I believe the following is true:
Camera manufactures have developed various methods to generate flat (low contrast) video to give the most CC (Color Correction) flexibility in post. Sony has S-log, DJI drones have D-Log, Canon has C-log, GoPro had Protune, etc. etc. etc.
The camera manufacturers and third parties also offer LUTs and tools to “de-log” the footage. For example, GoPro offers GoPro studio, DJI drones offer DJI Transcoding tool, etc. These tools may convert the original 4:2:0 footage to 4:2:2 color space and expand 8 bit depth video to 10 bits, and increase the file size 5x or 10x. They may also output to ProRes or some other high quality intermediate codec.
I’ve played with de-logging tools and LUTs, but find bringing the original flat footage into Vegas and CC (Color Correcting) using Color Curves gives me satisfactory results without adding steps to my workflow.
I think I am missing something. Folks I respect here on the forum talk about the importance of LUTs and transcoding to other codecs (MXF Long or Intra or MOV ProRes, etc.). What am I missing when I import “logged” (flat) video straight into Vegas and use Color Curves to de-log and CC my video?
I realize a LUT or tool that was specifically designed to de-log a video may provide optimum results, but even in those cases, the video needs color correction tweaking.
So the question is, why use LUTs or conversion tools? Why not just use Vegas to color correct, especially since you tweak the video after de-logging anyway. Why add extra steps and extra generations of video?
What am I missing … comments welcome,
Rich
Camera manufactures have developed various methods to generate flat (low contrast) video to give the most CC (Color Correction) flexibility in post. Sony has S-log, DJI drones have D-Log, Canon has C-log, GoPro had Protune, etc. etc. etc.
The camera manufacturers and third parties also offer LUTs and tools to “de-log” the footage. For example, GoPro offers GoPro studio, DJI drones offer DJI Transcoding tool, etc. These tools may convert the original 4:2:0 footage to 4:2:2 color space and expand 8 bit depth video to 10 bits, and increase the file size 5x or 10x. They may also output to ProRes or some other high quality intermediate codec.
I’ve played with de-logging tools and LUTs, but find bringing the original flat footage into Vegas and CC (Color Correcting) using Color Curves gives me satisfactory results without adding steps to my workflow.
I think I am missing something. Folks I respect here on the forum talk about the importance of LUTs and transcoding to other codecs (MXF Long or Intra or MOV ProRes, etc.). What am I missing when I import “logged” (flat) video straight into Vegas and use Color Curves to de-log and CC my video?
I realize a LUT or tool that was specifically designed to de-log a video may provide optimum results, but even in those cases, the video needs color correction tweaking.
So the question is, why use LUTs or conversion tools? Why not just use Vegas to color correct, especially since you tweak the video after de-logging anyway. Why add extra steps and extra generations of video?
What am I missing … comments welcome,
Rich