Sony Raw Editing

[Anonymous]

Looking at some footage shot on Sony F55 runnning at 2048x1080p23.976 16 bit. It does not have the washed out look I was expecting. It looks correct (the way RAW should) in the Sony viewer but in Smoke it looks as though there is a LUT added. As a matter of fact, it looks the same regardless of importing with 1D LUT on or off. Ideas?

Smoke 2015

[Grant.Kay · Accepted solution]

Select a clip and go to the format specific settings tab.

Change the pull down options and you should be able to tweak the look of the file using the sony metadata.

This is the same for RED and ARRI media.

Hope this helps.

Regards
Grant

[Anonymous]

Thanks Grant. I was under the wrong file type in the settings. Once I landed on Sony RAW the Colour menu was available and was exactly what I needed.

May I ask a quick question? This project is going to Resolve for CC. There is some compositing and general edit needed. My plan is to bring in the material (applying a one light CC, if you will) do my edit and prep fro Resolve. I'm using 2015 SP2 so the export of matterial will be new to me but I would assume a Sequence Publish of some sort would be in order. What would my best setting be to retain the RAW range for Resolve? Also, When it comes to compositing, is it customary to get a head start on the original matterial and then replace it with the CC. Doing a final tweek with the finished matterial?

I'm used to doing this all on my own so I want to supply the footage with the most to work with. Thanks for letting me bend your ear.

[Grant.Kay]

Hi,

When you do a sequence publish, you can go to the video options and change the format from DPX to OpenEXR so that you get 16-bit files to give you more range in Resolve.

With regards to compositing, you do the composite first with the original material and replace it with graded sources afterwards.    It does depend on the composite.   If its a key, does the grading affect the quality of the key in Smoke?   As a thought, you've done a technical balance in Smoke and built the composite.   This is published out for grading on the overall composite and than brought back as a flattened clip for any final tweaking in Smoke.  It really depends if you know you will be tweaking the composite after the grade.  No straight answer I am afraid.

Another approach that might be worth mentioning is that you can do your edit in Smoke and just use the techincal grade as a reference while you work.    You do a sequence publish.  This would be a source grade workflow come to think of it.   Next you take the EDL into Resolve and link it back to the same Sony media.   You would than apply your technical balance, followed by the actual grading of the shots.    Once you're done, you render the results out of resolve.   Finally, you go back to Smoke and unlink the timeline fro mthe original Sony media.   In the conform tab, you can relink the graded material back into the timeline with matching tape name and timecode.  This should keep the Smoke timeline as flexible as possible for revisions and composites.

Good luck!

Regards

Grant

[Anonymous]

Odd thing Grant. When I look at the RAW footage as Native, it is really dark. Same clip loaded in the Sony Raw Viewer has the high contrast of a Raw clip you would expect. Is there something I'm missing here? I have the resolution Debayering set to HD and Quality High but altering these don't seem to make a difference. I would expect that these settings only relate to how they load into Smoke. I feel as though Smoke is not reading the Raw correctly. Though I do have the dynamic range expected with a Raw 16bit clip. Cranking up the lumanence does not introduce noise. Just doesn't seem right and it's hard to see whats shot without sellecting 709 in colour for preview and shot sub clipping.

Any advice?

[Grant.Kay]

Hi,

I had a few conversations with the people who handle colour management with our products and interesting enough there are a few things for you to consider.

Firstly, unlink RED or ARRI who supply SDKs to correctly interpret the media, Sony does not.   This means that we have to apply our own colour mapping to the image based on supplied specifications by Sony.  So colour appearance may never be the same.

We aim to put more colour transformations in the upcoming extension release but they are not specifically Sony purposed.  This might help get you to the colour space you're after.

The other point that raided was whether or not you think Sony Native is Linear?  They said this is definitely not the case and suggested that you transform the media to either rec-709 or linear and grade from there.

I hope that this helps.

Regards

Grant

[Anonymous]

Thank you Grant for taking the time to look into this issue. 

This is a little disappointing information but not a deal ender. I do fine it frustrating that there are so many other systems that work with Sony RAW and read them in an identical way but Smoke (Autodesk products) do not. Makes me wonder how they are able to make it work and we are not. Setting that aside, this particular edit will be going to our Resolve colourist and he will be referencing back to the RAW footage so this colour space issue is not so critical. But in the future when I will want to stay in Smoke I can see this being a huge issue. If I apply a 709 but stay in 16bit, am I effectively getting the same flexibility of extra stops that Native RAW footage provides? I guess not but could be wrong. In a nut shell, I don't think I'm asking much of an edit system to show me footage with out doing anything to it. I either reads Native format or it doesn't.

On an unrelated note, I find it more frustrating that working with footage shot at 240fps can't be interpreted to Resolve. Using the recommended EDL workflow the speed information is simply absent when looking at the EDL in a text viewer. Examples attached. Again another work around is to simply apply a blanket timewarp to the needed clips on the Resolve side before rendering CC footage to link back to but this is not optimal, as I'm sure you would agree.

I do appreciate your interest in this and your assistance. A little work on this file type might be in order and a great help. Don't take this wrong but a quick Google search on Sony RAW and F55/65 cameras result in several resources of official Sony and user sites that have created LUTs specific to the format. Deconstructing them would be pretty straight forward for those knowledgeable in that type of thing. Maybe pointing that out to those who handle colour management in the software would be a good idea. 😉 

The attached EDLs: I used Sequence Publish EDL. The file called Generate was created by selecting Custome EDL Export. The file called 100TW_Test was created useing the same selections but disabling the export of media and selecting Export. The results, interestingly enough, are different. But neither show speed information that I can tell. This is the only situation I can think of that I would want to not create media but I feel this is a good time to mention that waiting an a render of selected media to happen when I am not exporting media is a bit of a bummer. Any way, hope this is of use. Also, I have an open case CF00564098 and have provided a 30sec. clip of the media I'm dealing with, for what its worth. Apparentyl I can attach the extention EDL so here is a copy/past of the text info

TITLE: Generate
FCM: NON-DROP FRAME

001 A00216EA V C 03:59:12:09 03:59:49:14 00:00:00:00 00:00:37:05
FROM CLIP NAME: Ribbon_Speed_Test-Woods
* UNSUPPORTED EFFECT:0 RESIZE
DLEDL: REEL:A00216EA A002C025_140916EA



TITLE: 1000TW_Test
FCM: NON-DROP FRAME

001 A00216EA V C 03:59:12:09 03:59:49:14 00:00:00:00 00:00:37:05
DLEDL: SEGMENTID: H_16777343_S_1411188646_U_783322
FROM CLIP NAME: 1000TW_Test
DLEDL: EDIT:0 FILENAME: A002C025_140916EA.mxf
DLEDL: START TC: 03:58:57+06
DLEDL: PATH: /Volumes/MOE/Raw Media-Working/16727_RAW_AMS_CS/16727_09162014_ACAM_002_F55/A002C2OC/Clip/A002C025_140916EA
DLEDL: EDIT:0 ORIGIN: /Volumes/MOE/Raw Media-Working/16727_RAW_AMS_CS/16727_09162014_ACAM_002_F55/A002C2OC/Clip/A002C025_140916EA/A002C025_140916EA.mxf
* UNSUPPORTED EFFECT:0 RESIZE
DLEDL: REEL:A00216EA A002C025_140916EA

[Grant.Kay]

Hi, 

If you apply a REC 709 or Linear colour transform, you are NOT clipping the image data.   At 16-bit float you should still have the full range that the RAW format offers.

The issue is not the question of supporting the RAW data.   Smoke does support that data otherwise the media would not be displayed.   The topic is actually how that information is being displayed.    I am talking about colour preservation and information, not RAW data.  They are not the same.    

How is the RAW data captured?  Log?  S-Log? ...  As I said, we added loads more colour transforms into the upcoming extension release which might be applicable to what you are after.

Dont worry, our DEV team talk to all the other vendors regarding colour management and science.   It's a scarey place where few dare to tread 😉

The other consideration is whether or not you want Smoke to actually alter the RAW data with the transform or not?

If NOT than you would apply a colour transform to your display and it will look correct and your RAW data will remain untouched.   Even when you export the information will be the same in whichever format you export to.

If YES than you apply the colour transform to the RAW material and this will change the colour data in the file.    But at all times, as long as you dont clamp or decrease the bit-depth, you should have full access the range that the Sony RAW file offers.

I am also aware that there was a bug with publishing EDLs where timewarps/speed changes were not working.   I know the bug has been fixed and it should come in an upcoming release.

I hope this answers your questions.

Regards

Grant

[Anonymous]

That does shed light on many of my questions.

The footage was shot RAW - SLog3 - CineD0 (I don't know what all that means but thats what the DP relayed to me)

Still unsure why it looks different in Resolve then Smoke whan the same paramaters are applyed? 

Sending the edit to Resolve is a more pressing issue as I have a large amount of TW's needed. It was show 240fps and unless the next version is coming my way today or tomorrow, I'm up in the s for sure.

[Anonymous]

Correction on File type shot - CineD0 should be CineEI