Cinelog - True logspace conversion for DNG and CinemaDNG footage

[morsafr]

Hi Andy,

Great thanks for your detailed response and the coming update!

Really appreciate your work

[rtwomey]

Hi Andy,

Which method of conversion from the mlv (or ML raw) files to CDNG do you suggest to work best with Cinelog on OSX?

[Andy600]

Hi Andy,

Which method of conversion from the mlv (or ML raw) files to CDNG do you suggest to work best with Cinelog on OSX?

I'm not sure if there is an app available yet for directly processing .mlv files to Cinema DNG format unless Rarevision's Rawmagic supports MLV now? There have been metadata issues with that app which mean adding some tags with Exiftool so I would suggest http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=9731.0 which I believe outputs 14bit DNG files.

[Andy600]

We have just released Cinelog 2.0 for those who are interested.

The update includes:

• Cinelog 2.0 Digital Camera Profile developed with a more advanced algorithm for a hardcoded 12bit resolution curve
• A new Cinelog Preview Profile as a visual aid for adjusting exposure and white balance inside ACR
• New and improved Rec.709 LUTS with Cinelog Color
• New Technical LUTs including LUTs for gamma correction and highlight recovery
• A new Cinelog Linear 1.0 gamma conversion LUT for VXF artists to help with compositing
• Cinelog Color Transformation LUTS including tonemapped emulations of the ARRI Alexa (using the Film Matrix) and Panavision Genesis cameras
• An updated guide with more tips and a handy table to help you decide which LUT is best for your workflow

See my sig below for a link. The update is so new we haven't had a chance to update the website yet.

[morsafr]

Great news! 

Thanks Andy

[dossisman]

Really? In our tests VisionLog tends to crush shadows significantly and gamma is off. This is workable if you're still in the raw domain but once you go to an intermediate format you'll struggle to get anything useful back without introducing a lot of noise. Also, we measured black, white and grey points and they don't hit the mark without a lot of push-pull in post. It won't be hugely noticeable if you're just outputting for the web but for film or Rec.709 HD TV conformity you need accuracy (especially for the BBC).

You might still get good results with VisionLog if you stick to using their premium LUTs (BTW, they do make some nice looking LUTs from what I've seen) and this is understandable as they are developing their own system but the professional colorists we converse with all prefer to grade without LUTs (except when pushed for time) and for this they much prefer an unaltered linear or logarithmic base. They also work to strict standards for broadcast work and just because something may look nice on screen doesn't mean it meets these standards. There are limits to luminance and saturation values amongst other things that need to be adhered to. We aim to help colorists get to final output quicker and with less work. 

BTW You should check out the forthcoming free update to Cinelog. I think you'll be suitably impressed

Yeah. I tried with daytime ISO 160 and indoors at 1250 ISO and VisionLog gave me better shadows vs Cinelog 1.0 (though Cinelog gave much better mids).

However, I did download 2.0 and I AM MORE THAN IMPRESSED. Especially with the Conversion LUTs. This is a significant improvement over VisionLog and will be using Cinelog for all my upcoming projects.

Juan Melara's film luts SHINE with this new Log space.  Great work, guys. I'm very happy with the new version.

[dossisman]

As I type this... I'm checking the Cinelog to Alexa Film conversion lut...


Um...


LOVE.  Brilliant. I can't wait for my short film shoot this weekend.

[Andy600]

Great to hear and thanks for the feedback

I haven't tried Juan Melara's LUTs with the new version so thanks for the heads-up. I'll check them out!

[nickychris]

Hi Andy

How do I update to Cinelog 2.0 ? Ive tried everything do you have a link?

I do remember getting the email saying there was a mistake with 5d3MLRAW some time ago so I had to update..

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[Andy600]

@nickychris - you should have received an email from us a few days ago but if not can you PM me the email address you used to purchase and I'll get it resent

[chmee]

@Andy600 in the last versions i splitted the modellname and uniquemodell Tags - does it work now with cinelog?

[Andy600]

@Chmee, I'll try it and get back to you I presume this is just .raw and not .mlv at the moment?

[chmee]

till now mlv was realized via mvl_dump as mlv->raw converter while drag&drop. next version will support mlv natively. are there some mlv-blockdata you need to see inside the dng-header?

[andy kh]

cinelog might not be that useful for film makers since it is only fro ACR. to me ACR is not practical for film makers. its too slow. when we have so many clips it wud take in days not hrs to convert to any other editable format. however resolve can render in realtime so it much more pratical for film makers. yeah for magic lantern raw test with few clips its not a problen with ACR.

[Andy600]

cinelog might not be that useful for film makers since it is only fro ACR. to me ACR is not practical for film makers. its too slow. when we have so many clips it wud take in days not hrs to convert to any other editable format. however resolve can render in realtime so it much more pratical for film makers. yeah for magic lantern raw test with few clips its not a problen with ACR.

It depends on the source footage, your view of Resolve vs ACR debayering and the NLE/Color grading app you use. A great many users don't use Resolve. I use ACR with AE and Premier pro for editing and Resolve for grading. I can say for sure that Resolve cannot produce as good results with ML footage shot on all Canon DSLR's except perhaps for that of the 5D Mark III and even that can benefit from ACR debayering. I totally agree that ACR is a time consuming step but for some it's the only option and Cinelog can be applied, footage imported and sent for render in a few seconds. You can even batchprocess this in AE so that you only need check each shot's exposure and WB. You get log footage that is easier and faster to work with. The length of time it takes to render is machine dependent. Resolve is certainly faster than ACR at rendering on my computer but it takes more work to get raw DNG footage into an editable state before starting to grade so it's a trade-off either way. Having 10bit Log footage instead of a drive full of DNGs uses way less disk space too

We've begun developing an app we're tentatively calling 'Cinelink' that ingests, debayers, converts and renders to whatever codecs you have installed and it has plugin capability for better debayering algorithms, noise reduction, scaling, DCP Camera profiles (i.e. Cinelog) and LUTs etc all-in-one. Cinelog will also be ACES compatible and we will submit our 3rd party IDT's for the currently unsupported Canon DSLRs to the Academy for consideration. If we get the technical stuff and measurements right (and that is a big IF) it might even end up in Resolve at some point.

[dossisman]

We've begun developing an app we're tentatively calling 'Cinelink' that ingests, debayers, converts and renders to whatever codecs you have installed and it has plugin capability for better debayering algorithms, noise reduction, scaling, DCP Camera profiles (i.e. Cinelog) and LUTs etc all-in-one. Cinelog will also be ACES compatible and we will submit our 3rd party IDT's for the currently unsupported Canon DSLRs to the Academy for consideration. If we get the technical stuff and measurements right (and that is a big IF) it might even end up in Resolve at some point.

I need this.

[50Deezil]

I have a 50D and i'm planning on buying a 7D.  I'm very interested in the Cinelog product, but wonder if they plan to create a video on the best workflows for the product using ACR or RAWTherapee?  I think this is very much needed for the novices out there like myself.  Thank you.

[MillTech]

We've begun developing an app we're tentatively calling 'Cinelink' that ingests, debayers, converts and renders to whatever codecs you have installed and it has plugin capability for better debayering algorithms, noise reduction, scaling, DCP Camera profiles (i.e. Cinelog) and LUTs etc all-in-one. Cinelog will also be ACES compatible and we will submit our 3rd party IDT's for the currently unsupported Canon DSLRs to the Academy for consideration. If we get the technical stuff and measurements right (and that is a big IF) it might even end up in Resolve at some point.

Do you intend the initial version of this to utilise ACR to debayer? Will it utilise GPU?

I'm very very interested in your product as I'm about to launch into a potentially long term documentary project which I will shoot on 5Diii Raw. Smaller LOG prores files are going to be a must for me, but the render speed of resolve lite is something I am loath to leave behind.

[Andy600]

The app is a bespoke framework with it's own GPU accelerated debayering engine but it will be able to utilize other debayering methods via free plugins currently being developed in tamdem with the main app (these will include AMaZE etc). Nothing to do with ACR. It's still a long way off but we're making progress.

In the mean time we're releasing LUT based versions of Cinelog for Resolve users. Resolve Lite lacks a few of the features of ACR (Custom matrices via DCP, CA correction, lens profiles, Auto WB, noise reduction etc) but it is much faster and our results with ML raw footage look very promising. This will be free for Cinelog users. ETA this week

[dubzeebass]

So I've been using Hunter's LUT in DaVinci Resolve and just bought Cinelog because I like to support people who do great work and there's a lot of value for me in having the most latitude possible.

My question: once I've exported from ACR, I set the first LUT to Cinelog to Linear, and then Cinelog to Alexa? (in DVR!)

[50Deezil]

I asked earlier if there are any plans to produce short tutorials of how to best use Cinelog.  I see there are no videos on the website demonstrating the product.  Do you see that happening any time soon?

[MillTech]

Sounds great Andy. So you expect your debayering engine to be on a par with ACR?

Next question, have you tried this with filmconvert? If so, which camera profile would work best? At the moment I select BMD film to work with my ML raw footage.

[Andy600]

@dubzeebass - Thanks for your support! The 'Cinelog to Linear' LUT is for VFX artists who work in Linear 1.0 gamma and would usually be used in compositing apps like After Effects, Nuke etc. If you are only working with Cinelog converted video in Resolve you should set the colorspace to 2.2 gamma in the main settings. The colorspace transformation LUTs only change color and are gamma agnostic so they can be applied anywhere in the pipeline. I would usually import footage then apply a colorspace transformation LUT (i.e. Alexa) as an input LUT and the Cinelog to Rec.709 LUT as an output LUT so that your color grading happens in-between them.

@50Deezil - Yes, sorry, time has been against me but I will make some basic tut videos asap. It's very simple to use TBH. Just load footage into ACR via After Effects or open with Photoshop, Lightroom etc, select the preview profile, adjust WB and exposure if needed, change the preview profile to Cinelog and either render 16bit TIFF (Photoshop, Lightroom etc) or open in AE and render 10bit (ProRes or DNxHD) intermediates.

@MillTech - The native debayering will be close to ACR but ACR has some clever highlight reconstruction going on that will be hard to match. You will be able to choose from several debayer methods and be able to finetune GreenSplit, add chroma blur/offset etc.
re: FilmConvert - It's only been tried with FilmConvert V2 and we found the best profiles to use are either Alexa Log (which needs a small tweak to exposure and levels) when working with Cinelog footage or apply the Cinelog to Rec.709 LUT first and choose your Camera's Standard FCP2 profile.

[dubzeebass]

@dubzeebass - If you are only working with Cinelog converted video in Resolve you should set the colorspace to 2.2 gamma in the main settings.

How can one change the gamma on a 16-bit TIFF with Cinelog already baked in?

[Andy600]

@dubzeebass - What are you trying to do exactly?

If, for instance you are working in After Effects with a linearized workspace (1.0 gamma) for compositing, Cinelog footage will look exactly the same as it would if you had set the workspace to Rec.709. The Rec.709 LUT has the 1.0 to 2.2 gamma conversion built-in so your workspace needs to be Rec.709 for it to work. If you are in a Linear workspace you would use the Cinelog to Linear LUT. The Cinelog to Linear LUT is basically a viewing LUT to transform Cinelog footage into a Rec709 2.2 gamma look while still in Linear 1.0 gamma. I guess you may at some point want to convert your VFX to another gamma? How are you currently doing this step? I can build LUTs for whatever gamma transformations you require but I need to know your source and target colorspaces. It would help to understand how you are currently working, in what app(s) etc.

BTW, I've just got Cinelog to work great with an ACES workflow in Resolve, so that may be another, easier option. I'll provide an additional LUT if you have already converted footage when we release the Resolve LUTs.