More fun pushing the 60D shadows (before/after pic)

[JoeThePro]

DISCLAIMER: This is all just for fun, no way would this shot be usable in any sort of work. I know this.

I have been messing with Marvel's Cine v3.4 PS for a while, and I find it works well in general use, the colors rendition is pretty good. But I wanted to see how far I could push the 60D shadows with Flaat_11n. So I went to my living room and exposed so that the (moderately bright) lamp on the table to the left was just about to clip, and this resulted in the rest of the shot being WAY under exposed since the room was otherwise pretty dark.

Settings were 1/47 (magic lantern), ISO 640, kit 18-55 @ F3.5, ~20mm.
Yes, its still soft, no way around that in low light especially with the kit lens. Its the only wide angle I have for now.

I edited it in VirtualDub. The filter sequence was:
- convert format (basically chroma interpolation/smoothing)
- gradation curves (RGB weighted)
- Neat Video (Temporal filter radius at 5, 50% luminance and chroma NR, mild sharpening)
- gradation curves (saturation)
- Neat Video (Temporal filter radius at 5, zero luminance and chroma NR, mild sharpening)
- MSU Noise Generator v2.1 (equidistributed, Y strength = 1)

Neat Video was, once again, the life saver for this. It never ceases to amaze me! I really pushed the shadows hard, and they looked terrible before Neat Video was applied. The data just fell apart, and it was obvious there were only a handful of shades of dark to work with all over the table and the couches. But neat video just smoothed it all out and added back all the color/luma data that was missing.

Im a noob, and this keeps me entertained.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE (detail):

AFTER (detail):

 

[JoeThePro]

It really is a fun challenge to try to get all the shadows back. Takes a long time, but I guess if you really had to stick with Canon's H.264, this process could make the shots at least a little bit more usable.
This was with the Marvel's Cine v3.4 PS.

Before:

After:

 

[JoeThePro]

Oh man, this one turned out GREAT, definitely the best one yet! Too much fun. Ill have to make an actual video out of these one day to show the difference when its actually playing.
Notice how well Neat Video took care of the sensor noise. It really makes a difference where in the workflow you do the DNR, I did 2 rounds of it at very specific points.

Original 1:

Original 2:

Curves/Saturation Only 1:

Curves/Saturation Only 2:

Final 1:

Final 2:

 

[JoeThePro]

Here's a clip shot at night with the only light source coming from the wicker lights.

And the original for reference:

 

[starcentral]

Hi, interesting thread.

I was using Virtual dub in early 2000 when I use to shoot PAL 50i on the Canon XL1se, de-interlace to 25p, and then slow down by 4% to yield 24fps footage. This was before the DVX100 cam out and even then because I was using mini35 adapters I liked the Canons for adapter use better because it meant shooting through less glass.

I haven't used Virtual Dub or AVI synth in ages but can you tell me what additional files or plugins might be needed in order to process more modern codecs through Virtual Dub? Are you using uncompressed AVI's, or actually able to put the footage files from the 60D straight into Virtual Dub?

cheers and again interesting work here.

 

[JoeThePro]

Hi, interesting thread.

I was using Virtual dub in early 2000 when I use to shoot PAL 50i on the Canon XL1se, de-interlace to 25p, and then slow down by 4% to yield 24fps footage. This was before the DVX100 cam out, even even then because I was using mini35 adapters I like the Canon cameras for adapters better because it meant shooting through less glass.

I haven't used Virtual Dub or AVI synth in ages but can you tell me what additional files or plugins might be needed in order to process more modern codecs through Virtual Dub? Are you using uncompressed AVI's, or actually able to put the footage files from the 60D straight into Virtual Dub?

cheers and again interesting work here.

Hi starcentral, thanks for the reply. I used the ffinputdriver plugin for VirtualDub to be able to import .MOV files straight from the camera.
http://codecpack.co/download/FFInputDriver.html

Also, this link lets you save the videos with the matrox i-frame HD codec which is configurable from 50-300 mb/sec. Its a nice wrapper and can be imported/exported directly to/from Lightworks, if you use that NLE.
http://www.matrox.com/video/en/support/windows/vfw_software_codecs/downloads/softwares/version1.0/

I did not use that (matrox) on these videos, instead I just saved as uncompressed AVIs. I then converted them to a more managable format (either DNxHD or Prores) with Cinec and then put them into Resolve Lite 10.

 

[starcentral]

This was bookmarked in my favourites, and I thought to resurrect it again.

There is a group buy good until the 20th of September on REDUSER.net to get a really great discount on the Neat Video plug-in available for nearly every NLE or system.

cheers,

 

[Spartacus]

Kind of sad that so many (like me) missed this. While you could just say "why should I shoot that way to start with?", especially "ambitious" lower budget productions, will have to rush a shot sometimes.
I have certain recurring job, where I know I will have to clean up footage - I would be very interested in JoeThePro's workflow, so if you´re still out there...