Canon to Panasonic - Where does one begin?
 

Hello Everyone,

I once read an article a while ago where someone had done a table that listed who to a canon camera and changes its settings to best match those of a beautiful Panasonic. Since then I can no longer find that article and I was wondering if anybody has a link to it or knows of someone else who has written up an article like this?

At my job there using the Canon XH A1 and they want the gamma settings and overall look to match that of a Panasonic HPX500. So they sent me on a mission to find out.

Any help or guidance would be appreciated. Thank you

Bryan

This thread might offer some insights:

XH-A1 gamma setting?
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=107691

Hard to say but to do this right would be both cameras next to each other and a good waveform equipped monitor.

Noah

THank You
 

Thank you all for the reply and guidanace. Greatly appreciated.

Bryan,

Just keep in mind that the cameras are shooting 2 different formats with different color spaces; HDV 4:2:0 vs. DVCPRO 4:2:2. You can boost gamma, play with knee, pedestal etc but you'll never get an exact match because the Panny is recording more color. There's no way to make up for that "0" in HDV, it's just not there hence it will appear a little more "cooler" and less contrasty in certain lighting situations especially outdoors.

Try www.adamwilt.com to fully understand the difference between these color spaces and you'll understand what I'm referring to.

would this be easier?

what if instead you attempted to match the panasonic video 4:2:2 with the "cooler" look of the canon 4:2:0?

It's always easier to knock something down than try to artificially build something up, so in fact yes, trying to match the Panny to Canon would be the way to go, not the other way.

In fact you could simplify the process by using Compressor to re-encode all your HVX clips into the exact HDV timeline specs that you want. Simply take any clip in your Final Cut browser, send it to Compressor and manually select an HDV output with the frame-rate that matches the Canon and voila, you'd have a near-match to HDV color specs. Be sure to turn-on "Frame Controls" to handle the retiming of the clips if there is a mis-match in frame rates at all; it will take longer to create the encode but the results would be far better.

Then you can simply take those re-encoded clips and drag-n-drop onto an HDV timeline and edit to your hearts content.

However the best method would be to import all your HDV clips into ProRes 422 then re-encode the HVX clips into ProRes also; this will create the most natural-looking color match without manually using the 3-Way Color Corrector on every HVX clip.

No matter how you do it it's going to be a lengthy, time-consuming process to get the clips to be as close to a near-match as possible, but those are the best methods available. That is without spending thousands of dollars having a professional color-grader do it for you. (^_^)

Look at Noah's advice again, setting up the two cameras side-by-side with monitors to evaluate is the best way to match. Would be a nightmare to do in post, not to mention the results wouldn't be as good as color timing in-camera.

BTW, I believe Canon users have already gone to the trouble of creating a custom preset to emulate those Panasonics- you can find it somewhere on the A1 forum here. That might suffice, depending on your needs.