D90 to Apple Color Workflow

O

Oedipax

Well-known member
I've seen several references to people having CC'ed their D90 footage in Color, but it's a no-go for me. Can anyone post their process for making it work? All I get are red X's in Color once I send my sequence to Color (I've tried manually exporting an XML file as well, same result).

My guess is that Color can't work with the AVI files straight out of the D90, so you have to transcode to something else first. ProRes should work. Then the question becomes, if I transcode to ProRes before editing, will the D90 Rescaler plugin still work properly in FCP? I guess as long as I don't resize the image when transcoding and apply the filter in FCP, then export to Color, it might work out. What about a way to bake in the D90 rescale filter when doing the ProRes conversion? That would save a step...

Curious to hear what everyone else is doing, though.
 
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You can do the stairstep removal afterwards, but any filters that affect several pixels, like diffusion and so on, will get screwed up. You can always import all the clips to a prores timeline, apply the rescaler, and export a new master. Set markers at the edits before that so you can split it into subclips after reimporting.
 
Color will not work with AVI files. You need to transcode into RS422 .mov files. There are lots of reasons why you'll get better results from this workflow, including the ability to use Color for CC.

Here's a link to a blog post with more details, pix, etc. - http://dslrhd.com/?p=85

-a-
 
What other reasons? To me it always seemed like transcoding could only decrease the quality or best case preserve it. You'll get plenty of workflow advantages for sure but i don't see any quality improvement. /matt
 
In my tests, I see an increased dynamic range and increased saturation. Whites and blacks both increased by 5% depending on the scene. Color saturation increased about the same - again depending on the scene. I'm sure there are artifacts introduced by transcoding but - to my eye - the footage has more depth. I also found that details that were blended into the background became visible through the processing - especially when rendered using your filters.

RS422 footage plays smoother in FCP (real time) and seems to handle more RT filters without needing to be rendered.

An FCP timeline with nothing but 720p RS422 footage on it renders much faster than a mixed time line. I haven't compared it to an AVI only timeline for render speed.

From my perspective, Color is a must-have. So all of these are "extra" benefits. I'm not an expert grader but the end result of ensuring that every clip looks as good as possible makes it an essential part of my workflow. Not to mention using the effects side of Color to enhance a scene.

I've got a comparison of AVI to RS422 on my blog and on Vimeo. I've also posted the rest of the workflow - rendering to RS422 no filters, then with your D90 Resizer and then with your Smooth-Sharp filters. The results are clearly visible in each case though you may need to download the file and run it side by side for best results.

AVI - http://vimeo.com/2631542
RS422 - http://vimeo.com/2631594
D90 Resizer render - http://vimeo.com/2632031
D90 Res + Smooth-Sharp render - http://vimeo.com/2632110

-a-

PS - thank you for creating the Too Much Too Soon FCP filter set - it's indispensable.
 
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A bit off topic, but when I import my clips into final cut pro, how do I set up the sequence settings,
(edit frame rate) settings properly? As it is now, when I click on the sequence/settings, it says the sequence is 29.764 and the pixel aspect is 1440x1080 or whatever. I thought that FCP automatically changed and reconfigured the timeline when you put a clip in there. In fact, it asks, and I click okay, but.....
It lets me edit the footage, but I'm getting duplicate frames every 5th or so.
Can you please help out?
 
I'm using FCP 6.0.5 and it dose NOT recognize avi files. At least I've not been able to get it to work. I create a prores422 time line.
 
hepabst said:
I'm using FCP 6.0.5 and it dose NOT recognize avi files. At least I've not been able to get it to work. I create a prores422 time line.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I just did that too. I'm testing it out. square pixel. 1280x720. Prores HQ. Frame Rate 24. I saved a small clip to my desktop as a preset.
 
You need to set the rt to unlimited to get realtime playback. As for recognizing avi files you must be doing something wrong. It should work just fine.
 
brunsona said:
to my eye - the footage has more depth.
Click to expand...
well that's a clear indicator that you've lost some quality, a perfect conversion should be invisible. Probably just a gamma conversion though, not a huge problem, and more importantly if it gives you the results you want it's awesome regardless.
PS - thank you for creating the Too Much Too Soon FCP filter set - it's indispensable.
Click to expand...

You're welcome. And thanks for you donation, i really appreciate it.

/matt
 
Its not changing the settings from 29.976 etc.. to the right settings when I put a clip in a new sequence. And last night, even with my preset sequence of 24p, I ended up with duplicate frames every 3,4, frames.
 
Okay, so I realized ( it should have been obvious ) that my new sequence preset works fine.
settings:
square pixel
ProRes HQ,
24
1280x720 (custom)
...........
The reason I get duplicate frames is that I'm slowing down the clip to 65 percent, duh.
If I let the clips play regular speed everything is fine.
So, just remember that if you slow down your clips, it is normal to get some duplicate frames here and there. It should have been obvious, after all, since slowing down clips has to create duplicate frames.
I hope that this helps some other people that might have run into this problem.
Anyhow, if you use the settings I listed above, you will definitely get the proper results in good quality.
 
Hmm, so the only way to get your D90 footage to Color is you select the ProRes preset, then do your editing them export it and THEN only you can do your grading and correction in Color? Don't know much about FCP or Color but to me it seems kind of a hassle. No way to do your CC/grading while editing in FCP? "While" as in when you're doing the editing in FCP and then jump to Color, do your thing and then jump back to FCP to do whatever else needs to be done? Or does such a workflow make no sense at all?

Or am I absolutely missing something here. Sorry, if I am.
 
it's very simple: color doesn't do avi so you have to convert to mov at some point. before, during or after editing is your choice. i tend to do it after since i work with features and typically don't have disk space to convert everything, but to get a more conventional workflow as you're used to it's better to do it first, before you do anything else. just batch all of it in mpeg streamclip and treat the mov's as your new originals.
 
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