Cinelog - True logspace conversion for DNG and CinemaDNG footage

[Andy600]

@50Deezil - Yes, we sent a pre-release copy of Cinelog-C to all current users of the Resolve version. Can you PM me with your email address and I'll resend.

edit: Sorry! Just remembered. We did a one-off Paypal payment for you but this meant your details were not automatically added to our new database. I've added you manually and sent you the Cinelog-C update info. You should have an email from us now and will get future update mailouts when they are sent.

[dmk]

I bought the Adobe version before... and now just bought the resolve version... still don't see any login to the LUT bank on the website?

[Andy600]

@dmk - You should have an email from us now

[dmk]

Yup, got it!

Download page is very odd brother... may I suggest:

1) Have only 1 download link for the package

2) Clarify whether the main package contains most up-to-date version or if user must replace with updates

[Andy600]

Great!

Thanks for the advice. We have a new website about to launch which has user accounts, the Lut Bank members area (your user acc will give you access when it goes live) and much simpler/clearer downloads and purchasing. I'm pushing to get it online this week when we officially release Cinelog-C.

[dmk]

Great! For now... just tried dropping in the LUTs... couple questions

In the previous version, I put in Input LUT: BMD Film -> Cinelog 2.0, and then Output LUT: Cinelog 2.0 -> Log C

That worked pretty well... is Cinelog-C meant to be an improvement on that?

Not quite sure how to implement... I tried putting [INPUT] BMD Film 4K -> Cinelog-C as the Input LUT and the image does not look flat. Also not sure how one would then stack LUTs (assuming for example [GAMMA] is meant to go somewhere other than output...)

[dmk]

NM about it not looking flat- forgot I had a color correction node on that clip

But still, not quite sure about workflow... is input always meant to be BMD Film 4K -> Cinelog C, and then output is a film emulation? i.e. how would one get to Alexa-ish footage in the new LUTs?

[Andy600]

@dmk - It works much the same ways as the previous version but converts straight to Cinelog-C wide gamut in Cineon gamma. The BMD Film 4K profile is much better suited to Canon DSLRs as the BM 4K camera has roughly the same DR as the 5D Mark III.

To use the BMD Film 4K to Cinelog-C you need to have Resolve 11 (currently in beta), otherwise you can use the BM Film to Cinelog-C input lut in Resolve 10 using the BMD Film profile. The end result is almost identical.

So, Import your footage to the timeline (as with the previous version), select BMD Film 4K in the Camera Raw panel, add the BMD Film 4K to Cinelog-C input Lut (either as a 3D Input Lut in the lut panel, or on the first clip node.) then either the sRGB or REC709 Monitor lut depending on your monitoring situation (add it in the monitor lut slot of the lut panel so it isn't rendered), make your white balance and exposure adjustments and render your clips to ProRes or DNxHD 4:4:2 or 4:4:4 (recommended).

When you have rendered you footage, re-import it. Your Cinelog-C encoded footage is Wide Gamut Cineon so you can then choose to add a Gamut Lut if you wish (i.e. add the sRGB gamut lut to transform from wide gamut to sRGB primaries, Rec709 = Rec709 primaries, Alexa Film Matrix = to Alexa Film Matrix RGB, Cinelog Prime Cine = Our Cine palette etc etc). The gamma will not change, only the color. You can then either add a 1D output lut (i.e. REC709, BT1886 etc) or one of the new PFE luts.

The guide is almost ready which makes it much clearer but after so much delay we wanted to get Cinelog-C out to current users before it's official release.

It's basically a recipe system where you can add different color transforms and output curves or print film emulation.


EDIT: The BMD Film 4K to Cinelog-C Input Lut has a color transform that gets you closer to the basic look of the Alexa so you only need add sRGB or Rec709 gamut + an output lut but if you want something more filmic like the Alexa Film Matrix + PFE just add the Alexa Film Matrix and a PFE. For something more exotic add the Prime Cine Gamut lut + a PFE

The Type 2 input luts are photometric and don't have the Color transform of the main input lut so this is better for when you want to use Colormatch. Colormatch is best done in a node after adding the REC709 output lut. Choose REC709 colorspace in the Colormatch panel. Resolve 11's Cineon gamma target seems to be a little off from standard Cineon specs so don't target it.

The PFE luts are film gamma so will look a little dark. You can push up the shadows in a node before the PFE to rectify or add a Soft Curve lut. 


BTW, you can use Alexa log-C luts from the ARRI Lut Generator too

[dmk]

OK, will digest all this and play around...

For what it's worth, my workflow is a little bit different than what you described, using Resolve 11 and 7D.

I convert to DNG using raw2cdng

Then I am editing those natively in Resolve Small project on very fast drive (2xSSD in Raid 0) so space and drive speed are not a problem...

So I guess for this, I only need the input lut (BMD Film 4k -> Cinelog-C) and then I can pick a PFE for output/monitoring?

Also, there is only an option for BMD Film 4K in the Gamma settings for Raw settings, not Color Space (which only has regular BMD Film)

[Andy600]

There are no rules other than lut order.

A Gamut lut (if used) must come after the input lut and before an output or PFE lut.

If you want photometric Rec709 for instance you would choose:

BMD Film 4K to Cinelog-C Type 2 + REC 709 gamut lut + Rec709 output lut

This is essentially the same as using the REC709 monitor lut (3D) as an output lut but in keeping color and gamma separate we can transformed the color in linear gamma using a 65x65x65 cube lut and then transform gamma with a 1D curve (4096 code values) independently i.e. it's much smoother than using a 3D lut. The input luts are very high resolution, combined 1D/3D shaper luts.

BMD Film and BMD Film 4K are 'almost' identical colorspaces, close enough as to not worry about it (we noticed a small shift in red - darker on the 4K). The variance is caused by the difference in sensors that these profiles were designed for. We are piggy-backing on a raw profile that's not really intended for Canon DSLRs but it still produces good results with ML raw footage - we just try to make it even better .

[dmk]

OK... thanks

What do the abbreviations for the film stocks mean? (A vs. D65)

Also- any way to avoid the film stocks from being so dark other than pushing it back up after? Does anything get lost in that darkness?

[Andy600]

OK... thanks

What do the abbreviations for the film stocks mean? (A vs. D65)

Also- any way to avoid the film stocks from being so dark other than pushing it back up after? Does anything get lost in that darkness?

A = standard light A (~2850k) input
D65 = Daylight (~6500k) input

Choose whichever is closer to your footage color temp. [A] is truer to the original scanned film stocks (on the Arriscan) but we also transposed the scans to [D65] to add another 'artificial' option. If you choose [A] for daylight shots you'll get that tell-tale 'film look'. blue neutrals, deep greens and reds. We have some Powergrades coming to the Lut Bank that fully exploit what these can do and the results can be stunning.

The PFE luts are behaving as PFE luts are meant to behave (except our artificially transposed D65 versions). If you make your shadow, mids, highlights adjustments before the lut (i.e. grade under the lut) nothing will get lost. Try using the shadow recovery in the Colormatch panel (Resolve 11), add a little midtone detail (also in the Colormatch panel) and maybe a touch of Colorboost and you will get something pretty amazing, very quickly

We will be releasing some custom curves for the PFE luts and the Powergrades will show better how to work with them.

[dmk]

Ah... another question- to compensate for the darkness, what do you think of boosting the exposure in the camera raw decoding settings?

[Andy600]

Ah... another question- to compensate for the darkness, what do you think of boosting the exposure in the camera raw decoding settings?

You can certainly push up the exposure but you might need to pull down the highlights a little. Watch out for haloing that can happen with extreme use of Resole 11 highlight/shadow recovery.

[dmk]

To confirm- working space is BMD film and Gamma is BMD Film 4K (for 7D)

Thanks for answering all these questions... hopefully they'll be helpful for other newbies too

[Andy600]

@dmk - correct




This is an example of simply applying luts and making a few easy adjustments in Resolve to footage shot on a 50D (crop 1080x960):

the process:-

BMD Film 4K to Cinelog-C + sRGB Monitor Lut (set up for white balancing and exposure compensation)





Cinelog-C rendered as DNxHD 4:4:4 - this is what Cinelog-C looks like. Actually very close to Log-C





Cinelog-C + Prime Cine RGB Lut + some Resolve 11 highlight/shadow recovery/midtone detail (10%), Colorboost (15%), Sharpen Y channel only to -48 + sRGB 1D Ouput lut





As above but added Fuji PFE [A] (on a layer node - not the usual method but works in this instance) + free 35mm Gorilla grain as a Matte (obviously this needs some secondary clean up to skin tones to correct for shadow noise)




No noise reduction used at all.

I should add that Cinelog-C is not officially released yet.

[dmk]

Wow, very helpful, thanks

[Jpb1138]

What is the "Prime Cine RGB LUT"? and Where can I find it?. Looks good

[dmk]

OK, here's what I ended up doing last night... didn't actually need to touch any color wheels at all! Now I can reserve that for just matching the different clips and maybe a tiny bit more tweaking on a clip-by-clip basis, though even that isn't really needed I think and even that could be done mostly in raw interpretation

Andy- can you confirm that this is a good, non-destructive approach? Seems so strange to barely touch anything yet get such a nice old school cinematic looking grade (to my eye at least). My biggest question is if it made sense to arrange the LUTs like this and especially LUT 2

Step 1 - Apply BMD Film 4K -> Cinelog-C across entire project:



Step 2 - For each clip:

A) make sure Color Space is BMD Film and Gamma is BMD Film 4K and Highlight Recovery is checked

B) Adjust tint, exposure, color boost to liking. Can come back to tweak these again later



Step 3 - Add Node, set LUT to [GAMUT] Cinelog-C to Photometric Rec 709 Primaries



Step 4 - Add Node, set LUT to [PE_A] Unversal HD



Step 5 - Go back to Step 2.B and tweak a bit to liking, paying attention to scopes etc.

Step 6 - Render out (I'm on windows, so that's DNxHD 10 bit at Data levels). Result:



Edit: In case it makes a difference, shot on 7D and converted to DNG with Raw2CDNG at default (CDNG 16 bit). Brought straight into Resolve 11 for all-in-one workflow, no roundtripping anywhere (not even back into resolve).

[Andy600]

@dmk - Yes, that'll work. Alternatively, if you are not rendering Cinelog-C intermediates first (i.e. just the log conversion) you can add the BMD Film 4k to Cinelog-C lut on the first clip node or even on a track node. It will do the same thing.

We suggest the intermediate stage (raw to Cinelog-C DNxHD or ProRes 4:4:4 video) for those who want to free-up a lot of drive space because the log conversion can effectively be reversed to debayered linear raw RGB in .exr files (i.e. for VFX) using the Cinelog-C to Linear lut. This means you don't need to retain the original DNG images. Cinelog-C is useful for efficient archiving

You can also set-up the render template to make Camera Raw default to BMD Film/BMD Film 4k colorspace with highlight recovery ticked so you only need adjust exposure, tint and temp for each clip. This saves a few key presses.

Resolve 11 also has a built-in legalizer (in the lut panel)  . If you select broadcast legal to 0-100 and set output levels to AUTO it will output your deliverables with safe IRE levels (but only switch this on for final render if using it, not for rendering intermediate Cinelog-C video).

Setting video levels to AUTO is the best option as it chooses between video or data levels depending on the output codec selected, so if you choose DNxHD 4:4:4 for rendering intermediate video it will automatically output data level video (which is needed for log conversion). If you choose H264 for a deliverable format AUTO will choose video level output.

p.s. you can add some simple tags to keep images within the 900px width forum rule like this:

Code: [Select]

[url=http://i.cubeupload.com/6MlM7C.jpg][img width=900]http://i.cubeupload.com/6MlM7C.jpg[/img][/url]

[timbytheriver]

Hello @Andy600

The results people are posting (especially skin-tones) look pretty persuasive.

Having read this thread I think I understand that your solution is optimised for Resolve.(?) My question is, as a Speedgrade user who currently uses ACR w/ VisionLog > ProRes 444 > Impulz Ultimate LUTs in SG:

a) How could I benefit from using CineLog?
b) Can I use any of your utility LUTs in Speedgrade?

Sorry if this has been covered, I may have missed something…

Many thanks

Tim

[dmk]

We suggest the intermediate stage (raw to Cinelog-C DNxHD or ProRes 4:4:4 video) for those who want to free-up a lot of drive space because the log conversion can effectively be reversed to debayered linear raw RGB in .exr files (i.e. for VFX) using the Cinelog-C to Linear lut. This means you don't need to retain the original DNG images. Cinelog-C is useful for efficient archiving

Totally, for a larger project that's critical and also I think if one wants to use ACR (i.e. via After Effects)

Though, I must say, as much of an Adobe fanboy as I am, it is *really nice* to be able to do the whole thing without leaving Resolve. That software is growing on me and I can't reason to do a short form project any other way

Thanks for confirming the above is all sane When you author the guide, for other people like me- might be helpful to know a little bit more about what the different GAMUT Luts are for. I just sortof randomly played till it looked good

p.s. you can add some simple tags to keep images within the 900px width forum rule like this:

Code: [Select]

[url=http://i.cubeupload.com/6MlM7C.jpg][img width=900]http://i.cubeupload.com/6MlM7C.jpg[/img][/url]

Done, thanks for the tip

[dmk]

Tim - See above: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=10151.msg98416#msg98416

"The difference between Cinelog and Visionlog might not appear big at first glance but...."

[Andy600]

@dmk - re: gamut luts - yes, we go into some detail

@timbytheriver - Thanks, part of our mission is to get skin tones into Alexa territory

You only need to use Resolve for the initial transcode of raw to Cinelog-C colorspace. This is because the source colorspace (BMD Film) is specific to Resolve (i.e. it's not just gamma/log related but actual color gamut) and our BMD Film to Cinelog-C input luts have both a color (3D) and a gamma (1D) component. Once you have rendered your footage to DNxHD or ProRes you can edit/color the log footage in any app. The other luts included are in IRIDAS .cube compatible format and will work fine in SG using Lumetri (although I don't have it here to test). We can provide other lut formats if required.

[Andy600]

Tim - See above: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=10151.msg98416#msg98416

"The difference between Cinelog and Visionlog might not appear big at first glance but...."

That is more relevant to our ACR version (which will also target Cinelog-C soon - still working out the dreadful Adobe DCP HSV conversion  )

Re: VisionColor's new Impulz pack: I believe the Impulz luts can use Cineon for source and target gamma so they should work great with Cinelog-C (same log gamma). The difference is in what we do with color transforms before you apply your output curve or PFE or to simplify further - Impulz is about accurate photochemical color print film emulation and Cinelog-C is partly this plus some unique color manipulations.