Alejandro Carrillo Penovi
July 1st, 2008, 06:22 AM
Hi David, I hope you can guide us a little with this. Please bear with me as I unravel my woes, as I haven't find a way for making this post terse.
We are currently editing a feature film (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1236438/) which was shot using Silicon Imaging SI-2K cameras. Unfortunately our production company did not plan in advance for a coherent workflow, vendor-wise, and thus all the subsequent postproduction links in our chain are mismatched: for picture editing, instead of Adobe Premiere, we're using Final Cut Pro (Mac Pro Quad & Octo-core); and instead of IRIDAS SpeedGrade our production company owns a SCRATCH workstation, and is obviously intent on using it for this feature.
(—Oh boy. —Yes, I know, this is not going to be easy...)
Since SCRATCH works with DPX, we need to devise a way to bring the SI-2K original footage to DPX, as clean as possible, and retaining the maximum of its full RAW information. But besides the footage we also need to bring to SCRATCH the sequences cut in Final Cut. And since this is a feature film, we need to carry both, footage and sequences, in an efficient and speedy manner, so that conforming and grading can be done within a reasonable time frame.
The obvious choice for converting CineForm RAW footage to DPX is, of course, the cf2dpx.exe utility that comes with Neo and Prospect. With this utility we are able to convert the SI-2K/CineForm RAW .AVI footage to DPX on a file-by-file (shot-by-shot) basis. The resulting DPX files are both readable and addressable (TC-wise) by SCRATCH, and thus automatic conforming using an EDL that references files in the comments is possible. But this method becomes impractical from the point of view of a feature film, where more than 1500 individual files would have to be converted manually using the command line, a devastatingly time-consuming procedure prone to human error. And cf2dpx.exe is a PC-only utility, so we can't run it in our Macs.
Now, our CineForm RAW footage is being edited within the Mac/FCP/QuickTime environment, albeit we are using proxy footage (ProRes 720p) for the actual editorial work, instead of the original CF RAW files. We resorted to proxies because when we started the project we knew little about CineForm and Mac, and we did not know that CF RAW footage edited in a ProRes sequence allowed for real-time effects; since we had tons of effects coming, working with the original media was ruled out in favor of ProRes proxies. Reconnecting our FCP sequences to the original .AVI CineForm RAW footage is trivial, since we kept the same names for both sets of files (CF RAW and Pro Res). This means that at any time we can make a FCP sequence reference the original 2K RAW footage in a snap.
It followed that if we could export such a sequence into DPX we could, in theory, bring a preconformed result to SCRATCH, which would only need to be "notched" using an ordinary EDL for subsequent grading. Enter Glue Tools, a third-party QuickTime component which allows for DPX and Cineon import and export from Macs, and specifically, from Final Cut Pro and Compressor. Our first tests showed that such an export to DPX would go nicely into SCRATCH. But we did not know, and do not know now, which parameters to use in the conversion, and how to use the Tools, and so here, at last, come our questions.
First, our RAW footage was delivered as .AVI files because Silicon Imaging recommended to our camera department NOT to use the .MOV (QuickTime) wrapper option, as it was not fully tested. Now, I've browsed through CineForm's site, and I've just discovered that .AVI files are processed as 8-bit within the QuickTime/Mac environment. If we are planning to export DPX files using the Glue Tools components, does that mean that we need to convert all the incumbent footage to .MOV in order to preserve the 10- or 12-bit range of the RAW files in the export files? If so, is there an automated way or batch process for this .AVI to .MOV conversion?
Glue Tools offers three different conversion modes to (and from) DPX/Cineon: linear, log-lin, and RAW. We haven't been able to figure out which is the "right" mode for our case, and Glue Tools developer, Bob Monaghan, keeps telling us that he cannot offer any guidelines on this respect, nor he would recommend which parameter values (neg gamma, display gamma, white point, black point) to use, instead urging us to contact our lab for those "magic" values. Since our production company is, in this respect, our own "lab", we are left to our own devices for devising which setting and values to use to convert from CineForm RAW to DPX. Of course, we know there is no such thing as "magic" values and that every case has its own characteristics, but we need to start at least with a ballpark estimate. How should we convert CineForm RAW to DPX using something like Glue Tools? What's the theory behind this conversion? Should the resulting DPX be log or linear? Should we mingle with the logarithmic parameters (neg gamma, disp gamma, white point, black point) or leave them at certain "standard" values for CineForm RAW?
There is a certain possibility that we are doing more than one thing wrong here, or making the wrong assumptions. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thank you for reaching this far in the post, and I beg you forgive my lack of brevity.
Best regards,
Alex
Editor, "La Leyenda"
Pampa Films S.A.
Buenos Aires
Argentina
We are currently editing a feature film (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1236438/) which was shot using Silicon Imaging SI-2K cameras. Unfortunately our production company did not plan in advance for a coherent workflow, vendor-wise, and thus all the subsequent postproduction links in our chain are mismatched: for picture editing, instead of Adobe Premiere, we're using Final Cut Pro (Mac Pro Quad & Octo-core); and instead of IRIDAS SpeedGrade our production company owns a SCRATCH workstation, and is obviously intent on using it for this feature.
(—Oh boy. —Yes, I know, this is not going to be easy...)
Since SCRATCH works with DPX, we need to devise a way to bring the SI-2K original footage to DPX, as clean as possible, and retaining the maximum of its full RAW information. But besides the footage we also need to bring to SCRATCH the sequences cut in Final Cut. And since this is a feature film, we need to carry both, footage and sequences, in an efficient and speedy manner, so that conforming and grading can be done within a reasonable time frame.
The obvious choice for converting CineForm RAW footage to DPX is, of course, the cf2dpx.exe utility that comes with Neo and Prospect. With this utility we are able to convert the SI-2K/CineForm RAW .AVI footage to DPX on a file-by-file (shot-by-shot) basis. The resulting DPX files are both readable and addressable (TC-wise) by SCRATCH, and thus automatic conforming using an EDL that references files in the comments is possible. But this method becomes impractical from the point of view of a feature film, where more than 1500 individual files would have to be converted manually using the command line, a devastatingly time-consuming procedure prone to human error. And cf2dpx.exe is a PC-only utility, so we can't run it in our Macs.
Now, our CineForm RAW footage is being edited within the Mac/FCP/QuickTime environment, albeit we are using proxy footage (ProRes 720p) for the actual editorial work, instead of the original CF RAW files. We resorted to proxies because when we started the project we knew little about CineForm and Mac, and we did not know that CF RAW footage edited in a ProRes sequence allowed for real-time effects; since we had tons of effects coming, working with the original media was ruled out in favor of ProRes proxies. Reconnecting our FCP sequences to the original .AVI CineForm RAW footage is trivial, since we kept the same names for both sets of files (CF RAW and Pro Res). This means that at any time we can make a FCP sequence reference the original 2K RAW footage in a snap.
It followed that if we could export such a sequence into DPX we could, in theory, bring a preconformed result to SCRATCH, which would only need to be "notched" using an ordinary EDL for subsequent grading. Enter Glue Tools, a third-party QuickTime component which allows for DPX and Cineon import and export from Macs, and specifically, from Final Cut Pro and Compressor. Our first tests showed that such an export to DPX would go nicely into SCRATCH. But we did not know, and do not know now, which parameters to use in the conversion, and how to use the Tools, and so here, at last, come our questions.
First, our RAW footage was delivered as .AVI files because Silicon Imaging recommended to our camera department NOT to use the .MOV (QuickTime) wrapper option, as it was not fully tested. Now, I've browsed through CineForm's site, and I've just discovered that .AVI files are processed as 8-bit within the QuickTime/Mac environment. If we are planning to export DPX files using the Glue Tools components, does that mean that we need to convert all the incumbent footage to .MOV in order to preserve the 10- or 12-bit range of the RAW files in the export files? If so, is there an automated way or batch process for this .AVI to .MOV conversion?
Glue Tools offers three different conversion modes to (and from) DPX/Cineon: linear, log-lin, and RAW. We haven't been able to figure out which is the "right" mode for our case, and Glue Tools developer, Bob Monaghan, keeps telling us that he cannot offer any guidelines on this respect, nor he would recommend which parameter values (neg gamma, display gamma, white point, black point) to use, instead urging us to contact our lab for those "magic" values. Since our production company is, in this respect, our own "lab", we are left to our own devices for devising which setting and values to use to convert from CineForm RAW to DPX. Of course, we know there is no such thing as "magic" values and that every case has its own characteristics, but we need to start at least with a ballpark estimate. How should we convert CineForm RAW to DPX using something like Glue Tools? What's the theory behind this conversion? Should the resulting DPX be log or linear? Should we mingle with the logarithmic parameters (neg gamma, disp gamma, white point, black point) or leave them at certain "standard" values for CineForm RAW?
There is a certain possibility that we are doing more than one thing wrong here, or making the wrong assumptions. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thank you for reaching this far in the post, and I beg you forgive my lack of brevity.
Best regards,
Alex
Editor, "La Leyenda"
Pampa Films S.A.
Buenos Aires
Argentina