[Chris Wright]

to be completely honest, the number of sliders will depend entirely on how automatic the program is.

like with my program, I promised myself, unless it was 98% automatic, I wouldn’t do it. no way mr. keyframe!

for example, is there a thickness slider or will it auto detect hair vs scratches? major scratches would need data from larger/smaller distance frame looking ahead. You’ll either have a super adaptive program or one that has 20 sliders. The only thing I can think of besides motion adaptive, is multiple passes for different kinds of things, like sub-pass 1, subpass 2 etc. I could be completely off base here as I haven’t touched coding it with a 10 foot pole.

another thought:
You’ll probably need to integrate scene detection unless the user is required to parse camera edits themselves and stabilization.

[Chris Wright]

i respect anyone diving head first into such a massive project. its always interesting to me to see people solve their own problems. Now, I don’t claim to be an expert algorithm person but it seems to me that first, before you start any scratch removal, you’ll need to de-flicker/auto white balance the image first.

I made a automatic deflicker that removes flicker, shadow pulsing, saturation, contrast, and auto white balance. It’s free here, perhaps it might give you some ideas.
ae cs3
https://f1.creativecow.net/6154/auto-white-balance-cs3-and-up

[Chris Wright]

dynamic link works fairly good, finally, after like 10 years, lol, but woa to the user who has a wide gamut monitor or uses DNG for compositing. why?

1. dynamic link 2015 connects and force auto simulates into rec709, so wide gamut monitor users will need a LUT to correct this.

2. DNG imports don’t import sequences correctly. and AE’s import of them not only crops them differently than Premiere(think pan and scan) but…

3. the colors are different due to two engine types. Sooo, you either have to render out all DNG’s from AE or render out all DNG’s from premiere, plus the crops will never match up.

4. So…you need to buy matchlight to create a LUT that matches the two DNG import engines, and still the crops are uncorrectable.

5. where’s my 32bit codec export support?

[Chris Wright]

file-project working space or the little rgb icon. but really, you can simply use color profile converter and leave working space alone, since your not simulating output or doing any advanced color management.

besides color management is just meta tags, and youtube etc ignore them, so you really have to use color profile converter anyway to “burn” in the right color, or use a LUT.

just my 2cents.

[Chris Wright]

if you apply AE’s color profile converter, input your color space/display and output Srgb/rec709, does youtube look differently?

[Chris Wright]

Adobe CinemaDNG @ 2.5K RAW
Apple ProRes Log 4:2:2 HQ @ 1080 “Film” (log) or “Video” (Rec. 709) gamma.
Avid DNxHD @ 1080 “Film” (log) or “Video” (Rec. 709) gamma.

here’s the 3 modes. if you selected rec709, there is no beyond white, its burned in. if you selected log, its stuck in there
as needing a log to linear lut called a BMD film log lut in Resolve. I like captain hook’s grading luts myself.
https://www.captainhook.co.nz/blackmagic-cinema-camera-lut/

I made a LUT similar to BMD lut that you can use in AE.
https://f1.creativecow.net/9256/bmd-film-raw-to-log-64-emulator

[Chris Wright]

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1552600

it’s such a massive bug that for professional results, you will need a……wait for it.. LUT to convert between ACR’s in AE
and lumetri’s dng plugin for Premiere to AE if you want to use dynamic link. and I believe that dynamic link crops sizes as well, since AE and premiere border crop differently, you’ll never get a plate lined up!

use this to fix ACR to lumetra dng import difference in dynamic link
https://www.lightillusion.com/matchlight_ims.html

but really.

you’re better off just rendering out of premiere, stinks huh. yep!

it gets even better, you need
https://www.fnordware.com/ProEXR/
premiere doesn’t have native 32bpc export, cool huh?

[Chris Wright]

its a bug.
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/967454#967462

I actually just re-tested it myself and the premiere import of dng looks aweful but the dynamic link of them from importing AE comps into Premiere looks fine. still not fixed!

You shouldn’t have to render anything out until the final grade.
https://helpx.adobe.com/speedgrade/using/direct-link-workflow.html

If you do need a rendered intermediate and don’t want to lose your raw data, you can render out an openexr 32 float image sequence or Tiff float. Keep it float, log or RAW until you want a high quality master of your final speedgrade.

That will be kind of like conforming out of RAW because grading is usually crushing blacks and white, so you won’t need massive space for the post-grade master. But still, keep it 4:4:4 16bit trillions so that you don’t get banding colors.

And finally, don’t use color icc profiles for the master, they degrade quality. Use 64d 3d LUTS so that you have the option of burning in DCI for theatres or HD709 BLURAY later on. It’s called a multi-transforming matrix. for example, a rec709/P3 LUT -> DCDCM X’Y’Z 3D 64 LUT would convert your nice grade on your color managed monitor to a DCP compliant format without using color metric profiles.

[Chris Wright]

DNG is RAW. there is no color management yet. there is no ISO except the camera’s native 800. there is no temperature.
Did you monitor in rec709? Are you going for a really basic look before final grade?

1. a light pre-grade or make your own here is an example
adobe’s camera RAW can create mini looks in the ACR
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ua1me2li7x4gu62/BMPC4K_RAW_TO_FILM_RGB.xmp?dl=0
drop in \AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings

2. i made a special LUT that emulates a BMD film log lut like in davinci resolve that you can use in premiere
using opencolorIO’s tonal curves.9256_bmdfilmemulatortolog.3dl.zip

3. your own BMD gamma to rec2020/P3 LUT with simulation output rec709/widegamut monitor using dispcal, resolve, brizsoft etc. you can also try LOGc alexa LUTs for different looks. try the free AlexaV3_Rec709 from https://www.arri.com/camera/alexa/tools/lut_generator/lut_generator/

4. if you want to grade smash all in one go, https://www.captainhook.co.nz/blackmagic-cinema-camera-lut/

[Chris Wright]

trying turning off mercury playback and going to software mode. if that doesn’t work, update gfx drivers and premiere patch or try another codec ingest.