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Welcome to the Bane of my Existence - LOG LUT workflow. You will want to keep you footage LOG as long as possible. The benefits in color grading are huge. HOWEVER the pain and agony of working in LOG are also huge. It takes a while to adjust to color grading in LOG vs Linear, you keys in Smoke/Flame will not behave like they do in Linear and working with graphics are a nightmare. The worst part of it all is the fact you keep having to tell the client, “That is not what the footage is going to really look like.” Clients eyes glaze over when you try to explain to them LOG/LIN workflow. For example I had to do a long fade up from black to a white title. The title turned baby blue during the 4 second fade up but ended up as white at the end of the fade. THis is because in LOG world, the particular shade of white I was using got remapped to blue when it when through the Film LUT I had to use - but only during the fade. Try explaining that to a producer. Here is the “best” way to work for a video deliverable.
1. Offline on FCP/AVID with some kind of video downconvert of you footage. It will make your life easier if you can apply a LUT to get the footage close to what it is supposed to look like. You would be amazed at how many clients, “fall in love” with that “washed out look” of LOG footage.
2. Conform in Smoke in LOG world.
3. Grade in Lustre in LOG world and have Lustre spit out LINEAR footage.
4. Title and effect in Flame/Smoke in Linear world.
5. Pray the client has no changes.
6. Output to tape. Pray that there are no changes.
A purest will argue to keep the project LOG for the entire way through until you go to tape - however here on planet earth, that option is not always possible but people will insist upon working that way. We do feature films and we have to stay LOG all the way. IF this is the route you go, keep the following in mind.
1. Graphics. Graphics will have to be made “pre lut” So they will have to be made in LOG space taking into account the lut you are going to put on them. DO NOT APPLY THE LUT OR CREATE THE MATE IN LOGSPACE. Keep the matte in videospace. I could prattle on about why, but trust me on this one - videospace for mattes. And good luck getting a photoshop artist to create LOG Pre lut images for you.
2. Color Correction. Grading in LOG is NOT like grading in LIN. If you don’t believe me, the first thing you should do is try to create a black and white image on LOG footage with the LOGspace viewer with a shot LUT on. You will soon know everything about grading in LOG space.
3. Keys. If you work in LOG with a LUT on and do an addative key, you will soon see that your key does not look like you think it should. There is a simple reason for this. An add key is adding the colors of the shot to itself and then doing a key. Think about this for a second. You are taking your flat log colors, multiplying them and then sending them through a LUT. This is why you are getting weird results.
Of course there are many, many more pitfalls of working in LOG vs LIN. I have tried to hilight the major ones. Depending on your client/workflow/deliverables there are many more. It is not as easy as just pushing the LOG button in the viewer on the Smoke. You really need a plan of attack which takes into consideration,you gear, your producer and your deliverables. Having said all that I have found the documentation from Autodesk is a bit lacking in the actual workflow in LOG/LIN space. For example people have told me to convert the LOG footage to Linear, do the work and then make the footage back to LOG but whenever I do this, I end up clipping colors. The manual tells you what all the buttons do, but getting actual real world practical ideas on how to work this way is tough. I would love it if they really broke it down for us in a white paper or something. And I haven’t even mentioned 32 bit LIN vs 16 bit LOG. Good Luck.
Author: M_Longchamps
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