7D Arri Alexa Emulation

[LoO93]

Last September @wangtrirat had the kindness to share his workflow to emulate an Arri Alexa out of an 5DmIII. Thank you very much for that. I can't believe what's coming out of my little 7D now thanks to that workaround.

I mounted all the clips w/ MLVFS, graded in DaVinci 14, exported to some uncompressed 10bit format from Quicktime and then exported H.264 out of the Adobe Media Encoder before uploading it to vimeo.

Everything was shot in 1728x864 at 23,976fps on a 20mm 2.8 canon lens.

I tried to get that analog film look. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I do.

Thanks again to the magic lantern community for being so awesome and making all of this even possible!

[scotophorus]

looks great! can you share the link to @wangtrirat's workflow?

[Teamsleepkid]

viva la france

[50mm1200s]

looks great! can you share the link to @wangtrirat's workflow?

+1

[scotophorus]

i found it here: https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=20591.msg190613#msg190613

[50mm1200s]

i found it here: https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=20591.msg190613#msg190613

Meh. Thought it was some good workflow. There's too many transformations in this. Using ACEScct on CinemaDNG's would yield better results, or even just a direct transform from Log-C to rec.709, using something like Logarist...

[allemyr]

I think its not necessary to emulate the Arri Alexa. I think when you talk about that 5D3 RAW is as good as an Arri Alexa. Its about the original image quality. It doesn't matter how you grade it, you will always have close to the same possibilities with 5D3 raw. Ofcourse people that grade Alexa footage are usually very good at it but they will probably be just as good at grading 5D3 raw footage.

If you do a grade for the 5D3 raw it will most likely look almost the same even if shot with the Alexa.

And yes in general, people using the alexa has a better workflow when grading.

[whitelight]

LoO93, did you shoot wide open? I see a strong loss of sharpness in out of center areas (if that´s an artistic choice to have a vintage look I can totally understand, although I personally prefer a cleaner image).

[LoO93]

Meh. Thought it was some good workflow. There's too many transformations in this. Using ACEScct on CinemaDNG's would yield better results, or even just a direct transform from Log-C to rec.709, using something like Logarist...

@50mm1200s I used to export my clips in Log-C out of the mlvRawViewer (well not in full bit-depth) and then apply the Rec.709 transform in Davinci, but to be honest I wasn't getting close to the "emulated" dynamic range from @wangtrirat's workflow. If you can provide some more details on the workflow you're thinking of, I'd be glad to try it out!

LoO93, did you shoot wide open? I see a strong loss of sharpness in out of center areas (if that´s an artistic choice to have a vintage look I can totally understand, although I personally prefer a cleaner image).

@whitelight I used the "prism blur" from DaVinci to get the heavier loss of sharpness and the chromatic aberration out of the center areas. It's the first time, but it was indeed an artistic choice trying to achieve also a vintage lens look.

[IDA_ML]

I liked the overall idea for filming this, music is very good too. But video quality is horrible.  The 7D is capable of providing much better video quality!

[wangtrirat]

Great job of emulating filmlook with that workflow. Your welcome!!!!

Meh. Thought it was some good workflow. There's too many transformations in this. Using ACEScct on CinemaDNG's would yield better results, or even just a direct transform from Log-C to rec.709, using something like Logarist...

This workflow have smoother overall color and light transition especially with someone who don't want to use ACES. The color is pop right out of the box.

But now I use ACEScc most of the time. This is really great for proxy generation or making Prores for other to grade.

[50mm1200s]

If you can provide some more details on the workflow you're thinking of, I'd be glad to try it out!

Convert MLV to CDNG. Import CDNG on Resolve. Make it use ACEScct, like in this video (not mine):

You can work with the Rec.2020 ODT, for a bigger color space output (Youtube and Vimeo now supports Rec.2020 and 10-bit videos).
Then, export in ProRes XQ 444, 10 or 12-bit, Rec.2020 and edit on your software (Premiere, FCP, etc). You can also use proxies with XML files.
This is probably the best workflow for color grading you can get right now, Raw data with ACES color. Resolve has many issues, but this would work on other software that supports ACES and debayering.

[scotophorus]

that's kind of inefficient since you can save yourself a full render of all the takes if you edit and grade in resolve, you can quickly change the grade of a single shot instead and make a single render, instead of two if you use two programs...

[50mm1200s]

that's kind of inefficient since you can save yourself a full render of all the takes if you edit and grade in resolve, you can quickly change the grade of a single shot instead and make a single render, instead of two if you use two programs...

Read: "You can also use proxies with XML files."



--luiz r.