DSLR Color Space

[synden]

I'm browsing the web to try and find what color space Canon DSLR video have. Is it sRGB or is it rec.709? Or is it like I saw on Creative Cow that they shoot in Y'CbCr? When I put my raw video from my camera into Nuke and look what Nuke sees it says "default (gamma 1.. I have a 550D(T2i) if it makes any difference.

Also, when I put my DSLR footage into i.e After Effects, do I need to change the color management to something or is it kina care for YouTube and web? Also, should I edit in PR the raw videos or convert? I would convert to ProRes if I had a Mac.

Would appreciate answers on all of this so I get a better understanding on what workflow I need for PR, AE and Nuke. Like what converter, prefer free one, to convert my DSLR footage, what color space it have and what color space to use in AE etc.

I saw i.e that someone used Cineform NeoHD to convert the h264-files from the camera to Cineform. ( https://vimeo.com/19908622 )

Best regards!

[romeus]

T2i use 2 color space sRGB and Adobe RGB

Now if  you shoot RAW the camera will ignore the color space  and you'll apply it later when you process your video

Rec. 709 and sRGB share the same primary chromaticity and the neutral point, only sRGB is explicitly referring to the display with a gamma correction average of 2.2

rec 709 if you are shooting for  HDTV
sRGB if you are shooting for the web

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._709
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRGB

[synden]

Yeah. But the T2i can't yet shoot raw, right? In other words, when you shoot "normal" video with the T2i, I will shoot in sRGB? So the color managemnt in like AE and Nuke should be sRGB? Nuke tells me anyway that it recognize the h264 from the camera as "default gamma 1.8", not "sRGB". Should I import every clip to AE, render out to like .tif seq and it will become sRGB?

How good is 5DtoRGB? Maybe I shall use that instead of Cineform? How is ProRess? Is it better to use ProRes then the original files from the camera?

[romeus]

http://vimeo.com/67213176
http://vimeo.com/67247775
T2i can shoot raw but there is a limitation in the resolution

with FCP X the H.264 will not be the good format for editing  so you must convert it to something like Prores

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_2QIO28N_8
http://vimeo.com/1829823#at=0

you can shoot with you t2i with technicolor cinestyle and convert your footage with DSLR Log2Video plugin to rec.709

http://pomfort.com/plugins/dslrlog2video.html

I think 5DtoRGB can do the same thing before the editing


if you're using adobe premeire you can edit  in a Rec709 space natively , premiere wil interpret your files correctly

ps: the colors in sRGB go from 0 to 255
rec 709 from 16 to 235

[deleted.account]

As romeus says sRGB and rec709 share same color primaries, it doesn't matter whether rec709 or sRGB in that regard, as T2i will use those primaries.

T2i does however use BT601 color matrix. AE & Premiere post CS5 both interpret this correctly, so does FCPx.

Canon DSLR's encode h264 over full 8bit levels 0 - 255, it's JPEG JFIF specification hence BT601 color matrix, rec709 primaries.

The h264 stream has a VUI Option metadata flag 'fullrange' set to on, so as soon as any decent h264 codec implementation reads the flag including via Premiere CS5 onwards or FCPx the full normailzed 8bit levels are squeezed into rec709 'restricted' range 16 - 235 luma, 16 - 240 chroma.

Gamma difference between rec709 and sRGB is marginal but suggest sRGB is more suitable due to JPEG / JFIF spec.

Premiere , After Effects interpret as sRGB, you'd have to switch the fullrange flag off to get rec709 interpretation and then due to the full range levels RGB channels would get clipped in the color space conversion.

Bottom line suggest treating Canon T2i h264 as sRGB / JPEG regardless including through Nuke.

[Leon]

Also, note that the Rec. 709 primaries are almost identical to the Rec. 601 ones (red and blue are identical and the green primary is only very very slightly different); the only problematic difference is the matrix.  (Before realising this, I spent two hours trying to work out how to use Rec. 709 primaries with the Rec. 601 colour matrix.)  Therefore, it should be fine to load a Canon MOV using "PC.601", i.e. Rec. 601 primaries and colour matrix, but full range levels (0-255).

That is how I load them in AviSynth.  FFMpegSource (aka FFMS2) seems to be good for this.  It even reports the colour space (FFCOLOR_SPACE) and the levels (FFCOLOR_RANGE) correctly; excellent for batch automation.  A word of warning though: FFMS v2.17 had problems with video artifacts on Canon MOVs, then v2.18 produced completely silent audio tracks!  However, the latest version, v2.19, seems to work OK now.

[chmee]

Just my two cents: The ml-raw-Data are linear-Data without any colorspace. First the inversed(!) Colormatrix (embedded in the dng/cr2) converts it into XYZ, after that another matrix (for example XYZ->RGB) turns it into useable pictures. And because i touch the data in raw2cdng i can say, its no rec709, because it uses the whole valuerange. black is Zero, whitelevel/max is max bitdepth.

bmcc example: http://vfx-rants.blogspot.de/2012/08/bmcc-raw-to-cineform-raw.html

regards chmee