Methods for colour matching/colour grading :: 1 < 2

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msycamore's avatar
RE: Methods for colour matching/colour grading

Moth3r said:

No; I'm still eagerly awaiting Max_Rebo's AviSynth filter!

 Ah, I see. Do you hear that, Max_Rebo!? ;)

Moth3r said:

It's a real picture, but I guess we'll never know whether it came from a real video or not. Zion alluded to the fact it was from a clean up of the JSC LD, but his promised article never appeared and x0project.com is now gone.

Yes, I should have asked if someone knew it was from a real video or not. ;) It's beautifully done anyway.

"In the future it will become easier for old negatives to become lost and be 'replaced' by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten." - George Lucas, 1988.

revgen's avatar
RE: Methods for colour matching/colour grading

I was able to find a way to automate pureimage.using a program called AutoHotKey in a small test of 11 frames.

It's a program that automatically records keyboard, mouseclicks, and mouse movement and creates a script that can be called automatically.

Together with a batch file using the delete, move, and rename commands I was able to process 11 frames automatically. It's pretty slow though. But at least it's automatic.

 It will take more work to setup a batch file to process an entire movie. I might be able to do something using Notepad++ or another similar tool.

AutoHotKey is free and open source. I used version 1.0.47.06. You can download it here. http://www.autohotkey.net/programs/AutoHotkey104706_Install.exe

The Aluminum Falcon's avatar
RE: Methods for colour matching/colour grading

Fascinating! Would you mind posting those 11 frames, as to show the result? This could be use for future projects; for example, color correcting the JSC to GOUT colors or vice versa depending on the one more theatrically accurate...

Does anyone happen to have a Cinematik invite? If you do, PM me and we can work something out...

revgen's avatar
RE: Methods for colour matching/colour grading

Here's a video demonstration.

Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVpeP6cS05w

Megaupload

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4Y0XL5ZC

Download video is 1280x720p H264 in MKV. I recommend VLC Player or Mplayer.

 

Here are the images. SW3 is Dark Jedi's. swtech is Lee Thorogood's. swXXXX are the pureimage conversions.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5REVZRWM

 

The PureImage trial version leaves a message at the bottom, but that can easily be removed by using crop() and addborders() in avisynth since it's only in the black bar area.

Last edited on September 10, 2011 at 8:18 AM by revgen
The Aluminum Falcon's avatar
RE: Methods for colour matching/colour grading

It does seem to work quite effectively. You're right about being able to crop out the bottom, so that will be no issue. Although, now I suppose we should figure out on where to use it.

Those frames from Lee Thororgood's version looked a tad bit too blue for my taste. Do you mind testing the process on a scene where Lee Thorogood more radically shifted the color like maybe the sunset scene or the Death Star scenes; (I don't know specifics, I haven't seen it.)

Does anyone happen to have a Cinematik invite? If you do, PM me and we can work something out...

Thundercracker's avatar
RE: Methods for colour matching/colour grading

That's pretty cool getting a method to automate the PureImage program. I've been experimenting with that software for a long while now. It does give some nice results for some shots but also less than stellar results for others. Really depends on how good the source is you want to match and how bad the color cast is in the SE. I've used filmstrips saved as .png's to get whole shots matched quickly.

I also have experimented with Matlab's autocolor scripts that Laserman posted ages ago in one of the other color correction threads. This method produces some very nice results but is not without its own set issues. I haven't found a way to apply it to video clips. And using is frame by frame usually produces color shift/flicker during playback. Also if the sources are really different from one another, noise will be introduced as well.

Here's some results from the Matlab code. As you can see in the sunset shots a lot of noise and missing pixels are introduced. The algorithm also brightens the image to GOUT levels.

http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/5759/ccm5.th.pnghttp://img508.imageshack.us/img508/9189/ccm1k.th.pnghttp://img850.imageshack.us/img850/1733/ccm3.th.pnghttp://img8.imageshack.us/img8/7413/ccm2.th.pnghttp://img8.imageshack.us/img8/8343/ccm4.th.png

And below are some of the Matlab color results but combined with the SE04's luma:

http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/7056/lumachroma2.th.pnghttp://img64.imageshack.us/img64/4185/lumachroma3.th.pnghttp://img37.imageshack.us/img37/1831/lumachroma4.th.pnghttp://img153.imageshack.us/img153/7881/lumachroma1.th.pnghttp://img13.imageshack.us/img13/8927/lumachroma5.th.png

 

 

Last edited on September 11, 2011 at 3:17 AM by Thundercracker
althor1138's avatar
RE: Methods for colour matching/colour grading

There is a freeware Java program I'm not sure has been mentioned here before.  It is called ImageJ but the version that includes all the plugins installed already is called FIJI.  It has some of the most configurable image registration options I've ever seen in a freeware program.  I've used it to align images and do a direct chroma copy between the GOUT and SE.  It's a bit tricky to get the right settings at first and you'd probably have to read up a bit on what all the settings are. 

You can go HERE to get an idea of what is involved in using this method.

The most interesting part about automating film footage alignment using macros is at the bottom.

I also use the MOPS feature extraction plugin to get features from both images and then feed it to the bunwarpj plugin for better alignment.

Unfortunately you have to use the RGB colorspace with this program.

**EDIT:

I found a nice tutorial video HERE that shows and describes all of the advanced functions for the plugin.  It even shows how to make landmarks and feed it to the unwarp plugin for greater accuracy.

Last edited on September 12, 2011 at 2:07 AM by althor1138

Luke threw twice....maybe.

revgen's avatar
RE: Methods for colour matching/colour grading

Both of those 2 previous methods look interesting, especially the java program that has built-in automation.

As far the PureImage front goes, I'm still trying to figure out what to do. I can create most of what I need to do using a simple Search and Replace in Notepad ++. The hard part is figuring out how to replace frame numbers in the ping images. I found a program (payware) called Advanced Find and Replace that has a feature called Cycilic Replace From File that looks like it could be the trick. Unfortunately the program costs $30.

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