14 Replies Latest reply: Jul 25, 2014 2:41 PM by R Neil Haugen RSS

    Technicolor Cinestyle

    Sekhar Ravinutala Community Member

      Did anyone use SG to grade DSLR footage shot with the Technicolor Cinestyle profile? I have the new Canon EOS 6D with Cinestyle and was wondering if others have used any LUTs on their 5D2s, etc.

        • 1. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
          federatedfilms Community Member

          Yes having the same problem, most posts state use the FREE Magic Bullet LUT Buddy, well as of July 2014 it is no longer available for FREE.

           

          So if someone could get this S-curve into a Speedgrade compatible file that would be most helpful :-)

           

          Kevin

          • 2. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
            Sekhar Ravinutala Community Member

            OK, guys, I see you rejected my reply. Fine, but you need to say way; otherwise how am I supposed to edit and repost?

            • 3. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
              R Neil Haugen Community Member

              Wow ... they took LUT Buddy off the free list, but left Colorista on? Dang ...

               

              Now as to the problem you're having, and not shooting Canon (Nikon & Panny) ... does the Technicolor Cinestyle profile record the file in a bizarre way or something? I've tried most of the Nikon & Panny "profiles" and stayed with pretty much a modified standard or neutral type file as the easiest to get a good gradable content out. No experience with this ... what's it look like on loading into Sg as-is?

               

              Neil

              • 4. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
                federatedfilms Community Member

                Hi Neil,

                 

                Well the colorspace is mainly pushed into the middle of the spectrum so in Speedgrade there is space to pull down the blacks and increase the highlights and stretch out the midtones. Any maybe that is all Technicolor's LUT really does, but just be nice to have their precise LUT in a Speedgrade usable form.

                 

                Kevin

                • 5. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
                  Sekhar Ravinutala Community Member

                  I have LUT Buddy that I used to convert the Cinestyle LUT, let me know (through personal message) how to contact you. There's also Briz LUT Converter if you want to convert yourself.

                  • 6. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
                    federatedfilms Community Member

                    Hi Sekhar,

                     

                    Thanks for the offer; it would be great to have a solution that everyone can benefit from on here, so is it possibel to post a link to the converted file on here for everyone to download?

                     

                    I did check out Briz but it is PC only and I'm on a Mac.

                     

                    Kevin

                    • 7. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
                      Sekhar Ravinutala Community Member

                      Sorry, I'm not ready to post the profile online because I'm not sure I have the rights. I did contact Technicolor for permission to either let me post or (better) host it themselves so it's available to a wider set of people. FYI, I did post a couple of links in an earlier post on this thread that Adobe moderators rejected. Good luck finding your profile...I can' post the link, but do a more thorough Google search and I know you will find your solution.

                      • 8. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
                        federatedfilms Community Member

                        Oh I see, odd that Technicolor would prevent something as basic as a color profile file being distributed.

                         

                        I did do quite a big search for this before, must be well hidden, will look again, unless you have a link to hand :-)

                        • 9. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
                          Sekhar Ravinutala Community Member

                          No, Technicolor didn't object to anything; it's the Adobe moderators who rejected my post with a couple of links, probably because it violated some policy (they wouldn't tell me). I contacted Technicolor to check if I can host the converted file and also to request them to host it so more people will find it. Technicolor are the good guys here, I'm so grateful they made this profile available for free.

                           

                          In any case, I think many people choose to add the look themselves in SpeedGrade, like they'd color correct/grade any footage - the hard work is done in the camera with the Cinestyle profile getting you all the details you need, and the final look is subjective and dependent on many other factors anyway. It's pretty simple, actually.

                          • 10. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
                            R Neil Haugen Community Member

                            I think that while the Technicolor LUT would be handy, one could pretty quickly make a "look" and store it in Sg that would accomplish the same thing ... take the offset down, raise contrast, adjust gamma on a shot of a test-area that is full-spectrum but not over dynamic range.

                             

                            Still, disappointed that RegGiant took down the free "LUT Buddy". It's not like it's got a fantastic GUI, of course ... it's rather antiseptic in appearance, a bit 1990's Windows 3.11? (For those with memories that long ago!)

                             

                            But it works ...

                             

                            Neil

                            • 11. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
                              Blabberlicious Community Member

                              Sidenote: I really don't recommend using Cinestyle. After a few years of production work, I can wholeheartedly recommend VisionTech, by Orisis. Much easier to grade with than Technicolor. It still gives you great skin tones, some wiggle room in the blacks (with less noise) , and has preset LUTs for both Film Convert and Speedgrade. It even come with LUT to convert VisionTech to LOG.

                               

                              steve

                              • 12. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
                                federatedfilms Community Member

                                Thanks Steve for the recommending VisionTech by Orisis - I Googled them and found this link to them -

                                 

                                The Canon EOS Color Profile costs $8.7 to buy - http://www.vision-color.com/visioncolor-for-canon-eos/

                                 

                                I bought it and installed it on my Canon 6D and shot some tests and I can see it is similar to the Technicolor one in that it pushes up the blacks and pulls down the highlights, I realised it would come down to what you do with it in your color grading software though. Disappointedly, it did not come with any LUT to get you going instead there are 3 further payment options you have to go through.

                                 

                                OSIRIS Cinematic Film Looks ($69): www.vision-color.com/osiris

                                ImpulZ™ 35mm Film Emulations ($53-$135): www.vision-color.com/impulz

                                M31 Cinema LUT (also included in OSIRIS) ($12): www.vision-color.com/m31

                                 

                                I haven't paid for any of the above yet, still working with the Technicolor one and hoping someone will post a Speedgrade S-curve LUT for it on here :-)

                                • 13. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
                                  federatedfilms Community Member

                                  HI Neil,

                                   

                                  I'm still a newbie at Speedgrade, so when you say -

                                   

                                  "take the offset down, raise contrast, adjust gamma on a shot of a test-area that is full-spectrum but not over dynamic range"

                                   

                                  I get pull down the blacks to zero in the Overall tab, but the rest I need it broken down a tad more???

                                   

                                  Many thanks for your help :-)


                                  Kevin

                                  • 14. Re: Technicolor Cinestyle
                                    R Neil Haugen Community Member

                                    Happy to help.

                                     

                                    "Offset", "Gamma", and "Gain" are the three wheel-ish looking things in the Speedgrade lower-panel window when the "Look" tab is selected. There are several pages out on the web that show what each affects. The outer ring is simply Luma data ... changing all colors equally brighter or darker. The inner control is the colors of the image in that area of brightness that the Luma correction would be applied to. Here's a really rough illustration I just made in the ol' Windows Paint program.

                                    OGG_Coverage.png

                                     

                                    Forgot to put lines on sides & bottom ... ah well. Bear with me.

                                     

                                    Speedgrade is "Offset", "Gamma", and "Gain" in general design as mentioned above. In operation, this is what they do in the "Overall" tab:

                                     

                                    "Offset" is basically an exposure control, affecting ALL parts of the image. If the diagram is a histogram of an image, the black line at the top is what Offset affects ... everything. Lift or lower the Offset control in the overall tab, ALL values shift up or down essentially the same amount (hence the black squiggle).

                                     

                                    "Gamma" is the green curve ... changing the Gamma outer-ring or Luma control takes the values inside that curve and either shifts them higher or lower. Think of this as essentially grabbing the top of the green curve and moving it left to darken those tones inside (below) the green line or move it right to drag the affected tones lighter.

                                     

                                    "Gain" is affected more in the area below the red line (hence the red squiggle). Note it affects very little of the image in the darkest parts, everything by the brightest part. This means in some ways it acts sort of like a contrast control. Move it left, you take the highlights down quite a bit, the mids down less so, and do almost nothing in the shadow areas. Move it right ... you take the highlights higher, lift the mids some, and do very little to the shadows.

                                     

                                    However, in the other tabs, there are slightly different effects. In the "Shadows", Mids", and "Highlight" tabs,. "Offset" works almost like an inversion of the "Gain" control; imagine a black line going from upper left to lower right, opposite to the red "Highlight" line. It affects values in the lower values of each section of the image more than the mids or the highs.Dropping the Offset wheel's outer ring luminance values in the Shadows tab drops your lowest values farther leaving almost everything else untouched, essentially stretching out the lower bits even lower.

                                     

                                    "Mids" is still similar in operation to the "Overall" tab, just isolated to the appropriate area of the overall image luminance (brightness). Raising or lifting the Gamma wheel in the Mids tab will move the central values of the central third of the image's luminance values towards the upper edge of mid-tones. Raising "Mids" in the Highlight wheel moves the middle of the highlight's third of the image to the brighter part.

                                     

                                    You can also use "Gain" in each control to affect the upper third of that third of the image's luminance ... and the color thingie in the middle of the wheels affects the color in that bit of the image. There's a few tutorials on this out there ... and different grading programs & tools use different controls.

                                     

                                    So ... back to my cryptic comments ... working in the Overall tab, start by taking the Offset down which does indeed lower the entire image exposure ... and is where many people start adjusting their corrections. Take that down to where your blacks just approach or touch the bottom of your scopes for 'general' purposes.

                                     

                                    Use either the "Contrast" control or the "Gain" wheel of the Overall tab, and lift your highlight values until they approach but typically don't go past the upper range of the scopes. At this point, you may need to re-work the Offset & Contrast/Gain controls to fine-tune things.

                                     

                                    Next take the Gamma control and adjust the mids to the right "feel" of brightness/lightness for that scene.

                                     

                                    This doesn't do any color correction, but it would pretty much replace the Look, LUT, or "Style" that you've used. Do this with a good bit of general-purpose footage, and you can save it as a "Look" in Speedgrade, and then apply that in the same way you would any purchased LUT, look, or Style. In fact, you can make one for each specific kind of scene you shoot, name & save them, and you've got more built-in capability than buying one.

                                     

                                    Neil