Longboarding

[Caleb Genheimer]

Here's a short longboarding video that my friends asked me to film for them earlier this summer. As always, I'd love some feedback! I'm still working on my grading skills with Resolve Lite, and on my grain effect, which Vimeo still doesn't seem to be capable of encoding properly.

Panasonic Lumix GH2 | Standard Firmware | Mir-1B 37mm f2.8 | Kowa 16-H Anamorphic Lens | 72mm Lightcraft Workshop Fader ND MKII | Anamorphic front and rear clamps by Redstan

[Caleb Genheimer]

http://vimeo.com/52799095

[Axel]

Hi Caleb, I downloaded the 77,28 MB mov file from vimeo, and it's as dark as there in the player. I guess this has to do with a very complicated bunch of correlations of color spaces, working environment, monitor gammas asf., described in the first chapters of [url="http://splicevine.com/july-color-correction/"]this[/url].

As with every challenge, having become aware of the nature of a problem is of more avail than just buying, say, an Eizo monitor, or two, three.

> the utility app in OS X, [i]DigitalColor Meter[/i], should be in your dock permanently.
> as the article above suggests, if you can't trust your eyes, navigate with the instruments. In Resolve, you should watch the luma waveform to realize, that big portions of your shadows in the shadows drown completely (if most of the values pike at '10' and below).

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]'72mm Lightcraft Workshop Fader ND'[/font][/color]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]One danger using ND faders is crushing your midtones. Midtones are what the whole grading ado is about. It can very well be that your ND has made the image too flat by dying out the precious midtones. Can be detected by watching the histogram during shooting.[/font][/color]

The second thing I noticed is, that in your upload file the block artifacts are bigger than any grain could be.

> ProRes-master
> 7 mbps (or higher) upload file for vimeo. Good H.264 encoders are AdobeME or x264 Quicktime-plugin.

[Caleb Genheimer]

Axel, thanks so much for the detailed feedback. I really shoved this footage around pretty abusively, and on purpose. I do watch my histogram and waveform pretty closely as I grade, but one thing is I always grade in a completely dark room, and maybe I should suggest in the video descriptions that they should be viewed in a similar situation. The original footage was significantly brighter.

Concerning the Pro Res master business, I convert all my footage to 422HQ via 5DtoRGB, edit in FCP at full res, grade and replace the 422HQ source files with Resolve, then re-render in FCP and export from there to H.264. Since I am working entirely with ProRes from the get-go, is there any advantage to exporting a full ProRes before conversion to H.264?

Honestly, I'm developing an utter loathing for FCP's stupid Gamma shift business, and I'm seriously considering a workflow change so that my final export is from Resolve, not FCP.

Why 7mbps for Vimeo? Why not their suggested setting?

[Axel]

[quote name='Caleb Genheimer' timestamp='1352147249' post='21080']Honestly, I'm developing an utter loathing for FCP's stupid Gamma shift business, and I'm seriously considering a workflow change so that my final export is from Resolve, not FCP.[/quote]

First, since Lion, there is no more Gamma shift within Apples native set of apps including Quicktime. Second, for FCP7, I consider Color the best program for grading. With FCP X, once you have learned the new workflow, you really need no external program for grading. Update to 10.6, and you easily work with the native AVCHD (if you like), wrapped as 'H.264-AVC' in a mov container, with no significant performance problems. As long as you export as ProRes (and with the new 'Share' windows and your own export settings, you can even export AVCHD as ProRes4444, which actually makes no sense, but indeed reduces banding to some extent), there will be no quality loss compared to an intermediate workflow.

[quote name='Caleb Genheimer' timestamp='1352147249' post='21080']Why 7mbps for Vimeo? Why not their suggested setting?[/quote] Wasn't 7mbps the recommended setting? The higher the bitrate, the better.

[Caleb Genheimer]

uh, I'm a broke college student running FCP5. could that be my problem? the image still shifts for me considerably, at least between the paused image and the plaback image within FCP.

vimeo suggests h.264 at 5000kbps