Logarist Color Correction for Vegas Pro

balazer wrote on 1/1/2017, 1:36 PM

Logarist brings color science to the art of color correction, enabling fast and accurate adjustment right inside Vegas Pro, without the need to shoot raw. Logarist reduces color correction to its fundamentals, with controls that work much like the controls built into a camera or a raw image processor like Lightroom. Logarist uses look-up tables (LUTs) to transform your camera's video into a color space optimized for exposure compensation, white balance correction, and contrast adjustment, and then renders it for view on a standard display. Logarist makes basic color correction easy and accurate, and enables advanced corrections that are otherwise difficult or impossible. Logarist is free, and you can download it from https://www.logarist.com.

Logarist works in Vegas Pro 15 using the VEGAS LUT Filter, and in Vegas Pro 13 and later using the VisionColor LUT Plugin.

Watch the Logarist introduction and demo/tutorial video on YouTube:

Logarist supports these camera color spaces:

BT.709 (standard HD video)
Arri Alexa Log C
Canon EOS Neutral
Canon Log 1–3
Canon Wide DR gamma
Fujifilm F-Log
GoPro Protune
JVC J-Log1
Panasonic GH2 Standard
Panasonic GH4 Cinelike D
Panasonic GH4 V-Log L
Panasonic GH5 Cinelike D*
Panasonic VariCam V-Log
Sony Cine1–2
Sony HyperGamma 2, 4, 7, and 8
Sony S-Log1–3

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Comments

karma17 wrote on 10/1/2017, 5:09 PM

Sorry I didn't catch that on the Logarist page. I thought I remember reading somewhere that desaturated highlights were part of the film look, so I'll have to try the High Comp look to see.

I just watched Doug Jensen's Primer on Resolve and found the info pretty well presented, but he only covers the basics and doesn't go into depth. I have studied a fair amount of Resolve, but never found Resolve sufficient as an NLE, so as much as possible, I've wanted to keep all my corrections within Vegas as much as possible. Jensen states that you can achieve the same effects with an NLE like Premiere as you can in Resolve, but it will be much more difficult. So he advocates strongly for using a dedicated grading program such as Resolve.

I believe if you get a good image in camera and that includes lighting and composing your scene appropriately in first place, I don't necessarily think a lot of correction is necessary beyond a few basics. Jensen's workflow is to apply a LUT and do shadow, mids, and highlight adjustments, and maybe white balancing, and pretty much the image is good. He might boost the saturation a little, but nothing complicated at all. He does show that the log wheels allow you more fine control over lows, mids, and highs.

He mentions applying the exposure node before the LUT node, but I honestly don't see what difference it makes to apply the exposure node before or after the LUT. Do you see any advantage to doing that?

In Logarist, are the filters considered added before or after the LUT? Does it even matter? I suppose I could shoot some test footage to see if any difference.

Thanks again for all your work. I sincerely appreciate it!!

balazer wrote on 10/1/2017, 5:33 PM

In Logarist, basic corrections are done between the two LUTs, in the Logarist space. You're not limited to just exposure compensation, white balance correction, and contrast adjustment. Curves, for example, work well in the Logarist space and let you access an extended range of highlights that won't be available after the BT.709 output LUT. Any filter you apply will have a different effect in the Logarist space compared to the same effect in BT.709. Which space to work in really depends on the operation of the tool. Vegas Pro's secondary color corrector for example can be used in the Logarist space, but it can be tricky because the space is denser than BT.709, and the controls aren't quite granular enough.

Personally I find that basic color correction is usually all I need. When I try to do secondary correction, I'm usually not satisfied with the results, and whatever I achieve would have turned out better with some change in scene lighting. But again, that's personal, and maybe other people are better at secondary color correction than I am. At least I think getting the basic corrections to be as accurate as possible should be the priority. That's what Logarist really helps with, and it works just as well in Vegas Pro as in Resolve.

And thanks for your appreciation. I'm glad there are people who get use from the system.

karma17 wrote on 10/1/2017, 8:05 PM

Yes, I agree completely. I find that once I apply the in and out LUTs in Logarist, it is like boom, we aren't in Kansas anymore. And the slog is back to full life with just that. If I shot my scene correctly, I really don't need any further adjustments. I mean key, fill, and eye lights are all there. At most, I apply a slight s-curve just for added punch and contrast and I'm done. That's why I get a kick out of all these Resolve tutorials that really show only very simple adjustments are needed to tweak the footage to taste. A little contrast here, a little saturation there, maybe tweaking the shadows and highlights a bit, and that's it. Of course, I totally get if you are trying for a blockbuster effect or teal/orange effect to make skin tones pop, But I think that look itself is somewhat of a cliche. But again,so much is personal preference.

yasuain wrote on 1/30/2018, 8:33 AM

I uploaded a video about selective color grading by logarist. If you are using logarist, please check this video by all means.

balazer wrote on 1/31/2018, 12:28 AM

Hi, yasuain. When using Logarist, make sure you set the view transform to "None". In your video, you set it to "ACES RRT (sRGB)". That's going to mix ACES processing with Logarist, which will give you incorrect colors. You should use one or the other.

yasuain wrote on 2/2/2018, 8:02 AM

Thank you for pointing that out. Anyway, I am evaluating logarist very much as a useful tool for expressing my favorite color tone.

BruceUSA wrote on 2/3/2018, 4:57 PM

First time I decide to try out Logarist workflow on GH5 CineD footage to Logarist .BT.709 cube= Awesome. Thank you very much. :)

RogerS wrote on 2/6/2018, 7:05 AM

I tried Logarist and while the theory behind it (correct out camera color oddities and edit with a gamma sort of like Lightroom's Melissa RGB?) seems solid, there is a huge performance penalty to doing the two transforms in Vegas and you lose access to many critical color correction tools. Curves seemed to have some odd behavior in highlights. I think it needs a suite of log-friendly correction tools (curves, hue and selective color, white balance) to be an improvement over the status quo.

To just get a more reasonable starting point for grading, see Paul Leeming's correction LUTs which just get rid of the color oddities of many popular cameras. They're not free but are not expensive.

balazer wrote on 2/6/2018, 12:37 PM

RogerS, you don't lose access to any color correction tools. Put them after the last LUT filter and they behave exactly as you're used to.

As for the performance penalty, yes, the LUT filters are slow. I suggest doing your color correction last, and reducing the preview resolution.

Leeming LUTs get rid of some color oddities, but they do nothing to enable the color correction process.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 2/7/2018, 8:25 AM

Well, at least for Vegas Pro 15 users there is also the possibility to engage an ACES 1.0 workflow inside Vegas Pro 15. BUT be prepared that the ACES 1.0 workflow will show a similar preview performance penalty at the Moment.

balazer wrote on 4/2/2018, 5:06 PM

Vegas Pro 15 build 311 introduced a new version of the VEGAS LUT Filter that adds GPU acceleration. I measured a 6x speedup of preview playback speed when using the build 321 filter with the Logarist workflow on 4k video.

Vegas can be unstable with GPU acceleration enabled. I observed more crashes than usual.

If you prefer Vegas Pro 13 or 14, you can still use the new Vegas Pro 15 VEGAS LUT Filter by copying "C:\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 15.0\OFX Video Plug-Ins\Vfx1.ofx.bundle" to "C:\Program Files\Common Files\OFX\Plugins\Vfx1.ofx.bundle". The GPU acceleration works even in these older version of Vegas.

wwjd wrote on 4/3/2018, 4:35 PM

HOW is it I missed this whole freaking thread??? This is awesome, thanks Balazer!

frank-grygier wrote on 4/23/2018, 10:53 AM

Vegas Pro crashing when using Logarist.

When I attempt to use the Luts in the latest Vegas PRO build I experience choppy play back with black frames and an eventual crash of Vegas PRO. I am trying to apply the LUTS to Panasonic CineD. Any thought on what I may be doing wrong or is there a known issue. Thanks

balazer wrote on 4/23/2018, 12:34 PM

Try turning off GPU acceleration in video preferences. The VEGAS LUT Filter seems to be unstable with GPU acceleration turned on.

frank-grygier wrote on 4/23/2018, 4:15 PM

Try turning off GPU acceleration in video preferences. The VEGAS LUT Filter seems to be unstable with GPU acceleration turned on.

That worked.

wslagter1 wrote on 9/27/2018, 10:28 PM

Hi Jacob,

I use your ACES and Logarist information for many years in Vegas Pro with Sony and GoPro cameras with great result.

Now I also shoot with the iPhone X using Mavis App and recording format 23.98Fps, 100 Mbit, 4K

Is there a Camera Color Space for the iPhone or if not supported,

should I use the BT.709 LUT ?

I guess the Project properties should remain - 32-bit floating point (full range) and View transform - Off

Thanks for your help

balazer wrote on 9/27/2018, 11:03 PM

I don't know about any special color spaces that the iPhone X camera might support. You can use the BT.709 input LUT with a standard camera color mode.

Atom-Jones wrote on 10/19/2018, 9:58 PM

Okay so I just got to this party!

I have a URSA Mini Pro 4.6k and I'm ready to try Logarist, one problem though...
My camera isn't supported... :(

How can I find the colorspace info and make my own preset?

Thanks,
~A

set wrote on 10/19/2018, 10:21 PM

Vegas Pro 16 has several new listed Color space compared to previous versions.

balazer wrote on 10/19/2018, 10:48 PM

Blackmagic doesn't publish specifications for their log color spaces. If they had, I already would have supported them. In my opinion, shooting raw is the only real way to use a Blackmagic camera, and practically speaking that means using Resolve.

set wrote on 10/20/2018, 3:08 AM

Someone in FB group posted his Color Grading sample (Property of TM Production Video by Alessandro Marchese) - graded in VP16.

If no mentioned color space, perhaps using LUT ?

Atom-Jones wrote on 10/26/2018, 8:25 PM

Because I shot on a Blackmagic there's no way to use Logarist as an aid to Color Correct my project, is that correct? I wish there was a way to build a color profile, maybe track down the Engineer, but they have an incentive to not reveal that info because they want us to use Resolve.

Also, I have Vegas 16, but I'm not sure that output of Rec709 helps in color correction, unless the program can correctly interpret the color profile to begin with. (This might reveal my ignorance on the topic, but drop some knowledge on me, I need it)

balazer wrote on 10/26/2018, 9:31 PM

That's right. Logarist is based on having a profile of the camera's color space, but Blackmagic's are all secret. It's possible to reverse engineer some of that stuff, and I've tried, but never got satisfactory results from the Blackmagic camera when I didn't record to raw. Blackmagic calls the Ursa's 'video' setting "very similar to the REC 709 color standard", so you could try that. Underexpose a bit so your highlights are not all blown out (since Rec.709 doesn't have much highlight range). You can then correct in post.