@kholi why not use .601 with 5DtoRGB?

So doing conversions with both 601full and 709full - yielded some interesting results. To the eye, the 601 images looked slightly warmer, and slightly brighter.

Pixel peeping revealed these results. 601 on the left 709 on the right.

which confirms what my eyes saw which is a weird shift in RGB values that does indeed skew towards a warmer, slightly more green image (as you know luma is tied to green in the RGB universe)

Waveform monitor shows slightly brighter image. but not lifted from shadows up... just stretched out through mids and highs. BUT the highlights are compressed

same stretching and compression on broadcast.

.

Why the hell are you guys converting your beautiful wider gamut rec.709 broadcast legal footage into the much smaller rec.601 colorspace? You understand you're just dumping away roughly 20% of your color gamut correct? And you understand the gh2 records broadcast legal luma information, there is no data below 16 or above 235 to magically recover. There is some insane misinformation propagated on this forum sometimes......

@rapsoe - Precisely - I wrote a more technical writeup over explaining, and eventually showing with 800% zoomed in examples, that Premiere's MTS interpreting (yuv to RGB conversion, legal vs ext. flagging, etc), are the exact same as 5dtorgb's - and in some tests, premiere's 4:2:0 YUV to 4:4:4 RGB conversion and chroma upsampling proved to be MORE detailed. I can't speak as to 5dtorgb's usability on a Mac with FCP, I've never used it - But I have heard that final cuts log and transfer can throw a fit with gamma issues sometimes

@Fohdeesha at least I had similar observations with Avisynth-VirtualDub workflow:

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/57909#Comment_57909

(see pictures of tulips). It was sharper than 5DToRGB.

@itimjim - Exactly, and that's what I was getting at - in some areas, the premiere sample actually has MORE apparent detail. When taking into account these subtle differences, you have to keep in mind they are 800% blowups - only one out of every 8 pixels are actually in the original footage, the rest are being interpolated - the tiny differences you end up seeing are simply from the interpolation varying results due to the original compression. You can clearly see the chroma handling is the same, if not better with Premiere's engine, and even then you have to blow something up 8 times to see it.

Is there a way to set the options to 709 and Full range by default?

It would be great if you could convert more than one clip at a time on multicore machines as well. Right now I just duplicate the 5DtoRGB app 3 or 4 times and then split my footage up into groups to be processed by each instance, but you have to set it up manually which is just silly.

Anything faster than 5DtoRGB? Supposing I really want the look of the ITU-R BT.601 / Full Range / Default Chroma Mode that 5DtoRGB gives you (I know the arguments against it), but that I want to get that look faster, is there any other tool that will do the same?

The reason is that 5DtoRGB takes significantly longer to encode than all the other tools I've tried. I ran a test last night, converting a 32GB card full of video, Crossfire Night hack. Using Adobe Media Encoder it took 35 minutes to encode to ProRes 422 HQ. Using 5DtoRGB, it took 1 hour 45 minutes to encode. Yikes! We're doing a 48hr competition soon. If it takes that long for each camera, we're going to lose just on encoding files.

I've tried every other tool I can think of and I cannot achieve the same flat look. I've tried Adobe Media Encoder with Prores, DnxHD, Media Converter, importing into Premiere directly, etc.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

@iFilmFlops If speed is your concern, then just transcode using Adobe. Then use a custom color correction preset that approximates the look you want from 5dtoRGB. (Like others have said, the settings you want from 5dtoRGB aren't optimal from a color correction standpoint anyway).

@Nityananda_SCSMath Just run a test for yourself and see!

Someone chime in on this issue

Full range vs. Broadcast range - I hear varying arguments for both sides.

My personal observation

Broadcast range looks exactly the same to log n' transfer.

Full Range gives me detail in the blacks just like the program is advertised to do and I notice WAY LESS NOISE and have never seen 1600-3200 ISOs look so good.

Yet I get called an idiot on that forum (paraphrasing) for advocating Full range. I don't understand why so many people advocate Broadcast range.

@psynema

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/63557#Comment_63557

It's about what's being done to the image - in the above link you'll see in the wfm that all it does is compress the waveform, stretching the blacks, and squeezing the highlights. You really gain nothing from using full. I've stopped using it, as I can duplicate what full gives me through a simple levels adjustment. And I start with an image that hasn't been "squished" in terms of luminance, which will effect your colors.

my process is organic. Always subject to change if I discover something new. So I have hopped off the full range bandwagon in favor of a more pure image.

I have sometimes glitches when transcoding with 5DtoRGB. As shown here before here in a topic

But also strange blocks. Originals mts looks okay. Any idea what that could be? Someone else with these issues? When I convert them again it's sometimes okay somtimes they are at different places in other frames.