Getting a Flat image for CC HVX

E

edgarmetro

New member
Hey All,
So I wanted to get a pretty flat image out of my hvx for color correcting in post.
Other than the cine d setting, are there any other ways to achieve this.
I tried blasting the master ped and it looks pretty flat but im not sure if this is the way to go and or if it will effect anything else...
please help if you can.
thanks.
 
The main problem going to FLAT is a 10-bits camera limit. It is not RAW and after stretching back your FLAT footage you possibly will get a huge color noise. Especially in the shadows area. Problem number two is the sensitivity of a sensor. I always try to use the zebra tool to avoid clips of highlights. Then I try to stretch shadows because avoiding of highlights makes my image dark. So after that I always spot the color noise in the shadow areas but the overal picture "look" gets better of course. Black balancing helps a bit here but not so much.
I always use the Cine-D preset now so the idea of creating of a new FLAT preset excites me now. The main thing I scare is losing color data. We have no RAW files here and losing any data is like a crime. But the idea is good enought to try.
 
I have no idea why a desaturated image is better to grade than an one that is closer to what you actually want the picture to look like, as long as you don't blow out any of the color channels? Now for high contrast scenes, I could see using a lower contrast setting w/ flatter gamma curve towards the top end to increase the DR. But I see lots footage that's nowhere near blown out that people shot that way so it would be easier to grade. And I just wonder why they do that?
 
BobbyMurcerFan said:
I have no idea why a desaturated image is better to grade than an one that is closer to what you actually want the picture to look like...
Click to expand...

It is not better. It is even poorer than the optimal because stretching of colors makes noise greater. I thing the main 2 reasons why ppl doing this are next:
1. Avoiding clipping of individual color channels. Zebra tool not indicates when only one color channel clips.
2. People likes to make some actions with the pictures. It is a mental effect. "I am using this brand new technology and this is the reason why my pictures looks better than usual".
 
Just tested some different scene settings. And you know? We have no tool for getting a FLAT imge by the right way. We need some kind of curves to get it. So in shadows areas the only tool is MPED and in the highlights area - KNEE and a NEWS GAMMA. Really we have no any settings to get something even similiar to curves.
I tried to play with the MPED using 0, +5, +10 and +15 parameters. After that I looked at my RGB PARADE and VECTROSCOPE and picture color losts resolution of color when MPED goes up. This is wrong way. After that I tried to stretch my color in AE to get the same RGB parade in all of the test clips. They are really looks identical on the screen but the minor noise gained from the high MPED settings when stretched to normal color.
So in conclusion I found that using of MPED is a useless thing. Meanwhile lowering the colors saturatuin a bit and shifting colors to more yellow palette I killed the damn blue horrible noise and protect my color channels from occasional clipping (by the cost of the small color resolution of course)! Thats a tiny victory :)
 
Does MPED stand for master pedestal? If it does, then wouldn't raising MPED raise the black level of the recorded image? And isn't that contracting the range, not expanding it? And isn't that what you don't want to do?

Wow, I've never made a post of only questions before, have I?
 
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