Color matching and prediction: color correction tool v1.3 released! — Page 36

Yes, that’s what I want to do. Watch in SDR. I was just wondering if the calculated values would be out of range or not. I guess not. I’ll try it.

As I’ve shown in poita’s 1997 SE thread, I’m working on a new color matching algorithm, based on the machine learning methodology used for the color grading bot, as such henceforth it shall be known as…the color matching bot.

Despite still being a work in progress, here’s an example, matching the Star Wars bluray to poita’s 1997 SE scan (corrected by NeverarGreat).

Bluray:

1997 SE scan:

Bluray matched to the 1997 SE scan:

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/WLWNNN8X

Here’s another example for one of the most difficult color matching challenges, which is impossible to do with the more traditional color matching algorithm:

This shot originally featured a red sky, like on this frame from Mike Verta’s ColorRef videos:

Here’s the color matching result:

Oh man, you’re a master Dre. The results produced from the color matching bot look incredible. Any chance you’d ever release it publicly? I’d love to try my hand at a Phantom Menace regrade fitting Hal 9000’s editing. 😄

poita said:

Want to try the lobsterman shot?
https://we.tl/qe5Wo5Yr1u

The download link has the file

This is a challenging shot, where the bluray’s crushed colors and missing gradients cause problems. Anyways, here’s the result:

Bluray:

Bluray regraded:

Looks darn good to me, DrDre.

I had a question about color spaces. Basically I’ve noticed that the colors can look slightly different depending on which “Working Space” is selected in Color Management under After Effects’ Project Settings. So which working space should I select (e.g. SI RGB, sRGB, etc.) so that the post-LUT colors there look like they do in Dr Dre’s program (when you build the color matching model)? Also, does it matter which program you use to take the reference & test screenshots? I’ve been using VLC to do this (and then editing in GIMP to align them properly), but I’m not sure if there’s some better way.

um, I have subscribed to this thread but the system haven’t send me notification email on new replies since October…

Anyway, what is the difference between the new developing color matching bot and the one we have now? Is it that it works better on darker scenes?

theMaestro said:

I had a question about color spaces. Basically I’ve noticed that the colors can look slightly different depending on which “Working Space” is selected in Color Management under After Effects’ Project Settings. So which working space should I select (e.g. SI RGB, sRGB, etc.) so that the post-LUT colors there look like they do in Dr Dre’s program (when you build the color matching model)? Also, does it matter which program you use to take the reference & test screenshots? I’ve been using VLC to do this (and then editing in GIMP to align them properly), but I’m not sure if there’s some better way.

In principle it doesn’t matter which color space you use, as long as you use it consistently. Some color spaces have a wider gamut, meaning that it can represent a wider range of colors than the standard sRGB. The display colors in the tool are sRGB, I believe.

lansing said:

um, I have subscribed to this thread but the system haven’t send me notification email on new replies since October…

Anyway, what is the difference between the new developing color matching bot and the one we have now? Is it that it works better on darker scenes?

It’s just a completely different method, that will hopefully be more accurate in most cases, but probably worse in others.

I finished writing a montage building script in Vapoursynth that mimic what Williarob did in his tutorial video. It will takes a scene change text file as input and create montage base on scene changes.

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=174796

But then when I took it to further test on my Dragon Ball Z and I found out that montage that was build from one single scene in anime doesn’t do well in color matching…

target:

reference:

match:

A total fail, none of the color matched except the dark blue…

However, when I create a montage base from 3 similar scenes, the result is surprisingly better:

target

reference

match

The only color that was noticeably off is red.

lansing said:

I finished writing a montage building script in Vapoursynth that mimic what Williarob did in his tutorial video. It will takes a scene change text file as input and create montage base on scene changes.

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=174796

But then when I took it to further test on my Dragon Ball Z and I found out that montage that was build from one single scene in anime doesn’t do well in color matching…

target:

reference:

match:

A total fail, none of the color matched except the dark blue…

However, when I create a montage base from 3 similar scenes, the result is surprisingly better:

target

reference

match

The only color that was noticeably off is red.

Are you workinh on to release a color edit of this the 13 movies,the two specials and the original dragon ball? Also will it include the broadcast audio?

animefan said:

Are you workinh on to release a color edit of this the 13 movies,the two specials and the original dragon ball? Also will it include the broadcast audio?

My plan is to color match the kai version to funimation season bluray/level version, and then put all the color matched LUTs of all the episodes into an library so everyone who has a copy of kai can download and reproduce them on their own. No pirating.

I have made williarob’s montage approach into a semi-auto script so it can be scaled up to a community project which everyone can contribute (nobody can do it alone). However that approach took a big blow from these test results. Those new color palette used for Kai (at least before the Buu saga) is screwing up the color matching. For example, in the reference image, the skin color of Krilin and Vegeta are different, but on the kai, they are the same. So the color matched result came out turning them into just one color. The test results also show that a montage for just one scene is not good enough (well at least for scene with no motion), sampling frames from similar scenes may give better result, as shown on the second comparison.

Even though this is a good news that kai is still matchable, everything has to go back to the drawing broad again because I have no idea how to scale that up now.

As for the 13 blu-ray movies, there’s really nothing you need to do except lowering the saturation and highlight.

lansing said:

animefan said:

Are you workinh on to release a color edit of this the 13 movies,the two specials and the original dragon ball? Also will it include the broadcast audio?

My plan is to color match the kai version to funimation season bluray/level version, and then put all the color matched LUTs of all the episodes into an library so everyone who has a copy of kai can download and reproduce them on their own. No pirating.

I have made williarob’s montage approach into a semi-auto script so it can be scaled up to a community project which everyone can contribute (nobody can do it alone). However that approach took a big blow from these test results. Those new color palette used for Kai (at least before the Buu saga) is screwing up the color matching. For example, in the reference image, the skin color of Krilin and Vegeta are different, but on the kai, they are the same. So the color matched result came out turning them into just one color. The test results also show that a montage for just one scene is not good enough (well at least for scene with no motion), sampling frames from similar scenes may give better result, as shown on the second comparison.

Even though this is a good news that kai is still matchable, everything has to go back to the drawing broad again because I have no idea how to scale that up now.

As for the 13 blu-ray movies, there’s really nothing you need to do except lowering the saturation and highlight.

Your wrong about that everything dragon ball related needs color correcting i saw the color problems in all of it.

animefan said:
Your wrong about that everything dragon ball related needs color correcting i saw the color problems in all of it.

The Funimation BD releases are color accurate, they only have the over saturation and over brightening problem, in which they toned them down in the Buu saga release. That’s why it’s worth color matching them to the kai version.

I found bugs in the 64 bit version, the program didn’t run often on the first double click. I saw it flashes in the task manager and went away. I have to do a second double click to open it.

There’s also a bug with the ui. When I’m loading in the images, if I don’t do file->close on those image preview windows, the images may not be loaded, causing the button to be grayed out or still stuck with the last successful loaded image.

clutchins said:

lansing said:

animefan said:
Your wrong about that everything dragon ball related needs color correcting i saw the color problems in all of it.

The Funimation BD releases are color accurate

…accurate to what exactly? What is your master color reference?

The dragon ball z power level card by Bandai that came out in the early 90s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p-a-4oAnsw

Dragon Ball Kai 1-98 use a differrent color palette than the dragon ball z series, all colors channel aren’t exactly the same that’s why you can’t duplicate z colors to them.
For 99 to the end you can for sure use as it was not done the same way

about dragon ball z bluray , colors are almost okay, film also have tint in the white and some slight alteration like the yellow being too much green and other slight things and yes there is crushed black, overbrightness and excessive saturation

movies also need color correction for what i have seen from the funi movies bluray

your references are good but for the kai 1-98 just keep the color exactly as they are

i already tried this tools and it only fail when the source you want to correct isn’t suppose to have the same colors (i tried with the dbz first episode preview that have goku arm in red (color error) that was corrected in the episode…i tried to color match the dbox footage with the broadcast colors and it didn’t change the arm color cause it wasn’t suppose to have this color

hakkaibills93 said:

Dragon Ball Kai 1-98 use a differrent color palette than the dragon ball z series, all colors channel aren’t exactly the same that’s why you can’t duplicate z colors to them.
For 99 to the end you can for sure use as it was not done the same way

about dragon ball z bluray , colors are almost okay, film also have tint in the white and some slight alteration like the yellow being too much green and other slight things and yes there is crushed black, overbrightness and excessive saturation

movies also need color correction for what i have seen from the funi movies bluray

your references are good but for the kai 1-98 just keep the color exactly as they are

i already tried this tools and it only fail when the source you want to correct isn’t suppose to have the same colors (i tried with the dbz first episode preview that have goku arm in red (color error) that was corrected in the episode…i tried to color match the dbox footage with the broadcast colors and it didn’t change the arm color cause it wasn’t suppose to have this color

The issue I have with the program is that the algorithm tends to miss color in smaller areas of the image. This example shows it:
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/0FCNNN8U

The big areas like the sky, the mountain and trees are all matched, but smaller areas like the wrist band, Goten’s robe, the rocks, Videl’s shoes are all missed.

okay as i did my cc with other software i never notice this issue…don’t know how it work but maybe try with the two settings (like use maximum settings)

but anyway it’s mean to be wrong, funimation blue ray have dark colors cause it have crush black and overbright so if you “copy” colors to the kai footage which don’t have crush black you’ll have some colors too dark than others
you have to think that (cause it’s not totally accurate like i said with some green in the yellow for example) if you have a dark blue with a crush black footage, your goal is to get the same blue as bright as it was crushed black so a middle blue instead of the dark blue

hakkaibills93 said:

but anyway it’s mean to be wrong, funimation blue ray have dark colors cause it have crush black and overbright so if you “copy” colors to the kai footage which don’t have crush black you’ll have some colors too dark than others
you have to think that (cause it’s not totally accurate like i said with some green in the yellow for example) if you have a dark blue with a crush black footage, your goal is to get the same blue as bright as it was crushed black so a middle blue instead of the dark blue

What? I don’t think that’s how the algorithm of the program works.

lansing said:

hakkaibills93 said:

but anyway it’s mean to be wrong, funimation blue ray have dark colors cause it have crush black and overbright so if you “copy” colors to the kai footage which don’t have crush black you’ll have some colors too dark than others
you have to think that (cause it’s not totally accurate like i said with some green in the yellow for example) if you have a dark blue with a crush black footage, your goal is to get the same blue as bright as it was crushed black so a middle blue instead of the dark blue

What? I don’t think that’s how the algorithm of the program works.

if i am correct the program goal is to “match” colors so he will alter your source colors until match your reference, but the things is that the “reference” you use is oversaturated, overbright and crushed black so even your reference already have color alteration, the tool copy saturation etc…

the hardest things in color correction is not only to take color in consideration, but also the footage, for example cels, carddass etc don’t have the same brightness , contrast etc than the dbox if you want the same colors you also need to adjust those to match them

for example if take this screenshot

you see details in the white (where the guys are running) but not in the dark as it was crushed
here the source

if you watch the regraded bluray

you have effectively recover dark things but you now less see things in the white things as you can’t almost not see anymore the details i was talking before
that’s why your references have to be “perfect” else you’ll loose something if you don’t have perfect reference you’ll have to alter manually colors and work with tone yourself to recover the dark things without destroying the white