Adventures in the PSE

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
Hey James,

I made a small video yesterday with your R303s0923L picture style, it's a little too compressed so quality is not exceptionnal.

 
Thanks for sharing that. I love your unhurried observances. It really helped me contemplate the intricacies of society and daily life. How long have you been in Japan? I've been to China. Different countries, but saw some similarities. It brought some memories back to me.


The picture style was actually developed for ENG, doc, fast turn around type work, that can benefit from a contrasty, yet natural look, that remains flexible for a variety of scenarios.
 
I am in Japan for 1 month now but I will stay until february.

It was just a quick shot, i just went around my flat and tried some stuff but I will try to do something better next time !

I used Mpeg streamclip at 70% quality @ 846x480 because my PC can't read Full HD video !
 
Last edited:
Haha, good work around. Regardless of quality, it is very resourceful. Looking forward to more.

I'm currently testing out some more extreme graded in-camera looks. Easy to make a contrasty image, just difficult finding the right balance, and remedying saturation anomalies.
 
Cool. That looks great. I saw it briefly this morning running out the door to a gig, but now being able to sit and take it in, it really made me feel transported.

It gave me some great ideas for a documentary coming up next year.
 
EDIT: currently all my links are down. I will see about adding new links. Check back on the page one post one of this thread later.


Sorry about that, the link got broken. Fixed.

IN_0701, is for very warm white balance situations, and reduces the orange skin glow quite a bit. Not sure how well it will work for other lighting situations. It's still in early stages. Not a pro tool yet, but playing around with what is possible.
 
Last edited:
Once the exposure is reduced, the contrast and saturation really starts to show!
 
Screen Shot 2011-12-06 at 9.56.47 AM.jpg scenes like this can be difficult to resolve without custom white balancing. Looks like he is using neutral picture style, but main fault is with the white balance, or the color of his lights.
 
MaKsOZ,

I was noticing some extra saturation on some of the colorful jackets. Did you like the way it looks in the original video?

Because contrast was added to the picture style, colors that are already heavily saturated begin to look too saturated. I may work with it a bit. What did you think, looking at the original video?
 
James0b57 said:
MaKsOZ,

I was noticing some extra saturation on some of the colorful jackets. Did you like the way it looks in the original video?

Because contrast was added to the picture style, colors that are already heavily saturated begin to look too saturated. I may work with it a bit. What did you think, looking at the original video?
Click to expand...

Hi James,

my main problem is that my computer can't read the full HD video file from the canon, it's way too slow, so I have to recompress every time to watch them smoothly but maybe during the process it changes the color saturation ( because if i play the video in the camera it looks fine, but screen is too small to have a good judgement imo ).
 
How difficult would it be to create a picture profile that more closely resembles a different camera?

Had a crazy idea in this thread:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?269817-Combining-with-Canon-footage.

Some folks are dabbling with both a Panasonic GH2 and a Canon DSLR (myself included), who want to combine footage.
It would be interesting to see if we can create a profile that makes combining footage in post easier.

I'm assuming it would be easier to make the Canon match the GH2 than vice versa. :)
 
after a few adventures with different picture styles, I have recently resorted to using technicolor cinestyle with high saturation and different degrees of contrast, depending on how much DR I need in each situation: http://www.similaar.com/foto/picturestyles/picturestyles.html - I came upon this ides on these forums, and I'd be curious to see if other tweakers have tried something similar, what disadvantages you found, and which other options you'd suggest
 
Hi Norman,

Technicolor is not giving more dynamic range, it is bringing the camera's dynamic range into a more post friendly range, because of the codecs compression. The idea of more or less DR is a nice simplistic way to describe it to a client, or producer, but not to a fellow DP, or student, or colleague. It is misinformation.


I tried playing around like that with Technicolor, and I think it is a pretty good workflow. It would have been far better for technicolor to make a second version with a more moderate curve. But they didn't, sadly.

This image, is cinestyle at contrast "0" rather than "-4". Other picture styles are in that picture set for comparison.
6373044617_c3dbae52c5_z.jpg

The only potential issue I saw with adding contrast, was some saturation anomalies, and occasional unnatural looking gradation. In the picture in the link, the shadow between her eye and hair is a bit too pink.
Remember you are applying a generic S-curve on top of the cinestyle curve, when adding contrast.

The curve on cinestyle is a great. It is the only style that is able to raise the black levels. Marvel, super flat, and all of those, change shadow levels, but the black point remains the same. So, I love the curve on cinestyle. My main issue with cinestyle, is that is doesn't fix skin tone issues for me. Since, cinestyle is used in a post heavy production workflow, this may not be an issue for some, but few people actually end up fixing skin tone in the end. So, if you have the time to apply custom animated mattes, and selective color correction, then cinestyle cannot be beat.

My workflow does not work well with a post heavy end. Beyond animated circle masks and 4 level curve adjustments, I do not do much else grading wise. So, my choice for not using cinestyle with added contrast is about the most useless thing I could do for myself, but if your workflow uses cinestyle, than adding a little contrast for the occasional shot is probably a good thing.
 
Last edited:
MaKsOZ said:
Hi James,

my main problem is that my computer can't read the full HD video file from the canon, it's way too slow, so I have to recompress every time to watch them smoothly but maybe during the process it changes the color saturation ( because if i play the video in the camera it looks fine, but screen is too small to have a good judgement imo ).
Click to expand...

Okay, I see. I sure do like your work ethic. It is almost like developing your own film! =)

I'll do some more test with the higher contrast styles. They do have that potential to add weird saturation. It may require some saturation reduction in the shadows.

Thanks for the update.
 
M. Gilden said:
How difficult would it be to create a picture profile that more closely resembles a different camera?

Had a crazy idea in this thread:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?269817-Combining-with-Canon-footage.

Some folks are dabbling with both a Panasonic GH2 and a Canon DSLR (myself included), who want to combine footage.
It would be interesting to see if we can create a profile that makes combining footage in post easier.

I'm assuming it would be easier to make the Canon match the GH2 than vice versa. :)
Click to expand...

Haha, actually, I first got into using the PSE, because I wanted to match Canon to Nikon. I think that is a possibility, for sure. I do not have a GH2, nor do I have access to one. But if someone were to work on it, I would be able to help in analyzing footage(via dropbox), or helping in finding PSE work arounds.

Even if it only got us 70% of the way there, it would make post production matching far less difficult.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top