Creating a custom LUT in DaVinci Resolve, and free cinematic LUT to download

EDIT (13 Aug 2014): The download link went dead for a while because of dropbox, it is now available again. 

On the movie I'm currently working on, I'm both the post-production manager and the color artist (and data manager, I guess...). So once I've chosen how to shoot the movie, (with log profile and creating dailies on the set), as a color artist, I had to prepare custom LUTs that will be used to grade the dailies.

What is a LUT? 

A LUT, or Look Up Table, is a very small file that is basically a translation table: it will convert the colors of the original file to another set, basically. This is great because it allows you to create a specific "look" that you can apply very quickly. On our set, for example, I will not grade all of our files individually. I will just apply a LUT to all the files and then export them, in matters of seconds.

How to create your own LUT. 

While you can find LUT files on the Internet (including on this blog, just scroll down on this article), the best practice is to run some tests before you shoot and create your own LUT: one style doesn't fit all. 

Thankfully, DaVinci Resolve makes it really easy to create a LUT. All you have to do is to color-grade your shot as you normally would (with no power windows, as they of course can't be included in a LUT), and then right click on the thumbnail of your file, and click on "Generate 3D LUT". And voilà!

How to download and use LUT files. 

Once you have created or downloaded a LUT, you have to put them in a specific folder in DaVinci Resolve. 

On Mac:

Hard Drive > Library > Application Support > Blackmagic Design > Davinci Resolve > LUT 

On PC: 

C:\ ProgramData\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Support\LUT\

Then, there are two ways to apply a LUT in Resolve. You can either do it on a node, just right click on one and choose your LUT (It will most likely be in 3D LUT), or on a file, by right clicking on it, and you will see the same submenu with 1D and 3D LUT. 

The LUTs created for Incompatibles. 

Incompatibles, the movie this blog is about, is a romantic comedy shot in Monaco, in August. To create a LUT, I discussed about Romain Girard, our director of photography, about his approach on the movie, and his references. 

Our visual references were: 

L'Arnacoeur (Heart Breaker)

The Hangover

Les Emotifs Anonymes (Romantics Anonymous)

We wanted a warm image, far from the usual Teal and Orange craze that you so often see in American productions. I created three LUTs. 

FULL DISCLOSURE

While they have been manipulated quite a bit, my LUTs use the LUTS distributed by the great Juan Melara, that you can find here: http://juanmelara.com.au/print-film-emulation-luts-for-download/

My references however weren't cinematic film stocks exactly, but rather photographic ones. I shoot a lot of a pictures, and my favorite film, especially for skin, is the Kodak Portra 400 UC (now discontinued), so my LUTs are a mix between a more usual "cinematic" look and the results I get from my 120 films. 

Since I wasn't able to shoot in Monaco with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera yet, I created three different LUTs based on the same core. They are all made to be used with log (film mode) footage, and will not look good with shots in video mode. 

There's the Subtle version, which aims at creating subtle colors, just a bit muted to part away from the digital look that you easily get from the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. 

Then there's the Lift version, which is the subtle version with a lift in the low mid-tones, especially on the skin-tone area, to lift a bit the shadows on faces. 

And then there's the Expo version, which is a high key version of the subtle, with more brightness and saturation. 

DOWNLOAD THE LUTS HERE

The LUTs are for educational purposes only. You have no permission to use it for commercial purposes. If you use it for your personnal projects, please credit me under the name Adrien Le Falher. 

Here are some frames for comparison purposes: 

Choosing the right workflow for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera (3/3)

Choosing the right hardware to handle the Blackmagic Cinema Camera files

This is probably the most difficult part of this workflow, for us, as we were very limited by our budget. 

The first, obvious thing you need when you shoot with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, is hard drives, and lots of them. 

We bought eight. Eight, 3tb hard drives. Yes, that’s 24tb of disk space. 

The break down is as follows: 

• Six 3tb Western Digital Red hard drives.
• Two 3tb Seagate Barracuda hard drives. 

The Red and the barracuda drives have different purposes. 

The Western Digital Red, being extra reliable, are our original file drives. Arranged in RAID 1, each drive is mirrored. We therefore «only» have 9tb of useful space, as the 9 other terabytes are back ups. Usually, one would advise to have three versions of your original files, however, due to our lack of budget, and the fact that having three versions of your files in the same place (since remote back up was not an option) seemed a bit pointless. If a fire eats up our main hard drive and its back up, it will surely burn the second back up as well.

The Barracuda are our proxie hard drives. Faster than the Red, they won’t be backed up. We’re FEARLESS. (Please please don’t crash...)

Now, how do you plug eight hard drives? Well, you don’t. Or we don’t. We actually don’t need to.

We bought this: the Icy Box RD3640SU3E2. This box can be connected to a computer via USB3, eSATA, Firewire 400 and Firewire 800, so basically, any computer. 

The box has four slots, which will be used as follows: 

• the top two are used to plug two Western Digital Red, in RAID 1
• the one bellow is for the Barracuda 
• the last one is for the SSD from the Blackmagic Cinema Camera

The Blackmagic Cinema Camera doesn’t allow two things: it doesn’t allow to transfer the files by plugging the camera to a computer, nor does it allow to format the SSD (which you should do each time you empty the SSD, to avoid deteriorate its performances and cause dropped frames). Therefore, you need to have a way to plug it to your computer. 

Precision: the SSD is 2,5’’ while the hard drives are 3,5’’. Since the box is a tray-less design (which I think is a mistake), you will need to buy an adapter where you put the SSD in to conveniently insert the SSD in the box. It is nearly impossible without it. 

To summarize: 

• In the box, which is plugged to the computer via the fastest connection available (in decreasing order: eSATA, USB3, firewire 800, Firewire 400), is connected 2 Western Digital Red hard drives in RAID 1, 1 Seagate Barracuda and 1 SSD. 
• The files are transferred from the SSD to the Red drives. The proxies created with DaVinci Resolve are exported directly into the Barracuda.
• Ideally, for speed purposes, the Barracuda drive(s) will be plugged internally for editing. 
• For grading, the red hard drives will be plugged in the box without their RAID companions. 

Some criticism

Our workflow is somewhat optimum considering our hard conditions, but it is far from perfect. 

• One backup is indeed not enough. If you can, it is better to have an off-site back up. 
• The box we used isn’t designed so well. I would have preferred a design with hard drive trays. 
• The box doesn’t allow to have the two Red in RAID 1 with the rest of the drives in no RAID configuration. Therefore, we must use software RAID. It is less reliable, and cuts the speed of the Red in half. 
• It would better to back up the proxie hard drives, although, if it fails, it would only take time to recreate the proxies, assuming the original files are still there. 

Choosing the right workflow for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera (2/3)

Choosing the right software path to process the Blackmagic Cinema Camera

• Creating Dailies/Proxies

Even compressed, the blackmagic cinema camera files are actually quite heavy. We therefore decided to use proxies for editing, which will be created on set, after each day; Indeed, the proxies that will be used for editing will be the color-graded dailies I will give to our director after each day. 

The software used to create proxy is the one that Blackmagic gives with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera: DaVinci Resolve. 

Near the set, where the team will sleep, will be a computer, with DaVinci Resolve installed. After each day of shooting, all the files will be transferred in external hard drives connected to that computer. Once transferred, all these files will then be imported into DaVinci Resolve, where I will apply a LUT (more on that later) and then export the files, individually, as proxies. (See a future blog post to see how to properly export proxies in DaVinci Resolve)

It is very important to choose the right file format for your proxies. I did some tests, to see which format would give me a decent picture quality for the minimum file size, with a short render time. 

I excluded the H.264 codec: since the proxies will be used for editing, I wanted to use a format that uses «complete» frames. H.264 is a broadcasting codec, but is not fit for proper editing: indeed, the frames are not rendered individually, but in comparisons to the ones adjacent to them. While Adobe Premiere handles H.264 files marvelously, I decided it was time to edit with a proper codec for once. 

The choice was made, therefore, to export the dailies as DNxHD 36 8 bit files. DNxHD, created by Avid, is an editing codec, in that each frame exist separately in the file, so that when you cut your video, you cut at that precise frame (it seems obvious, and it should be. But with h.264, it is not always obvious.) The files look great with the LUT applied, the file size isn’t too big, and it will be easy to import and edit them. 

• Editing the proxies

Now that the proxies are made, we have to choose the software that we will use for editing. 

The point of my workflow was to be fast, and as universaly compatible as possible. We will use several of our personal computers, each of which with different operating systems and configuration, so I needed a workflow that could work on any machine, and any number of machine. 

This excluded Final Cut Pro immediately, since it is not available on PC. We were left with Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere (No one on the team knew Vegas, therefore it was not considered as an option). 

Avid Media Composer is venerable, in that it’s been there for decades, and many movies has been edited with it. But DEAR GOD IS IT ANNOYING. Every single project we edited with Avid in the past has caused us issues. While Avid is surely very adapted to a very controlled (confined) environment, for a project that needs a lot of flexibility, Adobe Premiere was an obvious choice. It is very fast, convenient  scalable. Adobe Premiere CC even handles DNxHD files natively now (CS6 and previous versions handle DNxHD files as well, you just need to download the codec from the Avid website)

The choice was made: Adobe Premiere will be the editing software for Incompatibles.

• The roundtrip

Working with proxies demands a very organized and segmented workflow. Once the proxies exported, they are imported into Premiere where our editors cut the film. Once the editing is final, they export an Final Cut Pro xml file (from Premiere, it’s just called a Final Cut Pro xml, even though Final Cut is never part of our workflow) of the project. 

I, the color artist, will need this xml file (it’s basically a text file, it’s tiny, therefore you can share it easily with Dropbox) and the original files (several terabytes of data. Don’t use Dropbox). All I need, is then to open the Resolve project with all my original files imported, and import the xml. The files will automatically be cut into a new timeline, where I can start my grading. Once it’s done, I can finally export the graded project, as one high quality file. This file will then be added back into Adobe Premiere, where we will add the titles, and the mixed sound. 

• To summarize

       1. Create the proxies with DaVinci Resolve

• DNxHD 36 8 bit, separated files

        2. Import and edit the proxies with Adobe Premiere
        3. Once the edit is final, export the timeline

• Final Cut Pro xml (within Adobe Premiere)

        4. Import the Final Cut Pro xml file into DaVinci Resolve, and grade the film
        5. Export the film from DaVinci Resolve

• DNxHD 186 (to be determined), in one file

        6. Import the graded file back into Premiere, add titles
        7. Export the «master» file to the format you need, depending on the diffusion, with Adobe Media Encoder

Choosing the right workflow for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera (1/3)

As a director of post-production, my main and first task was to come up for a workflow that was efficient, maximizing both quality of picture while requiring as little time as possible. There are three parts for this workflow: 

• the recording format
• the software element
• the hardware element

Choosing the appropriate recording format when shooting with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera

The Blackmagic CC gives you the option to shoot in RAW or compressed format. RAW definitely is a better quality than compressed format, however it takes a lot more space, and therefore is more expensive. Considering our budget is very, very limited (we have 20.000 euros to produce the movie in Monaco, 1200 euros of which were allocated for post-production from my estimate), and after some tests, we decided we will shoot a mix of compressed and RAW: most of our scenes will be shot in a compressed format, which already allows us to color grade way better than a 5DmkII or any 8 bit codec, while some of our most challenging scenes will be shot in raw, like the ones that could need a bit of post-stabilization (we will then frame the shot a bit wider than needed) or very difficult lighting situations. 

Once we chose to shoot mainly in compressed, we had to decided if we’d shoot in Film or Video mode. Being the color artist on the movie, the choice seemed obvious to me: we will shoot in Film mode, to allow a better color-correction in post. I really don’t like how the Blackmagic CC renders colors in Video mode, especially the skin tones, and in the end it would take me MORE time to grade the already «graded» video mode than the flatter film mode.

Then, the choice was between ProRes and DNxHD. My choice was to shoot in DNxHD: ProRes, while being an apple format, is compatible with PCs and Mac, however, we always end up with gamma issues when using it, while DNxHD, the format created for Avid Media Composer (and therefore a good format for editing, more on that later) is free of this issue. You’ll see later it also is the format we chose for our proxies. 

To summarize, we will be shooting with DNxHD in Film mode for most of our scenes, and RAW mode for difficult ones.

The joy and pain of high quality imaging.

The Blackmagic Cinema Camera is what some people in the industry would call a "game changer": indeed, for the price, it was the first time a low budget production would have access to an image quality quite comparable to cameras from RED or ARRI, the two leaders in cinema cameras.

Here is a few numbers: to buy a camera from RED, let's say the Scarlet-X (which is their cheapest option), you would need to cash-out near 8,000$ for the "brain", and about as much if you want a somewhat functional camera. For an ARRI Alexa, you would pay 80,110$ for a starter kit. For a functionnal Blackmagic cinema camera, you would pay... 3,000$, and that includes the camera and the DaVinci Resolve professional color grading software, available for 995$.

Arri Alexa

RED M

Blackmagic Cinema Camera

Now, granted, the Blackmagic doesn't shoot 4k like the RED, nor 3,5K like the Alexa. It is limited to 30 frames by second, so no slow motion. However, it does shoot in RAW at a resolution superior to 2K, which is the main delivery resolution in movie theaters.

What is RAW, and which should we care? RAW was first used in DSLRs: it was a picture format that would incorporate the "raw" information directly recorded by the sensor, uncompressed (as opposed to a JPG, even at its highest quality). It is a major step up in quality compared to virtually any compressed formats (excluding the "lossless" ones, which compress files without loosing quality), and gives us the ability to color-grade a picture very precisely, and quite heavily, without loosing quality, while any modification of, say, a video recorded from a 5D, would be degrading the image, sometimes pretty badly.

The Blacmagic Cinema Camera also shoots in compressed formats: PRORES, which is a format created by Apple, and DNxHD, which is the default codec of the proeminent editing software AVID Media Composer. While compressed, these formats offer a very high quality but require much less disk space than RAW, and are much less demanding to read. In short, they are a compromise, but a good compromise.

As a post-production manager, one of my first decision (taken after some discussions with the director of photography) was to decide whether the movie would be shot in RAW or in a compressed format, as this choice would have an impact on many parts of the workflow. We actually decided to shoot a bit of both: we will mainly shoot in a compressed format (to reduce costs: compressed data means you need less hard drive space) but some scenes will be shot in RAW. Typically, they will be the scenes that would require stabilization in post-production (shooting in RAW gives us a higher resolution than our output resolution, therefore, if we frame it a bit wider than we need, we can use a software to make the camera movements smoother), or the scenes that we won't be able to shoot many times (raw is more forgiving regarding exposure and framing, as well as setting the color balance and ISO, as you actually set both these parameters in post, as opposed to before shooting the scene when you shoot in a compressed format.).

Once we decided on the format, we had another decision to take: with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, the option is given, when shooting a compressed format, to shoot in either "film" or "video" mode. The "film" mode has very low contrast and saturation (the file looks very grey, "flat"), while the "video" mode is quite saturated and contrasty. Both have their advantages: the movie mode is more pleasing to the eye as-is, but offer less information than the "film" mode.

Film mode

Video mode

Film + custom correction

We decided to shoot the while movie in film mode, which will allow us to color-grade our movie to our liking, which would have been more difficult if we chose to shoot it in "video" mode.

So, to summarize:
-With the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, you have three quality options: RAW, Compressed Film, and Compressed Video.
- RAW is the best quality, but takes significantly more space.
- Compressed Film is quite unflattering but offers more information than Compressed Video for the same amount of disk space.
- Compressed Video doesn't need to be color-graded, while Compressed Film absolutely does.
- As a reasonable compromise between space taken and image quality, we will shoot mainly in Compressed Film with some specific (difficult) scenes shot in RAW.

Genesis

A few months ago, a couple of friends and I gathered to start a project. An ambitious project: we would shoot a feature length movie. The story will be placed in Monaco, and it would tell the tale of two "incompatible" characters, Matthieu and Emma, two twenty-somethings who will know, hate, and then love each other.

The story was written, the various technical roles distributed. I, Adrien Le Falher, was asked to be the cameraman, as well as the color artist. In the end, we decided I would also take the charge of post-production manager.

What is a post-production manager? He is the one who will lead the whole post-production team (that's video editing, sound editing, mixing, color grading, etc), who will budget it, schedule it, and so on.

This project is interesting for several reasons, but one is particularly challenging: indeed, I believe this will be the first attempt in the world to shoot a feature-length movie with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera.

The Blackmagic Cinema Camera is a great camera for low-budget but high quality productions: it can record 4:2:2 PRORESS or DNxHD in 1920x1080 (as known as 1080p, or HD), and well as 2,5K Raw Files. This is a major step up from the image quality of a 5DmkII or any DSLR, which were often used before for low budget productions.

However, the camera being new, there is very little documentation on it, and especially on how to handle the workflow with the camera. This blog will describe our trials, errors and successes in creating an effective workflow for this camera. There is a chance that a few things won't be optimum, because of a lack of knowledge or budget, however, I believe we, and so, you, might learn as much from our mistakes as from our successes.