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color grading in AECS3 without control monitor
Hi
To cut a long story short: I have to do the post of a HDCAM 1080p shot short film on my Mac Pro at home instead of at a professional post facility.
The post production consist mainly of keying backgrounds on greenscreens. The film will later be transfered back on HDCAM tape.My biggest problem is my lack of experience with color spaces. And to make things even more tricky, I dont have a calibrated control monitor, but only the LCD screen of my computer.
The keying is not so much of a problem, but the color grading process will be.
What do I have to do that what I see on my computer monitor will also be what I get when it is transfered back on tape?I have received 16bit TIF sequences from the rushes and I will deliver the same back to the facility to master on tape. My project is set to 16bit color.
But even though I an certain my computer monitor is calibrated “alright” for every day purposes, I know for sure that I will grade completely wrong if I do it by eye on the LCD monitor.Every piece of advice is very much apretiated.
Thank you!
Markus
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3 Replies
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You are right to be nervous about color grading without any sort of monitor. Short answer? I wouldn’t do it. It would cost about $1,500 to get a Blackmagic Decklink card and a cheap-but-accurate (meaning, has blue gun etc. so you can calibrate it properly) broadcast monitor from B&H, and it would be worth every penny.
If this was shot on HDCAM and you are working with transfer houses, then clearly there is some money tied up in this project. It’s probably worth spending a little more dough to get it right, rather than risk it all in the 9th inning.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Hey
thanks for your replyYes there WAS budget involved in the project. But since the whole post production incl. grading was offered as a favour and circumstances have now changed, I ended up only getting the mastering to tape for free. So – there is no more cash in this whole project. Which sucks.
What about using a very detailed color chart that also includes something like a 10 to 11 stop range of greyscale. If I would calibrate my monitor to this and then do the grade on my film, the color chart would remain unchanged.
If we set the levels and color values of the output at the post facility to this chart, we should in theory see on tape what I saw on my monitor, right?
I know how to use “internal” software based histograms and vectorscopes to make sure I dont destroy andy bright and dark areas and leave me some room for minor adjustments when outputting to tape.
I just need to do the grade in AE to do the bulk of work. Things like equalizing every shot to the next. Defining color tones etc. -
The cheapest and most effient way to do this is use photoshops’ Adobe gamma in control panel, adjust each red, green, blue, and save the icm file at gamma 1.8(mac) or 2.2(win) gamma, then setup AE with color management, preferably some linear d65 type at 16bpc or close gamut. Interpret your incoming footage as correct color types then just use display color management, then view-> simulate output for the color management you want to see, for instance, 2393 would simulate a film output. Color grade from there. You could also use utility-color profile converter to convert a master pre-comp to a whole new color management type that they want. It’s called a burn-in.
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