To access the old thread - go here: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1817/colorghear-toolkit-color-grading-system-for-ae/p1

So as not to be misleading, ColorGHear is a system, and not so much a plug-in... a school of thought supported through the ColorGHear Toolkit -which is a set of MODULAR PRESETS for After Effects and ColorGHear Pro - which is a set of MODULAR LUTs for Davinci Resolve, FCP7, Premiere Pro, and Adobe Speedgrade, and is not what you'd consider a classical style plug-in.

The toolkit isn't a collection of drag and drop "looks" like Magic Bullet. It is a series of nodes which contain a set of grading instructions or "macros" (a set of operations), specially designed to work with each other to speed up your workflow. Along with these nodes, comes a system of grading which replaces having to perform the minutia of individual corrections by hand. Learned through the online tutorials, this system will give you speedy and precise grades. It is this precision that prevents you from "bending" your images like with standard methods which is what allows me to get such drastic and dramatic grades from normally flimsy DSLR codecs.

As a professional colorist, I noticed that because of the way the color channels in RGB video are tied together; that typical methods like the Color Balance tool, and the 3-way Color Corrector will actually bend an RGB image out of shape. So in order to maximize the full potential of any given image, I had to learn a method of grading that would avoid damaging the footage. I called this method "precision grading."

I also noticed that in executing these precision grades, I was performing the same operations over and over. I began taking notes on what these operations were, and trying to determine if it were possible to create a set of interacting preset nodes that would save me time in having to repeatedly perform these operations.

I soon discovered 37 distinct sets of operations that would serve to correctly grade any, and all footage. 6 of these macros cancel each other out, and only 1 of those 6 could be effectively used at any given time leaving me with 32 nodes - giving me 1,024 possible combinations. Over a thousand distinct grades. Over time, I added some other tools to the set which now sits at 74 nodes all of which are designed to be used in conjunction with the other nodes. (69, if you subtract the 5 canceling nodes) which brings the total to 4,761 distinct grades.

The precision method I mention above is demonstrated here. Along with how the 3-way Color Corrector damages your footage.

The power of ColorGHear is presented in the video demonstrations below.

ColorGHear is available at http://www.ColorGHear.com

(ColorGHear Pro not yet available to the public)

I just bought a GH4 and I am trying to get it to work with my FCP 7, but is does not really work well yet. I prefer to film in FHD 100Mbps 25P, and I need to film longer than 30 min..The camera is bought in US and does film continuously more than 30, but it chops up the files in small pieces of 4.27GB (6.40 min). There are 2 problems in this: 1) When importing in FCP7 it imports well, but when put on the timeline, "General Error" appears and it will not play it. I have tried to convert to ProRess HQ, and this plays well, but a second problem appears: 2)every 6:40 min I lack 2 frames both audio and video, and this is really not what I need, I need a continuos file for more than 6.40 min...

What can I do?

Here is my problem: since I switched to OSX "El Capitan" on my mac pro, my Final Cut Pro displays the rushes in a very dark way, as if there was a gamma adjustment problem. I tried to play with the settings of parameters in every way and I have not found a solution.

At best, the problem appears when the playback bar on the timeline is stopped. And as soon as I put in reading, the image appears as normal.

Any idea ? best regards

What I do now is I transcode the 4K footage (H264) to 4K (ProRes) and edit away on a 1080 sequence - if the delivery asks for 1080.

The problem is that once I render the sequence and decide to change some small things around or add/trim clips, I have to render again for every step that I change and overall it can be very time consuming.

Is there a way to for example transcode the 4K original footage to a 720p small files JUST FOR THE EDIT and then once the sequence is a lock, conform the clips in the sequence back to their original size (4K) and export the sequence in 1080 and 4k?

Thank you so much.

Test filming in HBR mode (1080p25) with very safe "hack" at 33 mbts.

First use of a voigtlander nokton 50mm 1.1. that I've just received. Great lense ! All manual control.

I thought this would be funny to shoot. And a much more interesting subject for the test than the usual garden tree... :)

Export with Clipwrap. Edited in FCP7 with no color correction.

Music : Betty Hutton "Stuff like that there".

I primarily work as an editor, but im not super "tech". For the past few years i've been using a hacked gh1 for my personal stuff, editing on an imac with FCP 7, log and transfer to prores. As far as i have experienced h264 has not been good to edit with? every time i have had footage shot with canons sent to me for work, an assistant editor would trans-code to prores.

so with one of the main selling points of the GH3 being ALL-I, and the talk of "edit ready" h264, im confused.

like everyone else, i want to get the most out of this camera in terms of image quality, so my question is, to transcode or not? if you were to transcode ALL-I footage to prores, would it defeat the purpose of shooting it in the first place? what are the pros and cons of working with H.264?

the primary size and frame rates i'd be using are 1080 24p and 1080 60p for slow motion.

what are you guys doing for post? what are your opinions on codecs and workflow?

thanks! jon

EDIT 2: If anyone has a FCP 7 exported XML 5 file or a DaVinci Resolve 8.2 XML file they could post so I could try to look at syntax differences vs. the current XML, it would be much appreciated. If you are interested in seeing the features below implemented so that you can buy the software,

Michael at http://www.aatranslator.com.au/ has been kind enough to spend a lot of time recently working on getting better FCP XML conversion capabilities into AATranslater (his relatively inexpensive conversion program for audio that is expanding to include video). If the conversion process worked properly, it would allow a lot very helpful things to happen.

• The ability to take Sony Vegas Pro sessions in and out of Resolve the way the FCP 7 users can currently do (via FCP XML).
• Improved export from Sony Vegas Pro to FCP 7 or Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.
• He has talked about possible FCP X support.

And there are of course many others. I am not affiliated with Michael's company but if the conversion starts working, I will of course buy myself a copy of the software (because the process to get Vegas files into DaVinci Resolve is insanely difficult at the moment, even with the intermediate use of programs like Adobe Premiere to try and convert the AAF files to be more readable, etc.) When I say the workflow without this tool is insanely difficult, I mean over 30 man-hours this week alone on the problem and still have not solved in a satisfactory fashion after 2 weeks.

Here are some of the reasons why a converter like this would help. - Sony Vegas Pro 11 AAF files will not open in DaVinci Resolve 8.2. - Sony Vegas Pro 11 EDL files will not open in DaVinci Resolve 8.2. - Sony Vegas Pro 11 EDL files will not open in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. - Sony Vegas Pro 11 AAF files that can open close to perfectly back into Sony Vegas, may have major issues in Adobe Premiere CS6. - The AAT Sony Vegas Pro XML import and export scripts (potentially) allow more information to come out of Vegas than an AAF file (current issues seem limited to BIN support and sub-clip support).

But at the moment we are hitting several challenges and so I would like to ask for help, both in providing additional files and in looking at the ones below.

The attached "AAT XMLfiles for PV - v1" ZIP file contains two files.

The "VP11 AAT XML v1" file is the XML output from Vegas using a custom AAT script.

The "AAT XML to AAT to FCP XML - v1" file was created by parsing that script through the converter at the moment (note that the program has not been designed for this sort of conversion and will have to be re-written to work properly).

If you have FCP 7 XML 5 exported files or similar DaVinci Resolve 8.2 files that you can upload for analysis, it would be appreciated. Or if you can look at the AAT FCP XML file below to find out things like why it will open in Premiere Pro CS 4.0.1 but not CS 6.0, it would also be appreciated.

Here's hoping Michael can create a conversion tool that would make life a lot easier, and thanks in advance for your help!

'Update 2012-07-30 01:02AM' - The resolution mismatch has now been fixed. - The CS6 "hanging" issue from a direct import (vs CS4 importing mostly correctly) is being looked at.