Question about RAW and color correction

[Tom Lowe]

Sorry if this has been addressed already.

With the RAW workflow, you will be doing most of your color correcting long before editing in your NLE, right? Kind of the opposite of working in most digital formats, where you would save the CCing for last, to lessen the burden on your NLE during editing. Working with RAW DLSR shots, the first thing you do is color correct.

If you are shooting in the field and you want to watch dailies, basically you have to convert the footage using RedCine into something watchable, like an AVI or Quicktime intermediate, right? So you might as well apply a color-corrected look and adjust exposure that point, so you have an idea about the look. Is that right? Would "LUTs" come into play at some point? I've never used them and don't know much about them.

Before importing the REDCODE RAW footage into a format suited for your NLE, you will have to color correct, adjust exposure, etc, just as you would before viewing a JPEG from a RAW DLSR photo, is that right?

Are most people going to keep their original RAW footage, in case they want to change the color temp or something later? Because once you process your RAW footage into Quicktime or an AVI, the color temp and exposure are "burned in" just like a DLSR RAW photo saved as a JPEG, PSD, etc, right?


edit: oops, i just saw a new, similar post. after reading that one, one thing I wonder about is how the image is CC'd going out to an HD monitor on set?

[Anders Holck]

It all depends on how what camera settings Red implements.

If you take the raw workflow of a DSLR, you can set: 2 axis color temp, contrast, brightness, color and maybe some kind of picturestyle.
Those settings will be written into the Raw as metadata, and later read in the RAW converter or file reader.

RED might implement similar features in the camera, and maybe they wont.

The good thing about having such settings in the camera, would be it enables batch conversion for quick dailies with no user intervention.

Before you edit you'd only want to do a quick "One light" correction, then do a more thorough correction after the edit. All indications imply that only some corrections will be possible within redcine, the fine correction should be done inside a dedicated app.

A LUT is just a translation table, describing an input to output range conversion. Visually you could think of it like a photoshop RGB curves tool, with a lot of points along the curve, written into a table.

[Chris Kenny]

Think of Adobe's RAW plug-in. There are some adjustments you can make there, and you probably should, because that's where you have the most data to work with. But there's a lot more you can do once you've actually got the image in Photoshop, so the RAW plug-in by itself doesn't eliminate the need for Photoshop.

The relationship between REDCINE and a fully-fledged color grading app will apparently be similar.

[Graeme Nattress]

Good analogy Chris.

Graeme

[Tom Lowe]

Think of Adobe's RAW plug-in. There are some adjustments you can make there, and you probably should, because that's where you have the most data to work with. But there's a lot more you can do once you've actually got the image in Photoshop, so the RAW plug-in by itself doesn't eliminate the need for Photoshop.

The relationship between REDCINE and a fully-fledged color grading app will apparently be similar.

Yeah, I definitely had the Adobe RAW plug-in in mind when I made this thread. Basically you set the white balance/temp and "tint"... but you are correct that you can do much more powerful CCing once you bring the file into Photoshop as PSD file, JPEG, etc. But the fact remains that you are making some major decisions about exposure and temp that will be "burned" into whatever Quicktime or AVI file you output from REDCINE to your NLE, will you not?

Do people plan to keep the RAW footage on file, or just scrap it once the Quicktime or AVIs are done?

Me personally, I keep all my RAW DLSR files, plus a copy as JPEG.

[Jaime Vallés]

I'll be keeping 4K Redcode RAW footage as an untouched negative.

[tj williams]

Well thats a plan that will lead to spending all the lunch money on more drives.

Now I'm confused about somthing I thought I knew... So I set the LUT in the camera... Over the USB? and during filming I see out the HDSDI at video village footage that represents this look. And when my boss asks to see a playback I play back the clip and see the corrected footage again at video village??? But the final look is only seen after correction in post.

[donatello b]

guessing you should be able to apply that LUT in Redcine and to any clips you render out of it (redcine) ...

if editing RAW files ( providing your NLE can do it) you apply the LUT's in the NLE or in AE or in Combustion ( again providing they can apply it to RAW files - i know many can apply LUT to RGB/YUV clips ...

[Tom Lowe]

Wait I don't think any NLE is going to be able to edit RAW, if that is what you are suggesting.

So will people be doing quicky or "batch" RAW conversions to AVI or Quicktime in order to watch dailies? If you use batch settings, it might not work out that well, because you may want a very different exposure settings for day shots versus evening shots, for example. If the RAW workflow is anything like a DLSR, I can see spending some fairly serious time in the RAW conversion process in order to present good dailies.

Who knows. Those "dailies" might end up being the footage that goes into your NLE.

Also, does anyone have a ballpark idea about the difference in data between the 27MB/s RAW footage and the AVIs or Quicktimes that will be outputted to your NLE? For a DLSR camera, a RAW photo might be something like 8MBs, while the JPEG version would only be 3MBs. Will we be looking at a similar situation with REDCODE RAW to Quicktime or AVI? And will those Quicktimes or AVIs probably be a wavelet intermediates like Cineform is doing?

[Chris Kenny]

Wait I don't think any NLE is going to be able to edit RAW, if that is what you are suggesting.


Red has said there will be a QuickTime component that supports REDCODE RAW, so it should be possible to directly ingest RAW video into QuickTime apps. Whether you can actually edit with it on, say, an FCP timeline, nobody knows. This would require some tricks (like seamlessly handling the RGB and RAW versions of REDCODE in what appears to apps like a single codec), because the RAW version of REDCODE will be decode-only on a computer.



Also, does anyone have a ballpark idea about the difference in data between the 27MB/s RAW footage and the AVIs or Quicktimes that will be outputted to your NLE? For a DLSR camera, a RAW photo might be something like 8MBs, while the JPEG version would only be 3MBs. Will we be looking at a similar situation with REDCODE RAW to Quicktime or AVI? And will those Quicktimes or AVIs probably be a wavelet intermediates like Cineform is doing?

Given that you can output using any codec QuickTime supports, nothing can be said in general about data rate. Different people are going to have very different needs. Some people might be exporting to DVCPRO HD for offline editing, with the intention of doing a final conform later. People might want to generate H.264 files for sharing dailies over the Internet. For some workflows, people will want uncompressed HD QuickTime files, or 4K DPX or Cineon sequences. Some people expect REDCODE RGB to be useful for online finishing, and might want to export to that (and we don't know what the data rates are like for that).

We'll probably know a lot more about all of this after NAB; Red seems to be planning to lay out the workflow details there.

[Gopher77]

From the first I heard of RAW it was my plan to shoot that way. Obviously it's going to take some time for the NLE's to support this feature, but once there I think RAW will become the standard. Now a few things I've wondered about is white balance, will the temp be in the metadata even if shooting RAW. It's hard to tell outdoors on a sunny day just how blue you are. Secondly will there be an SDK kit or some way that redcine could become a plugin for NLE's and finally, I know the red team has said there is no keyframe capability in redcine or red code, but I hope they'll consider that in a future or pro version.
This is how I envisioned the work flow, Shoot RAW, keep it as a digital master. Output the lowest res, 720p version with some standard LUT applied, cut, evaluate and plan custom tweaking of the LUT to achieve the desired look. Apply the new LUT and EDL and output at 720p to evaluate. If happy output at final resolutin, add graphics, composites, vfx etc.

[donatello b]

"If you use batch settings, it might not work out that well, because you may want a very different exposure settings for day shots versus evening shots"

you can have different LUT's for different scenes ... and i would think that as we get to know our REDs we'll have a folder full of LUT's for all kinds of lighting situations & different "looks" and will be sharing them here under a new thread ...

[Tom Lowe]

Jeez, I would be really surprised if an NLE supported RAW editing. Isn't it a given that the RAW will have to be processed into a more standard file type like Quicktime, AVI, a Cineform intermediate, etc, before editing? I mean, not even Photoshop can deal with RAW. You have to use a plug-in to make adjustments before it will even open in Photoshop, let alone trying to work inside an NLE.

I could be totally wrong about this. Graeme?

[Chris Kenny]

Jeez, I would be really surprised if an NLE supported RAW editing. Isn't it a given that the RAW will have to be processed into a more standard file type like Quicktime, AVI, a Cineform intermediate, etc, before editing? I mean, not even Photoshop can deal with RAW. You have to use a plug-in to make adjustments before it will even open in Photoshop, let alone trying to work inside an NLE.

This is the approach Photoshop takes, but take a look at Aperture. It works natively with RAW files. It's internally decoding and possibly caching non-RAW versions, of course, but the user doesn't see any of this. The user can go back and make changes to the RAW processing settings even after doing other things to the image, because Aperture doesn't really make any changes to the original image; adjustments, cropping, patching, etc. are essentially stored as metadata. In other words, it stores a series of operations to perform on the image, rather than simply performing the operations and saving the resulting bitmap. This allows the user to go back and change any prior decisions (including the RAW processing settings) without having to undo successive operations.

In principle there's no reason an NLE or a grading environment couldn't work with Red's RAW footage the same way.

[Tom Lowe]

This is the approach Photoshop takes, but take a look at Aperture. It works natively with RAW files. It's internally decoding and possibly caching non-RAW versions, of course, but the user doesn't see any of this. The user can go back and make changes to the RAW processing settings even after doing other things to the image, because Aperture doesn't really make any changes to the original image; adjustments, cropping, patching, etc. are essentially stored as metadata. In other words, it stores a series of operations to perform on the image, rather than simply performing the operations and saving the resulting bitmap. This allows the user to go back and change any prior decisions (including the RAW processing settings) without having to undo successive operations.

In principle there's no reason an NLE or a grading environment couldn't work with Red's RAW footage the same way.

Interesting. But isn't editing even simple 4K wavelet-compressed footage like the Cineform intermediate or basic Quicktime 4K footage hard enough on the processor as is? It seems like trying to drop unprocessed RAW footage into your NLE might cause your processor to melt down! You'd be asking for a lot of processing power, would you not?

[Gopher77]

No NLE supports it right now, probably be a couple of years before they do. But most still photographers that I know shoot raw and finish in photoshop. I think the first NLE that gets that kind of capability up and running will be way ahead of the game. Shoot I'd even buy a Mac if FCP we're the first.

But I think it's still a practicle workflow right now. With a raw DM you can always come back and reconform color, white balance and resolution. I can't imagine a situation that would be of convienece. We are just at the tip of the RAW iceberg here, imagine the possibilites that will come as the technology matures.