F55: First Time

starcentral said:
Hi Adam,

Yes the F55 has a different CFA on it which gives it an extended gamut, according to Sony's marketing "exceeding the color space of even film" and "adhering to the ACES specification". Anyway, to activate it you have to enable it under "color space" in "base setting" buried deep in the System menu option.

The F5 does not have an extended color gamut and there would be nothing to replace it since the F5 uses a CFA more like the F3 which is more within REC709 color space.
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Thank you Dennis, wow you are fast. I just found this thread on the S-Gamut option on the F5, so it seems it has it, but because the CFA is different on the 2 cams it won't help with anything other than reducing chroma clipping:

nweaver wrote: "The SLog2 LUTs out there are expecting the reduced chroma of SGamut, so you might as well use it. F5's S-Gamut isn't going to fill out the gamut that can be filled out by the 65 and 55, but it will help reduce channel clipping, so it's still a win."

 
Copperplate said:
Thank you Dennis, wow you are fast. I just found this thread on the S-Gamut option on the F5, so it seems it has it, but because the CFA is different on the 2 cams it won't help with anything other than reducing chroma clipping:

nweaver wrote: "The SLog2 LUTs out there are expecting the reduced chroma of SGamut, so you might as well use it. F5's S-Gamut isn't going to fill out the gamut that can be filled out by the 65 and 55, but it will help reduce channel clipping, so it's still a win."
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Wow I did not know s-gamut option was available on the F5 and it seems perhaps there might still be some benefits of enabling it.


Admit One said:
S-Log2 transposes the linear values of the sensor to log values so that a greater range of stops can be stored.
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This is typically one of the effects of slog/slog2 but I'd say the real benefit of slog is that by providing more equal quantization of data between stops you end up with more flexibility in your grading process.
 
starcentral said:
The F5 does not have an extended color gamut...
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Sony released a CIE 1931 chromaticity diagram for the F55/65 in their advertising. While they have stated the color gamut for the F55 is wider than for the F5, they have not, to my knowledge, specified by how much.

Do you have any specific information about the native color gamut on the F5?

Cheers.
 
Taken from an entry I wrote on F5/F55 Forums:

I would recommend Resolve. Remember the free Lite vesion of Resolve will open 4k XAVC files and render them out to HD resolution without restrictions. The full version will let you output 2k and 4k files.

This works for creating high quality conversions, dailies, or proxy files for editing. Whatever you need.


IMPORTING AND CRITICAL SETTINGS
• Import your MXF files you want to convert in the MEDIA POOL section of Resolve. (Drag from the file explorer area). Once ALL your clips are down below select ALL OF THEM, right click and review the CLIP SETTINGS. Particularly you want to check that the DATA LEVELS are set to 0-1024 instead of AUTOMATIC. Now if these are really only for purpose of DAILIES you can select 64-940. If you shot slog2, 64-940 can remove a bit of that "slog2" look so directors don't freak out too much over a "pure" looking slog2 image. If you are GRADING or want to preserve the original slog2 look then definitely chose 0-1024.

• Click on SETTINGS (lower left) and check that your IMAGE SCALING is setup how you want. If you shot in 4k mode and outputting to HD you will end up with a thin black bar at the top and bottom of your video files if you chose "scale entire image to fit". For going 4k to HD I usually select "scale full frame with crop" so that the image fills the entire frame. Note however this does chop off some pixels from left and right sides.

• If you are scaling any footage (ie: 4k to 2k or 4k to HD) under IMAGE SCALING you can select between various filters that will increase/decrease quality or the scale but also increase/decrease rendering times.

• Also under CAMERA RAW options. If you shot in slog2 + sgamut then select SONY RAW, Decode Quality: Full Resolution, Decode Using: Project, Color Space: sgamut, Gamma:slog2.

OUTPUTING THE FILES
• Once you are ready to output all your clips select the DELIVERY window in RESOLVE.

• This took me 532 hours to figure out... to select ALL the CLIPS for your output go down to the timeline and on the timeline BAR right click and select ALL CLIPS. Sadly this took me forever to figure out, and I do mean forever.

• Now you need to chose your file output settings. For CODEC you might want Quicktime H.264 or Quicktime MPEG which are pretty good and can play on most PC or MAC computers. Otherwise there are various ProRes and Cineform options as well.

• Note your frame rate setting, compression quality setting, and don't forget to check the AUDIO box if you want to include SOUND in your output files.

• IMPORTANT one here: Under "SET TO VIDEO OR DATA LEVEL" you want to select "Normally scaled legal video" if you want 64-940 data levels, or "Uncaled full range data" for 0-1024 levels.

• If you want all your clips as SEPARATE video files there is a check box for INDIVIDUAL SOURCE CLIPS by the RENDER TIMELINE AS option. For dailies maybe you want one continous file, but I usually keep all of them separate so they can be easily referenced by unique filename if needed.

• Select WHERE you want the files to save to. If you don't pick this you can not start the job.

• There is a checkbox to keep the original source filename. I recommend this option again so clips can be referenced back to the originals if needed. Also keeping the same file names has benefits if you plan to do any round trip editing wiith 3rd party software and back into Resolve for grading, etc..

• Once you are done setting up your output job, select ADD JOB.

• Once you are ready, START the job and wait several minutes to hours to days depending on how many clips you have and how long they are (and how powerful your computer is).
 
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I would like the editors to edit it with the best file possible (ProRes 4444 or HQ?) then after they finish the edit, export it (what format is the best for Da Vinci) and I can color grade in Da Vinci. I assume the 1080p footage will hold up quite nicely in anything I give it. I won't be able to do 2K. I could also use Speedgrade so I can keep the 4K and export how I would like.
 
Are you trying to convert your F55 to ProRes for editing? Or trying to convert your finished edited master project to ProRes from another format?

Another way to get ProRes files is using Final Cut Pro. I've done that for films which were only accepted as ProRes files for theatre projection and it worked pretty well. Except the files sizes get seriously huge fast.
 
Converting the original F55 MXF files into ProRes so our lovely Final Cut editor can use the footage. I really hate transcoding lol
 
OK I just read your post #48.

There are two ways I've used to incorporate Davinci into your workflow, one is to do your edit with the original high quality files (4k MXF from F55) in Premiere CC and then when you are ready export the project as an XML file an import that XML into Davinci and grade away and you can do your final output from it. You could have problems however with dissolves, titles, post crops or zooms... so generally I don't do it this way.

Instead, what you can do is still import your XML into DaVinci and do your grading on your clips, but when it comes time to output it... output it as "individual clips" with the same file name as the source clips from the "delivery" page. Then, either relink your Adobe edit project to the new set of grade files from within Premiere, or trick Premiere by renaming the folders of your old files and new graded files so premiere thinks the path is the same. When you open Premiere, your timeline will all be there using your new graded files. Your dissolves, titles, and other crazy things you did on your timeline will be in tact.

What this video, it does a great job of explaining how to do a "round trip" from Premiere to DaVinci and back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0S2MJT9wDY
 
Chris Langer said:
Converting the original F55 MXF files into ProRes so our lovely Final Cut editor can use the footage. I really hate transcoding lol
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The thing is if you use the "round trip" method you can just transcode your F55 MXF 4k files into HD QuickTime H.264 with the "best quality" settings and 3.5 hours will only be around 12GB in size. This edits like a breeze and later your editor can send you the XML file so you can grade the clips in Davinci and then replace the ones Premiere thinks it was using with the new graded ones when you are ready to output the final film.

The other reason I like to transcode into H.264 is because you can edit it with older software as well, you don't necessarily need Premiere CC just because it can open XAVC files natively...
 
Thanks a ton for helping me out with this! I will pass along the information and hopefully everything works out alright!
 
The video Starcentral recommends is an excellent one for anyone who wants to use Resolve with Premiere Pro. It also indicates how counter-intuitive and confusing the process can be. However, once you figure it out the process is relatively easy. I would recommend making a cheat sheet of the key steps unless you are in Resolve on a daily basis.

The big thing this approach addresses is Premiere Pro or Resolve's inability to properly manage files in terms of "Reel Number" (and possibly timecode) when exporting XML for other NLEs and Color Correction Software. If you have problems with clips not showing up in Resolve after doing an XML export from PPro to Resolve, this methodology will solve this problem by first creating proxies in Resolve, exporting XML from Resolve, importing the resultant XML into Premiere Pro, working with those proxies & XML and then spit it out via XML back to Resolve for color correction.
 
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Has any of this changed with the release of PPro CC? I have downloaded it but am out of the country and don't have the time to delve into it.?

Ned
 
I am not on PPro CC. I intend to move to AVID MC in the next month or two.

By happenstance this morning, I checked the Blackmagic Design Product update page for Resolve and discovered it was bumped up to version 9.1.5 on July 12th... yesterday.

Here is what's mentioned in the Read Me on the changes to Resolve since the last update:

Code: 
What's new in DaVinci Resolve 9.1.5


• Support for Avid Media Composer 7.0 round-trip
• Support for reel names from FCPX XML
• Support for Avid EuControl Software Package Version 3.0
• Improved handling of multi-track Quicktime audio files
• Improved DNG format support
• General performance and stability improvements

Resolve has added support for Reel Names but curiously they say it is for FCPX's XML. Don't have time to run Resolve and Premiere through it's paces today to find out if this fixes the "roundtrip" issues between PPro & Resolve.
 
According to Adobe, Pro CC still has the XML export feature. http://www.adobe.com/ca/products/premiere/features.html

Failing the ability to do a roundtrip workflow or if folks don't want to edit proxy files created from Davinci so that the round-trip goes smoother, you can just bring all the source clips into Resolve and grade away then upon exporting use the original source file name and later replace the source non-graded files used in your edit with the new ones. What I would actually do is simply rename folders so I'm not actually copy+pasting any files. The disadvantage to this method is you are not getting the edit in Resolve so it can be harder to match cuts without seeing them side by side.

Anyway, XML is a great feature and I've used the roundtrip method several times without any complaints. Working with proxy files for editing lets me give my editor hours and hours of footage that overall can be pretty small (12GB for 3.5 hours of HD H.264 footage). Much easier than passing around original 4k MXF files which can tax some older systems, and really for editing purposes proxy are greeeeeat.
 
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