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superwhites and the cinevator?


Matt Sandstrom

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hi,

 

i've done a few tests with the cinevator and while the results have been great i just realized that i always used "broadcast safe" hd masters. does anyone know if i might get more contrast and more punch in the highlights if i let them go all the way up? maybe i can even retain more saturation in the extreme highlights this way? i mean i should but how does the cinevator handle this? my contact at the post house doesn't know, but then again that's not really his field either.

 

(the next problem is that i don't really have monitoring to properly check superwhites but that's what testing is for, right?)

 

thanks,

/matt

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I do not have experience directly with the Cinevator however it should be able to record a much higher contrast range than a legalized HD broadcast master. That said I would think that if there is more information in your original HD master (i.e a film transfer or something like a Viper Log file) and it is being legalized by the system you are using the answer is yes you will get more info in the film out by not legalizing. I would try a piece and see.

 

-Rob-

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thanks, that makes sense. i'm not transferring film nor shooting raw though, i'm working with regular video footage. the thing is that everything was (wisely) shot to protect the highlights, and when i bring the images up in post it would be nice to be able to keep the highlights bright and contrasty letting them go as hot as they want rather than compressing everything between 95 and 100 ire, which both gamma correction and broadcast legal filters do. if that means they clip in the cinevator that's obviously not what i want, but if they are preserved it would be great. i guess i could always render to pdx or something instead, but i'm more confident with video space and there's still quite a bit of headroom over 100 ire.

Edited by Matt Sandstrom
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If you have the footage in your CC (Color?) and grade it to hotter than 100ire you could export a DPX sequence or a 16bit linear tiff sequence which would hold the greater DR of the grade for recording. If you are going DPX you would have to figure out a Lin-log conversion I think.

 

-Rob-

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yeah this is why i'm not fully confident with dpx and so on, but then again neither with tiff. after effects has a cineon export option which does dpx and seems to be taking care of the lin-log conversion, see setting below. guess i really have to get hold of some expert at the post house. :-)

 

post-1832-1255109375.png

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  • 5 months later...

This reply may be a bit late to help. The Cinevator can be fed a full range signal and not one that is limited to 100 IRE. It will also accept 16bit Tiffs as well as 10bit log and lin DPX files. If you do supply a tape or quicktime to a facility with a Cinevator be sure to let them know that the material is full range. The Cinevator requires new calibration LUTs to be built for each new film stock emulsion, color space and resolution.

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great info, thanks. so will it extend the range thus lowering the contrast or will it let my whites go even hotter, if you know what i'm saying? i'm asking because "video gamma" is the only color space i can monitor properly so i was hoping to grade for video and just take advantage of some hot headroom.

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