

Cheers!

EDIT: It's only fair that I mention that this was on an OLD version of Ginger HDR which clearly has been improved since.

Np.  Were you on CS6, and did you put it into the MediaCore, as opposed to directly in the plugins folder?  I haven't heard about the ACR window not coming up issue before but maybe it's just that no one told me about it.  (-:  Before CS6, there were AE importer plugins and Premiere importer plugins, and they were separate.  Then in CS6 they decided to let AE use Premiere importer plugins.  Additionally, you can (I believe) adjust the priority of the PRM plugins, but they will always trump the AE plugins.  But if you put the plugins in the AE plugins folder then it will ignore the PRM importer, and ACR will work normally.

In other words, it's kindof a mess.  My guess is that the Ginger HDR PRM importer was taking the files away from the ACR importer inside AE, and that's the problem.  It's on my todo list to sort this all out but I have a rather long todo list, so I just tell everyone to make sure you keep the plugins out of MediaCore and that's good enough for now.

Btw, if you tried Ginger HDR in the past, and you want to give the trial another go, just email me at jhable at 19lights dot com.  Run WhatIsMyMacAddress, send me the output, and I'll clear your trial for you.

Hi! Nice work. I,m trying out you,re demo and after following instructions the files indeed show up and lets me import them to premiere cs5 but It gets stuck on the import and won,t get imported?
I also tried importing a 50fps raw-clip which actually worked, although stretched as from the camera recording. Summary. Regular clips won,t import on my macbook pro on premiere pro cs5 but 50fps clip would? Any suggestions?

Hi Danne,

Is it possible to make the .RAW available somewhere?  Please send me an email directly: jhable at 19lights dot com.  I'm guessing that there is something in the metadata that is confusing the plugin.  If I can get a .RAW file it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.  Also, what camera and firmware version?

It didn't work... had to remove the plugin to get normal ACR working. Unless they've updated it or I'm using it wrong was fail for raw.

That seems pretty strange.  Did you make sure to put the plugins into the AE plugins directory?  If you put it into MediaCore it can cause problems.  If that wasn't case, please PM me with the exact error that you ran into and I'll take a look.

Awesome! Exactly what i was hoping for. Love native workflows! Is there any kind of quality loss to this process compared to ACR-import?

Hi Markus,

In theory, there is no loss of data.  The difference is that you are using my custom debayer and processing instead of Adobe Camera RAW's.  Most people consider ACR's debayer to be pretty good.  In my opinion, my debayer is pretty good too, but I might be a little bit biased.  (-:

Also, ACR does lots of other things without telling you.  In addition to debayering, it's also adding contrast, clamping your blacks, clamping your whites, sharpening, and reducing chroma noise.  If you want to see ACR without the extras and see a true comparison then you have to set these values:

From Basic:
Blacks: 0
Brightness: 0
Contrast: 0

From Detail:
Sharpening - Amount: 0
Noise Reduction - Color: 0

Btw, even if you decide that Ginger HDR is not for you and you would rather stick with ACR, I'd highly recommend that you always set blacks/brightness/contrast to zero.  Otherwise you're just throwing away good dynamic range.

Hey Guys,

For those of you looking for a Premiere Pro/After Effects workflow I might be able to help you out.  In the latest version of my software (Ginger HDR) you can import the RAW files directly into AE/PPro.  Just install the plugin, import the footage, and everything should work.

Full tutorial is here:
http://vimeo.com/67934251

Post and link to download:
http://19lights.com/wp/2013/06/08/magic-lantern-raw-video/

Please let me know if you run into any problems.

Happy shooting!