Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

So the technicolor cinestyle is now available. You can dowload it here-

CineStyle Downloads, CineStyle, Digital Printer Lights - Technicolor

Aside from the tests that I've seen elsewhere what my own testing has shown me is that the picture style retains much more detail around highlight areas that either blownout or close to it. The following is a video and couple of cropped frames from it. They compare the cinestyle with the neutral profile. In both cases the user defined settings were 0, -4, 0, 0. In the second shot (see stills) parts of the post on the left hand side of the frame were blowing out, but you'll notice with the cinestyle there is much more detail around those blownout areas. Its obviously better if you click through to vimeo to watch this in HD.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Your test actually shows vastly improved shadow detail more than improved highlight, which is what I'm finding with this new low-contrast picture style.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Thanks for this. It's exciting to see continued support for the 5D in what is now an established 5D ecology. I'll be trying this on a project next week.

J.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Thanks for posting. Seems to be a large improvement. The blacks are often quite crushed with this camera and it looks like the new style really helps in this area.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

I'm planning on trying this out.

I have questions too, will have to search more but thought of asking here too.

I found myself having a hard time finding focus now that I use the the neutral super flat settings. I don;t have focus aids..so only using the LCD...but man...sometimes is just to dificult for run and gun. Any ideas?

also..this LUT thing..will you all use it or just go straight to grade from scratch? Can this LUT be used in FCP?

Also..I'll like is this example above..how will you grade the shots and how diferent they'll be from the neutral.... to me that neutral looks very contrasty already..ummm.

thanks for the test.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Whats everyone's settings to get it back to something like canon's standard. I was testing out saturation of 10 and contrast of 17 in after effects.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

The other picture styles now all look over-saturated with too much contrast compared to the Technicolor CineStyle. I quite like this look straight out of the camera as it has a sort of cool pastel tone however it is not meant to be used like that. The idea is to use the provided LUT to put back the colour & contrast while retaining detail in the shadows & highlights.

I am not sure that I am using LUT Buddy (the FCP plugin) correctly however as FCP crashes if you just import & apply the supplied LUT. If you convert it to 3D 32-bit then export & re-import then it doesn't crash but does wind up with an saturated contrasty image pretty much like all the other picture styles.

The render times when applying the LUT are pretty horrendous too. Around 4-5 minutes for a 20 second clip on my 2.5GHz 2008 MBP.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Yes this seems to be the case. The lack of contrast with these picture styles will make focusing more difficult.

From what I've read the LUT doesn't really have any advantages for grading over creating your own curves profile. I don't plan to use it.

Yes it is constrasty by comparison. This was however shot in full afternoon sunlight, in situations that don't have as much variation between the shadows and highlights, neutral with -4 contrast can appear quite flat. In terms of grading one of the strengths of this profile that I see is working with tools like Colorista II which has power masks so that you can selectively "relight" a scene. So in the footage posted above you may not want to keep the extra shadow information across the entire frame but you might want to hold on to the moss under the tree while you push some of the other shadow areas towards black.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

I agree that the LUT isn't technically required. Any picture style will provide 8-bits of information on the card. The key point is to decode this properly. In other words, don't use Quicktime or any NLE that relies on QT for its h.264 decoding. All you need to do is decode the 8-bits properly into a 16-bit or 32-bit NLE at which time you perform grading. For even better results, insert a noise reduction plugin right before your color corrector as it can smooth out gradients and provide an output with more than 8-bit resolution. (Yes, the resolution is "fake", but can work really well on smooth surfaces like the sky or a balloon.)

My workflow is to transcode to Cineform for my initial edit. Once I know which clips I will use, I process the original MOVs in AE in a deep-bit mode with NeatVideo and Colorista II. I render the result to Cineform and replace my initial Cineform files. Open up the NLE and your edited footage is now graded. Continue editing, compositing, and re-grading to taste. Render a final Cineform master. Encode to your delivery formats and distribute.

I can't wait to try Cinestyle on a real project!

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Here's a question for everyone: I have often found that while these cameras have that "crushed blacks" look to them, the footage will easily open up in color correction to where it "should be" without any penalty (macroblocking or noise). I know people SAY that will happen, but my experience is otherwise. I've often wondered if it's one of those weird Quicktime quirks. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

I agree with the "where it should be" thing. If you like the look right out of the camera with a higher contrast picture style, you're golden. You don't need to apply additional gain adjustments, and it looks nice. Often, I desaturate the overall picture and tint the highs (orange) and lows (teal). As long as I didn't need to change the s-curve much, it's all good.

I think the main thing about shooting flat is that you have some elbow room if the exposure wasn't spot on. It should also work well when shooting high contrast scenes, like when backlit on an overcast day.

Regarding Quicktime, that's another issue. It's 8-bits in and 8-bits out. Because it applies its own gamma curve, you end up getting "holes" and "doubles" as you go up the scale, rather than 256 unique levels. You could shoot a smooth monochrome wash from dark to light that looks good out of the camera, but Quicktime will add some "teeth" that make it impossible to show such an image smoothly. And, because the errors get baked in at 8-bits, you can never get that information back again.

If QT worked in 16-bits - or even just 10-bits - one could recover the detail. And it doesn't just affect blacks or whites. It causes errors across the range.

Back when the 5D2 first shipped, QT was even worse. It would just clip the data below 16 and above 235. And then it would stretch the results with a funny gamma curve from 0-255. It didn't just crush the blacks, it took a jackhammer to them!

It's stuff like this that gives 8-bit video a bad name. Process it properly and it's surprisingly good. Process it badly, and it can look just terrible. Of course, capturing more bits is preferred, but 8-bits shot, exposed, and processed well can deliver the goods.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Charles:

This is one of the reasons I use Cinform. Originally, when 5D first came out, we were seeing loss of detail at both ends. I am a PC user, but Cineform appears to me to open up things from the initial Quicktime clipping range. This was Cineforms claim to fame early on in the DSLR revolution. Now I had heard Quicktime had done some work in that area, but it still appears to be the same for me. It would seem to me that the Canon codec in camera is what is the issue, and conversion that specifically corrects that is what is needed.


To make things more complex, when I edit the Cineform DSLR footage in Vegas Pro, I have to select the Vegas Preveiw monitor color correction filter to "studio RGB to computer RGB" in order to get a reasonable approximation for eyeballing purposes as to what the ultimate render will be.... Then you have to turn that off at render time.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

As to Technicolor Picture Style, I had previously been shooting a lot of stuff iwth Superflat. Later, I was convinced by posters here that super flat was creating to much noise. On recomendations, I went to neutral and turned down the sharpness, an color and contrast settings.

I have been looking at the Technicolor now, and I think it is going to be great for getting whatever dynamic range is in the camera. Couple that with false colors from Anthony Newmans version of Magic Lantern, or false colors in my Marshall monitor, and, from testing I have done, I think it I wlll be able to get some great footage in high contrast situations (bright daylight to shadow) that will react well to color correction.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

John:

Have you been successfull in getting the technicolor .lut to work in Cineform's FirstLight if you use. When I first downloaded the .lut, I just clicked on it, and it looks like Cineform automatically loaded it to the list of .luts available in FirstLight. However, in trying to apply it to a Cineform transcoded file, it was nothing but red.

For those of you that don't know Firstlight, this is a cool feature of Neo Cineform, in which you can instantaneously treat your footage to fixed .luts, or add a plethora of adjustments, without damaging original footage. That treatment can be done and will instantaneously transfer to the project you are working on in NLE.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Chris, I've got NeoScene. I don't believe that it has the LUT feature.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Thats right, it does not....

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

I confirmed the lut does work in Color Finesse 3 in After Effects.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Hey guys, few novice type questions if you please:

1. Shot with it in a dark basement. Clearly it helps in bright daylight, but I'm not sure you should use something like this for dark conditions - or am I way off base?

2. Much more difficult to focus - I thought I broke my lens at first. Any way to avoid this (other then having a different style programed in)?

3. If you're happy with the basic image coming from the camera shot with "normal" styles, should you still consider using a super-flat style?

Thanks -

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

I agree and I'm not sure what is the point of shooting low contrast and then crushing back the blacks in post. You are always better off getting your look in camera or optically. If your intention of shooting low contrast is to crush the blacks in post, then you will actually decrease the picture quality than if you had just shot with crushed blacks from the beginning.

Either underexpose to save highlights or overexpose to save shadows. I frequently shoot a stop under with these cameras because the shadow detail is recoverable but the highlights are not.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

John, how long does it take you to process a minute of video with this workflow? I find NeatVideo really slow to render & only use it when I really need to rescue some noisy video. The idea of applying it to everything doesn't seem practical.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Hello Chris,

I am getting that same problem loading the Technicolour s-curve LUT into Cineform's Firstlight and getting just red when I apply the LUT. I have reported this to Cineform Support and they are testing it out.

Leo

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

You're right. It's slow. I don't use this on fast turnaround stuff or stuff that doesn't need strong grading. In fact, I wouldn't use Cinestyle for fast turnaround, natural looking stuff either. Just get it close in the camera, transcode to Cineform, adjust levels when needed for matching, add a bit of sharpening, and deliver.

But when I want strong grading and best results, I go with the MOV -> NR-> 16-bits -> Colorista II -> Cineform route.

Speed is one of the reasons that I do a rough edit first. I only correct the footage that is used in the final project - not everything that is shot.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Leo, thanks. Can you PM or post if you hear of a resolution.

Jad: My view: Red and all the other major digital film cameras shoot a low contrast image to extend the camera latitude. This is well known. All the camera is doing when you increase saturation, contrast, or sharpness in the camera is locking in potentially image damaging treatment, that will make color color correction more difficult.

Jon:

This is the great thing about Firstlight, and the applications of .luts. You should try the Cineform trial of Neo.

Work flow is simple. Shoot your footage in Technicolor Cinestyle, or other low contrast style. Transcode your footage to Cineform as you normally would. Take all of your footage into Firstlight, and process it to conform to your basic film requirements. .luts are there to give treatments to meet certain film stocks. You can adjust any number of factors and create your own .lut. There is no rendering, the change to each file treated is instantaneous. Then you go to your editor and edit as normal. If you want to change what you did in First Light, you can have it running in background, and synch it to your editor.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

I'm not sure that a LUT workflow would work in all cases. In general, I want to first adjust each image to correct for exposure differences and then perform any shaping after that. A LUT would only work well where the exposure is what you want up front.

Also, can the LUT be customized to the level of true grading? Often, I want to push my darker colors towards blue/teal/green and the lighter colors toward yellow/orange/red. And I usually want to do that after any re-lighting (push faces, pull backgrounds).

For fast turnaround, natural stuff, a LUT sounds great. For cinematic work where you finesse each image, I don't see the benefit - unless it can be applied at the end of the chain and unless the tools allow it to be designed to bend the darks toward one color and the lights toward another.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Chris... i never research this before..but i'm curious now. I'll look into it but would like to ask you first. Can FCP work with cineform files? what do they make avi?

I'm reading of all the destructive way that FCP deals with 8bit footage and wish I knew more about it before to find a better route. I've been using Prores and for easy to do. I would change to PP now but I'm thinking that the new FCX is fixing most of the important issues now and adding some good ones..so I'm stick with it.

meanwhile..wondering if using cineform in FCP is a good way to go...or stay with my proRes.

Thanks

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

also..to answer some previews question.

the real advantage to shoot with cinestyle is first to get a better H.264 compresion out of the camera...and then also get more dinamic range.....

i read it somewhere and it makes sense.

will quote him but can find him now...

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

I don't use Macs, but Cineform does have a MaC Version, from their site:

"With versions for both Windows and Mac, CineForm’s Neo delivers a real-time digital intermediate workflow, even up to 4K spatial resolution, that is compatible with most NLEs — including from Adobe, Apple, Avid, and Sony — enabling cross-platform compatibility for 2D and 3D editing and effects applications that has never before existed. A CineForm DI workflow begins with the underlying CineForm Intermediate compression acclaimed for its high visual fidelity, and which is used routinely as the mastering format for 2D and 3D film, televison, and archive workflows. "

Cineform Neo4K

GoPro bought out Cineform, and now Changed name from Neo4k to straight Neo. For $ 299 you apparently get all features that originally cost $500. For Jon and others, should be an upgrade from NeoScene too.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Get magic bullets lut buddy:
Red Giant Software: Downloads - Free Products Download Form

I'm going to run more test tonight, but still seemed to be some grey in skin tones.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

My impression was always that LUTs are designed to allow you to shoot a flat image then edit proxies with the LUT applied so that you aren't cutting with muddy grey footage - then the colorist can go back and do a proper grade from the log-encoded source (possibly using the LUT as a starting point). From that standpoint the First Light workflow makes sense, in that it's not baking in a change to your footage, you can cut with something approximating the final look but still retain plenty of info for your grade. But if the workflow is to shoot technicolor, then render everything through a LUT and end up with contrasty footage you might as well just shoot that way in the first place.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Evan, that makes sense. I could use that on my first "cuts only" pass, then I would still bring the MOVs into AE and apply the magic. I would encode from AE to Cineform without any processing.

Still, I could also apply an effect to the master output of the NLE for quick cuts. I guess it's a tradeoff between CPU load and wallet load, since I don't own Neo. ;)

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

First, as it was expleained to me, the benefit of appling change to the Cineform format is that it is done in 10 bit color space.

Second, you can apply a film look, and then do your adjustment in the NLE. And yes you can change the .lut in post if you want.

Third, the footage on the NLE timeline is affected instantaneously, and you can have the NLE open to monitor changes instantaneously.

By the way, I am not a Cineform shill. But I think it does a great job, and some here are not giving good information about Firstlight does, and you should really find out more about it. Here is a video that explains a bit.

Introduction to FirstLight (part 1) - VIDEO TUTORIAL : cineform support

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

I did this test with my Canon 5D and Canon T2i, comparing, and using CIneform. I used a .lut in Cineform and also added 50% sharpening in post.


Note that David Newman has now posted a Cinestyle .look file for download. It looks pretty good. Download it here: http://j.mp/iSidLT

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Very pleased with the new Technicolor profile but I wouldn't use it for every project.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Chris and Olivier,

Nice footage. It certainly looks like there is a lot of dynamic range with Cinestyle. I'm not seeing a lot of aliasing in either clip. Is Cinestyle helping with that or is that the result of turning down the sharpening in camera?

Pat

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Hey Pat:

The roofs on the homes across street are exhibiting moire, which is, in my understanding, a type of aliasing. If you down load my uploaded files, it will show up better than what has been rendered by Vimeo...

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Why wouldn't you- except in those situation where no post grading is going to be done. My understanding of the Technicolor Cinestyle Picturestyle is it opens up your file closest of any Picture Profile to actual raw images--- as close as what can be attained with the codec.

What we fail to remember sometime, is that anything we add on in the camera (saturation, sharpness, contras, etc.) can be added in post, probably with a greater degree of control, and with better results. In my case, I convert the file to Cineform which actually lets you work in (if their claims are accepted) 10 bit color space. And with use of Firstlight, I can instantaneously apply what I might have wanted in the camera in a simple batch process to the original footage, but with much greater degree of control.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Hi Chris,

Since you need to grade every shot I wouldn't use the profile for less expensive projects. Personally I would but sometimes the customer doesn't have the budget.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Hehe, i think your colour correction workflow is vastly different...in quality of workflow! than most here :)

Up until now I've been working mostly with a slightly burnt in camera color + grading for natural to slightly exaggerated looks and its been fine, but for more extreme pushes of colour i do find it helps to desaturate a bit. but I'll add that i do get my burnt in camera looks first and then desaturate a bit if needed for post.

something else i noticed with respect to the inherent 5D/7D quirks, such as moire or blocking is they seem to disappear more the bigger the screen gets.

I have a little 14 inch jvc crt pro monitor that shows most flaws quite easily, that in the beginning when using the 7D it was driving me crazy when editing/colour correcting - but then i found when even on a 25 to 30 inch screen most of the minor to medium issues were gone, for the most part - on a 50 or 60 inch it feels like a movie theater. Great little cameras!

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Footage looks great Chis, I am downloading now for a closer look. I like the doorway in shadow across the street and the black bits on the car not being lost to black, as well as the sky not blowing out.

Liking this a lot.

Re: Technicolor Cinestyle Initial Tests
 

Technicolor have released a new 3D LUT that is compatible with the LUT Buddy plug-in and Apple's Color & prevents FCP crashing when the clip is rendered

CineStyle, Digital Printer Lights, Filmmaking - Technicolor

Unfortunately FCP still takes an age to render the footage to which you have applied the LUT using LUT Buddy (3-4 minutes for a 20 second clip on my 2.5GHz MBP).