- Hey there Caleb Wojcick of DIY video guy here.
And in this video I'm going to do another "Ask Leb" Segment
where I'm taking a question from someone and diving into
way too much detail on how to answer it.
So this question is from Greg in Scotland.
So let's take a listen.
- Hi Caleb, this is Greg from Scotland,
and I was wondering,
what's your work flow for using Canon Log?
Seem to be having trouble getting the colors to pop
when I'm using LUTs.
Can you tell me what your workflow is and what programs
you specifically use? Thanks.
- My first tip is that when you shoot in Canon Log,
You're getting a really flat picture profile.
So when you're looking at the back of the camera
or in the viewfinder, it's not going to look very good.
So my first tip is to turn on the "View Assist" function.
Which is typically found under the OLED or Viewfinder Menu
on your camera.
Number two,
if I'm shooting in Canon Log in a controlled environment
like a studio that I'm in right now,
I will use a Grey Card
or at least check the skin tones of the person I'm filming
and make sure those are hitting around 35 or 40
on the Waveform monitor.
I'll also turn on "Zebra's"
so that if anything is going above 90 or 95,
I'm making sure I'm not blowing it out
because it's a little bit harder to see that
when you're shooting in Log.
If you're filming with an external monitor or recorder,
then you can turn on a LUT or a "Look Up Table"
onto that device as well.
So that you can get a better prediction
of what you're video is going to look like
after you grade it.
Rec 709 is an HD television standard
of color, range, and spectrum.
You can turn on a LUT to rec 709 usually in your camera,
or in an external monitor recorder.
I would caution you against using Canon Log
when you don't really need it.
So if you're in a controlled environment where you don't
have really bright highlights or really dark shadows
like we're filming right now.
Don't shoot in Log.
It'll save you a bunch of time in post.
Also, don't shoot in Log if you haven't used it before
and you don't know what it's going to look like
when you get back on a computer.
I made the mistake of shooting in Log for a project
that I didn't really know where my exposure levels should be
and then I had to end up re-shooting it.
And don't shoot in Canon Log if you need to do a quick
turnaround time or you just don't know how to do
color correction and color grading
using your video editing software.
Because you'll just spend a lot of time
trying to make the footage look normal,
when you didn't really need the extra information
to save the highlights or the shadows.
Now to jump into editing Log footage.
It gets a little bit more complex in your workflow
to correct the footage from Log to a Rec 709 look.
But you can do it with Look Up Tables
built into something like Final Cut Pro 10
or Adobe Premiere Pro.
If you want to go further than that
and do more color correcting and grading,
some plug-ins I like are
Film Convert, or Colorista, or Magic Bullet Looks.
There are a bunch of different options out there.
You can also just go
into a color correcting specific program
like Adobe SpeedGrade, or Davinci Resolve.
And that gets even more complex.
So for that discussion,
I'm actually going to throw it to Tim
who does a lot of the editing
and color correction workflow for my videos.
- What's up guys,
apparently Greg wants to learn
how to color grade Canon Log footage.
I think he said "Canon"
but we shoot in Canon, so I'm gonna show you my process,
how I grade Log footage going from
Premiere to Davinci Resovle.'cause I like Davinci Resolve
'cause I think it currently offers the best looks.
So, basically the process you're going to do
is you're going to export a final cut XML, weird right?
Even though you're in Premiere?
But that's what's copacetic for both programs.
Then you're gonna open Davinci Resolve,
then you're gonna import the XML,
then you're gonna go into the color work space
after you've created a sequence.
And then you're gonna create three different nodes
and then you're gonna put a 1D LUT on the first node,
then you're gonna put a 3D LUT on the third node,
and then you're gonna color correct on the second node.
Then you're gonna export another final cut XML.
Then you're gonna hop over to Premiere,
You're gonna import the XML,
then you're gonna have to re-link the footage
using in MP4's into Premiere Pro.
For that reason, you're gonna wanna do the coloring
at the end of everything.
It's all really complicated, so let's just hop over
to screen foot and I'll show you how to do it real quick.
- [Tim Voiceover] Okay, so now that we're in Premiere
we have our footage that's in Log, as you can see here.
It's really flat looking.
And what I've done here is I've just selected one clip
that I want to work on in Davinci Resolve.
And then just for good measure, just to show you guys
what's gonna happen in the end,
I added a cross dissolve at the beginning
as well as one at the end.
It's just one continuous clip.
So, once you have your sequence or your clips,
whichever one you're gonna use in the end,
what you're gonna do is you're gonna go up to "File,"
and then you're going to "Export"
and "XML,"
and you're going to have to choose a "Final Cut XML."
So, it'll ask me where I want to put that,
and then you'll just navigate to it.
I'm gonna put it in a file "Round Tripping"
and I'm just gonna call it "Start" so I know
it's the beginning of my round trip.
So I'll hit "Save" and it'll export that XML for me.
So, now I'm gonna go ahead and open up Davinci Resolve.
And it's gonna take a moment.
Ooh, pretty colors,
pretty colors.
And then you're gonna get a Welcome screen basically,
and normally I would sign into my account,
but that's gonna be windows that you won't necessarily see
'cause it's set up for how I work
So I'm just going to log into a guest account.
So you'll see what you would when you log in.
So, I'm just gonna start a new project.
And I'm gonna call it
"Color Test."
And then I'm just going to open it,
and then what I'm gonna do is go up to "File"
and then "Import"
and I'm gonna choose "XML."
So then I'm gonna have to go find-
It's right there.
And I go back and navigate to it.
I'm gonna choose what I just exported in Premiere
I'm gonna open it,
and then I'm gonna get greeted
with a whole bunch of settings.
Normally, you're not gonna need to touch this,
I'm just going to make sure that it's in 1920x1080
Final Cut Pro works, you can also choose Final Cut Pro 10.
But I'm just gonna leave it in Final Cut Pro.
So, It opens into my editing windows.
You can see down here I have multiple panels.
I have "Media," "Edit," "Color," and "Deliver."
For our purposes today, we're just going to use
"Edit," "Color," and "Deliver."
So you can see I play it,
and it's still really flat and ugly and that's fine.
Because what we're gonna do it bring it over to "Color."
So, in Color, this is just a generic window as I was saying.
I have my Shadows, Mid Tones, Highlights, Offset.
Pretty much anything you would get in any other program.
It's not the interface that's different in here,
they actually try to make it look like
Final Cut or Premiere.
What I really like is how powerful the tools are.
And then over here, you can choose what you want to see.
I always go with my Waveform monitors,
and then I either work with the Vectorscope
or something like the Parade, which I work with a lot
and then right now we just have the Waveform up.
But let's go back to the Parade,
and then what we're going to do is work in nodes.
So I'm gonna create multiple nodes here
and I'm gonna hit "Option S"
and I actually wanna make one more.
So, I create a lot of nodes
depending on the project I'm working in.
But For today I'm just going to create three.
One's gonna be-
Two are gonna be for LUT
and one's gonna be my color correction one.
I'm doing really difficult color correction,
or color gradient.
I'm gonna create multiple nodes,
so I'm only doing one correction per node.
And then you can grab 'em and drag 'em around
and you can create all this crazy web of nodes basically.
And what Resolve is gonna do,
is it's gonna move from one to the next seamlessly.
But what it allows the editor to do, us to do,
is we're basically working in layers
like we would do in Photoshop.
So if we don't like something, it's easy to remove,
and we don't have to start all over again.
So, I'm gonna bring these back together,
and then what I'm gonna do,
and what's really easy,
you can do a correction in 30 seconds
and I'll show you how right now.
So, all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna right click on the node,
and then I'm gonna go to 1D node
and then I'm gonna choose "Canon Log to Cineon."
This is one I'm just picking
because I think it'll look good.
So I'm gonna click this and then I'll go to the third node,
and I'm gonna right click again and then go to a 3D LUT.
And then I'm gonna go "Arri."
And then it's gonna bring up "Arri Alexa LogC to Rec709."
So I'm just gonna choose that.
And already you can see it's saturated,
it brought in the colors nicely.
So now I'm just going to correct
what the LUT's have already done.
To do that, I'm gonna go to the second node
and open that.
And then, what do I want to do about this?
So, if you're looking over here,
I can see that I want my shadows a little lower.
I wanna bring that down
but I don't want to crush that black that they're wearing.
That's good right there.
And then the highlights,
I wanna drag the highlights up so they're right around 100.
And then, looking at this, I see that it's a little red.
The reason it's pulling red is one, I'm using a Canon
which turns everything red.
But two, there's also a high level of red in this shot.
So that's not abnormal,
but what is abnormal is there's a white wall
in the background.
I don't really like that it's got this red hue on it.
So there's multiple things I could do.
I could play around with the curves,
do anything like that.
But what I'm just gonna do is
I'm gonna go to my Offset Wheel right here.
And I'm gonna pull away from red ever so slightly.
Till right about
there.
So, I'm not affecting the true red
that's her gloves, and her pendant, and her lips,
but I am pulling just a little bit of red off that wall.
So if I play this back,
you can see that it's nice and colored
compared to what I brought it in.
And now this is like, a very easy correction,
I'm just showing you how easy this is and how quickly
you can do it.
I'm not gonna go into how to actually use this program
and color grading.
This is simply applying LUT's to a Log footage
and then getting back to Premiere
so you can finish your editing.
So, now what I'm gonna do,
is I'm gonna go to my "Deliver."
And then, I'm gonna
choose-
I'm gonna stay in QuickTime,
and then I'm also gonna stay in ProRes422.
If it was something a little more complicated,
I would probably choose Apple ProRes422 HQ.
But for now I'm just gonna stay in 422.
Check again that I'm 1920x1080.
Frame rate's good, everything's good.
Rendered twice, two audio channels, it's good.
And then I'm gonna go to "Clips."
I don't wanna render all clips,
'cause it's gonna pull in the original,
non-graded footage as well.
I'm gonna choose "Graded Clips."
So after I do that, I'm gonna hit "Start Render."
Start Render.
Oh, my bad.
So you're gonna Access you're Render Queue
First of all.
And then I'm just gonna navigate back to that folder.
A lot of pull-downs.
Put it in "Round Tripping," hit "OK,"
And then I'm gonna start my render.
So it's a short clip so the render's gonna go pretty fast
and I'm on a nice computer.
So that helps out a lot.
So, I've rendered the clip and it's exported,
and now I'm going to go back to the "Edit."
And I'm gonna make sure that you can see here
this is the non-graded versus the graded.
So there's a big difference how flat this looks,
versus how this just pops off the screen, really nice.
Red hair, and the red pulling out against the black,
it's looking really nice.
So I'm gonna go here, you'll see a check mark
saying that it's rendered.
And then I'm going to go up to "File,"
and then I'm going to "Export Another XML."
I'm gonna choose where that's going to,
so I'm gonna put it with my other XML in "Round Tripping"
and I'm going to name it-
Let's name it "End"
since I named the other one "Start."
So I'm gonna go there, it'll export for me,
and now I am going to go back to Premiere.
So what I'm gonna do is just go into this miscellaneous bin
that I have in Premiere and I'm going to import.
And then I see this, it's "End," my XML is there, boom.
Pull it in, it'll import it,
it'll bring all the information with it,
and as you can see here I have the clip,
and I have my sequence.
So all I'm gonna do it open up a new sequence.
Let's zoom in here so you can see it,
and so now you can see that I have nice graded color.
No, I shouldn't say "graded,"
I have nice color corrected footage that once,
as you can see, was Log and not very nice looking.
Now it just pops off the screen.
And as you can see, because I did XML's,
Davinci has kept my cross dissolves
that I had on the beginning and the end,
so you'll see it fade out nicely.
And that's it.
So now that I have this back in Premiere,
I'll just start working off this sequence
and I'll continue to build.
Normally, I'll color after I have my first edit down
and I know that I'm ready for color.
And then, if I know I'm going to be doing advanced effects.
Because, during this Round Tripping process,
if I had advanced effects in my sequence,
Davinci's not guaranteed to export those.
So I might lose some of those effects
and I might have to re-do some work.
So if I know I just have a generic sequence,
something like this, where it's just some cross dissolve,
some fades, then I'll do it at the end,
but if I'm working with more advanced stuff,
sometimes I'll do coloring
somewhere in the middle of my process.
But that's it, and I hope that works for you guys.
So that process is how I like to do it.
As I said before,
I do it that way because I work in Premiere.
I like it as an editing software,
and I don't really like to edit in Resolve.
But I do like to color in it.
I currently think, especially using Canon Log footage,
that's just what looks the best.
I know people on You Tube,
everyone's gonna be like "Tim, you're working in Premiere,
why don't you just use SpeedGrade?"
Yeah, I could.
And then you're gonna be like,
"why don't you just use Lumetri?"
'cause it sucks.
And then it's like
"well, why do you do this, or this or this?"
It's like "I know, I just, I know."
But that's why I do it,
if you want to leave all your little comments
about like (mumbling indistinctly)
that's fine, go ahead and leave 'em.
But that's how I like to do it right now.
I'm always open to learning more.
The reason I don't use SpeedGrade is I don't really like it.
I think Resolve works better.
- Thanks again, Greg, for the question.
I hope you an anyone else that watched this
learned to shoot in a Log profile
and then take that into editing
and make it look really really good.
So, for more videos and detailed reviews on camera equipment
be sure to subscribe to our You Tube channel.
I've been Caleb Wojcick of DIY Video Guy,
and I'll see you in another one
- [Tim Voiceover] (British accent) I don't remember
how to stop it 'cause I've never used this program before.
My name's Greg.
Except Greg's from Scotland.
How the fuck do you do Scotland's?
Oh my god, thank god.