Viper Filmstream footage

[skippy]

Don’t know how many of you have worked with Viper Filmstream footage, but MotionFX, UK, (one of my clients) has just finished shooting its second feature film using Viper. The film is ‘Highlander: The Source’ (the first was ‘Silence Becomes You’), and the biggest difference to the workfolw this time was the use of ViewLUTs for on-set DoP/Director viewing of the Filmstream images.

These ViewLUTs were used in the S.two film recorders, as well as HDlink converters to show a ‘graded’ image to the DoP/Director, while the film recorders captured the full high-dynamic range image.

The interesting bit for vfx work is that these LUTs can also be used during vfx/compositing work to show the same image as seen on-set, as well as for the initial DI setup.

I know this isn’t rocket science, but as a workflow its working well.

The film also captured over 80TB of data, so being able to injest into the offline system images that were ‘graded’ rather than raw Filmstream was a help – especially as the LUTs are realtime, with no processing or user involvement to slow things down.

So, my tip is, if working with Viper Filmstream try to get the production to use ViewLUTs, and then get copies of the same LUTs for use in post-production. While not a fully calibrated environment, it does get things started in the right direction, rather than sitting looking at the ‘green’ low-contrast image that is normal Viper Filmstream.

Steve

[Author]

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