"The last, 50p is as fluid as 25i"

How or what shoots 25i, some cameras shoot 50p but...
Perhaps you meant 25p is as fluid as 50i?

If so well yes. film doesn't judder unless there's something wrong with the projector (ask for your money back) or it was badly shot (unlikely) or it was shot with a small shutter angle e.g. Saving Private Ryan. Shooting 25p and learning how to do it will get you on the right track however many displays today go out of there way to make it not look like you intended anyway.

" ubiquitous green-teal-yellow washed out cinematic look"

Film has no such thing. Considerable time and effort goes into making certain it doesn't. There's a number of processes that can make film look very odd, like cross processing and bleach bypass. You can sort of emulate those in the grading, Vegas could sort of emulate them too but it's tedious unless the video is very consistently exposed. That's where the expensive tools really shine.

There was an extended thread a few years back on using Vegas to emulate 2 strip Technicolor. Technicolor Challenge

If you want to make video look like film then you're looking completely in the wrong place. It all starts with the lighting. Study how film is lit. One very good resource is theThe DV Rebels Guide.

It's not that heavy on lighting and there's mighty tomes written by the masters if you really want to learn from the very best then Writing With Light would seem a good but considerable investment.

Bob.

Perhaps you meant 25p is as fluid as 50i

Exactly…because it’s the same frame rate exept one has 2 fields but both have the same amount of frames so this isn’t the solution for judder


Ingvarai I see you are coming round to that film look! ….What happened?

"Exactly…because it’s the same frame rate exept one has 2 fields but both have the same amount of frames so this isn’t the solution for judder"

If you shoot 50i you do get less judder than if you shoot 25p as the camera is recording 50 fields per second compared to 25 frames. A CRT TV will display the same 50 fields.

On the other hand if you shoot 25p then converting it to 50i (25PsF) will make no difference as the two fields were taken at the same time.

Not trying to be pedantic but getting the terminology right is 80% of the problem when these topics come up and it's very easy for people to get confused.

Bob.

Ok - whoa there, ist was a typo, i meant 50i, not 25i.
So far, no one has answered my question, to what extent you use Vegas for the cinematic look. And sorry about mentioning a specific color, I should have kept my mouth closed and just written "cinematic look". The reason I mentioned it is because to me, all modern movies look greenish with teal/blue shadows and overemphasized yellowish skin colors and highlights.

xfx:
>Ingvarai I see you are coming round to that film look! ….What happened?
I will try to answer (I am not sure what this question means):
I watched a video tutor for Red Giant Colorista, used in After Effects. Then I realized that in Vegas, we have the same color wheels in the Color Corrector, and we have several instruments that, before this, were hidden unknown(hidden) to me. The RGB Parade, the Vectorscope and several others. Besides of this, I have tried separate levels for R, G and B.
Using the same approach as the Colorista tutor, I was able to create a Cinematic look. Ok, nitpickers, I know movies have their own color fingerprint, but admit that there is a trend where movies become greenish, and where there are only a few dominant colors.
The question still remains: Do you use Vegas for doing this? I am after the tips and experiences you might have.
ingvarai

"... admit that there is a trend where movies become greenish...

I totally disagree.

You need to see more movies. ;o)

I wound up going with Magic Bullet Looks. It's a great time saver.

I found this http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/881374#881374:
Rick Wise:

This is interesting, since I think Vegas is good enough right here. So far, not one has said they use Vegas for this. I will..

>You need to see more movies. ;o)
Only green movies ;-)

I watched the same tutorial and can easily replicate the same look in my own footage with MB Looks. That was really cool. I think it would help to clarify that achieving the "cinematic look" was fairly limited in that tutorial to a "blockbuster" action movie look. Whether it 'defines' the look of this decade remains to be seen, but the summer blockbusters showcased there seemed to be representative.

Even though MB Looks slams a brake on rendering, it allows this dunce to create a new stunning look in just a few mouse clicks/drags. I'm not ashamed to admit that I sit in the hobbyist cheap seats, so MBLooks putting that kind of power at my fingertips made its purchase worthwhile to me. I just wouldn't want to fuss around longer with Vegas' built in filters (and, yes, I've messed with them).

$0.02,
Steve

I've used MB Looks and I've used Vegas built in stuff, and while there are places where I find MB Looks to be useful GPU driven gradiated blurs. I think that most everything can be done in vegas quite well with regards to this aspect.

VASST has a free tool, known as Celluloid which does a lot of what you're talking about ( 24p conversion is SD only though ), and VASST is selling various film looks for that software at just $25 a set that utilize the tools already at your disposal and are completely tweakable after the fact. As your proc gets faster, your rendering times will go up and up, and faster than real time is not really an option with GPU accelerated MB Looks when rendering I don't believe. (another reason I like to use the built in Vegas tools).

Dave

> I think that most everything can be done in Vegas quite well with regards to this aspect.
Unlike most other topics, where I have gotten super tips and explanations on how to solve various issues, over the last 18 months, this topic seems to be different.
If anyone is doing this in Vegas, that is: Adjusting the overall color look and feel of an entire project, I would like to know how you do it.
For instance: Do you first adjust and correct the color of all scenes to make them as "normal" and homogeneous as possible? And then colorize? This is what I intend to do, unless you think different.
And what Vegas FX do you use when colorizing, in what order, what Vegas meters (Vectorscope) do you use, etc. etc.
ingvarai

I would have thought my tip to try using the Channel Blend FX would have shown you some very interesting approaches. What that FX does is let you adjust the color matrix, something that to the best of my knowledge cannot be done with any other FX in Vegas. This is one of the subtle differences between the look of video and film.

If you simply want the rather gross look of say CSI then spinning the low and high color wheels in the primary CC FX should get you going. All that is covered in Stu's book as well as controlling the colors in front of the camera to really help the process along.

I suspect one of the reasons MB is so slow is it does more than simple CC. It looks to me like it's doing clever detail reduction. You can do this in Vegas and render times again become very long.


Bob.

>..I would have thought my tip
Huh? What post are you referring to?
Anyhows - thanks for the tip now.I am not on my Vegas PC at the moment, I cannot even remember the Channel Blend FX. I will definitely have a look at it, very soon.
Edited:
> All that is covered in Stu's book
Who is Stu?

"Huh? What post are you referring to?"
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=680066

"Who is Stu?"
Stu Maschwitz, arguably done more than anyone to advance the indie film maker.

http://prolost.com/

Heaps of good stuff to read on his web site.

Bob.

Stu is Stu Maschwitz and the book is The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap. See the link in Bob's first post:

http://astore.amazon.com/prolost-20/detail/0321413644

Another link:

http://www.amazon.com/DV-Rebels-Guide-All-Digital-Approach/dp/0321413644/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256847212&sr=1-9

Jøran Toresen

Thanks Bob, og takk til Jøran,
the book is already on its way from Amazon

To Bob:
I do know the Channels Blend FX, after all, in fact I have already experimented with it. These days I try so much software that my mind is full of FXs and stuff.. Thanks for the reminder.

ingvarai

If you like greenish, dreamy look, try this preset:

sample veg

Piotr

PS. This is a preset that either Alister Chapman or Simon Wyndham once published on their websites (sorry don't remember which one of the 2 gentlemen, but still credits to the right one :))

Thanks Piotr, now we are talking!
I learnt a lot from this, although I have made something similar myself. I do not understand the use of the HSL before the color corrector, since the latter have a saturation adjust itself. Nevertheless, having tweaked it some, I achieved great results.
Here is some footage (that originally is bad lit), using the VEG you sent me, having tweaked it a little:

At the risk of appearing argumentative, I'd say it looks different, but not more cinematic.

However, depending upon the dramatic context of the scene in which it's used, it might work.