This IS the Avid L2: [Avid-L2] Using LUTs in MC 7

Monday, July 8, 2013

[Avid-L2] Using LUTs in MC 7

Applying External LUTs to your Media

Avid provides a standard set of industry color transformations that you can apply as source settings directly to the master clips. Avid also provides the ability to load custom look-up tables that have been provided by the camera operator, the director of photography, the film scanning facility, or the colorist during the dailies processing. A LUT is essentially a file that contains a conversion table used to map an input color value to an output color value.

The application supports two different types of LUT formats:

• 1D LUT: A 1-dimensional lookup table maps each input channel value to an output channel value on a per-channel basis (independently for each channel R, G, and B).

• 3D LUT: A 3-dimensional lookup table maps any given color value (R,G,B) to an output color value (R,G,B). Mistika, LUTher, Kodak KDM, and IRIDAS formats are examples of 3D LUTs that are supported.

A list of supported products or file extensions have been listed below. Other product LUTs may be supported but the first line entry of the file must appear as listed in the third column.

Product or

File Extension

Supported first line entry

Avid DS

.lut

AVID DS LUT

Autodesk

LUT: followed by the number of channels and entries

IRIDAS 1D

.itx

LUT_1D_SIZE

IRIDAS 3D

.cube

LUT_3D_SIZE

Kodak KDM

.3dl

# IDENTIFICATION: 3DMODEL-3DLUT

LUTher

.txt

#channels: c3

Mistika 3D

.itx

LUT_3D_SIZE

Nucoda

.lut

NUCODA_3D_CUBE 2

The LUT has to be installed before it can be applied to the media.

After the LUT is installed, the Source Settings dialog box will display it as an option in the Color Transformations list. This LUT is available to all sequences within the project.

Any changes made to these color files will be reflected in the viewer within this dialog box. Changes made in the source settings will be reflected when clips are dropped on the timeline. For clips already on the timeline prior to the changes, you will have to refresh the sequence.

Changing the settings for a master clip will also propogate these changes to subclips that were created prior to the changes. Similarly, any changes made to the subclips will be applied to the parent master clip.

To install an external LUT:

1. From the Settings tab, select and open the Color Management Settings.

2. Click Install LUT.

3. Browse for your file, select it and click Open to install it.

The LUT is now available in the list of color transformation in the Source settings. This LUT will be part of the project. All sequences in the current project will be able to access that LUT.

To apply an external LUT:

1. On the timeline, or in the bin, select the clip that you want to change, right-click and choose Source Settings.

2. Select the Color Encoding tab.

The Source Settings dialog box displays with the viewer showing the first frame of the clip with the current color encoding.

3. Click the drop-down menu below the list of Color transformations.

The installed LUT(s) will be listed at the bottom, prefixed with the word External.

4. You can apply more than one LUT to the media and change the order in which they are applied.