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GH2 color grading
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  • B3GuyB3Guy
    I might have to get AE so I can try this out ;-)
  • fehafeha
    @shian

    Thank you.
    NP i have AE too ...
  • shianshian
    And with Automatic Duck being free now, you don't even have to lose a generation by exporting the footage into AE, you can export xml, and import that into AE, and it will bring all your footage, edits, motion, etc into AE, and allow you to color correct it using my plug-in.
  • danyyyeldanyyyel
    You have the free Davinci lite now even on PC (beta) version.
  • bwhitzbwhitz
    "AFX is the only platform short of Davinci with a compatible render engine to produce these kinds of results."

    ... and everyone always thinks I'm weird for grading in after effects. :)
  • DouglasHornDouglasHorn
    @shian - Your plug-in sounds really interesting. When will it be available? How will it compare to Colorista II? Are you looking for beta testers?
  • pvjamespvjames
    @Shian....i really liked what you did with Andrew's video. Very impressive background.
    I have MBL and i like it but it seems to 'breakup' or 'affect' GH2 footage in a certain way that
    adds noise. It also could be user-error. But, i seem to like working within Ppro/AE color
    tools but sometimes i wish it had something extra. So, your plug may be just the right thing for me.
  • shianshian
    @danyyyel Yes Davinci Resolve Lite is awesome for HD, if you have a system that can run it. Neither my Macbook Pro, nor my maxxed out 2011 iMac have compatible video cards, which produces less than optimal, and often unpredictable results. So unless you have a monster machine to run it, it's not a viable option for the DSLR crowd. Not many are gonna spend upwards of $3000 on machine just to run a free program that ONLY does color. And you are limited to 1920x1080. Not to mention, the learning curve on Davinci is pretty steep,

    AE 5 has an awesome 32bit floating point engine that will run on almost any system made in the past 5 years including my outdated Macbook Pro (2007).

    I've gotten to the point where if I have the control surfaces, and a fully functional Davinci station, I'll take it over anything else in a heartbeat. But short of that, I'll take AE far above any other program for color hands down. The demo coming next week will show you why.

    Speaking of floating point. I do all my correction in this space. I've done side -by- side comparisons with FCP, Color, Resolve and AFX and asked people to pick the one they like best.... they're always shocked to find they picked the one corrected in AFX, and also shocked to see the color banding coming from 8 and 10 bit systems. I'll see if I can dig up the test I did on Peter jackson's "Crossing The Line" and post it.

    @pvjames it may be the way it's being brought in, and also the way the footage is exposed is critical. And I'll cover that in the video tutorial series.
  • shianshian
    @DouglasHorn

    Next month.

    To me, Colorista, MB, all those are nice. They're..... serviceable. But to do the type of color correction that most of us want to do. The kind of looks that go beyond matching white balance, throwing a "look" filter onto something to give the appearance of production value, those complex looks are the things that excite me. They excite any colorist who loves the complexities, and nuance of digital images, whether they be gathered digitally or gathered on film and then scanned.

    My plug-in makes these kinds of looks accessible because I will not only sell you the tools, but I'll show you how to use them in a way that goes beyond the usual plug-ins. I built it for my own use. But since I've had so much interest in what I did to get the looks that I have in my reel, and the CC I did on Andrew's stuff, I decided to make it available to the masses.

    No need to Beta. I scrapped the idea of programming a true 3rd party plug-in (I lack the programming skill), and found a way to build it within AFX so that it uses the full range of tools provided by the AFX framework.

    Teaser will be online by morning (west coast time)
  • shianshian
    ....and here it is:

    Introducing ColorGHear Toolkit for After Effects.
  • OedipaxOedipax
    Cool. Looking forward to that walkthrough demo, I'm quite curious to see it!
  • HallvallaHallvalla
    Really like those MTS before/afters. Keep us updated - thanks!
  • bwhitzbwhitz
    Pretty awesome stuff!
  • pvjamespvjames
    Looks awesome Shian!
    Wish i could use it right now.
  • LPowellLPowell
    @shian - "ColorGHear eliminates the GH2's tendency to skew toward a mild puke green in the image especially in skin tones, and is more prevalent in low light shots with higher ISOs and is more noticeable when shooting at warmer color temps. The plug-in kills that by default."

    That is exactly what I've noticed about the GH2's color balance (and even more so with the GH1). I've been correcting for it by setting M-5 @ 2700K in the Nostalgic Film Mode when shooting under incandescent lighting. Thank you for developing a GH2 post-production tool that addresses this chronic problem. One suggestion - in addition to defaulting to GH2, it'd be very convenient if there was a way to store custom presets for other camera types such as GH1 and AF100.
  • B3GuyB3Guy
    If this is out by the time the collaborative film project is in need of grading, I'm going to highly suggest we use it.
  • daisukedaisuke
    @shian What noise removal program did you use on your footage? It looks super clean in the shadows.
  • shianshian
    Thanks guys. I'm working hard on it, and will continue to do so as the AF and GH lines evolve.

    @LPowell - it does. I've included several green kill options. I can make them more precise if you guys can send me AF100 and GH1 raw mts files. Upload them to like dropbox or another file sharing service, and send me the link. AND LET ME KNOW IF I HAVE PERMISSION TO USE IT IN ONE OF MY DEMOS. You'll get a requisite shout-out in the video for doing so. Try to keep them under 30 seconds for file size issues. But the GreenKill Gear itself is adjustable so it should fit what you need just fine.
  • No_SuRReNDeRNo_SuRReNDeR
    @shian I have a feature I am working on soon that I will need to match a similar super 16 look to "Y Tu Mama Tambien." So I'm shooting GOP1 and I was going to try and stay in FCP and Grade in color. I have CS5.5 and perhaps with this plug-in the adobe work flow would actually be better. I could then edit the AVCHD in premiere directly and I wouldn't loose as much from the transcoding . Its just that I have been in FCP for so many years its kinda a scary to jump to another platform I worry that the interface etc will hang me up ....Any advice?
  • shianshian
    @daisuke - none. I just exposed to keep the shadows above 20%, which is why so much of my raw footage looks flat. I will cover my shooting techniques in the video series as well, in terms of helpful tips to get the best looking footage in-camera as possible to help facilitate color correction.

    If you look at the raw footage at 1:16 that was shot at 1600 so there's quite a bit of grain there. But I always shoot with the NR set to +2. There was so much grain on my first test shots, and when I dialed the NR up, it killed most of it.
  • shianshian
    @No_SuRReNDeR if you're more comfortable in FCP, edit in FCP and use (the now free) Automatic Duck to pull the whole thing into AFX. Personally I would get the batch version of 5DtoRGB and a MASSIVE hard drive, and then convert to ProRes 444, 709, no gamma. I'll cover all of these options in the video series.
  • shianshian
    @FGCU yup, all GH2
  • No_SuRReNDeRNo_SuRReNDeR
    @shian I didn't know about Automatic Duck..that sounds like a better solution.I was already looking into the batch version of 5dtoRGB it seems worth the minor investment. I cant wait to see the series man. You and driftwood and of course VK are now my personal heroes, and Roger Deakins... well obviously. Gonna stay on a lower end GOP1 for stability like the 100MB aqua motion so I figured 3 or 4 terabytes would be good enough... the film has ziltch for a budget, too bad you cant just buy stuff with passion.
  • HillTop1HillTop1
    @No_SuRReNDeR
    http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/22760#Comment_22760
  • shianshian
    @No_SuRReNDeR still getting familiar with all the patches, can you send me a link to it. I'm going to be doing a lot of testing and such once the plug-in goes live.

    Any and all links to footage, and questions about this topic, or even slightly off topic, can be sent to colorghear@gmail.com
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