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Partnership between Silicon Imaging and IRIDAS announced . . .


Jason Rodriguez

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http://www.iridas.com/press/pr/20061025.html

 

I'm excited, and really, this is big news because it means our camera is now a complete "blank slate" for you to make whatever color adjustments you want, load that into the camera, and have complete color management from the camera head through post.

 

Nothing like this exists anywhere on the planet. There is no camera on the market that can take 3D LUT's and use them as the native colorimetry of the camera, shoot with that 3D LUT, and manage it as non-destructive meta-data all the way through post. You're typically either constrained to the annoying confines of the on-board matrix and colorimetry of the camera, or you can do the 3D LUT technology using the Iridas toolset, but you have to preview the look on a monitor that can use 3D LUT's, like an expensive Cinetal, or something of that nature.

 

Speedgrade On-set has some amazing tools to create any color-look you can imagine . . . virtual film-stocks, etc. If you don't like the way the camera looks, make it look like *anything* you want! Seriously!

 

The reason I say this is because 3D LUT's map one set of RGB triplets to another set of RGB triplets. As a result, a single 3D LUT can model absoluetly ANY non-linear color correction, be it gamma correction, curves, saturation, selective color corrections, etc. Also our implementation of IRIDAS's 3D LUT's are completely non-destructive, meaning that if you clip the whites in the 3D LUT, but there's still "over-white" information, you can simply dial that information back in during post correction in a 32-bit floating point environment.

 

We're going to be packaging a bunch of generic looks with the camera to-do stuff like bleach bypasses, wide-dyanmic range stuff, low-con looks, etc.

 

There'll be more information coming out soon, but we just wanted you all to be aware of the exciting new developments happening :)

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Hi Keith,

 

Direct Mac support is coming via a quicktime codec that Cineform will be releasing in the coming months . . . QT support will trail AVI support by a little bit, but not much. Now in the meantime you can always use After Effects on a Windows box to transfer the AVI over to a QT format for use on the Mac . . . with Prospect HD, you have full control over the RAW file including the 3D LUT's, so there's quite a bit you can do there before transcoding the RAW data into a normal QT codec for use on the Mac. (toungue-in-cheek) Now I'm sure EVERYONE should be VERY exciting about having to taking our AVI's through After Effects to make color-corrections and then transfer to QT's, I mean that is the BEST workflow in the WORLD! (my jab of the day at the REDCINE workflow model :D )

 

BTW, just in case anyone is curious, the reason for the length of time it takes to get QT support is not because QT is so hard to support . . . it's not really, it's just making sure when you import a QT file into an application, that it's able to receive the greater-than-8-bits of data in our CineForm RAW files. Each program seems to handle this differently, and as a result, you have to make sure everything works correctly, and that unfortunately takes time when the program behaves in a way that you don't expect. Plus there's always the issues of Apple not willing to support third-party codecs in Final Cut Pro . . . that's a major pain. To help with that, if you want to see full Final Cut Pro support (you can bring in the QT's and edit in FCP, but "full" means we're talking about full parity with Prospect HD on the PC), tell Apple . . . we talk with Apple, other manufacturers apply pressure on Apple, but it it seems to-do no good. I think they need customers telling them "we want this" before they budge. So far all their "third-party support" codecs like DVCProHD and XDCAM are actually codecs they wrote themselves and licensed from Sony or Panasonic . . . but anyways, users bugging Apple is always a good thing.

Edited by Jason Rodriguez
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What's not to understand about Red workflow?

 

If it's not a completely standard data post route, it's wrong.

 

First of all, there is no such thing as a "completely standard data post route." In fact, when it comes to post workflows based on data, there are no "standards." There are as many post flows as there are projects being done using a data based approach. Personally I wish there were standards, but there aren't.

 

But if there were standards, why would a methodology that differed from those standards be "wrong?" If it works, it's not "wrong." In many ways, it might be an improvement. Nothing improves until someone decides there are ways to improve it. That isn't "wrong," it's often innovative thinking that advances the state of the art.

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How is this different from using a truelight solution all the way through production/post production?

 

True light can import 3D LUTs, which can be used throughout the pipeline, and they even offer monitor calibration on set, in post, and for projection. I suppose this would offer the 3D LUT in the EVF as well, but... does the operator really need to see the fancy grading? Can you edit what you're getting off the camera in real time?

 

I'm lost, what's new? Sorry about the confusion.

Edited by Gavin Greenwalt
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Can you edit what you're getting off the camera in real time?

 

Yes.

 

I suppose this would offer the 3D LUT in the EVF as well, but... does the operator really need to see the fancy grading?

 

This is more than just a fancy image in the EVF.

 

We are applying color-correction to the actual camera as non-destructive metadata. That means you color-correct the camera, not through some confusing on-camera matrix (that then bakes the "look" into the camera), but through the very inutitive Speegrade interface. Once the look is applied, that is the "look" of the camera . . . i.e., when you open up or play back a recorded file, the look you made in Speedgrade is the actual "look" of the file itself. So "looks" are handled at the codec level.

 

The huge advantage to this approach though, is that because look files are completely non-destructive, you can edit and replace the "look" for a file anywhere through the post-production chain. This is much more integrated that using truelight through-out the post production pipeline, although I guess that could be done. This is actually color-correcting the camera with non-destructive metadata that describes how files recorded off the camera will look, but can be adjusted at any point in the RAW worflow chain.

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Yes.

This is more than just a fancy image in the EVF.

 

We are applying color-correction to the actual camera as non-destructive metadata. That means you color-correct the camera, not through some confusing on-camera matrix (that then bakes the "look" into the camera), but through the very inutitive Speegrade interface. Once the look is applied, that is the "look" of the camera . . . i.e., when you open up or play back a recorded file, the look you made in Speedgrade is the actual "look" of the file itself. So "looks" are handled at the codec level.

 

The huge advantage to this approach though, is that because look files are completely non-destructive, you can edit and replace the "look" for a file anywhere through the post-production chain. This is much more integrated that using truelight through-out the post production pipeline, although I guess that could be done. This is actually color-correcting the camera with non-destructive metadata that describes how files recorded off the camera will look, but can be adjusted at any point in the RAW worflow chain.

 

Ah! Very cool. Thanks Jason for clearing that up.

 

But I assume it's too much to hope for speed grade to come with your camera package? ;)

 

- Gavin

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Hi,

 

> How is this different from using a truelight solution all the way through production/post production

 

It's not, really, other than the ability to edit the LUT in speedgrade.

 

Well, that, and the fact that it's integrated into the camera electronics, which means a number of things: first, you don't have to use either a separate $35,000 Truelight box or expensive LUT capable monitoring during production. Second, the fact that it's integrated into the Cineform codec/wrapper means that the information in that LUT (i.e., the LUT itself) is carried in the digital image header itself, meaning it follows the image through post production without any need for external databases or tracking systems of any kind. Third, it can be varied in the field, and customized for specific shooting situations - for instance, if you decide to overexpose a particular scene and want the LUT to print it back.

 

I'm not necessarily a fan of such practices in the first place, preferring to shoot based on basic exposure and creative lighting and leave the timing to post, where you have continuity from editorial and where, frankly, the timing step belongs. But to claim there's no substantial difference between a camera integrated LUT creation/management solution and the use of a separate piece of hardware that must be pre-programmed is to ignore the facts. SI knows this, just as Jeff Kreines knew it when he proposed exactly the same system for his Kinetta, with the same partner (Iridas).

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Is this solution platform, software agnostic? I read up on Speedgrade and it looks like a nice interface for onset LUT generation, however from the sounds of it I'll be locked into their proprietary .look LUT format.

 

What if I don't intend to use an IRIDAS grading station? What if I grade in Lustre, FFI or a desktop box like Fusion? Will I be able to bring my LUTs with me in a format other programs can understand?

 

It sounds like a great thing to have the LUTs embedded in the file for convenience, but if I can't extract it to work with on all of my platforms, I don't see any use for it. I would rather carry around a generic LUT labelled for each setup on a thumb drive if that were the case.

Edited by Gavin Greenwalt
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Hi Gavin,

 

It will be platform agnostic, as the .look LUT file will actually be a "side car", sort of like XMP's are right now with Adobe's software, and Iridas software is supported on Mac, Linux, and Windows. While one could say there are some downsides to this method, there are also a number of advantages, including access to the LUT at any given point in time without having to be a programmer. But basically we're putting pointers in the AVI header for what the LUT file should be, but not actually packing the LUT into the AVI. The main reason for this is that we're using a 64-point cube, and as a result, the file is too big to fit into the AVI or QT header . . . no other program would be able to read the file since it would be looking for video information and not getting it.

 

The LUT itself is fairly staight-forward . . . it's a XML file, with some settings for the Iridas software and then a big 64-point cube. It's all human-readable, although the cube is in a 4-byte IEEE floating point hexadecimal word (inside a tag in the XML, so you don't need a hex editor), but it's not hard to decipher. Also there are some un-announced features in Speedgrade 2006 for supporting additional 3D LUT formats, so by no means are you "locked in" to the system.

 

BTW, Mike, there is one nice thing about the 3D LUT's and that is for you "shoot it flat" approach, it's actually quite accomidating for that too. Since the 3D LUT also encompasses gamma corrections, you can make a log-like curve or whatever you desire as your transfer curve from the basic 12-to-10-bit LUT that we have in the camera. Also the LUT is non-destructive and is at floating point precision, so there are no concerns about clipping over or under values unless you transcode to a different codec from the CineForm RAW . . . if that's the case, then we'll be adding the ability to "turn off" the LUT, or you can use a program to adjust the LUT for exactly the look you want before you "bake it in" during the codec transcode (obviously since we're doing management at the codec level, you can't take the LUT with you when you go to another codec, although you can turn the LUT off, and then import the new file into Speedgrade HD or DI and re-apply the .look file, or import the LUT into another application for re-application of the LUT in that environment, say a Lustre, etc.).

Edited by Jason Rodriguez
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