Image/effects Tab questions

[finnjaeger]

Got some questions I stumbled across today when doing a grading session in Flame

1. is there a way to have a colormanagement matchbox be always the last node? i keep moving it in the priority editor everytime I add a new selective. I like to use a Look Lut or whatever as my last node , sort of like how output-grade is setup to just be the last node

2. Can you somehow denoise a shot in the effects tab? OFX neatVideo comes after resize so not before the green Image node… which is sort of useless?

3. Where is the default setting for the grading mode for new mastergrade nodes? My sources are acesCG but i have a green colormgnt before my green image that takes my source to logC4 before it hits Image. Image mastergrades still default to scene-linear and not log.

4. Can you copy the settings of a node to another node? like i want to take outputgrade from shot A to shot B

5. Groups are interesting, can I use them to add a overall group-output/group-input grade like resolve? Not sure what they are for otherwise…

6. can I make new selectives default to parrallel ?

[Sinan]

Some answers to some questions:

1. Instead of a ColorManagement matchbox how about using the default ColorManagement as a TLFX?
2. Naah. We could do a feature request for a green OFX node maybe.
3. n/a
4. Drag and drop for the Image node, but copy/paste for grade/selective hierarchies. There might be a way to save them like the ref buffer, if I’m not mistaken. @Jeff might know

That’s all I have

[Hengy]

@finnjaeger

Can you somehow denoise a shot in the effects tab? OFX neatVideo comes after resize so not before the green Image node… which is sort of useless?

Maybe a Work around
Curious if you add an action fx and put the neat ofx before it. since resize is muted, it should do the whole picture yes?
But I would like it to be in the beginning of the source chain. Once I degrain I would leave it alone anyway.

[Jason_Kalinoski]

1. Under node prefs in Image, you can select “current as default”…so you should be able to add whatever node to the image schematic then save as default.

[bryanb]

1. Attach the Color Management matchbox to the surface (same as ‘OutputGrade’ node).

2. You could do denoise in BFX. That get’s processed before Green Image nodes.

3. Preferences > Tools & TL FX > MasterGrade > Change “Project Working Space” option to Log / Scene-Linear / Video

4. You can copy/paste the OutputGrade node to another schematic. It’s not the best because you still have to attach it to the surface. If it’s a selective you can copy/paste those easier by right-clicking on the number in the Selective area. You can paste everything, just the selective, just matchboxes, or append the matchboxes.

5. Yes but I don’t think you can apply just the OutputGrade node. You can apply selectives to all the group, or the whole image node as far as I know.

6. I don’t know this one.

[allklier]

A few thoughts -

1 - Is your color management clip specific? If not, just put in a gap effect in a track above, and then you don’t have to worry.

2 - I’m for denosing with BFX. A few weeks ago I found a insidious bug having Neat in the TL-FX. It mishandles the bit depth conversion under certain circumstances. Also, if Denoise is the only thing in BFX, you can copy between clips without having to setup Neat. Pretty simple.

Plus in BFX is simple to write out an OpenClip for denoise to do your own caching. Just save in User/Project bin as setup with pattern browsing.

3 - Brian already answerd

4 - You can copy between nodes. However, I think it’s best to make use of the TL-FX explorer. Drag either the entire node, or individual selectives there, where they’re saved as grades similar to Resolve gallery. Then you can apply from there, including bulk-apply to all selected nodes. Very versatile. Allows you to copy specific selectives only, and then only update selective or matchboes. Actually way better than Resolve.

5 - Use separate Image node in gap effect below / above

6 - Not sure you can do that. But what I do is I setup an empty grade at the beginning of the project. Essentially setup all my selectives they way I like them (I have a specific pattern that follows common ways of managing Resolve node trees). But all grades are neutral. I save that to the TL-FX explorer as ‘base grade’ and then can initialize all clips with that and then grade. If you set your selectives up as parallel in that saved template, it will automatically be that way for everything you use it for.

Other benefit of pre-setting your selectives for a specific pattern (see below), then they don’t fall out of order. If you add selectives as you go, you have to keep an eye on the priority editor and re-order them every so often, which creates extra work.

Also - I tend to leave input and output grade alone. At least input grade has specific significance in how the node works (if you hide it, the whole thing goes black, instead of just disabling your grade). I do all my grading in selectives, even if there is no actual key/mask involved. For no other reason that I can select all the selectives from my Tangent, except input/output grade nodes.

PS - My selective pattern (loosely structured after Cullen Kelly’s node trees)

1a - Film Emulation (if applicable)
1b - Camera Match Node (if I want to match underneath grade)
2 - Tone (exposure only)
3 - Color (hue only)
4 - Saturation
5…8 - Image details with keys/masks / can be based on source if needed
9 - Vignettes / Gradients
10 -
11 - Revisions
12 - Client Notes
13+ - (if things go crazy)

Many colorists use Fixed Node Trees for their color piepline. Keeps things organized. Also helps in Resolve/Mistika/Baselight with propagation tools throughout the timeline. In Flame there are limited propagation tools, but keeping things in separate selectives makes it easy to emulate by mass-dragging individual selectives from TL-FX explorer. And keeping the same grade op on the same selective number helps with dragging from TL-FX explorer as it matches number and then you can just update selective or matchbox.

If you’re not familiar with the TL-FX explorer , here’s the learning channel video. There’s are at least 3 parts, I’ll let you find the other ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAEe0Mv448E

I keep my TL-FX explorer and references on the 2nd monitor, so they’re always at your fingertip.

[finnjaeger]

thank you all! will write some answeres addition Q later

Main thing for me is that it all has to happen on the tlfx and not via batchfx or gaps as i am using connected conform between many timelines,

All i want to do is select all my clips and sync my image node to all selected clips , all incomming clips are openclips for example

[finnjaeger]

@Jason_Kalinoski

1. Under node prefs in Image, you can select “current as default”…so you should be able to add whatever node to the image schematic then save as default.

super awesome, i totally missed that!

[finnjaeger]

1. yes its clip specific, gap effects are out of the question because of connected conform, I am grading like 40 timelines… starting in the sources sequence syncing everything to all timelines, so managing gapFX and stuff is not really a option.
   so @bryanb whenever I have something directly connected to the surface it automatically gets applied after all the selectives?

2. yea the denoising part really should happen in image , i guess thats a missing thing - i can maybe misues the modular keyer or something crazy .

3. Thanks Brian!

4. Gotta check that out, about copying single selectives… i was alsways just copying the nodes around thats super interersting also with the TLFX explorer, i only used it so far to copy and apply a whole Image tlfx to my shots, never to do selective copying of parts of the image node… thtas super cool, i really dislike the resolve gallery for that reason

5. thats interesting, so if I setup a “look” portion that I want to be the same across my whole group I could change that look selective and apply just that selective to everything in the group? that sounds super dope

6. Yea I have my own logical nodetree that I have been using for many years now, ill set that up as a preview, but I really really do like to add more parralell nodes as I go, i dont like starting witha huge tree of empty nodes.

First node for me is usually my IDT, usually to log but I do that in a colormgt tlfx

Then the primary balance grade , usually whitebalance and exposure pretty much just a CDL adjustment, i do like the colortemp and whitebalance matchboxes as well for this, but i just usually do it all in one node.

after the primary grade i have a stack of parralell nodes for all my secondaries, wether its keys or mattes , stuff i need to fix like skintones e.t.c that all happens in parrallell

then the rest is look nodes, usually some log2log Look lut or something, maybe a vignette or overall client adjustments - I build myself with curves or whatever i want to be doing, I would like to have this last part be shareable like shared nodes in resolve tbh.

and then i use a custom view transform to load my ODT, often TCAMV2 , sometimes ACES or Arri reveal or something

Got one more thing, in resolve I would carry a seperate pipe in my nodetree where I pull my keys and mattes and then pull that alpha into my nodes and do merging and matte substractions e.t.c using keymixes to then pull into each grade node where I need it so that there is never a key thats dependent on the previous nodes output, i wonder how I can do that in flame …

[finnjaeger]

I guess there is no visual way to see which node is parralell and whioch one is serial in the HUD?

[allklier]

You could put a P at the front of the selective name Low tech solutions sometimes work…

[finnjaeger]

[allklier]

@finnjaeger

Got one more thing, in resolve I would carry a seperate pipe in my nodetree where I pull my keys and mattes and then pull that alpha into my nodes and do merging and matte substractions e.t.c using keymixes to then pull into each grade node where I need it so that there is never a key thats dependent on the previous nodes output, i wonder how I can do that in flame …

Totally possible. Where you select ‘parallel’ the third option is ‘Comp’ and by default the source of the comp is ‘original source’, meaning the Image Input. So your key input bypasses all other selectives and then gets comped on top. You can leave the comp mode in default.

So yes, if you have keys you don’t want to get clobbered by grades, use a ‘comp’ selective.

See manual page.

@finnjaeger

1. yes its clip specific, gap effects are out of the question because of connected conform, I am grading like 40 timelines… starting in the sources sequence syncing everything to all timelines, so managing gapFX and stuff is not really a option.

My projects aren’t usually connected conform (sadly). So I guess it just pulls the segment from the sources sequence, not the whole stack? Is there an equivalent to compound nodes in Resolve where you could stack? I guess that is BFX… But then you lose all the flexibility of the TL-FX explorer and what not.

@finnjaeger

never to do selective copying of parts of the image node… thtas super cool, i really dislike the resolve gallery for that reason

You can do it in resolve. It’s just not that slick. You go to the gallery still, display the saved node tree in a popup and then you can drag individual or groups of nodes.

@finnjaeger

First node for me is usually my IDT, usually to log but I do that in a colormgt tlfx

Then the primary balance grade , usually whitebalance and exposure pretty much just a CDL …
. . .
and then i use a custom view transform to load my ODT, often TCAMV2 , sometimes ACES or Arri reveal or something

Why do you do all that color management in the image node? Hang over from the days where every Resolve colorist swore about their node-tree color management instead of using the proper color pipeline. That was a bunch of crok in my mind. They mostly landed in the same place but with a vastly more complex tree.

I set my Flame project to ACES 1.2, tag sources, put a View Transform gap effect at the top. No color management inside Image. Works perfectly fine.

I’m still not sold on the way Flame handles color management. I like Nuke’s way better. But I do appreciate the intent of not messing with the pixels. But that’s a separate debate. Just like the ever present stab/unstab batch groups. They solve problems, but are the opposite of Flame color management. Sacrificing pixel quality constantly.

[finnjaeger]

super awesome thank you!

my explainer about keeping the colormanagement in the nodetree is my default resolve way, resolve colormanagement completely suuucks imho.

In flame i use a green colormanagement before that and then i setup my custom view transform and thats usually all I do, i dislike the aces ODTs , but whatever, same with tcam,

Actually 2 more things I need to figure out , but this has allready helped me sooo much! awesome!

if I use a comp selective to pull a key , how can I re-use that key in another selective? Light-link between selectives?

Can I somehow merge selectives matte outputs and combine them to be used in a new selective?

Lets say i have a key for the skin, one for product, and now I want a additional selective that has those combined in some way like skin - product or product + skin or … intersection between them, like you do with a keymixer in resolve ?

[allklier]

PS: While I get the concept of parallel selectives, it is not risk free. Same in Resolve by the way.

If you have multiple grades, each of which is affecting the same pixel, Resolve / Flame has to figure out what the sum of all that change is, which at times can be ‘ambiguous’. Not in a technical sense, but non-intuitive.

For example if you have one selective that does an exposure change, and one that does a saturation - which one comes first (not sure this is the best example, but it’s too early on a weekend to find the perfect illustration).

I realize that it helps not having to worry about priority order of the selectives, but you add risk of surprises that are harder to debug.

So I generally prefer sequential selectives for the unambiguous nature of them. And yes, you have to watch priority, but that’s a small trade-off.

Most people use parallel nodes in Resolve less for technical reasons and more for the beauty of the node tree. Like having multiple separate facial details being worked on. But that’s not really a good reason to use them. And in Flame parallel selectives don’t make your schematic better at all.

[allklier]

@finnjaeger

if I use a comp selective to pull a key , how can I re-use that key in another selective? Light-link between selectives?

Can I somehow merge selectives matte outputs and combine them to be used in a new selective?

Don’t have an answer for that. In the Reverse User Group I had made a request (and I think there is a feature request to that extend) to allow other ‘alpha’ inputs to a selective, upstream of the selective - similar to the blue link from a GMask. My use case was using other keyers instead of that insanly bad UI of the diamond keyer. If they exist as Matchbox, you could theoretically use them in Image.

So I think the whole ‘alpha input’ on the selective could use some extra features. There may be ways to do it, but I’m not aware of them.

That said, the Image node does allow for multiple matte inputs. But only in Batch. In TL-FX it’s hard limited to a single matte input that travels through the TL-FX pipeline. I’ve experimented with using a BFX in front of Image to run the keyer there and then have that travel into Image, but didn’t quite work when I tried it.

[bryanb]

One thing that needs clarifying:
Selectives use the Primary Grade as their source for keying. So if you are building up a bunch of serials you don’t have to worry about Selective #2’s key being affected by changes you make to Selective #1. This is why it’s good to use that Primary Grade to get your balanced shot first.

[allklier]

Interesting, didn’t know that. But with that context can see it now in the manual page.

[finnjaeger]

oh wow

i saw in some tutorial that you can see the matchboxes assigned to a selective in the hud - but how?

(( i think i am mistaken and you can only see gmasks in the hud, so thatbwould be nice wouldnt it?))

[hBomb42]

@allklier

I realize that it helps not having to worry about priority order of the selectives, but you add risk of surprises that are harder to debug.

Early on in my time with Lustre (all of whose secondaries were always parallel), I remember wanting to check something in b&w. I added a new secondary, cranked saturation to 0, and my entire image turned a lovely shade of blue. Having keys not break is nice, but it’s definitely not without occasional downsides.