[Bouke Vahl]

[Mike Most] “There is no need for any special “skills””

well…

[Mike Most] “Open the shots in Resolve.”

That is special skill #1 ☺

My beef with this is, you need to do a lot of work that is absolutely NOT needed if you have shot normally.
And, after having your machine do a lot of calculations, the resulting image is not better than it would have been when shooting normally.
The whole shebang with log / luts was made up to overcome shortcomings in the codecs, not be able to record raw.

Now, if you look at the YouTube video from the OP, I notice that it sucks big time.
Why not spend time on rehearsing your takes / think about what you want to tell, edit properly, do another take when an airplane flies over? Spend time everywhere to improve the quality of your show, NOT in this kind of stuff.
To make it worse, his example shots are typical shots that do NOT need Log.
Even worse, the last shot (and poster frame) with the women in backlight, I would have expected the demo to be able to recover the women instead of ending up with a silhouette.

So, it has a function, but only for high end stuff or if you are a geek with lots of time.
(I’ve seen people spend more time on grading than it takes me to edit and finish a complete piece for national television, including a lot of editorial descisions, selecting music, mixing sound, graphics etc.)

Editing and shooting are typical things where you have to make (a lot of) decisions. Postponing them to post is not the best way. (Unless you have unlimited time / money.)

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

You are right, but I never made a DCP with Premiere, so I don’t know.
But, why not toy around and make a few short tests?
In the DCP package you’ll find the sound as a PCM MXF, that is easy to analyze to see what happens.

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

Heavy CC means, heavy Color Correction.
I’m not going to follow this guy. If the video is 17 minutes and he says it’s really easy there is something wrong.
It should be clear in 2 minutes then.
(And I’m a Resolve / Avid guy)

You will NOT get more dynamic range on output, but you WILL get it on input.
So, since the crushed / blown out parts are saved, you need to bring them into the normal range, AND save the overall look. (So the interiour is not all smashed into one level to save the tiny look outside the window.)

Toy yourself first, with actual footage, that is the ONLY thing you should believe.

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

In order to save the extra luma info, you need heavy CC / masking, as the output codec is not capable of displaying it either.
So, this is NOT a trick that you suddenly have no longer blown out windows / candles / lights and having beautifully exposed faces.
Then, to answer your question, you should be close to overexposure. Underexposure will make you loose to much color information.

Now, if you like it or not / what you should do is get a cam, rent one, borrow one, steal one and shoot the same testshots in all varants you think is wise, and see what comes out after processing, and how much time that takes.
(If you do shoulder / run & gun work, also test that to see how easy it is to do moving masks on blown out highlights.)

Then decide for yourself. Let no-one tell you it is great or easy. (I have yet to see a real life scene that indeed looked better then the same shot normally taken.)
It has a purpose, but only for the ones that know what they are doing / have time and money.
For the rest it’s the emperors clothes.

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

Since you remap colors and swap out color info for more bandwith, you want to use as much as the codec can handle, thus expose close to max. (Or perhaps a bit over.)
You are going to do heavy CC anyways, or you would not shoot Log, are you.
Now, since doing heavy CC assumes you know what you are doing, why are you asking this?
Did you run tests yourself? Are you able to make your footage better than shooting it normally? At what cost?

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

I would only dare to do this if I am the only one working on the project.
It is not uncommon to trash entire media folders expecting nothing else but ‘true’ Avid files in there.
(No one normally looks into those folders, but uses consolidate and expect stuff to be done after that.)

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

A few hints when you are going to toy with FFmpeg (which is great fun btw.)

First, the terminal supports drag and drop, and copy / paster. You want that, as spaces and other characters have to be escaped, and when you drop FFmpeg and your video file onto the terminal, that will be taken care of.

For the output file, create a dummy file in the output folder, drop that and have FFmpeg overwrite.

Now, you’ve got the basics, but you are missing a good output codec.
If you want prores, use -c:v prores -profile:v 2
-c:v meand Codec Video
Profile can be 0 up to 3, where 0 is proxy and 3 is HQ

FFmpeg is case sensistive sometimes, be aware.

To test, use ffmpeg -ss 30 -i input -t 10
-ss means search 30 seconds into the video to start, -t 10 means process only 10 seconds.
This is great to fiddle around without having to way too long.

Also, you can add -an to the command line (audio: none) so your output has no sound. |

Have fun toying!

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

Not sure if it helps in this case, but I’ve used QTplayer (pro) to remove advanced pulldown.
If the clip start is the original one, an export with another speed will do the math and will perform removal of frames in a mathematical logic cadance.
YMMV

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

I totally agree with the others, BUT, if you have to go to 29.97, the trick is to slow down your 25P master to 23.976, then add NORMAL pulldown to go to 29.97i. (And do a pitch correction.)
This way no frames are lost, and the result is good (All movies on TV are shown in Europe speeded up, so they are shorter than in the theatre.)
Don’t let the term ‘advanced pulldown’ fool you, that is easier to remove, but looks worse and is obsolete now.
Do note that your new master will be longer, so if you have a time restriction, do the math before you start.

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

This is a clip with pulldown applied to go from 23.976 to 29.97, nothing wrong with it. Read up on how to inverse telecine with the tools you have.

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com