Inspiring

Question

Lumetri Limitations

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
January 16, 2017
5 replies
7539 views

I'm very confused after watching this video.

I don't have any of the problems described in this video. Anyone else having the same issues as this person in the video?

Perhaps maybe it's the codec he's using?

He's saying the scopes don't accurately represent what he does in Lumetri even though my AVCHD does.

This topic has been closed for replies.

O

Offbeat Bryce ProductionsAuthor

Inspiring

since I posted more screen shots why isn't the curves section what it was when I exported the LUT. It's imported in the basic section.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

It doesn't look like there's anything "in" that LUT this time. In looking pretty close at the scopes, I can't see any changes in the one with it appearing in the slot or the one without it. So either there's some reason Lumetri is disabled at the moment or that LUT isn't working.

Creating a LUT isn't anything like creating a Preset ... you create a preset of a Lumetri panel, you drop that on a clip, it re-creates the Lumetri panel just as you saved it as a Preset. Save as a Preset after doing something with any control, the control will be exactly like it was when you saved the Preset.

LUTS ... aren't Presets. They don't have anything whatever to do with the controls of the Lumetri panel. They are built from the changes to the signal data in place at the time you create them but not from the settings of the controls.

A LUT is a Look-up Table. It's a matrix of data points about changes to the signal ... that's all. "At Red Chanel level 1, lift signal to level 3; Blue channel level 1, drop to -3; Green Channel level 1=1; ... rinse & repeat.

So ... neither PrPro nor any other NLE/grading app will have any clue which controls were used to create the matrix settings the LUT recorded ... let alone what the controls used were set for.

You can create a LUT with the LUT buddy effect, for example.

1) Do some changes in a Lumetri panel.

2) Drag/drop a LUT Buddy effect on the clip.

3) In the Effects Control Panel (ECP), drag that LUT Buddy up above the Lumetri panel, and set it to "Draw Pattern".

4) Drag/drop another LUT Buddy effect onto the clip.

5) In the ECP, make sure it's below the Lumetri effect, and set this one to "Read Pattern"

6) In the ECP for that second LUT Buddy, now use it's controls to "Export LUT". Name/save it, and move it into a folder you can access easily.

Now ... go to another clip.

1) Drag/drop a LUT Buddy effect on it.

2) In the ECP, use the controls to navigate to and apply the LUT created in the above steps.

Now ... you've got all the changes made in the Lumetri panel as above ... without even using the Lumetri panel.

Sadly, Lumetri created LUTs are not usable with LUT Buddy, although LUT Buddy created LUTs normally are usable within Lumetri.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

O

Offbeat Bryce ProductionsAuthor

Inspiring

LUT buddy from Magic Bullet?

R Neil Haugen

Legend

Jarle is a very, very good post-processing expert. He's knowledgeable, experienced, and also a pretty nice guy.

And I can guarantee what he says is accurate with any media that comes into PrPro with over-brights and super-blacks. Lumetri behaves exactly as he shows. And no, he isn't saying the scopes inaccurately show what he does, but that they show exactly where his media is, and what Lumetri does with it. And everything he shows that he feels is "broken" will happen exactly like that with any media that includes signal data in the "overbrights" above 99, or the "super-darks" below 1.

And that is how it is designed to work.

Yes ... I've spent plenty of time in both live discussions and emails with some of the PrPro staff, and that is exactly how it's designed.

The basic concept behind Lumetri was to create a color workspace that could sort of replace the full grading app SpeedGrade for many users. And if you have any familiarity with the Adobe Lightroom still-image program, you'll recognize the basic layout of panels of tools, on the right side of the UI, exactly like ... Lightroom. And the Basic tab is the closest section of the Lumetri panel to Lightroom. This is by design ... that's not a layout used by any pro colorist application I'm aware of.

Next, the processing of the media occurs precisely in the same order the tools appear on the UI, top to bottom. So ... in the Basic tab, any Input LUT is applied; then Temperature, then Tint, then Exposure, then ... on down the panel. And on down through the other panels. (Which does lead into his comments about the HSL Secondaries also.)

But also inherent in the design considerations was that they were building a tool mimicking a non-pro-video program, that to their expectation would be most utilized by those without experience in pro video media. "Noobs". And this is the exact phrase that's been used by several of the engineers/design leaders to me in explaining this design choice: "This was designed to keep the users from breaking their media."

The Basic tab tools are limited to working with media within 1-99 on the Lumetri scope's RGB Parade left-side scale. Completely. You can not push media above 100, neither can you 'touch' super-darks at or below 0 on that scale. Unfortunately this means that if you currently have data above 99/below1, it's off-limits for any slider of the Basic tab to modify.

Those bits where his clouds are above 99, and when he brings down the Whites, you see the scopes now show a major gap between signal at whatever the top is ... maybe 85 ... and then no data at all until it hits 100, then there's all that data up there? Yea, that's absolutely correct.

My Panasonic GH3 creates mov, mp4, and AVCHD files. All of those formats can easily provide media that exceeds the 0-100 scale on the left side of the RGB Parade scopes. In direct terminology, "over-brights". And exactly as Jarle shows, no over-brights can be "touched" by the tools of the Basic tab.

There are two tabs of the Lumetri panel that are allowed to touch signal in over-brights/super-darks: Curves and Color Wheels. So, you can just skip down to the Curves tab, bring the top of the signal down, then go back to the Basic tab and work, right?

NO.

The controls of the Basic tab are applied to the media first, remember? Anything you do in the Basic tab changes the signal that any later tab "sees" and can modify. So now, any adjustment of say the Whites or Contrast sliders in the Basic tab throws the over-brights back up, creates that huge gap, and gives you an incredibly banded image. So if you go down to the lower panels to correct your too-bright media, you can't ever go above those and touch anything. Period.

That's why the HSL panel also gets screwed up if you go back & change the data in an earlier panel. The HSL mask and contols should work on the basic media signal data, but they don't. They are processed in order, after everything you've done above. Which is logical to the engineering staff, and terribly screwy in working media. So ... you have to learn to work in the order of the tools they give you.

You wanna know some other screwy design choices?

The Basic tab's Input LUT is where one is supposed to use a camera or technical corrective LUT. So if you're shooting a big Sony with a particular LOG format, you'd put the corrective LUT to Rec.709 there.

Which is completely ... WRONG.

All the camera makers build those LUTs around the sensor's design and the math of the internal processing ... from media that's perfectly exposed & white-balanced. They couldn't really do it any other way. So to properly use those corrective "tech" LUTs, you need to feed them a properly exposed/white-balanced image. So ... you need a spot to apply the LUT, then before that LUT, do the correct neutralization work while watching the results in the scopes & playback monitor. Completely backwards of this design.

(Note: all the camera manufacturers, colorists, and other software programs such as Resolve apply LUTs after neutralization. Only PrPro does it in this order.)

So ... what the heck do you use that Input LUT slot for? If you have media you're working like my little GH3 puts out that typically has over-brights, you load your media on a timeline, without any other corrections, then use perhaps the Curves or Color Wheels controls to bring the media tops back down to probably about 97-98, then save that as a .cube LUT from the Lumetri fly-out menu. Save it in the Technical folder, and give it a name that is like "1 Overbright Recovery" so it's at the top of the drop-down list, and you can access it fast to get your media workable in Lumetri.

There's a bunch of others, but I'm already into the weeds.

That said, Lumetri when worked with an external control like a properly (and nearly completely!) re-mapped Tangent Ripple or Elements panel, can do pretty good work and that pretty fast.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

chrisw44157881

Inspiring

nice post neil! without your insight into the broken superbright problem, premiere would be mostly useless for a great many people. I almost left to davinci from this, for real.

Your post, """1 Overbright Recovery" Lut""

Are you talking about using master clips? Because that seems like it would be used the most. or.. wouldn't you need 2 copies of lumetri then, for technical lut?

What do you think of using an adjustment layer above video, set transfer mode to luminosity and apply levels effect and save as preset.

I made a preset for broadcast legal, which in hindsight, actually is almost the same thing! perhaps just need to raise output instead of input> 235 and lower <16 in terms of ire for non-broadcast stuff so it reduces instead of clips.

I did try going the route with a technical transform lut but premiere seems to have a bug where you have to nest your sequence first for it to clip luma/colors correctly without smooshing gamma. That's annoying as heck. I must investigate further.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

As to the overbright LUT, no ... you can make some settings in Lumetri, then go to the three little bars to the right of the "Lumetri Color" name at the top of the panel, right-click, and choose "Export .cube ... ". Then save that to the Program files/Adobe/Premiere Pro 2017/Lumetri/LUTs/Technical folder.

After re-starting PrPro, when you click the drop-down list for the Input LUT slot in the Basic tab, that LUT will be in the list. If you save it with the type of naming I suggest, it should be the first one shown. Which makes it very easy to apply that when needed. I have three different LUTs I created for various media there. Here's the shape of the curve for rolling off over-brights & super-darks that I did as shown in the Lumetri Curves tab, while watching the Waveform Luma & RGB Parade scopes:

(Having two "marks" close to each other is a way of forcing the curve shape above or below the paired marks on the line, otherwise it will bend the curve both above and below a mark.)

Using the curve shown above, I then created a cube LUT of this and saved it in the Technical folder ... so it appears at the top of the list. So that drop down now shows:

"1 Curve Rolloff" is the one that brings over-brights down and super-darks up a bit, as in the curve that is shown above.

"1 LowSat Mask" is a nifty one. That I created from a mask in the HSL panel, using Saturation only, where I set it for the low end of Saturation, the "full" bar up to about 25%, then the "shoulder" extending up to maybe 40%. Saving this just as a mask is possible ... on a "clear" clip with no other settings applied, you set the HSL panel like this:

And then do the Export cube routine as given above.

Now, when I set that 'on' in the Basic tab's Input LUT slot, the only parts of the image showing are the fairly low saturated areas. Which is rather nifty ... now set the Temp & Tint controls so that the low saturated areas shown by the scopes are centered in the Vectorscope, right on the axis of the two crossing lines ... and you've pretty well nailed "neutral" color balance. The low saturated areas in most images should be the areas closest to grey/white/black. Which normally belong as a spot in the center of the Vectorscope.

As soon as I've adjusted white balance, I select either "none" or the 1 Curves Rolloff if needed.

As to working on adjustment layers ... that's a good way to keep full use of the Lumetri panel, especially when working with external controls. If you have multiple Lumetri on a clip or AL, the color-workspace Lumetri panel will only work with the latest applied instance ... you need to use the Effects Control panel and the twirl-down controls to adjust earlier Lumetri controls. Which, naturally, will change how the following Lumetri instances affect your media also ... sort of a Harry Potter "wizard's" priori incatatem situation ...

So yes, I use AL's on sequences, primarily to A) maintain full use of my external controls (I've both a Tangent Ripple & Elements panel) or B) to extend a correction over multiple clips.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

E

excited_Genie16B8

Legend

The cameras I use record the full range, not limited. So if there are "overbrights", that detail is either gone for good, or brought back into range with the RAW settings. So for me, this is not an issue.

Ann Bens

Community Expert

I know of this video and the editor who made it.

I have encountered this many times.

When i do I resort to the 'obselete' effects.

chrisw44157881

Inspiring

I'm impressed someone made a video like that. How did you find it? I use fast color corrector myself. you can get around part of the bug by laying a rgb effect and raising/dropping all ire values in the waveform to 0-100 ire or else lumetri goes crazy.

if none of your footage is below or above 0-100 ire, you probably won't have this problem. as to RAW controls being better, well heheh, yea, they are. also, any extreme shadow problems require enabling hdr in lumetri. Think of lumetri as beta. heck there's still no color management after 10 years.

Peru Bob

Community Expert

Please don't double post.

I've deleted your other thread with the same question.

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