Canon EOS C300 COLOR GRADING TEST

UPDATE:
I DID THE COLOR GRADE FOR THE WHOLE SHORT:

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ORIGINAL POST:

(watch the test on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/33528082 )

Thanks to Mario & Nino for uploading the MXF files AND for shooting that short in the first place! Great result - especially in that short amount of time and with limed resources.

the first scene i traded quite “usual” just a lil push here and there … skin tones, contrast, richer colors… stuff like that… i “protected” highlights in the back window tho’

all the rest – especially in terms of high ISO performance – i did push much more – to see what is possible … and there is a lot of “play-room” for a grade … the grain / noise still looks very organic / filmic (almost like 16mm) even at the limits of what is possible.
even a hard color push / tint is no real issues if you watch your blacks … kinda awesome!

and at no point there was any artifacts you are probably familiar with from DSLR h264 or even XDCamEX or AVCHD stuff … that is really nice!!!

over all … great footage to work on!

i used FCP7, Colorista 2 for all the Color Correction and  Magic Bullet Looks 2 for all creative Color Grading

As soon as i get the whole short film as ProRes422 from Mario & Nino i’ll do a full color grade on that lil movie … i can’t wait!
Review & short blog post by Nino Leitner – YOU HAVE TO READ THAT!!!
ninofilm.net/blog/2011/12/09/canon-eos-c300-review-short-film/

YOU HAVE TO WATCH THAT!!!

original full short film: vimeo.com/33425317

UPDATE;

well Stu from prolost.com did his version of that first shot … well… i like it a lot!!!

RED EPIC @cinec Munich 2010

well today i have a gear only post… well i did use FCP to make this lil clip … so there you go:
it was cinec time in Munich and after i missed IBC this year and i’m not able to go to photokina that was my only chance to see at least a few fancy “toys” in action. but i did not acpect what “happened”.

i pretty much went without any real plan … i knew that there would be a bunch of cool gear to see, so no worries on that side.

so i went straight in for a first “overview-round” … and after about 5 minutes i ran into Ted form RED (you can say by accident) with a RED EPIC in plain sight. well that was nice.

… so i not only shot some random stuff with my 550D  i also had the chance to hold this thing in my hands … pretty awesome…
well it was the small config. like a big DSLR not out yet & i couldn’t (i was not able to) really record something to a CF-Card (wich will be relaced by a SSD Module / slot… but man it was a great feeling …if u ask me it was a nice weight.. not to light not too heavy… soon other people noticed the RED EPIC. i followed “EPIC” and shot some stuff not much cuz i was too curious how this thing worked and stuff … but that is what i “glued” together in FCP last night … with a lil color work done with magic Bullet Looks:

more cinec coverage soon (review & more film clips…) stay tuned!

View on ExposureRoom

THE “BIG” INTERCUT (EX FC150, XH-A1, Canon 7D, RED ONE, DVX100)

A few day’s ago two things “happened”

fist: Scott from Rocked Rentals posted/shared a bunch of RED ONE (Mysterium X) low light test R3D’s over twitter … so we all could have a try … that’s one of the kinda things with this great twitter/film community. anyway, i tried build 99 of REDCINE-X … that was fun and nice to play with some RED ONE footage.

UPDATE: REDCINE X Built 104 MAC Pre-Release is out now

Apple Color REDCODE plugin 4.0 beta is out now too

second thing: Tom Guilmette posted some test footage on his blog post about the new little Casio EX FC150 Camera which can shoot 120 fps and more in video-mode. so i played with this footage too … after a “few minutes” an lil intercut-test cam to my mind…

how good is this footage in a regular or typical project / workflow … which is 1080p or 720p HD footage for a SD DVD delivery?

so in the end i put a bunch of “flavors” in one timeline. in this first edition i used a 720p HQ (1280×720, 29,97fps) FCP preset.
in that timeline i dropped the original Casio AVI’s (no trancoding), some XH-A1 ( 50i, HDV 1440×1080 and ProResLT 1920×1080 transcoded), one 7D clip i got from Scott Simmons (editblog) ( i did an basic h264 to ProResLT – 1920×1080 transcode with MPEGStreamclip ) … and some RED ONE (Mysterium X) clips shared (R3D’s) by Scott. in this case i did some lil adjustments in REDCINE-X (nothing too fancy … you could do a lot more with RED footage … but that is not the point this time) so i did a basic 1920×1080 ProResHQ transcode / export and dropped these RED clips in my 720p timeline as well …)

UPDATE: NOW all clips 29,97fps conformed

Thanks to Genus Products on twitter. we discussed a few off many options to do this frame-rate conforming one is to do it with cinema tools: Genus Products: “Change the time base in Cinema tools. But only do on copies of files” but this doesn’t work for native HDV files (interframe issue ) so you have to transcode to PreRes (recommendation anyway)

another way – use compressor - Genus Products: ”While it won’t be fast use motion compensated settings in Compressor which make use of optical flow technology found in Shake.” (a nice link i’ve got – Genus Products:“While a little out of date read this article might be helpful: converting_frame_rates_compressor“)

i tested another solution: just a transcode in MPEGStreamclip to 29,97 fps… but i’ve had some flickering / quality issues in some details in the shots (in trees and so on)

satisfied ? … not yet ! PAL footage isn’t “faltering” as much as before but stillnot quite as good as in a PAL 25p/50i Timeline … working on that.

so i will try the slow compressor way… 20h + to render though for 4 clips …

 

so that’s it … i tried the “easy” way fist … so no advanced scaling and/or transcoding with all the footage … i just used it straight away

of course i had some trouble with all that 25p / 50i footage in a 29,97 timeline … but i’m more a PAL 25p kinda guy … so give me some time to do a better version in the next few days

so in the end (in my opinion) its stunning how good this DVX100 footage still is and you can see how much shaper the RED footage is … in relation to the “cloudy” HDV stuff … the 7D footage is as expected … quit good … but i will try (have to) some more of that flavor too. Casio EX FC150 is good too (at this pice point) but it’s not made for more than 720p and web usage … but still great to have a “cheap” SloMo-Cam at your service (if needed)

Ok that’s it so far … some more to come.

if the vimeo version is offline (for update reasons) the 1st edition is on exposureroom too:exposureroom.com

now some “BTS” pictures & facts:

RED ONE Footage in REDCINE-X in there you can to quit a lot color-grade stuff
it’s a nice free tool form RED

in addition to make this more fun to watch i did add some kind of sound design and music

i used LogicPro 9.1 (32 bit mode) and used my Euphonix MC Control & MC Mix to handle the 33 Tracks

for mastering the mix i used (my loved) Ozone3 PlugIn.