Personal View site logo
Make sure to join PV on Telegram or Facebook! Perfect to keep up with community on your smartphone.
Please, support PV!
It allows to keep PV going, with more focus towards AI, but keeping be one of the few truly independent places.
GH4 Firmware 2.3, V-log for $99, Epic Panasonic marketing fail
  • 1451 Replies sorted by
  • @Brian_Shiano You can use Filmconvert vlog as technical LUT, and then, you can add -as output- any another creative LUT ( premiere workflow)

  • Thanks aaronchicago for sharing your success in grading V-LOG with the Cineon to Film Contrast LUT. I just did a short test and was delighted how well it works! I have a dropbox link here with one clip that contains 3 parts - ungraded, graded with only the Cineon LUT and then the Cineon LUT with a touch more contrast and a slight color adjustment toward magenta. Although recorded internally in 4K, it was exported in ProRes 422 1080p for those who wish to cut out the ungraded clip and try their own grade. Keep in mind that this was filmed in a forest with lots of green and yellow foliage and also the model's natural complexion is a tanned reddish brown tone. Of course you know Dropbox sucks at streaming HD video so don't even try, just download if interested: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hmm83mfapsn1jap/V-LOG%20Test%20-%20Cineon%20to%20Film%20LUT.mov?dl=0

  • @Aria With my Ninja 2, I set HDMI in the GH4 to down convert UHD 10-bit to 1080p 10-bit and the results are fantastic!

    Sorry for the late reply, I'm in preproduction for a short and it's all consuming.

  • @dial I bought the Ninja 2 for two reasons: 10-bit and false color. You really have to nail your exposure for best results, and the reason people have started over exposing by two stops is to get the mids and lows up where there are more bits, but this sacrifices highlight detail.

    Sacrificing highlights is just par for course, so that's no big deal, but who the hell has two stops to give when shooting indoors? But if you under expose by even a half of stop with V-Log, you're screwed, so false color to the rescue so you can actually see what your exposure is on everything in the frame. Histogram lets you know the scene exposure, but you're just guessing what item in the scene is exposed where. Zebras won't let you know if you're underexposed on something of importance. So I recommend the Ninja 2 for false color exposure tools almost more than for 10-bit.

  • @estarkey7, so then regarding false colors, let's say that skin tones are the priority of a shot, the approach then would be to expose for false colors reading in the pink zone for skin while then letting everything else just fall as is... This then is a more specific method to target exposure on important areas rather than simply exposing two stops over..

  • For Premiere Pro users, I've created a new color space optimized for basic color correction of Cinelike D and V-Log L footage using Lumetri Color. It's the same idea as my log space for DaVinci Resolve, FCPX, and Sony Vegas Pro: you can perform exposure compensation, white balance correction, and contrast adjustment almost as if you were working with raw footage. I effectively invert the weird color manipulation of Cinelike D and V-Log L, transforming them into a scene-linear unrendered color space. The result is a neutral look with accurate colors.

    I claim that Cinelike D actually performs better than V-Log L: you get virtually the same color accuracy and dynamic range, but without any visible 8-bit banding. And Cinelike D is a lot easier to shoot with, because you can judge exposure and white balance on the camera's monitor.

    @rNeil and @LPowell, please let me know how the LUTs work for you. I experimented a lot with Premiere, SpeedGrade, and After Effects, and none of them had the color tools necessary for working with a purely logarithmic color space, even one with a smaller gamut and reduced dynamic range. So I made this new color space with a gamma encoding specifically for Lumetri Color. After Effects actually includes color management support, but I didn't investigate that, favoring an approach that would let you perform basic color correction right inside Premiere.

  • @balazer Thanks for this for PPro users. I look forward to checking it out in a few days. I haven't upgraded to CC2015, any idea if this will work in CC2014? I know Lumetri in CC2014 is not as developed.

    Do you recommend the computer monitor be calibrated to Rec. 709? or sRGB?

    Thanks!

  • @CFreak, I haven't tried Premiere Pro CC 2014. If it can load Cube LUTs, it will probably work.

    Rec.709 doesn't specify the behavior of a display, so it is not possible to calibrate a monitor to Rec.709. A monitor would ideally be calibrated to sRGB (or possibly Rec.1886) to properly display Rec.709-encoded video.

  • sRGB and rec709 are in practise the same color space.

  • sRGB and Rec.709 are compatible with each other, but they are not interchangeable. Rec.709 is a standard for video cameras, specifying how they should render and encode their output. sRGB is a standard for monitors, specifying how they should display their input (and specifying how you should encode an image if you want it do be displayed a certain way on an sRGB monitor). sRGB and Rec.709 are compatible in the sense that if you hook a Rec.709 camera up to an sRGB display (encoding differences aside), the image will look correct. But the two standards have significantly different opto-electronic transfer functions, due to the fact that the viewing conditions of an sRGB monitor are different from the typical conditions under which a video camera shoots. If you use the sRGB OETF where you should be using the Rec.709 OETF, you'll get an image with unnaturally low contrast. Rec.709 specifies how to render an image so that it will be displayed with natural contrast. sRGB does not specify how to render, leaving that to the user to decide.

    Most cameras these days don't have Rec.709 output. They use their own rendering, quite different from Rec.709, especially in the highlights.

  • @balazer Wow. Great stuff. Thanks a lot for the gammalite and I'll check if my monitor is sRGB calibrated. This is serious progress and gets the best out of the GH4 + premiere combo.

    One question: You don't mention any recommended Cinelike-D profile settings inside the GH4 on you site. I assume these are the same as with the other luts.

  • @RKM, thanks! Sorry, I forgot to mention that. Use Cinelike D with all zeros for the camera's contrast and color settings.

    And please let me know how the color space is working for you guys. It's based on a lot of my own experience with the output of various cameras in other apps, but only limited testing in Premiere.

  • rec709 is a spec to describe video signals and colour space for broadcast. It evolved from rec601 which was the first digital video spec. sRGB is only a spec. for display colour space.

    The colour range defined by both of these are very similar but not identical.

  • Thanks @all for the clarification :-)

  • Balazar's LUT's should work in the 2014 Adobe apps. PrPro, AfterEffects & SpeedGrade all accept LUT's.

    However ... the implementation is very different between the programs. In PrPro 2014, "Lumetri" is only an effect to apply a LUT/Look file to a clip, there are NO controls over that look in the Lumetri effect there.

    So ... you might apply say a Three-Way corrector effect, then apply a Lumetri effect which asks you to navigate to the file on disk ... the LUT you want to use. Select it, then go to that Three Way corrector in the Effects Control panel that you've already applied to the clip, and do your base technical corrections for prepping the clip to go through Balazar's fine tech LUT. While of course watching your scopes & monitor for the effect of your technical corrections.

    The Lumetri effect in 2015 is a very different beast, as it includes a lot of controls over the luma/color of the image sort of semi-borrowed from SpeedGrade kinda similar but not quite ... ;-)

    Neil

  • Ok, in that case, to use the LUTs in Premiere Pro CC 2014 you'll want to use an RGB Color Corrector effect placed between a pair of Lumetri effects with the input and output LUTs. For exposure compensation, use the RGB Color Corrector's master gain control. For white balance correction, use the RGB Red, Green, and Blue gain controls. For contrast adjustment, you can either add another Lumetri effect with a contrast LUT just before the output LUT, or use a combination of master gamma and master gain. After adjusting gamma, you will need to go back and change the gain to compensate for the altered brightness of middle grey. Add all the effects and load the LUTs before you start making adjustments in the RGB Color Corrector.

    So this is the sequence of effects:

    1. Lumetri with an input LUT

    2. RGB Color Corrector, using master gain, RGB gain, and master gamma

    3. Lumetri with an output LUT

    or

    1. Lumetri with an input LUT

    2. RGB Color Corrector, using master gain and RGB gain

    3. Lumetri with a contrast LUT

    4. Lumetri with an output LUT

  • first quick attempt internal 8-bit v-log-l in available light, using Koji Arri log-c 2823 LUT

  • @mat33

    Why v-log at so soft light in a cloudy day? Looks dark, noisy and washed out. Did you use iso1600? Image looks like cheap small sensor camcorder. Sorry.

  • @vesku You really are the dark depressing rain cloud of this forum. Do you ever have anything positive to say or submit? We all come here to learn, so in that spirit please feel free to direct me to towards your positive posts. I, and I am sure many others, really look forward to reading them.

  • @2wheelsimon

    http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/14012/exif-data-in-panasonic-cameras#Item_2 http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/13955/using-alpha-channel-for-correcting-playing-video#Item_4 http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/11663/hopes-for-next-fw-update-for-gh4#Item_4 http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/11663/hopes-for-next-fw-update-for-gh4#Item_4 http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/8955/gh3-mov-poor-mans-raw/p1

    As you can see if you read these topics there is little interest for new ideas and findings when trying positively bring to discuss with. Bringing issues to light is also a way to learn about our equipment. I usually say my thoughts short and straight without many softening frases or being very polite all the time.

    My negative comments about v-log is for learning too. Someone may save 99$ and lots of trouble when figuring how bad the 7bit v-log is.

  • Thanks for the CC2014 instructions @balazer @rNeil