I have to grade a bunch of dailies that have had all the camera metadata loss due to transcoding to ProRes, and all I have is the naming structure to guess the right LUT. I know I can wing it and just make it look good, bu I’m wondering if anyone recognizes this naming structure to help me know if I’m going in the right direction for my Color Mgmt.
A122_A049_0329LX - I thought maybe Red, but seems like the 2nd part of the shot in Red always starts with C***.
That’s standard cine naming convention and does identify specific camera. And good camera uses this same layout.
First part is camera index and reel (A camera, reel 122), second part is clip number. Actually should always say C and not A (clip 49 in that reel) and last part is a random letter combination assigned to the specific camera to avoid ambiguity. I believe its derived from serial number or timestamp but could be wrong. Will be same for all clips from same reel.
Without meta data surviving your guess will be as good as anyone else’s.
Either Red or Alexa has an underscore (_) between the cam index and reel…
Ex: A001_C001 or A001C001
And ive also seen file names that include military date and time (when shot) after that (YYYMMDD)
Ex A001_C001_20230511
Experiment with different LUTs: Try applying different LUTs to the material and see which settings give the best results. You can use trial iterations and compare them with each other.
Learn the general naming structure: If you have noticed certain patterns in the filenames, you can use this information as a clue to determine the correct LUT. For example, if the second part of a frame always starts with “C***,” this may indicate a particular color profile.
Consult Experienced Colleagues: Ask colleagues who have experience with similar situations or color correction specialists. They can offer helpful ideas and tips based on their experience.
Test and get feedback: Create small test projects, apply different LUTs, and gather feedback from others. This will help you better understand which settings work best.
Colouspaces, gamma, lens info, ISO, fstops … Cameras should dump such metadata automated and mandatory, safe form lazy DITs. And “professional” softwares should keep always all metadata throught exports or conversions. It’s a shame that our industry does not set inflexible standards. These are a must for today’s workflows. Metadata lost is one of the most underated issues we have.
Appreciate the feedback everyone. It’s unfortunate when the camera information get’s stripped from the file, but I know it happens all the time. @ace_elliott, thanks for the Alexa naming convention. Best I can tell, the files in question were Sony F65 Slog2 and Sony SLog3. I’ll try and get confirmation and post a rough cheat sheet of those and other file conventions if it could be helpful to anyone else.
Nothing beats trying each LUT out and seeing for yourself, but sometimes it’s late and testing LUTs can be time consuming. Having something to reference as a starting point might cut down some time and let folks go home a bit earlier. Thanks again!