Phantom .cine (Color space?)

Hey all!

I just have some raw files from the Phantom camera, I have seen that Flame doesn’t read .cine, I would need the Media Reactor plugin. The other popular way seems to transcode it with Resolve.

We were going to this second way, but when exporting it seems to be Rec.709, obviously I would want to do it without any loss. Is there a way to transcode to ACES or another color space?

Or maybe using another Mac software where I can convert it? If Media Reactor is really worth buying, it could be a possibility

Cheers!

I may be wrong about this, but I feel like the phantom shoots in rec or at least a non-hdr colorspace that is comparable to rec.

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Yeah, that sounds right to me too. Color science compatibility never seemed to be Phantom’s strong suit. May have to do with HFR and bandwidth limitations…

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Aren’t .cine files raw and thus can have any color space assigned to them?

If I understand the original post correctly, it sounds like more of a Resolve issue. It’s a common complaint among those new to resolve that raw files look Rec709 when you first debayer them. (See this a lot from people using Black Magic Cameras.) I’m not a Resolve expert but I think you can just set your Resolve project to ACES and export EXRs that have all the latitude.

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I think the phantom issue is that the camera sensor has limited latitude to start, so you don’t get any extra value out of a log or linear file.

It’s also possible that the people who’ve historically shot and prepped phantom footage for me were not all that versed in how to do those things. (/grumbles about underexposed Phantom footage)

I’ve really got to learn some Resolve. It’s become the universal answer to camera footage.

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Just had to deal with phantom cine files as well.
Baselight debayered them straight into ACES 2065-1 (linear/AP0).
So we used EXR export from there.

There is this PCC software from Phantom to handle the cine files. But never used it and it’s Windows only.

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In resolve you can set the camera raw settings of the cine files. (I think you have to set it to project setting). Then you can choose from rec709, log1 and log2. Log2 seems to be the prefered setting.

And you might set the resolve project to another colorspace to go further

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Thank all for answering! Seriously, it is great to have a forum where find how to work out something. Finally, we used Resolve and set the camera raw as log2, it was the closest to what we were looking for. Cheers!!

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What I found to be most useful is to use. DaVinci YRGB Color Managed as color science
Input colorspace: S-Gamut/S-Log2
Timeline colorspace: Rec.709 Gamma 2.4
Output colorspace: Arri LogC or ACEScg

Of course, camera settings should be PhantomCine, Log2

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Following on this topic, I have a job coming up where they are shooting on Phantom. I will be doing the offline, grade and online. I would like to do the lot in Flame but the agency are insisting I use Premiere for the offline.

So, I’ll transcode the rushes to prores proxy for the edit. I can’t remember if .cine files have any form of timecode and if not should I also transcode all the rushes to prores444 and relink to them after the offline? I’ll then be able to grade and online in Flame.

OR will I be able to relink after the edit in Resolve, grade and export for online in Flame.

I would probably create ProRes4444 files after the edit is done and I know what I need. Then I can relink to the hires whenever I need them. This will also allow you to do a squence publish if you need to deliver to another facility for the grade.

Since I also edit on Flame I transcode in full res 4K proxy, this lets me to work in full res so when we go online, HD->4K res change doesn’t mess up with timeline FX (resize, 2D transform, action…)

I will be doing all the video post.
You brought up a good point. I will proxy all the rushes then either make prores4444 of the edit selects or relink to the cine files and grade in resolve. Do you think I’ll get more out of having the cine files to work with over the prores4444 ? And if so do you think buying the plugin that allows Flame to see the cine files is worth going that path.

I tried the demo of the plugin to work with .cine files in Flame. Was a bit clunky and not stable enough for me.

My suggestion would be to transcode using Resolve to ProRes444 with settings I explained somewhere above and get them into AlexaWideGamut. Then the image behaves like AlexaWideGamut and you can use workflows suggested by Andy in his color-spaces video. I did this for the Kims job I did, where we shot one actor on greenscreen with moco and comped 50 of them. And the grading was done somewhere else with no issues.

Or there is an alternative approach which was suggested by folks at Company3:
Gamma - Log2
Lift- 10.00
Sharpness- 10.00
(every other setting set to 0)
and render it as rec709. This will give you an image that looks like log with detail in the darks. To get this into “nice looking rec709” I add a CC node with gamma at 0.4 which pulls it somewhere better looking.

I hope these make sense.

Tell the agency that they have to communicate with you by registered mail and they have to submit all feedback via text files saved from a windows xp laptop.

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HAHA. Yeah I wish. Unfortunately they want me at the agency cutting this job then I can bring it home and Finish it remotely. I like @Sinan approach of Prores444. Not sure how much data is going to land on my door step. It’s a 30 and 2 15’s (cutdowns - haha) I’m guessing a few terabytes

Does the file size explode from the .cine files. I can’t get my hands on some sample footage to test. Last time I played with cine files is with an app called Glue tools.

Anyhow, thanks for all the input people.

The GlueTools software is used to download .cine files from the Phantom mags. Once someone does that for you, all you need is Resolve for transcoding.
Generally file sizes are like 16 GB .cine file → 1 GB ProResProxy → 6-7 GB ProRes444
And one minute of .cine file is around 16 GB

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THANKS for the info.

phantom
is the one that i always wanted to test and analyze and measure.

I think last time I did this a frw years back I used their pcc softwsre thing and set it to gamma mode (not log) and choose gamma=1

no idea what the camera native gamut is however …