I get that it's better than importing with Final Cut Pro but I have adobe premiere and it can handle my gh2 files natively. But I've heard 5dtoRgB handles color better (gamma or whatever). Is that true? Is it better to convert to ProRes than to just edit natively? I have a pretty fast machine with CUDA enabled so I'm not wanting for speed.
GH2 Is there a reason to use 5DtoRGb on Windows?
- Thread starter mattman1
- Start date
ErikTande
Well-known member
Yeah, I was wondering that too. It seems to me like it just lowers the contrast of the image, which can be done with a simple flat curves, like pictured below. Or is it doing something more than that?
PaPa
Major Contributor
Technically because you are transfering your file into 10 bit color space, you can potentially get better results. But it doesn't magically turn your 8 bit image into a 10 bit image and create those extra shades. But it is more color correcting friendly and also runs smoother. It's a very friendly file format.
PaPa
Major Contributor
Going to post some images showing the benefits. I'm really pixel peeping here, but the differences are clear from the benefits of the 10 bit converted 5DtoRGB stuff. I can see this being the most important in keying.
I'm not going to say which one is which, but the differences speak for themselves ( hint hint, notice the red channel )
Original file was given contrast -13 and then the same curve applied to both the 5D to RGB footage and the original.
open tabs to compare side by side. 400% crop. If you look closely, the same one thats better on the red channel is also slightly better with breaking up the macro blocking and also breaks up the banding ( look at the yellow light against the wall closely ) We are really peeping here though. But still, facts are facts and this helps us determine the best.
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/8863/pixelpeepred01.jpg
http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/1936/pixelpeepred02.jpg
I'm not going to say which one is which, but the differences speak for themselves ( hint hint, notice the red channel )
Original file was given contrast -13 and then the same curve applied to both the 5D to RGB footage and the original.
open tabs to compare side by side. 400% crop. If you look closely, the same one thats better on the red channel is also slightly better with breaking up the macro blocking and also breaks up the banding ( look at the yellow light against the wall closely ) We are really peeping here though. But still, facts are facts and this helps us determine the best.
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/8863/pixelpeepred01.jpg
http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/1936/pixelpeepred02.jpg
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Disastronaut
Member
In the bottom one the red lights look very pixelated, at least that's the first thing I notice. At 400% I guess that doesn't really matter, though.
PaPa
Major Contributor
Aki_Hartikainen
Carbonite Member
From the images last page it appears to be the same effect as transcoding to Cineform codec. Colors are oversampled from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 which does help especially the most coarse Red outlines. Think of it as having a tiny image represent the colors and then you enlarge the image size physically in Photoshop and not just zoom in. There are other ways to get the same effect but I never hesitate to transcode to Cineform 10-bit if needed.
With Cineform you also get a 32-bit FirstLight primary color corrector.
With Cineform you also get a 32-bit FirstLight primary color corrector.
You guys do realize that it only blurs the color channels slightly? And this benefit completely disappears when you encode it to bluray or anything that is 4:2:0? Which is basically everything.
If you do greenscreening, slightly blurring the 4:2:0 channels is the first thing that is done in AE anyway.
Sure you can pixel peep and be like "Wow!". But the end result is still the same. The original 4:2:0 image has been interpolated to 4:2:2. You can do that without 5dtorgb and it would be better without because there are no re-encodings done. If 5dtorgb also limits the channels to 16-235 instead of 0-255 it will also squeeze the bits down.
Aki_Hartikainen
Carbonite Member
It does not blur anything. It is the point of over sampling, to manipulate data in greater bandwidth to allow operations that would otherwise exceed the limits and result in clipping. 32-bit color corrector do it also. With powerful enough computer I could do all grading in 3k or 4k to get the benefits of over sampling.
It gives you the option of 16-235 ( Broadcast range in the Luminance ) or 0-255 ( Full range in the Luminance ), and everything is being transcoded to 10-bit 4:2:2 color space, so I don't think anything is lost or distorted. Files are 5+ times larger, but they will playback much smoother, especially if you have multiple layers and effects being composited.
PaPa
Major Contributor
Sorry for wasting everyone's time. I guess the time i've spent trying to analyze footage and share information that i've spent hours on with the community is for nothing then.
M. Gilden
Canon DSLR Moderator
PaPa- are you using a Mac, by any chance?
I'm also under the impression that 5DtoRGB doesn't do anything on Windows boxes or NLEs that don't rely on Quicktime.
As I understand it, Quicktime has a gamma shift problem when using certain formats, and 5DtoRGB gets around that by converting to RGB space using its own decoder (not relying on quicktime).
There is no magic "quality enhancement" going on here, but rather it works around a bug when using Final Cut editors. As far as working in higher color space, modern NLEs work in the color space of the project, not the clip. If the project settings are 10-bit color, the color space is of an 8-bit clip is upconverted automatically. And editors like Premiere and Vegas don't rely on Quicktime for decoding anymore, so they don't suffer from the gamma shift bug.
The only advantage that I hear is the more editing-friendly format it converts to. If you find your computer is having trouble with native DSLR footage in the NLE, converting to an intermediate format is good advice. But there are plenty of options for that as well.
I'm also under the impression that 5DtoRGB doesn't do anything on Windows boxes or NLEs that don't rely on Quicktime.
As I understand it, Quicktime has a gamma shift problem when using certain formats, and 5DtoRGB gets around that by converting to RGB space using its own decoder (not relying on quicktime).
There is no magic "quality enhancement" going on here, but rather it works around a bug when using Final Cut editors. As far as working in higher color space, modern NLEs work in the color space of the project, not the clip. If the project settings are 10-bit color, the color space is of an 8-bit clip is upconverted automatically. And editors like Premiere and Vegas don't rely on Quicktime for decoding anymore, so they don't suffer from the gamma shift bug.
The only advantage that I hear is the more editing-friendly format it converts to. If you find your computer is having trouble with native DSLR footage in the NLE, converting to an intermediate format is good advice. But there are plenty of options for that as well.
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Windows or not, if you're doing VFX work or grading, you don't sit on AVCHD and do it, you convert to DPX. That's enough reason to warrant using 5DtoRGB for any workflow.
You may not need it for editing or cheap quick finish projects, but actually finishing? Absolutely.
You may not need it for editing or cheap quick finish projects, but actually finishing? Absolutely.
Thomas Smet
Veteran
Certain formats like AVCHD in Premiere CS5.5 get converted to 32bit float color space on the fly during editing and playback so no advantage there at all. In fact one may argue that converting to 32bit float color space will always be better then 10 bit color space.