-
FCP X – steady as she goes.
-
[Oliver Peters] “Often, you do not want perfect white balance. And LUTs are often wrong. Most of what’s sold/given away on the internet as LUTs are someone’s subjective “look” and most look like crap. They typically only look good with the demo footage that company uses to market the product.
Any more these days, most productions I deal with were shot with a multitude of cameras, each with their own log, pseudo-log, or raw format/look. The only one I trust is Arri and their Log-C. Even there, you still need to tweak. Most of these require manual grading, because LUTs, AI (whatever), simply don’t work.
“Yes, exactly, we shoot log a lot and simply applying a LUT, from whatever source doesn’t work well 90% of the time,
-
[Oliver Peters] “Often, you do not want perfect white balance.”
This is a good point.
Which is why in Hawaiki AutoGrade, a product that I am no longer commercially connected with but which I was lucky enough to be involved in developing, we decided that the user needed a means of not merely dialling back (or up) the amount of white balance (i.e. a simple mix of the result with the untreated source) but actually “recalibrating” the process up or down.
With products that offer you a one-click white balance with no over-ride options, you can sometimes get lucky, but if you don’t get lucky you’re stuck with resorting to doing the whole thing manually.
I have to say, from having studied the colour science of white balancing just a little bit (I most certainly wasn’t the technical expert on this project even though I came to feel I was on first name terms with Johannes von Kries …), it’s quite a lot more complicated than one might think, and it’s fair to say that a definitive method doesn’t yet exist, despite some examples of it being done extremely well.
And this is a relatively “simple” example of “automated grading” … from which I think we can reasonably conclude that a fully automated grading process (even if such a thing were conceptually imaginable and I’m not sure it is) is a very long way off.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
So is this where we have the spin off discussion about how LUTs were intended to be used vs how LUTs end up getting used by people that aren’t aware of what LUTs were intended to be used?
Not to mention applying preset looks is nothing new. I bought Magic Bullet Looks back in the day, pre-made looks for Color, etc.,. But I guess saying “I’m applying a LUT” sounds more impressive than “I’m applying a preset”.
-
[Andrew Kimery] “I guess saying “I’m applying a LUT” sounds more impressive than “I’m applying a preset”.
“And of course “developers” can charge a lot more more for a “LUT” than for a “preset” …
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
Of course, what’s really funny about the touch versus dedicated controller discussion, is that Apple felt the need to develop Apple Pencil, just to better interact with iPad Pro. I guess fingers just weren’t good enough. ☺
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
-
[Oliver Peters] “Often, you do not want perfect white balance. And LUTs are often wrong. Most of what’s sold/given away on the internet as LUTs are someone’s subjective “look” and most look like crap. They typically only look good with the demo footage that company uses to market the product.
“Not talking about “aesthetic LUTs”
Talking about a LUT to conform a RAW file out of a particular camera to an output that appears like base graded footage.
Two different things.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “Not talking about “aesthetic LUTs”
Talking about a LUT to conform a RAW file out of a particular camera to an output that appears like base graded footage.
Two different things.”Well, in the video world, that’s largely RED and ARRI, which don’t use LUTs to convert the RAW to Rec709. If you mean factory log settings to Rec709, then what I said stands. They are most often wrong and don’t look good – ARRI being the exception.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
-
[Bill Davis] “Talking about a LUT to conform a RAW file out of a particular camera to an output that appears like base graded footage.
“So were we and in my experience they rarely work
-
Here’s a further explanation of raw versus log, since it seems the term “raw” is being used incorrectly in this thread:
https://www.hdvideopro.com/columns/help-desk/formats-explained/#
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
-
As you well know, Oliver – LUT is just – look up table.
Substituting new values for an old ones.
That process could care less whether the original data represents RAW, Rec. 709 or SD footage from a security camera.
A LUT is a LUT is a LUT.
Type, purpose, goals, all float.
But the thing itself is what it is.
That’s all I’m saying.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up