Live color grading the Cinema Camera

My church recently bought a Blackmagic Cinema Camera for its awesome recording capabilities, but when we're not shooting footage we're using it as a secondary camera in our live streaming setup, supplementing our ATEM Television Studio and Blackmagic Studio Camera. The setup works quite nicely, the additional angle is very helpful when streaming.

However, the feed from the Cinema Camera doesn't match the Studio Camera very well, the hues are similar but the Cinema's colors are much less saturated and with less contrast. I understand that's pretty much the point of the BMCC, I've had fun learning how to color grade its footage after we record. However, is there any way we can grade its footage live? Or at least increase the color saturation?

Are you using the 4k studio cameras or the original HD versions? The first thing you probably want to do is put the BMCC in rec709/video mode. That will cut down the dynamic range and pump out a little more chroma. If you're trying to match the BMCC to 4K studio cameras you're probably going to need a LUT box. Blackmagic make the Teranex Mini which isn't a technically a LUT box more a standards converter but has LUT functionality built in, you'd need to run SDI back to the Teranex which will convert the signal to HDMI with the LUT applied that you can then run into the TVS. AJA makes the LUT-Box, and Teradex makes the Colr which will also apply LUTs. Good Luck.

Thank you for your feedback Howard, I had same issue with live color grading

Blackmagic make the Teranex Mini which isn't a technically a LUT box more a standards converter but has LUT functionality built in

I have had a BMDCC and BMDPC for years now and have always been disappointed with the real-time output of these cameras when trying to use them for live streaming. The blacks were basically brown and all the color was shifted in a way that blended poorly with other cameras so I rarely used them. I came across this post by Howard Roll explaining that the BMD Teranex Mini SDI to HDMI 12G could apply a LUT to an SDI input and send it out in real-time with no latency so I bought one.

I had my first opportunity to try it out earlier today and quickly pulled up one of the 2 preset LUTs in the box for converting a "Blackmagic camera default color space to REC 709". It looked terrible and I was really bummed about it, knowing that I would need to send back the converter and be stuck with these cameras that were only good for projects where I had time to color grade the captured video. In a last-ditch move, I found this thread from CaptainHook in a Google search and downloaded his free LUT.

WOW. Problems are solved, cameras are functional for live streaming, blacks are black, colors are consistent...all is right with the world! Thanks, Howard, for posting this information.

so much for posting this LUT, it really solved a long-term problem for me and I hope that someone else sees this and puts it together, too.

In regards to this. Can you output the LUT via SDI or only HDMI? I can't find a straight answer on this online.

Blackmagic make the Teranex Mini which isn't a technically a LUT box more a standards converter but has LUT functionality built in

I have had a BMDCC and BMDPC for years now and have always been disappointed with the real-time output of these cameras when trying to use them for live streaming. The blacks were basically brown and all the color was shifted in a way that blended poorly with other cameras so I rarely used them. I came across this post by Howard Roll explaining that the BMD Teranex Mini SDI to HDMI 12G could apply a LUT to an SDI input and send it out in real-time with no latency so I bought one.

I had my first opportunity to try it out earlier today and quickly pulled up one of the 2 preset LUTs in the box for converting a "Blackmagic camera default color space to REC 709". It looked terrible and I was really bummed about it, knowing that I would need to send back the converter and be stuck with these cameras that were only good for projects where I had time to color grade the captured video. In a last-ditch move, I found this thread from CaptainHook in a Google search and downloaded his free LUT.

WOW. Problems are solved, cameras are functional for live streaming, blacks are black, colors are consistent...all is right with the world! Thanks, Howard, for posting this information.

so much for posting this LUT, it really solved a long-term problem for me and I hope that someone else sees this and puts it together, too.

In regards to this. Can you output the LUT via SDI or only HDMI? I can't find a straight answer on this online.

In the Teranex Setup Utility software, there is an option for enable 3D LUT on loop SDI output that can be used enable the LUT on both the SDI and HDMI outputs. If this option is unchecked, the LUT would only be applied to the HDMI output.