C200: Apple releases Final Cut Pro X with support for Canon Raw Light

AndreeOnline

AndreeOnline

Veteran
The release note for FCPX 10.4 lists support for Canon Raw Light – with additional software from Canon.

Lot of other goodies as well.
 
I'm curious at the implementation. I doubt Canon will build in more features and controllability into an FCP X plug-in than they do in their own Cinema RAW Development. We all hope they do but I doubt they will. Fingers crossed.
 
Actually, there's less support in FCP for raw than there is in CRD.

Like Resolve, Final Cut Pro appears to be rendering the raw as Clog2 without providing any options to change raw file settings. I tested this by taking a raw clip and using Canon Raw Development to transcode to Clog2 ProRes, then I did the same thing to Clog3 ProRes. I put all three clips on a timeline in FCP and turned off the LUT for each file. The raw file and the Clog2 ProRes look identical; the Clog3 ProRes file looks different, including less noise in the shadows.

I noticed that by default, FCP applied its Clog2 LUT (that comes pre-installed with FCP) to both the raw file and the Clog2 ProRes file; it applied the pre-installed Clog3 file to the Clog3 ProRes file. I was also able to easily load new custom LUTs into FCP to use with the C200 footage.

Here some screen captures that show what I'm talking about: https://imgur.com/a/Oq1rg

I'd like more options for altering raw in FCP or Resolve or Premiere - mainly while balance - but I personally don't find it to be a big deal. Eliminating the need to transcode to ProRes is great (and raw files are actually smaller) and if I've really blown the white balance, I can still use Cinema Raw Development and the ProRes workflow.
 
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fhammond said:
Actually, there's less support in FCP for raw than there is in CRD.

Like Resolve, Final Cut Pro appears to be rendering the raw as Clog2 without providing any options to change raw file settings. I tested this by taking a raw clip and using Canon Raw Development to transcode to Clog2 ProRes, then I did the same thing to Clog3 ProRes. I put all three clips on a timeline in FCP and turned off the LUT for each file. The raw file and the Clog2 ProRes look identical; the Clog3 ProRes file looks different, including less noise in the shadows.

I noticed that by default, FCP applied its Clog2 LUT (that comes pre-installed with FCP) to both the raw file and the Clog2 ProRes file; it applied the pre-installed Clog3 file to the Clog3 ProRes file. I was also able to easily load new custom LUTs into FCP to use with the C200 footage.

Here some screen captures that show what I'm talking about: https://imgur.com/a/Oq1rg

I'd like more options for altering raw in FCP or Resolve or Premiere - mainly while balance - but I personally don't find it to be a big deal. Eliminating the need to transcode to ProRes is great (and raw files are actually smaller) and if I've really blown the white balance, I can still use Cinema Raw Development and the ProRes workflow.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the early review, you're fast, I just heard about this half an hour ago. In the middle of a client edit so I can't update to 10.4 for a couple of weeks ;-(
 
fhammond said:
Actually, there's less support in FCP for raw than there is in CRD.

Like Resolve, Final Cut Pro appears to be rendering the raw as Clog2 without providing any options to change raw file settings. I tested this by taking a raw clip and using Canon Raw Development to transcode to Clog2 ProRes, then I did the same thing to Clog3 ProRes. I put all three clips on a timeline in FCP and turned off the LUT for each file. The raw file and the Clog2 ProRes look identical; the Clog3 ProRes file looks different, including less noise in the shadows.

I noticed that by default, FCP applied its Clog2 LUT (that comes pre-installed with FCP) to both the raw file and the Clog2 ProRes file; it applied the pre-installed Clog3 file to the Clog3 ProRes file. I was also able to easily load new custom LUTs into FCP to use with the C200 footage.

Here some screen captures that show what I'm talking about: https://imgur.com/a/Oq1rg

I'd like more options for altering raw in FCP or Resolve or Premiere - mainly while balance - but I personally don't find it to be a big deal. Eliminating the need to transcode to ProRes is great (and raw files are actually smaller) and if I've really blown the white balance, I can still use Cinema Raw Development and the ProRes workflow.
Click to expand...

What are your favorite custom LUTs with C-Log 2 and 3 for FCP X?
 
fhammond said:
Like Resolve, Final Cut Pro appears to be rendering the raw as Clog2 without providing any options to change raw file settings. I tested this by taking a raw clip and using Canon Raw Development to transcode to Clog2 ProRes, then I did the same thing to Clog3 ProRes. I put all three clips on a timeline in FCP and turned off the LUT for each file. The raw file and the Clog2 ProRes look identical; the Clog3 ProRes file looks different, including less noise in the shadows.
Click to expand...

This is good news. I have the feeling Resolve DOESN'T default to any of the Log curves, but uses something else.

It makes sense to default to the flattest curve and it should be easy to transform that into anything we need. Even better would be a little panel like RED has to change the settings directly of course.

fhammond said:
…and if I've really blown the white balance, I can still use Cinema Raw Development and the ProRes workflow.
Click to expand...

Or, just use the white picker in FCPX or the white balance tools in Resolve.
 
AndreeOnline said:
This is good news. I have the feeling Resolve DOESN'T default to any of the Log curves, but uses something else.

It makes sense to default to the flattest curve and it should be easy to transform that into anything we need. Even better would be a little panel like RED has to change the settings directly of course.



Or, just use the white picker in FCPX or the white balance tools in Resolve.
Click to expand...

So if one wanted to utilize CRL in FCP X with this new plug-in as C-Log 3, there is no way to do that, short of using CRD and rendering Prores CLog 3 files out and importing them into FCP X? How would you transform them, Andree? The panel sounds like a very useful idea. Hopefully development will continue with the FCP and Canon teams to build more functionality into CRL in FCP X?
 
This is great news! Adobe could probably ignore DaVinci and Avid, but with FCPX also adding Canon Raw Light support they'll be the only major player without support and will have to add it to Premiere.
 
puredrifting said:
How would you transform them, Andree?
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I meant that once the files exist in a known gamut and gamma, color transforms can be done easily via LUTs, and Canon's standard flavours of Log are pretty widely supported. This is all still very new, so I'm hoping that whatever is missing today might get support soon (like moving between Canon Log - Canon Log 2 and 3). If not, the community might step up and create a few LUTs.

Regardless if you work with film emulations or what to go to let's say Arri's gamut and LogC, it's easier if you start with a default Canon Log. In Resolve, the .crm gets imported as something I don't quite recognise. <--- But those files are very easy to grade by eye anyway.
 
Fahnon said:
This is great news! Adobe could probably ignore DaVinci and Avid, but with FCPX also adding Canon Raw Light support they'll be the only major player without support and will have to add it to Premiere.
Click to expand...

I work at Adobe 'though not in the Premiere team. Releasing new features is more about what customers are asking for and our existing product release schedules than what the competition is doing. That isn't a comment specifically about C200 support - it's just what I've seen in the (long, long) time I've worked here.
 
puredrifting said:
So if one wanted to utilize CRL in FCP X with this new plug-in as C-Log 3, there is no way to do that, short of using CRD and rendering Prores CLog 3 files out and importing them into FCP X? How would you transform them, Andree? The panel sounds like a very useful idea. Hopefully development will continue with the FCP and Canon teams to build more functionality into CRL in FCP X?
Click to expand...

If you take a C200 raw file and put it on the timeline, FCP will apply its Clog2 LUT to the file. If you put a CRD-transcoded Clog3 file on the timeline, it'll get the Clog3 LUT. What's interesting is that both files will look exactly the same with the LUTs applied. Even the noise in the shadows - which definitely looks different with the LUTs turned off - looks exactly (even at 200%) with the LUTs on. In general that makes sense to me but I'm a bit surprised about the noise being the same.

Here are some screen captures that illustrate this: https://imgur.com/a/vmGzW

I wonder if my results would have been different in a scene with a great range of luminance values? The clip was just something I had laying around from some proxy workflow testing.
 
fhammond said:
I work at Adobe 'though not in the Premiere team. Releasing new features is more about what customers are asking for and our existing product release schedules than what the competition is doing. That isn't a comment specifically about C200 support - it's just what I've seen in the (long, long) time I've worked here.
Click to expand...

Good to know. Thanks!

Hopefully they'll see enough demand to add soon. I have no data, but would bet this camera has been a strong seller in the $5k-$10k market.
 
fhammond said:
If you take a C200 raw file and put it on the timeline, FCP will apply its Clog2 LUT to the file. If you put a CRD-transcoded Clog3 file on the timeline, it'll get the Clog3 LUT. What's interesting is that both files will look exactly the same with the LUTs applied. Even the noise in the shadows - which definitely looks different with the LUTs turned off - looks exactly (even at 200%) with the LUTs on.
Click to expand...

If you shot those clips after each other with the same exposure value it makes total sense. They will have more or less the same underlying raw data recorded. The Log encodings are just transforms on top of that same data.

raw --> Log 2 --> Rec. 709 = raw --> Log 3 --> Rec. 709

Both clips start with similar raw and end at the same target: Rec.709. Their look and feel will be similar.
 
Now that I've had time to install the plugin for FCPX, it seems the .crm files look identical in FCPX as in Resolve, and FCPX auto senses them as Canon Log 2. I'm guessing then that Resolve too defaults to Canon Log 2. That's good to know and I haven't been sure that was the case.
 
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