My friend Sandy is a big horror movie buff and just became a mom a few months ago. I had a baby t-shirt made and sent to her. It’s one of the posters for the film, “It’s Alive” which was about killer babies.
Here’s the IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071675/
I’ve been working on getting the work flow of my DPX file footage so that I could export and import to FCP and other programs and not suffer Gamma shifts or data loss. I’ve balanced my monitor to 2.2 gamma with a Spyderpro Express.
These settings worked perfectly for me. The idea being that the initial export from FCP has a gamma shift, but that’s the only time. Send it to FCP again, out again, into shake, out of shake, into shake again, and the image remains the same.
It took me quite awhile of figuring it out and not everything was simple to understand, so I’m going to go through and show you all the pertinent settings screens.
Notice in Shake I used the Truelight plug in to simulate the color change comparing my .709 footage on a .709 monitor. This footage was compressed using the .709 and my monitor was set to gamma 2.2 which is the .709 gamma level. It shows no change which I think means it is reading correctly and there is no issue with the output.
As an additional test I imported the DPX frames into Photoshop and layered them together. Setting the top layer to difference created a completely black screen meaning the images were pixel-for-pixel identical.
When I did the Photoshop test I noticed one issue. The Compressor DPX to Shake output looks like the Compressor DPX was offset by -760 pixels. The right side also had an issue with being a few pixels lower than the left which became compelely black. This difference isn’t visible when you import the footage into Shake or FCP though.
The attached gallery displays my settings for Fcp 6.0.8, Glue tools 3.0.9, and Shake 4.1.
I’ll add additional settings and programs as I have access and time.
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I recently landed the best job ever working at a comptuer helpdesk I can easily walk to. I’m making enough money to start really paying back what I owe, and I’m very thankful that in this economy I have a job.
I’m making it through my last week of both this and the night auditor job. I’m looking forward to leaving the night auditor position and being able to have a life on the weekends while also paying back my dues.
Hey all, I thought I’d write this on the internet so if I need this information I always know I can get to it. I figured that some people on my friend’s list might have an opinion as well.
I had to get the Gamma level figured out on my monitors and footage recently.
I’m using Gluetools to convert Dvcpro HD shots from a Hvx100 into Dpx files. The program requires a known output and input for the gamma levels.
I found out a few things about gamma. Old mac’s used 1.8 gamma, most pc’s use 2.2 gamma, and the color profile Adobe 1998 uses 2.2 gamma. So…
Also, a number of film post houses ask for the Video Colorspace of ITU-R BT.709-5 for digital to film conversion processing.
Now, I’m using a Spyder2 Express colorimeter and the Color Eye Pro calibration software to balance my monitor’s color balance.
The color goals I’ve set for Color Display Pro are setting the gamma to 2.2, the white point to D65 and black points to relative. I don’t understand how else to interpret the black and white levels to get better results.
Glue tools also had a few settings for the footage. You can choose input and output settings. Also DPX is a 10-bit color format that is lossless.
Note: FCP in RGB is only 8bit, so if you need the extra information for Keying you have to set the colorspace in FCP to YUV and the white point to Superwhite. Also, you have to output the sequence with Compressor, NOT FCP, because Fcp will gamma shift everything and sometimes can strip the color info to 8-bits with certain codecs, even if you set it to YUV and the codec should support it.
My setting for import are as follows. The input is a conversion for 10-bit Rec709 Gamma (2.22), Video color space of ITU-R BT.709-5, and the same for output.
The idea being that the initial conversion will shift whatever gamma the camera shot in, but once in 2.2 .709 colorspace, you keep it there. Throw the DPX files to any other program and you know, flat out, that it’s supposed to be read 2.2 gamma and the .709 colorspace. Also the file type is set to Big Endian due to the fact a bunch of Apple and Adobe products will poo their digital pants dealing with Little Endian.
Also, if I go crazy and want to put my movie on film for some reason it already has the right settings.
Okay, so that was a big brain dump, things to remember : Gamma 2.2 with a bullet (think 22cal), .709 is not the color space with a 6 in it, DPX is the good one you can give to the effects guys, and size matters.
