Holy Grail Timelapse using ETTR and post deflicker with Rawtherapee

Started by edevost, August 30, 2019, 06:37:14 PM

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edevost

I'm rediscovering Magic Lantern for timelapses creation. What a great piece of software !

I made this first test video to see how the post deflicker module would affect the outcome of my timelapse. The deflickering is most intense and noticeable in the first part of the video:



The workflow I've used is the following:

Shooting setup
-----------------
1 Setup the ETTR with default values
https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5693.0
2 Setup the post deflicker module to output to UFR, default values
https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=12585.0
3 Set the Advanced Intervalometer, no ramping, 8 seconds intervals.
https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=8431.0
4 Shoot RAW with Canon T2i

Post Processing
-----------------

1- Run this bash script to rename the files and download them from the card. I've renamed the .UFR files to .UFRAW as stated in the documentation, however, since I'm not using UFRAW to process the files, this step is not required.


#!/bin/bash
# This script will rename images from an sdcard
# and download them to a specified destination.

find DCIM/ -depth -name '*.CR2' \
     -execdir bash -c 'mv -- "$1" "${1/_/I}"' bash {} \;
# Rename UFR to UFRAW to be able to process the images with UFRAW
find DCIM/ -name "*.UFR" -exec bash -c 'mv "$1" "${1%.UFR}".UFRAW' - '{}' \;
# Create destination directory
mkdir -p $destination/$timelapsename/ufrawconvert
# Move files and sidecars to the destination
find DCIM/ \( -iname '*.CR2' -o -iname '*.UFRAW' \) -type f -exec mv -nv -t $destination/$timelapsename -- {} +


2 Process one file in Rawtherapee, visually adjusting settings to taste, (not the exposure), then save the processing profile to then apply it to all images.

3 Run the following bash script to take the exposure value from the sidecars generated by the post deflicker module and write it to the previously generated processing profile (.pp3) of Rawtherapee:


#!/bin/bash
# This script will apply exposure compensation from the sidecars
# to rawtherapee pp3 files.

# Script has to be executed from the root of where the images, sidecars (.UFRAW)
# and processing profiles (.pp3) are.

for sidecars in ./*.UFRAW; do
    echo $sidecars
    profiles=${sidecars/UFRAW/CR2.pp3}
    echo $profiles
    exposure=$(grep Exposure\> $sidecars | grep -Eo '[+-]?[0-9]+([.][0-9]+)?')
    echo $exposure
    sed -i "s/Compensation=0/Compensation=$exposure/" $profiles
done

# Process the files using modified processing profiles (pp3) and save them in folder
mkdir rawtherapee-processed-deflicker
rawtherapee-cli -o rawtherapee-processed-deflicker -Y -s -c ./


This workflow has been highly inspired by:
https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5705
Thanks to RenatoPhoto !

I still have much learning to do, but I'm pleased with my first experiments. I will try ramping exposure (with keyframes) without the ETTR module, to have a little more control on how the images are exposed and see how it goes.

Questions 1:
---------------
I see that in the sidecars produce by post deflicker, there is two parameters that I'm not using
<ExposureNorm>1</ExposureNorm>
<ClipHighlights>film</ClipHighlights>

Do any of you know what are their purpose and what they actually do ?

Question 2:
---------------
Does any of you have successfully ramped the exposure with the Intervalometer, for a day/night sequence, and corrected it with the post deflicker module ?

Any comments on how I could improve my timelapse ?
Thank you !

edevost

I uploaded another one today, which shows a full sunset with city lights lighting up in the evening. I think this one is better at showing the post deflicker algo at work.



I'm also very pleased by how the ETTR module handled the exposition throughout this timelapse.

ETTR exposition
-------------------

From my point of view so far, it seems to me like the ETTR module (out of the box) would better handle these kind of timelapses, with lots of lights in the evening, than landscape only one.  Am I right in my assumption ? What I'm struggling with is thinking of a way to correctly expose dark regions, with ETTR, in a landscape timelapse when the sun is setting, like in the first video. I have to many questions... I'll leave it there for now...

glubber

Nice to see someone picked up the efforts to bring holygrail-timelapse to "Free-+Software"!

My last trials are from 2013, and for the sake of convenience i switched to Lightroom/LRTimlapse.  ;D

My conclusion over the years:
Use ML-ETTR to make the best possible picture, Postprocessing (deflicker, ramping, adjusting exposure to taste) is done easiest and best with dedicated software.
Trying to adjust the exposure with scripting is very cumbersome.

Quote from: edevost on August 30, 2019, 06:37:14 PM

Questions 1:
---------------
I see that in the sidecars produce by post deflicker, there is two parameters that I'm not using
<ExposureNorm>1</ExposureNorm>
<ClipHighlights>film</ClipHighlights>

Do any of you know what are their purpose and what they actually do ?


The parameters are for developing the raw-files in ufraw. So no use in Rawtherapee.
http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Guide.html

Happy timelapseing!
EOS 550D // Sigma 18-200 // Sigma 18-70 // Canon 10-18 STM

c_joerg

Quote from: glubber on September 08, 2019, 08:48:52 PM
My conclusion over the years:
Use ML-ETTR to make the best possible picture, Postprocessing (deflicker, ramping, adjusting exposure to taste) is done easiest and best with dedicated software.

I can only agree...
EOS R