Grading S-Log and Non S-Log form cards

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Backfocus92

Active member
How are you grading your footage shot directly to the SxS cards? I know several people are shooting S-Log and Non S-Log straight to the cards without an external recorder. Are you guys using Resolve to grade, or something else? If you are using Resolve, are you trans-coding you footage to a different codec first?

I am not a colorist, just and shooter and editor, but I have someone who does all my bigger budget color correction. We were testing a few things out for some up-coming shoots, that I want to shoot straight to the cards, so the camera can stay compact and light weight, the shots require it, very tight spaces. He was telling me that he can not get the footage shot to the cards to recognize in Resolve. I have not played around with it much, but just curious if we were missing something. I am pretty sure he has the last version before the new version 9 that just came out. Normally I recorder to an external recorder via Pro-Res and have had no problems.

Walk me through your process.
 
I have been grading S-Log (CBk-RGB version)both from the SxS cards as well as a Samurai SSD. My NLE is Avid Symphony 6 and I do most of the grading in this software after the files have been transcoded to DNxHD. I have used Resolve Light and have not experienced any major issues moving the timeline from Symphony into Resolve ... getting them back into Avid is, however, occasionally problematic. I am told that the latest version of Symphony—6.5—to a great extent mitigates that difficulty. That said, I have not tried to move files directly from the SxS cards into Resolve, if that's what you were attempting to do.
 
I use Adobe After Effects, but lately I can get away with some standard video filters built right into my editing software; Adobe Premiere CS6.

I use to spend hours trying to "grade" footage and look for the perfect blend of everything by playing with curves, saturation, 3-way color correctors, etc... now, with SLOG to SXS I apply a very gentle s-curve using curves on the main RGB channel to remove the "s-log" look and the clips instantly look great. After, if I want to alter a channel of color you can go back in your curves and just select the channel of what you want to adjust.

Obviously there is more advanced correction where you change color based on your tones, and that can really start producing some nice results, etc.. but as far as software I have never tried or used Resolve or Symphony but in the end I think it can all more or less do the same job. Some tools just have better features.. for example I know Final Cut has a color matching feature, that could be handy for a 1000 things.
 
Thanks guys. Star good find on the thread. I will play around with re-wrapping, I prefer to keep everything in the original format, but I could do that for a few spots. I mostly use Final Cut and have been slowly moving over to Premier. As for color correction there are few other software programs that have the power and easy of Resolve.
 
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