Cinematographers around the world getting more and more familiar with various digital tools that the modern digital era has brought to the Art of Cinematography.

We at Motion FX have sensed a need, from professional cinematographers to get equivalent level of professional consulting services towards to the secret world of Digital Color Management for Filmout or even DCP. Also many new camera need LUT's like Sony S-Log or Alexa Log-C.

We offer, on a down sized scale, the software toolset that we provide to our partners in Post Facilities, plus a limited time for one to one consulting thru Skype to get the part of Know How that they seeking, in order to solve all their problems regarding Color Management and maximize their abilities on their craft.

Along with that we provide a service to create unlimited custom 3DLUT’s to be used either on their MacBook Pro laptops or Apple Cinema 27 LED screens for special software like Gamma & Density 3cP and others to act as a pre-visualization tool on their work.

Our services are very competitive and provide a 2 years support for the professionals, along with a Filmout confidence test to be absolutely sure that what they see is what they going to get.
 

Below are FAQ for cinematographers that seeking color management assistance for Filmout or DCP.

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FAQ for Cinematographers

Q. That means we will get 3DLUts for everything like Film, DCP, XYZ, sRGB etc?

A. Yes, that's the point, we can provide all the LUT's for almost all the targets available. And more importantly specific for your setup.

Q. Unfortunately, we don’t speak English… can we still collaborate?

A. We are very sorry, but we can’t communicate if you don’t speak English. The know how transfer process includes long Skype conference calls in order to educate and solve your problems, so a lack of fluent English speaking can rise a serious communication barrier.

Q. Do we need extra hardware to get it done?

A. Yes certainly a spectrophotometer probe and if your display device fail to comply or its really bad, another display device, typically an Apple Cinema 27' LED will be just fine or a MacBook Pro.

Q. What are the supported LUT's that you can deliver?

A. We can deliver a wide range:

Q. If we don't use a Mac can we still work together?

A. Yes, the software toolkit that we provide includes version for MAC as well as for Windows.

Q. We do have a color grading system, not Apple Color, can we work together?

A. Yes we can, we do cooperate with almost all systems available. We can’t though warrantee that we will be able to assist in system related problems or tips and tricks since our knowledge as users limits in Apple Color. Additionally depending on the system there might be difficulties that we have to solve together.

Q. We also have a monitor that we trust, can we work with that?

A. Off coarse you can, the only problem that we going to face is if the monitor doesn’t perform. Then we will need something that will perform since the whole process relies on that.

Q. What are the differences between what you do and Magic Bullet LUT Buddy free?

A. Let’s explain the different types of LUT’s existing to understand:

1. Viewing LUT’s, these are LUT’s that can be created from special software like CineSpace with the aim to calibrate accurately your display devices to certain targets like Filmout Stocks, DCP, REC709 etc. These are our Generic LUT's.

2. Looks LUT’s, these are LUT’s to take an A image “original” that you will alter it (color correct it) to an image B “new image” and because you want to transfer that Look to other applications you will need to create a Look LUT which when it will be applied to images it will convert them from Look A to the Look B.

3. Conversion LUT’s, these LUT’s are designed to take a given color space like a given Film Stock or Cineon Log to REC709 or DCP, these LUT’s can be applied in the video output and used to color grade a Log sourced image to REC709. You can find this type of LUT's in our Gneric's.

The first is needed to bring your viewing environment to an accurate state in order to have the confidence of what you see is also visible to your clients and to the world. This is a difficult and very expensive task to achieve, it needs special software that costs more than 1500$ and up, plus probe and monitor that can perform. Have in mind the package needed isn’t the typical Desktop Publishing monitor icc calibrators but rather the cinema counterparts that supporting 3D LUT’s. This can be covered along with the third in the most cost effective way by using our consulting services. Alternatively you can use our Generic LUT’s that are used with specific setups to get a similar result.

The second is what the Magic Bullet free plug-in is doing…

So the bottom line is that you either need a correct conversion LUT to work with Log and i.e. with the new Technicolor style like the REC709 to Cineon 6500K (HD) assuming that you use an averagely calibrated HD monitor or if you want a professionally accuracy you have to use the professional tools to calibrate and the appropriate monitors.

Q. Ok you do different thinks, but Technicolor provides a LUT with the package what is the difference?

A. The difference is that the LUT’s included on the package are just simple 1D curves in 8bits and we provide regular high precision 3D LUT with 12 or more bits in depth that allow you to take advantage of the internal Floating point color engines of Apple Color or DaVinci i.e. in a way that will result in much more rich image and more flexible. As an example the Technicolor LUT is 4k bytes and a DaVinci 3D LUT for Cineon Log 6500K (HD) is 951k bytes.

Q. Can After Effects work with 3D LUT’s?

A. As for After Effects the most current version CS5 (10.0.1) supports the Autodesk formats of *.3dl, which we can also provide as generic or conversion.

Q. Why the Log is so better than linear in small cameras like canon 7D or 5D?

A. Let’s assume that we want to capture an 8 stops image from a sensor that has 12 bits internal processing that’s 4096 steps of light intensity to an 8bit compressed H264 file that’s 256 steps.

In “linear” the top brightest stop n. 8 will consume 128 steps, the stop n. 7 will consume the next 64 steps and the stop n. 6 will consume the next 32 steps. The top 3 brightest stops of an image when is being described in linear will result to “consume” the 87,5% of the available bits in a file, leaving the lower 5 stops of the mid-tones/shadows to be described by just 32 bits…!!!

On Log we allocate 10 stops in equivalent segments like 25 bits for each stop. That results to a secondary data compression of an applied curve, which needs to be decompressed with the use of an appropriate 3D LUT in order to counteract accurately also the saturation of the converted image. By doing that we effectively recreate information that wasn’t visible in the original file but was there in the original image the sensor was capturing.

So the difference between Linear and Log is night and day.

Q. Ok, let’s assume that we going forward what is the expected accuracy?

A. The accuracy that we aim is +/- 1 printer light. It’s a difference almost in the accuracy limits of the instruments that measuring it. A difference, very hard to be noticed from the inexperienced eye.

Q. I don't have a Mac, I use PC's what I can do for the display?

A. You can either use an Apple Cinema display or you can stick with your PC and we will make LUT's for that if it doesn't the appropriate performance we will seek for a solution. Typically almost all LED LCD's with IPS panels are performing very well when combined with a 3DLUT.

Q. What we have to pay to get started the consulting process and the LUT service?

A. The consulting fee is 400 euro’s and includes all the software needed to do the display profiling, optimizing and calibration along with one free 1 minute film out confidence test. To order now click here.

Q. Why we have to pay a renew fee when Post facilities have the unlimited LUT service?

A. The main difference is that Partners like post facilities are sending to us film recording projects. We don't make money from selling software since we don't do that, but instead we supporting our clients to do their color grading in a manner that will result to a perfect filmout. So, Cinematographers are not the natural clients for us (they don't order a filmout directly) but on the other hand they play a key role on the chain and we are obliged to support them with a minimum fee. Our aim is to get as many as possible film recordings and not to be a webinar service.

Q. Is it obligatory to do our copies in Kodak Cinelabs Greece?

A. No its optional, when all is finished correctly and you have on hands a good zero copy then all god labs would be able to reproduce the results. If you decide to do the prints in Kodak Cinelabs Greece, you will benefit from the great stability and repeatability of an ImageCare accredited Lab. Of coarse there are other ImageCare labs around the world check out the list: ImageCare Labs List