FS7: Gratical HD LUTs with FS-7

jasonbrooks

jasonbrooks

Well-known member
Moving over from the world of Canon C-series and 5D3 raw workflows, I'm now getting stuck into optimising my FS-7 workflow for various circumstances, ranging from short-form web promo/music/corp/etc to feature-length doc DoPing.

I'm very pleased with the overall partnership of the FS-7 and the Gratical. When used with the axis, its' form factor seems to work much more fluidly than the stock VF/tube/rail setup, and its built-in scopes circumvent FW frustrations that many feel are some of the most challenging aspects of the camera 'out of the box'.

I'm slightly confused with how the Gratical handles it's in-built LUTs in combination with it's own WFM/Histo. Basically it seems as though there's no way to monitor the original s-log2/3 video levels coming into the Gratical, and still see the VF image with a LUT applied (by the EVF, not the cam). Another thing that would be VERY useful, would be the ability to selectively enable (or disable), elements of the FS-7 data overlay, so that for example, the red 'rec' dot, duration, battery level etc, could all be shown, whilst most of the other HUD paraphernalia could be hidden.

Does anyone else here have much experience using the Gratical specifically with the FS-7, and if so, can you offer any pearls of wisdom as to how they can mesh most effectively?

With many pre-emptive thanks. - Jason
 
I also use FS7 an Gratial HD. There are some issues, zacuto told me some will be fixed in comming firmware.
1. Gratical cannot use zebra and focus assistent at the same time.
2. Graticals vecto, wf and histo exactly displays what is in the monitor. So if you use graticals zebras, waveform changes because of the zebra-light.
3. Also if you use Graticals focus assisttant (e.g. red) vecto, wf and histo change because of the red signal.
4. Gratical does not show the singal right of the lense, but only whats in the Gratical display.
5. Gratical does not support its own 3D luts only 1D luts.
6. If you change display stetting (brightness, contrast..) all scopes change because of that changings.
7. If you use FS7 monitor LUT (REC709) and SDI out 1 or HDMI you will not see FS7s scopes in Gratical and too Graticals own scopes.
8. I agree, i also did not find a proper way to disable those FS7 overlays directely in Gratical. Of cours they can be disabled in FS7 but that is not the proper way. Some overlays are really needed in
Gratical but it makes cracy when for example record duration overlay from FS7 turns in gratical in highlited red....and becouse of that Garatical waveform changes.
Not bad is in CI mode using 3D monitor Lut you can see 2 waves, the natural CI wave (without influence of the monitor LUT) and the influenced wave. You can see slog3 60% wave (whites) from FS7 and 90% whites monitor LUT from Gratical (via SDI 1 street).

I hope Zacuto will find a solution. All in all Gatical is great with Axis mini, together they are a little bit heavy.

...not a lot of perls of wisdom but same problems..

klfi
 
jasonbrooks said:
So it seems that not many people are using the Gratical in the wild yet... hmmmmm.
Click to expand...
the price dictates, it coast more then some cams.... + personally i dont like this stupid price games at the beginning, .... only 1month/3weeks/2weeks/1 week left for the special price, and then the price drop to 3100$...
 
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I had one on Order but canceled partly because i felt cheated by what anatusa said and also because of immediate complaints from Redusers that bought it about luts and waveform issues. Im already beta testing the fs7 I don't need more unfinished products. If they bring out the LT version later this year at a better price (1500) and work out the problems I will consider.
 
Hi Klfi- We are releasing a firmware this week that will fix a lot of the problems you mention. Here is a list of changes on the firmware coming out this week:
1. LUT creation is now implemented. When entering this menu, the values of any active LUT will be shown. This includes Zacuto preset LUTs, so users will now be able to tweak the LUTs we created
2. LUT export is now implemented. Exported LUTs will be saved in a .zlut file format. The .zlut format is only compatible with other Graticals.
3. Scopes can now toggle between two settings: raw input data from camera or raw input data plus Gratical applied LUTs
4. Error message is now displayed when attempting to import a 3D LUT
5. Exposure Assist (zebras) now appear at the correct setting
6. Audio Meters are now enabled on the SDI path
7. Frame lines now scale correctly with anamorphic settings
8. With anamorphic de-squeeze on and scopes active, the video image now centers toward the scopes
9. Scopes can be positioned along the top or bottom of the image
10. Custom LUTs can now be mapped to a function button
11. Red line peaking and zebras are now usable simultaneously
12. Stored frames can now be seen without requiring a video input source to be plugged in to the Gratical
13. Menu transparency setting added to the menu settings menu
14. Joystick controls will now flip when image flip is active
15. Frame Lines now have current video standard names
16. RBG setting is removed from the display calibration menu. This setting was not providing any unique adjustment that is not already possible by adjusting the individual R, G, and B color channels
17. Gratical will now correctly detect the SDI signal coming from an Odyssey
18. SDI video detection and system stability improved

Let me know if you have any questions,
Mandy, Vp of Sales & Marketing

mandy@zacuto.com
 
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icarusfilm said:
I had one on Order but canceled partly because i felt cheated by what anatusa said and also because of immediate complaints from Redusers that bought it about luts and waveform issues. Im already beta testing the fs7 I don't need more unfinished products. If they bring out the LT version later this year at a better price (1500) and work out the problems I will consider.
Click to expand...

I was probably one of those posts on DVXuser, I definitely made a comment about their marketing gimmick with dropping the price to $3100 immediately after doing their "$900 off promo". I feel like there was also a little bit of misleading with their "only 400 left!" countdown thing on their site. Oh well, the reality (in my mind) is that their specs and features surpass the OLED offerings from RED, Sony, etc. and are universal. I know people who bought the EVF for the F5/F55 and not only was it about $5000, but it can't be used on ANY other camera (not even the FS7, which shares the F5 sensor!).

I've been enjoying my Gratical. It's a bummer that they have kinks to work out, but that's (unfortunately) been the name of the game lately with almost all of my camera gear. Sony's buggy FS7, the Odyssey7Q took nearly a year to get 4K ProRes (which was advertised as a launch feature-- hell, the FS7 was almost out by the time this feature was released!) and now with the Gratical. And of course, BlackMagic and Atomos follow the same lead.

I'm going to NAB for the first time this year, I'll try to keep tabs on how many people are over-promising and under-delivering.
 
I'm using the Gratical. Beautiful clear picture and it's fine for shooting in Log, but applying one of the preset LUTs boosts reds and yellows too high, turning the image orange, which isn't helpful. Having all the graphic overlays turn red with the peaking assist makes everything a mess, so I end up using a hand to focus, switch peaking on/off on the Gratical, and switch VF info on/off on the camera body. Not having the VF data on makes things much easier but then there is no clue whatsoever whether the FS7 is recording or not, unless you stop using the viewfinder to look at the camera's tally light, which isn't really somewhere you can just glance at on the FS7. Then there's the mount, which seems sensible and certainly does the job, until you realize how convenient it is to twist a viewfinder around when you're operating in weird set ups. But that might just be me being weird :)

In short, I'm finding there is way too much time spent "operating the viewfinder" which should just be a tool to check the image, and my experience is that the LUTs aren't usable yet.
 
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Keith Jefferies said:
I'm using the Gratical. Beautiful clear picture and it's fine for shooting in Log, but applying one of the preset LUTs boosts reds and yellows too high, turning the image orange, which isn't helpful. Having all the graphic overlays turn red with the peaking assist makes everything a mess, so I end up using a hand to focus, switch peaking on/off on the Gratical, and switch VF info on/off on the camera body. Not having the VF data on makes things much easier but then there is no clue whatsoever whether the FS7 is recording or not, unless you stop using the viewfinder to look at the camera's tally light, which isn't really somewhere you can just glance at on the FS7. Then there's the mount, which seems sensible and certainly does the job, until you realize how convenient it is to twist a viewfinder around when you're operating in weird set ups. But that might just be me being weird :)

In short, I'm finding there is way too much time spent "operating the viewfinder" which should just be a tool to check the image, and my experience is that the LUTs aren't usable yet.
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Agreed. A rec tally would be a nice addition. I always have the FS7 LCD on a little arm so I can glance at it for settings/menu...

I once tried to see if I could use only the Gratical on the FS7, and realized that if you haven't already enabled the VF info for SDI 2, you're SOL for menu usage without the Sony LCD. This is a Sony issue, not Zacuto, but I feel like this is something that could bite you in the ass if you use All Files (which store camera-wide settings, making it easy to have presets) and you don't realize that one All File maybe has VF Info disabled for SDI2. You could be shooting with just the Gratical, load an All File (maybe one that happens to have VF info disabled) and bloop, all your VF info is gone from and you've got no Sony LCD to navigate the menu to get it back. Just the other day, I was wondering why there was no video input to the Gratical (via SDI) and I realized that the All File I loaded was set to SDI2 off + HDMI on (didn't realize the camera was set to this when I saved the All File).

A bit off-topic, but the above issue makes me wish Sony had a user-replacable cable on the LCD. The camera relies so heavily on that LCD, it's scary to think a damaged cable could bring you grinding to a halt.

I also agree with the LUTs looking strange for Slog3. Colors don't look correct at all.
 
Hello,
I read all of your comments related to the Gratical and I appreciate you taking the time for this feedback. We are always listening to all feedback and anything that makes sense we will incorporate. We have full time people working on implementing firmware features and are constantly trying to come up with features. I will give you my personal email and at any time anyone of you can contact me with comments, suggestions or feedback: steve@zacuto.com

With regards to all of the pricing info at the beginning. Yes, we kind of and kind of not bungled that. Once we saw the pre-orders coming in, we realized that the demand was high. We had no idea what the demand was going to be since a universal product like this was not out there. Someone commented on the fact that the price is the cost of some cameras and believe me we were aware of that and that is what made us a bit gun shy on calculating what the sales quantities would be. So we were cautious with our order quantities with our suppliers. But as soon as we upped our purchase quantities of the components we quickly realized substantial discounts. So we decided to pass them on to our customer. Even to the extent that some who originally pre-ordered the Gratical at a higher price had their price lowered and were very happy. Then we had to decide if we would come to market at $3,600 as originally advertised or come in at a lower price which we could do with all of the quantity discounts. Some are complaining that it is false advertising, I thought I was doing a service. I guess I should have keep the price high and nobody would have said anything but I went with my gut which I'm going to stand by.

I had hoped to have all of the features incorporated in the original release of the Gratical but it was just not possible. But I think it's fair having a corrected firmware within a month of shipping. It's not like some of the horror stories you are talking about. I'm very happy with this firmware and it has more features then we originally promised. We are currently working on a record light and Time Code via the SDI, I'm not making any promises but I think we are going to be successful in this next firmware update. As far as 3d LUTs, we are working on it but it will have no visual difference on an image approximately 1.75" and at our high resolution. You get to a point where your eye cannot resolve the difference when you can no longer see pixels. Much like looking at a billboard from far away and not seeing the golfball size pixels that you would see when standing right in front of it. You can convert your 3d LUTS to 1D LUTS very easily. After that we are pretty much done with all of the features we can think of and looking for ideas.

I'm sorry if our launch seemed un-professional or clunky, it was not intended that way at all. We tried to do the right thing with pricing and I stand by our decision.

Steve Weiss, director, product designer
 
Hi Steve,

Thanks for your comments, I have a couple of responses for your consideration:

zacuto said:
We are currently working on a record light and Time Code via the SDI, I'm not making any promises but I think we are going to be successful in this next firmware update.
Click to expand...

This has been a godsend, makes the GHD what I hoped it would be when I first bought it (at the same time as my FS-7), which is the ultimate EVF for this camera, as well as many other log-capable cams.

zacuto said:
As far as 3d LUTs, we are working on it but it will have no visual difference on an image approximately 1.75" and at our high resolution. You get to a point where your eye cannot resolve the difference when you can no longer see pixels. Much like looking at a billboard from far away and not seeing the golfball size pixels that you would see when standing right in front of it. You can convert your 3d LUTS to 1D LUTS very easily.
Click to expand...

I see what you're saying here re: visible difference, but I have been hoping for 3D LUT support due to one ongoing (and definitely visible) issue with LUTs in the GHD. I can see banding on smooth gradients that are not visible when applying the same LUT to the footage (1080@25fps, 10Bit XAVC BTW) in an NLE (PPro CC2015 or DVR 11). Of course this banding might still be present if 3D LUTs were supported, but then my follow-on question would be simply - why? Any thoughts on this?

zacuto said:
After that we are pretty much done with all of the features we can think of and looking for ideas.
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Here's a feature idea that I think MANY shooters would LOVE. Full-width WFM display option. Whilst I do like the ability to show several scopes beneath the VF image window, I don't think it's always (or even often) the most effective option. WFM and Histo both show essentially equivalent info, albeit in a different way. The Vectorscope is useful in a few, highly controlled situations, but rarely needs to be compared to WFM or Histo. If you've ever seen the C-100's full-width WFM, you'll see what I mean. It's frustrating in the C100, because it has to be so squashed, but thanks to the GHDs lovely 4:3 screen, it would an AMAZINGLY accurate exposure tool. No more searching for where 'that' peak is, but rather real-time instantaneous confidence of what part of the image is exposed where. Doesn't seem like it would need too much coding either, as it's essentially a display transformation, no new information/processing required. What do you think?

Here's a mock-up to clarify (image copyright Zacuto 2015 ;-):

Existing:
z-lutg.jpg
Proposed:
Full-Width-WFM.jpg

zacuto said:
I'm sorry if our launch seemed un-professional or clunky, it was not intended that way at all. We tried to do the right thing with pricing and I stand by our decision.
Click to expand...

Didn't seem either of those things to me. Perhaps slightly rushed (which seems par for the course these days, especially with ground-breaking kit, which this was/is). I've been VERY pleased with your customer service over the past five years, and am overall a happy GHD buyer.

Looking forward to your thoughts. Cheers,

jason
 
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