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Working with LUTs for Sony F55 XAVC HD Footage in Avid MC 7
Hi,
I’m confused by the XAVC/Avid AMA workflow, when it comes to LUTs. Firstly, I’m wondering if there is any way to tell what colour space the DP shot the material in simply by looking at the metadata alone. Unfortunately, Avid’s colour space column seems dependent on what colour encoding the footage is set up for and doesn’t indicate the colour space of the original footage. Sony’s Content Browser doesn’t seem to offer any useful colour space metadata information either.
My footage has that washed out “log look”, so I’m assuming it was shot S-Log2, but don’t know if it was shot in S-gamut. I’m new to Sony’s log footage. Is there any way to tell the intention of the DP based on metadata alone?
In order to make the footage look less washed out for editing, I downloaded and installed the LUTs from Sony’s page here: https://community.sony.com/t5/F5-F55/NEW-3D-LUT-s-for-F55-and-F65/m-p/135617#U135617 However, I can’t seem to get any combination to look even remotely correct. The blacks become either far too crushed or the image becomes far too saturated.
How do others deal with Sony F55 XAVC HD log footage in Avid?
Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com -
10 Replies
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I’d call the DP. Easiest way.
Richard Sanchez
Los Angeles, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
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The “assume” part is always the part that leads to issues. As mentioned, the best thing to do is ask the DP or DIT what the camera was shooting in and if any other “tweaks” were done beyond that. I have found the metadata on source clips to be a bit hit and miss and find that MC’s “auto” can pick one of the many that may be applicable, but may not be the right one. I have four different S-Log LUTs from Sony and they are all pretty close to each other looks wise, so I tend to go through them all and see what I am getting via the histogram or in the scopes in color correction. When all else fails, I do a correction in Resolve based on a base test chart and export a 3D LUT from there that I use in Media Composer. Same thing for ASC CDL.
Michael
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Thanks, Michael. All of that info is very helpful. I am asking production for the details about how the footage was shot. How exactly do you personally read the metadata of the XAVC footage? The content browser doesn’t seem to be of much help. Do you look to the bin columns in Avid for all your metadata information? You say it may sometimes be unreliable, but is that the best place to see it all?
Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com -
The metadata for that is in a column called: “CaptureGammaEquation” and is part of the Sony AMA plug-in metadata extraction. It also declares it’s source and can be seen when doing to source settings and looking at the top menu of the color transform tab. In my tests with 4K XAVC, the “auto” worked as intended, and I would then go and remove the LUT if I did not want to have it. The following screenshots will show you what I am seeing and what the file looks like with or without LUT.
Michael
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Thanks so much, Michael! When I checked out CaptureGammaEquation, it was listed as “ITU-R BT.709 type”, yet the footage has that totally washed out “log look”. Is this a case where the metadata could be incorrect? I am in the process of contacting the DP.
Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com -
You can always override that with the menu is the color encoding tab to be Sony S-Log2 – that basically helps the “auto” apply the proper LUT when clicking “auto”. But the result most likely will not be different than you applying the S-Log2 LUT manually and setting the color encoding to “unknown”.
The fact that your column shows “709” is telling – I’m not saying that it can’t be wrong, but it’s reading the metadata from the file through Sony’s developed AMA plug-in. And as Dr. House always said on the show “House”: – “people lie”.
🙂
You might want to make sure this is not being double LUT’d somehow and either select S-Log if given the choice, or select “unknown” and apply the S-LOG2 LUT manually.
Michael
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Hi,
Im new to 4K and had a rather limited budget when it came to the camera. As a result (i wanted BMD 4K camera but was out of the timeframe) i bought the Sony FDR-AX1E. Im having trouble with this importing or linking via AMA in Avid. i think its down to the XAVC-S codec that the new 4K camera’s are recording in. Is it possible to get this to work in Avid as i have spent a fortune on a new computer to run all this on along with 4K monitor.
Thanks
Sam
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Have you downloaded the Sony XAVC AMA plug-ins for your version of Media Composer?
https://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Download/en394827Michael
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Yes i have. Its ok now i have it sorted. It wasn’t wanting to link to any UHD files that were higher than 25fps.
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