Blackmagic Forum

The interview looks fine - well set up and shot - to me.

Australian Image wrote:I watched that twice on YouTube at full screen and can't see any noise.

I think you tube is cleaning up noise in the comoression process.

About the Australian sun. I've been trying to tell people about 16 stops+ which can help that. There is significantly more energy and at bluer hues in these sorts of latitudes in the mid day sun. Something people from Europe and the US, might not be used to handling. Your journalism use is one thing I had hoped for in a pocket with still features and high latitude ability. If anybody has the actual part numbers for the pocket 4k and 6k, or the near identical wholesale versions, it might be possible to find out what the spec says, and any real time HDR capability?

Anyway, Pocket footage doesn't really suck, it gives adequate results in real conditions. But, if you are going push it against harsh lighting, you are going get it's spec, and either expose down and accept the shadows, or grin and bare it, or buy another camera. At this stage. There was a guy here, who might gave had a go at trying to expand the HDR functionality, but unfortunately he was really abused, and h e i s g o n e. Sad.


Thanks guys for the grading discussion. There is a dynamic range discussion with linked thread by Dimitry over st my thread, so you know its going be hands on good stuff.

I have to stand corrected. With the release of BRAW 1.5 black magic isn't just trying to steal market share from Adobe. You can now edit on premier pro.

I just submitted a feature request for Native Highlight and shadow adjustment. Other than that and "Blue Primary" shift it's nearly perfect.

Aside from some of the more compressed flavors still be quite bad quality wise.

Chris, I have the same problem with you.

While everybody talks about getting the footage right so actually the codec is not challenged, I am a surgeon and I am limited at shooting in very unfavourable conditions due to the huge variations in lighting of the surgical field.

With CDNG, I have been able to save many highlights which are above 1023. They just "appear" when I work on the curves, etc. With BRAW on 6k it cuts off everything above 896 and it is unrecoverable.
The peculiar thing was that my previous BMPCC 4K seemed to be better than the current 6K. But neither seemed to be as flexible as CDNG.

From what I have seen ProResRaw has similar (if not better) performance in this respect to CDNG but I have no personal experience.

In this respect the performance level of the BRAW is exactly the same as for the normal ProRes. Otherwise, for colour management and file size I find it superior.

I have attached screenshots of the scopes for overexposed BRAW vs overexposed CDNG. BRAW is cut off data, CDNG is continuous.

For comparison, have a look at a demo of ProRes Raw. I am not allowed to post url here but if you search "Overexposed footage ProRes raw" it comes up.

I have been able to achieve similar flexibility in CDNG and almost similar on the 4K BMPCC in BRAW. Nothing near this on the BPMCC 6K. From this point of view, major disappointment.

Thanks. That is disturbing. But it's not the case Braw is squeezing more actual stops out in the beginning, as it was designed, where as in cdng you have to work for it?

Lucian wrote: With BRAW on 6k it cuts off everything above 896 and it is unrecoverable.

This can help.
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=95250

I think you have a file handling problem rather than a codec problem. What is your workflow in Resolve? Colour management settings etc?

Lucian wrote:I have attached screenshots of the scopes for overexposed BRAW vs overexposed CDNG. BRAW is cut off data, CDNG is continuous.

This is plainly user confusion or user error, with respect to either in-camera exposure or post-production in Resolve, or both. And I gather those waveform screenshots are of two completely different subjects? Are they even the same camera?

@ Lucian

I am sorry, but I can't see any validity in your claim that DNG is inherently better in addressing over exposure than BRAW.

I have just performed a test for you:

Setup:

• Camera: PCC4k, received in Oct. 2018, Firmware 6.8
  @ 180° shutter / 24 fps / 4K DCI (4096x2160) / WB ~5.000 K / ISO 200
• Metabones Speedbooster Cine Ultra 0.71x
• Lens: Sigma 18-35 mm f/1.8 - at 35 mm
  @ f/8.0 (which equals to f/11 without speedbooster); f/5.6; f/4.0; f/2.8
• no ND filter
• Preview monitor: Atomos Shinobi SDI/HDMI
• Tripod: Sirui BCT-3203 / Head: Sirui BCH-30 / with VCT-14 plate and shoulder mount.

I captured the footage in uncompressed CDNG via stills button, and BRAW 5:1.
Unfortunately pressing the stills button always put enough pressure on the setup so the framing moved a bit vertically compared to the rest, despite having a lens support and a rigid cage.

Edited in Resolve 16.2.1. The settings are imprinted to the stills.
Only applied my LBK Neutral HiDesat v10 LUT, available here to a second node.
Stills exported to PNG and downscaled by 50% to JPG.

With 1 stop of overexposure and highlight recovery (HLR):

With 2 stops of overexposure and highlight recovery (HLR):

With 3 stops of overexposure and highlight recovery (HLR):

Chris S wrote: It's still a mystery what "Highlight Recovery" does, as 90% of shots I try to use it on--That you'd think it would work, based on exposure histogram--it does nothing, while 10% of shots, it maybe helps recover some slight detail. I'm not exactly sure what's going on here. It recovers detail that's been just barely clipped I guess?

highlight recovery simply try to rebuild highlights when not all channels are clipped, if all channels are clipped do anything, if one channel are clipped, is pushed down to pair at other two channel.

Well, the bottom one is clearly lighter and has more shadow in top one. So maybe the latitude is similar, but where the exposure is put appears different giving less head room to push it.

carlomacchiavello wrote:

Chris S wrote: It's still a mystery what "Highlight Recovery" does, as 90% of shots I try to use it on--That you'd think it would work, based on exposure histogram--it does nothing, while 10% of shots, it maybe helps recover some slight detail. I'm not exactly sure what's going on here. It recovers detail that's been just barely clipped I guess?

highlight recovery simply try to rebuild highlights when not all channels are clipped, if all channels are clipped do anything, if one channel are clipped, is pushed down to pair at other two channel.

You got to expose for it, if you want it to work more often. One of two channels clipped out and use the other single inadequate primary. Yes, it does not sound like it will always work well when it does work.

This kind of highlight recovery is an old trick of color graders, you can do that with the regular tools in Resolve (and other systems) as well. It's only there for your convenience. Red had this from the start too.