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Unable to grade HLG files ?
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I have just moved over to PD 18 - 365.
Today I was just playing with my camera to see how the colour grading of PD18 compared with the different movie settings produced 'In-camera'.

I noticed some very strange behaviour and I wonder if anyone else has found this problem, or someone could come up with a possible reason/cure.

I was using a Fuji X-T3. This camera produces 'MOV' files. They load into PD18 no problem.

(Incidentally, PowerDVD will NOT play these 'Off-camera' files without stuttering, even when reading off a fast ssd - Though the standard windows player is totally fine with them - But that's not the issue here...)

I shot 3 clips, one in 'Standard', one in 'Eterna' and a final clip in HLG. This last clip caused the problems...
It was recorded 4K, 25fps, HLG, 'Long GOP', h265, 200mbps, 10bit, 4:2:0

I put the three clips together in the time-line. They played fine. All smooth.
I colour graded the HLG clip and 'Produced' all three together as a short movie.
During the production, I noticed a 'Freeze' when the final clip was reached, for say 7 seconds, then it blasted on to the end of production...

I played this in PowerDVD (Converted files play smoothly) and watched. The first 2 clips produced correctly, but the HLG colour graded clip was black... Sound, but no picture.

I tried again, this time JUST the HLG clip.
If I 'Produced' it with no colour grading, then it was visible and played... albeit looking washed out as un-graded HLG isn't great.
I tried three different LUTs on this clip and each time there was a delay in the production at the start, followed by a very fast render producing nothing but a black screen with sound.

I then tried one of the other clips - I chose 'Standard'... Recorded 4K, 25 fps, Long GOP, 200 mbps, 10 bit, 4:2:0
I ran this through 'Production' three times - each with one of the LUTs I'd tried on the HLG clip...
All three produced correctly ! - Though this time with far too vivid colours as I was applying a LUT to an already 'In-camera' graded video.

So - It's not the LUT or its use totally at fault, as this can be applied and 'Produced' - Where it's not required !
(At least I know I can use 'Gentle' LUTs to change the look of videos without a problem.)
The HLG clip could be 'Produced' as long as no LUT was applied - Which makes it sort of useless...
It seems to be the COMBINATION of using a LUT and an HLG file... ?
And when in PD18, the viewer had no problem playing the colour graded HLG...

Anyone any idea what's going on ?

I will see if I can have another play tomorrow and will also record in F-Log and see if these files will accept a LUT in PD18.

Maybe something about the Fuji X-T3 HLG format that PD18 production doesn't like ?

I wasn't using any shadow files or anything other than off-camera.
I had transfered the recorded MOV files from the sd card to my internal 'Video working' ssd.
The program itself is held on another ssd - where windows and all other programs live.
I was 'Producing' onto an 'old school' disc-based hard drive. It can write faster than PD18 can produce the video so never an issue before...

PC is a water-cooled Ryzen 2700 over-clocked to 4GHz, nVidia 1070 8Gb Graphics (Correctly identified by PD), 32 GB RAM.

Any suggestions welcome !

Gerry

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Sep 20. 2019 17:59

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Addition...

Should anyone else 'Find' this post whilst looking for an answer to the same problem and discover that there seems to be no answer...

Transfering in/out of ColorDirector will result in the same black screen.
'Producing' the file without LUT and then putting this file back on the timeline did accept the LUT and 'Produce' - Though the result was full of compression artifacts due to the double rendering - Not acceptable.

The only way I found to change the colour of the HLG file easily within PD18 was to use the 'Match Color' option under 'Fix / Enhance'

Find a clip that you like the colours of and place it on a track under your HLG clip on your timeline.
Select this as the source for the matching of colours...
Once the colour match has been undertaken, you can remove the source clip.

The resulting 'Colour-graded' HLG clip will now 'Produce' and render correctly.

I also discovered that if I converted the *.mov file from the camera into a mp4 file using 'Handbrake' (Could be one of many programs, just the one handy). Then this file accepted a LUT and produced an acceptable result.
I set 'Deblock' to 15, converted it to h.265 with RF set to zero (Ignore warning of this now being loss-less)
It took 10 minutes to reproduce a clip only 1min 20 secs long. (That's an age for my machine)
The resulting file was 1.3Gb, where the off-camera *.mov file was 2.2Gb.
For reference the file 'Produced' by PowerDirector was only 339Mb.

For the time being, I'm now setting my X-T3 to record in the 'Eterna' setting.
I will wait to see if I can easily apply a LUT to an HLG file with PD19 !

Gerry
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