GH4 How should GH4 footage be saturated?

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gh4_storyteller

Active member
Most guides, including Andrew Reid's GH4 Shooter's Guide, say that you should crank down saturation to -5 on Cine-D. But wouldn't this be counterintuitive for color grading? Since the GH4 is 8-bit 4:2:0, you can't push the saturation too far in post. So wouldn't adding a lot saturation in post be worse than removing it? I've been doing a lot of heavy color grading recently and I've noticed some nasty blockiness in certain areas of the image when saturation is pushed.

I know that you can reduce the chance of certain colors clipping by turning down saturation in camera, but I have yet to see a significant advantage from this. Maybe I'm missing some other added benefit?
 
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It should be saturated exactly as much as you want for the look you're attempting to achieve. If somebody says you're wrong, they're wrong. Unless you're wrong, because you're only doing what somebody else said was right, then you both may be wrong. But so long as you know that everybody is likely wrong because you're within your rights to call them wrong for whatever is right for you, you'll be right.

-5 sat is Cine-D looks crappy, by the way, so ignore that. Unless I'm wrong.
 
In my experience, when shooting in 8-Bit 4:2:0, I want the original footage to be as close to the final image as possible for the exact reason you described. The less that color grading pushes the compressed footage, the better the final image quality.

Now, if you're recording externally at 10-Bit 4:2:2 on the Atomos Shogun or something similar, then by all means crank down the saturation and shoot as flat as possible. But for regular GH4 footage, you generally want to mess with it as little as possible.
 
I wind down sharpness to -2, and NR to -3 when shooting in cine D, to an atomos ninja blade. Everything else is flat, because this camera isn't a log camera.
 
I agree Jaime and mr bill. However, I do enjoy heavily grading my GH4 footage. I come from a graphics design background, so I get a kick out of manipulating the image to get an un-realistic color scheme.

And mcbob... I had to read your post six times before I could understand what you said. But you're right, I think. :tongue:
 
Saturation on certain picture profiles for some cameras can cause cause clipping to some colors. This is a good reason to dial down saturation if you're using such a picture profile. However, many of the recommendations seem to come from wanting to mimic the output of raw/log footage from other cameras.

Unfortunately, while the color data in a raw file can be manipulated to a fair degree, you don't have nearly as much range when working with highly-compressed codecs like the GH4's.

You can always dial down saturation in post, but adding color information back after throwing it away is not as doable. If your camera's picture profile is not clipping colors due to oversaturation, then I don't see a good reason to turn down saturation in-camera if you plan to make further adjustments in post.
 
Yep agree with the above, the number of times I have seen Cine-D -5,-5,-5 etc...is tragic, its more or less a situation thats come about by people posting (this is the best setting) and others just following without experimenting and seeing what actually works best for them.
That said...personally I do not like winding the crap out of the saturation and sharpness, I just dont like how it looks that much.
 
Daniel Brown said:
I agree Jaime and mr bill. However, I do enjoy heavily grading my GH4 footage. I come from a graphics design background, so I get a kick out of manipulating the image to get an un-realistic color scheme.
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Oh, by all means you should absolutely color grade as much as you want to get the desired result! I'm just saying that the best results (regardless of how much you color grade) will come from shooting as close to the final look as possible. Don't de-saturate in camera if you want saturated colors in the final. But if you want it de-saturated in the final, then de-saturate it in camera first. Then adjust in post.
 
I drop the saturation in post to about 80 percent then color grade. A lot of times that is fine but I have headroom if I want to take it back up. I shoot with the saturation at 0
 
P13 said:
I've read so many people say to use Cine-D on the GH4 and to dial the saturation down to -5, so I've recently used the GH4 for the first time with these settings and I'm not enjoying the experience in post of trying to add life back to the video. I also saw this blog on the subject this week: http://blog.josephmoore.name/2014/11/05/why-cine-d-sucks/
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Good Info. Standard looks the best to me and I agree that there is no additional dynamic range gained by using a flat setting.
 
newzhack said:
Good Info. Standard looks the best to me and I agree that there is no additional dynamic range gained by using a flat setting.
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I still like shooting Cine-D on the GH4. It can give you nice room to adjust the color without having to deal with too much of a baked-in look. Just don't mess with saturation in camera.
 
mcbob said:
It should be saturated exactly as much as you want for the look you're attempting to achieve. If somebody says you're wrong, they're wrong. Unless you're wrong, because you're only doing what somebody else said was right, then you both may be wrong. But so long as you know that everybody is likely wrong because you're within your rights to call them wrong for whatever is right for you, you'll be right.

-5 sat is Cine-D looks crappy, by the way, so ignore that. Unless I'm wrong.
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That may be the rightest answer I've ever seen to a forum post, ever.
 
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