Arri Looks in Resolve

[Jake Blackstone]

Arri Look files designed to be loaded into the camera for on-set use. Baking those looks into Prores would not be same as, say, ARRI RAW metadata manipulation, which is non distractive. Also, I could be wrong, but I’m not aware of a way to carry the Look as a metadata inside Prores.

[Chris Lundy]

The Alexa ProRes that is written when using a Look in camera does indeed embed the Look metadata in the Quicktime file itself. It’s non-destructive. If you use Media Inspector on Mac you can see all this data in the header. When you play the file it has the raw LogC color. But any application that is Arri Look aware can parse the metadata from the ProRes and use it to apply that Look non-destructively. Colorfront’s On Set Dailies system can do this for dailies work. But the question is what about finishing? The ideal is that Resolve (or other color systems) could parse this same metadata and apply it. Then the finishing colorist can start from the same place as dailies if he wants. Or at least see what the DP had applied initially.

I just can’t seem to find anyone else really supporting these Arri Looks.

[Jake Blackstone]

Everything I read so far on ARRI Look creation (White paper and Look creator guide) talks strictly about applying the Look as an in camera application. They are talking about incorporating Look for delivery, but, so far, it is a destructive process. I guess, at this point Look creation is in it’s early infancy, so we have something to look forward to in the future.

[Kevin Cannon]

Hi Chris,

You could create a DaVinci-compatible LUT with the online Arri LUT generator, and specify a Look file to include in the LUT (along with the logC to Rec709 or P3 conversion). The downside is that as far as I can tell, you can’t make a LUT without the Rec.709/P3 conversion, with just the look file. And you need the look file itself. Also use a browser that isn’t Safari, there’s some kind of browser issue.

KC

Prehistoric Digital

[Chris Lundy]

Thanks guys. It does seem the Arri Look workflow is in it’s infancy and my end up staying there. I know the LUT Generator workflow from an Arri Look but then the operator must manually apply the right LUT to every shot. My experience is CDL is much more useful in a full pipeline from dailies to finishing. Was just hoping that Blackmagic had done some Arri Look implementation as that would be “automatic” since the values are all embedded in the ProRes.

Oh well.