5d3 MLV grading in After Effects - Very washed out.

Started by jamestmather, December 13, 2014, 11:34:11 PM

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jamestmather

Okay - I'm sorry if this has been posted but I don't really understand why we moved away from RAW files (MK2) that worked in premiere to the new MLV filetype which requires a new plugin or much laborious processing of files - As such I've got a watermarked version of Drastic Media Reactor which I'll purchase when I get it working correctly. The MLV system seems poor compared to the old system.

Here is the problem - the footage is coming into premiere very dull and washed out - grading seems tricky to get it back looking as good as it looked in the camera screen. The few LUT's I've tried through Lumetri seem to blow out the image in weird and unpredictable ways.

Is there any simple way to get the footage looking like it does on the camera screen inside premiere please? A single LUT? 

dmilligan

You are very mistaken. There was never any native support for the RAW format in Premiere and the MLV format is better in almost every way. It's much more robust, it provides metadata (like exposure info, camera/lens name, white balance etc), allows audio recording, spanning, and compression (not in-camera compression).

Have you looked at this:
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=13152.0

jamestmather

Thanks for the reply. I meant opening in premiere with GingerHDR which I had purchased. Apologies. MLV just seems to bring the images in very flat (and yes I am familiar with LOG C etc - I own two Epics and an Alexa and am familiar with telecine grading ). It just seems that there is no easy way to get the images looking as good as the viewfinder in premiere (which has simple colour grading tools at best).

Is there a MLV LUT which will restore the Rec 709 style image in the viewfinder - I'm shooting my wedding and wanted a reasonably quick way to get a good looking picture. Thanks.

dmilligan

How flat the images are has nothing to do with the MLV format. MLV and RAW formats contain exactly the same image data.

sijak

Strange that you try to grade footage in AE. That is not apropriate soft. for the job...
Try Resolve or SpeedGrade for color grading... Adobe always did "rounding" to get speed and results were always very poor both in terms of geometry and color.These people ar ML rock!
Cheers
Ivan

kihlbahkt

There is an easy way in Premiere and you might consider doing some basic correction in Premiere first if you are going with PP>AE. Skip the LUTs and do it manually. Premiere actually has a pretty good set of tools for primary and secondary color correction and they all aren't in the color correction effect folder,and some of the ones in there you might want to avoid but I digress.Pull up your waveform and do some fast color corrector tonal range adjustments for white, black and mid to get the flavor you want. Use Fast Color Corrector Input Levels and Output Levels sliders below the Saturation settings. Set up white balance, deal with color casts, shot matching etc. The 3way CC effect allows secondary control of isolating areas by luma. Then move onto secondary and grading. You need balanced footage to start with then you can build on that basic foundation.  I would recommend to do primary and some secondary color correction in Premiere vs AE based on what I know from your post. Don't overlook the power of Premiere which has a great set of color correction tools. The Fast and 3way CC effects can take you a long way with the right tweaks. Grading the project is near the end of doing color work. You don't start grading until primary and secondary color correction is complete. Also, dont forget about mocha in After Effects it can provide powerful secondary mask tracking. mocha is awesome. Everyone who reads this and runs After effects and has not used mocha, needs to reconsider that decision.Good luck.
600D x2