I have a color grading issue.

[harmonica44]

I was color grading a scene I shot, by adding some blue to give it sort of a gritty atmosphere. It looked really good after, but when I blow up the movie to a full size HDTV, the actors lips come out really pink. I was told by a collaborator who knows a little more about it than I do is because the footage is not RAW, and therefore will look bad after color grading if it's H.264 which is what I shot it on originally with the Canon T2i.

He says he does not know how to get rid of pink lips. I also sent it to a colorist and he gave me a sample, but in order to get rid of it he desaturated the movie into almost complete black and white, like Saving Private Ryan which I don't want. Is there anything I can do to get rid of it? It's only noticeable on the HDTV so far, but I want my footage to look normal on ALL systems. Thanks.

 

[Sweetie]

Well the codec is H.264 on the Canon T2i, if that's what you mean. I also exported it at H264 after editing, so the final exported copy so far is H264, and hasn't been downgraded, unless I'm wrong.

h264 is what is called a lossy codec.

Ok, look at it like this.: 8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 95 MB per/sec, or 334 GB per/hr. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncompressed_video). I've got footage from a 7d from a couple weeks ago that has a 2min 3 second video at 720MB. If it was uncompressed, it'd be 11685MB. That's nearly a size difference of 11gig of data. Now compression can shrink it somewhat without losing any data, but not that far. Some loss still happens.

I take that same clip, throw it into Premier Pro (which is what you use right?) and export it in h264 you'd expect it to be the same size right? (I should have used a smaller video, this is pushing my patience while I wait here). 684mb. It lost a little more data... or compressed a little better. I'd suspect if you did it again, it's shrink in size again.

So while you may be right, you may also be wrong. From this small sample size, it would suggest that it has indeed been downgraded slightly. Depending on settings (limiting the data rate, changing the keyframe rate etc) I could downgrade it even further. This should not change the color space though. I'd bet money that you've got a monitor that aren't showing a true representation of their colors, messed up the color grading somehow, or a combination of both.

 

[Sweetie]

Harm, clear your mailbox. PM's cannot be sent to you.