Perhaps I am misunderstanding how the clip info panel works, but I would expect the ClipCS to display the colour space of the clip, not my working CS. Am I missing something? Or is it broken?
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Hi Tim,
Previous versions of Flame only showed the final colour space of the clip that would be created in Flame. This caused confusion for some because if you had accidentally togged or left a setting, you could mistakingly import with the wrong colour space tagging.
So the info panel was changed in recent releases to always show you the tagged colour space of the source media as well as any colour space conversion you might apply on import.
The INPUT CS - represents the source media’s colour space ( you can read it from the file or assign it manually or using rules) ----- THIS IS NEW
The CLIP CS - represents the colour space that will be assigned to the clip in the media panel in Flame. — THIS WAS ALREADY THERE.
Flame was already doing this in the background but hopefully this adds more clarity to what Flame is doing with colour spaces as well as assist you when doing conversions on import.
For EXAMPLE:
TAG ONLY:
When the colour management is set to TAG ONLY, you are telling Flame simply to use the actual assigned colour space of the source media. (input colour space) So if the source footage is REC 709, this is set in the INPUT CS and your clip in flame will also display as REC709. This is displayed via the CLIP CS.
ANY CONVERSION(view or auto-convert)
When you enable any of the colour management tools to do a colour space conversion on import, you still need to define (tag) the colour space of the source media. (input colour space) So if the source footage is tagged as REC 709, this is set in the INPUT CS.
If you want to convert the footage on import, you need to tell the working space what your colour space for the clip in Flame should be. This could be set to FROM PROJECT which is whatever the project is set to. Or you could choose the colour space yourself. Mine is converting the REC709 into SCENE-LINEAR REC709. This is displayed via the CLIP CS in the Clip Info panel. The clip you will get in the Media Panel is SCENE-LINEAR REC709
Please let me know if this is what you were talking about
Thanks
Grant
Yes, this was exactly my question. I suppose I was under the impression that it reported the CS of the file I was importing, rather than my tagging it, like Adobe does. I never noticed until now because all my non-sRGB sources were Alexa, which a routinely tag. On a similar note, is there any way to reliably tag and convert Display and Display P3 to sRGB? My results with the Display modes are inconsistent.
Hi Tim,
If you leave the tagging setting on FROM FILES OR RULES, then Flame behaves exactly like Adobe. It reads the colour space tag in the file and applies the appropriate CS to the media. The other area to be aware of is to ensure you have the correct viewing rules set up to display the tagged media as their appropriate colour space tag. For example, viewing ARRI, you will need to have a viewing rule to ensure the ALEXA RENDERING transform is available when you select the clip and look at it in the viewer.
Now this works brillaintly until there is no header data in the file or you want to tag it as something else. That is when you would manually tag the files or set up some rules to recognise certain files by a variety of conditions and tag them with a desired colour space. So you could set up a rule for your sRGB files to be tagged a certain way even if there is no colour space tag in the file header.
As for your second question, you should be able to set up a rule to convert Display P3 to sRGB. Switch to AUTO-CONVERT and you can set the input Colour Space as P3 (I found some under Displays menu). The Working Space can be set to sRGB Display (also under Displays menu). Looking at the Clip Info Panel, my INPUT CS is P3 and my CLIP CS is sRGB Display. Obviously I don’t know your exact workflow but this would be the way to go. Just keep an eye on mixing the colour spaces so it doesn’t become a headache further down the pipeline.
Hope this helps!
Grant
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Well . . . that all sounds well and good, but I get “unknown” on files that Adobe clearly identifies and their identification seems to concur with MacOS get info. As for the auto-convert, there are several options under display. They all gave me results that were inconsistent with Adobe.
As for workflow, normally I get all my graphics as sRGB. If there is something that is some other CS (usually display p3 or cmyk) I convert it in photoshop before I begin. The other day I was given all my graphics in Display and Display P3, which I missed (yes, careless on my part) but when trying to unravel the mess I found that I could not properly convert them on import, but for that matter the Adobe conversion of Display to sRGB didn’t match the conversion from Display P3 to sRGB. Since I really didn’t have a baseline handle to grab onto, I floundered a lot and Flame really didn’t help me sort out the mess like I thought it would.
Hi Tim,
“Unknown” means that either there is no CS information in the file header or Flame does not recognise it. This is why you would use the manual tagging and auto-convert to sort this out.
If your graphics are sRGB then the INPUT CS must be sRGB and you can convert it to whatever you need.
I would suggest logging a support case for us to look at the colour space in your files to help unravel it and it may boil down to a feature request.
Thanks
Grant
Thanks Grant. The sRGB files are not a problem. It’s just this Display crap. Sounds like a feature request.