[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for all your help Paolo

[Oliver De morassé]

I’ve done a whole load more testing with all 8 picture styles the Canon DSLR has. All movies shot at ISO 320 with an aperture of 3.5. I changed to each picture style, did a manual white balance and filmed. Here are the original movies as a 70MB zip download. FYI, RGB & white balance values for each picture style:

R: 0.0595 G: 0.4233 B: 0.2789 | 4300k | Cinestyle
R: 0.0000 G: 0.4735 B: 0.1981 | 4300k | Faithful
R: 0.0000 G: 0.6584 B: 0.2423 | 4500k | Landscape
R: 0.0168 G: 0.4397 B: 0.2502 | 4300k | Marvels Adv
R: 0.0021 G: 0.3864 B: 0.2122 | 4300k | Marvels Cine
R: 0.0137 G: 0.5395 B: 0.2918 | 4200k | Neutral
R: 0.0003 G: 0.5395 B: 0.0630 | 4300k | Portrait
R: 0.0038 G: 0.6472 B: 0.3486 | 4200k | Standard

I would very much appreciate your comments as to which picture style you believe best suits the greenscreen and if the white balancing is now better?

Thanks again.

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for all your feedback Andrew – you’re a tremendous help.

Reading through the post again, I have come across a couple of questions where I am still a little confused. Would be great if you could comment on my questions regarding white balance, stops and metering on “Mar 13, 2012 at 11:03:03 am”:

You mention “you must white balance your camera such that the green screen is ending up in the green channel, and not the red or blue” – how do I do this? Separate shots of the greenscreen with different white balance values and then analyse in AE?

You metion that “your blue channel has barely a stop difference from the green channel”. What exactly do you mean here – when analysing the green using the eyedropper, what represents 1 stop? What do I need to be looking at in order to make sure that the difference between the G and B is 3 stops (or more)?

You keep mentioning “at meter”. Is this the value I get when evaluating my WB using the 18% grey card? You then mention that I need to go 1 to 2 stops under my meter value – what should I be doing here… changing my aperture values from what I used when evalating the WB (from let’s say f2.8 to f3.0)?

Thanks again.

[Oliver De morassé]

Just received a 18% grey card. Quick question to white balancing my camera. Should I do all the picture profile settings first (like no sharpness, neutral etc.) and then do the white balance – or does it not matter when I white balance?

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for your feedback Mark. I have played with creating a self-made teleprompter – works just fine. I used an old bit of glass which was lying around. My only criticism is that the displayed text has a drop shadow – it appears doubled. Would a beam splitter mirror give better results?

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks Paolo for your recommendation. Is this machine not ‘overkill’ for simply being used to capture the video stream using the Blackmagic DeckLink SDI? I will be using a different machine for the post work using AE.

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks Andrew,

I assume the image where you were able to pull a perfect key was this one – right? This is the image that Neat Video shows me when I denoise – unfortunately, this is not the one I can use for Keylight. Is the whole image not too dark – is this what I should be aiming at? The original footage is here – any good? Shot with the Sony at 4800k & F3.4.

I have played with monitor calibration through Windows 7 and “Simulate Output” settings in AE – I was able to see little change in my video preview or rendered image. My settings are:

I have tried both “HDTV (Rec. 709)” and “sRGB IEC61966-2.1” within Project Settings, Working Space and althought I can’t really see a difference between the two I should stick with using “sRGB IEC61966-2.1” – right?

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for your feedback Andrew.

I believe the Panasonic has 3 Chips – it has a 1/3-type 2.2-megapixel 3MOS image sensor. However, due to the larger 1/2″ chips from Sony… that’s probably where the quality difference is – right?

I have changed the AE working space settings as you suggested – now I get strange results with my denoiser from Neat Video:
Set to none – Neat Video
Set to sRGB – Neat Video
Set to none – Result
Set to sRGB – Result
A much darker image to analyse resulting in a slight purple tinge around the person.

Here the AE interpretations of the workspace:

Panasonic uncompressed

Panasonic card

Sony uncompressed

Sony card

You mention that I keep white balancing incorrectly. Please can you give me some tips… what am I doing wrong? If you can also further expand on the “-1 & -2 stop” and “at meter” issues.

Thanks again, you’re a tremendous help!

[Oliver De morassé]

Wow Andrew – thanks for your tremendous feedback!

You mention “you must white balance your camera such that the green screen is ending up in the green channel, and not the red or blue” – how do I do this? Separate shots of the greenscreen with different white balance values and then analyse in AE?

I have set my Project to a Color Depth of 32-bits – but my working space is set to none. The options I have are:

What should I be using?

You metion that “your blue channel has barely a stop difference from the green channel”. What exactly do you mean here – when analysing the green using the eyedropper, what represents 1 stop? What do I need to be looking at in order to make sure that the difference between the G and B is 3 stops (or more)?

You keep mentioning “at meter”. Is this the value I get when evaluating my WB using the 18% grey card? You then mention that I need to go 1 to 2 stops under my meter value – what should I be doing here… changing my aperture values from what I used when evalating the WB (from let’s say f2.8 to f3.0)?

DSLR aside, I have also been testing various camcorders and capturing the video uncompressed using a Black Magic DeckLink Card. The video stream produced is a 4:2:2 10-Bit YUV – should be OK right? When capturing to their internal cards, I get differencing results.

Panasonic AG-HPX250EJ:

Sony PMW-EX1R:

Here screenshots of the results:

Panasonic uncompressed
Panasonic Card
Sony uncompressed
Sony card

With the Sony I shot with an aperture of f2.7 and WB 4800k, with the Panasonic f3.4 and WB 4900k. I find that the Sony produces much cleaner results – perhaps because of the large CMOS chips?

Thanks again for all your help in this matter – I’m learning lots ;O)

[Oliver De morassé]

I use both a DSLR camera & camcorder dependent on the shooting. My lights use a Color Temperature of approx. 5400K. I have experiemented with the white balance settings… I think I shot around 4900k.

Should I be using a 18% grey card for setting my white balance manually?