For those of you who do not have web access from your machine that you use After Effects on, I’m very pleased to announce the very overdue Web Activation option. Just go follow the link below and you can either activate a trial or register your serial number. Also, Ginger HDR is on sale until May 1 for $149. Happy trails!

19lights.com/license/generate.html

Finally, I’ve had the time to make some updated tutorial videos. With the latest version of Ginger HDR, there are 5 sets of parameters that you can use to edit videos, and there is finally a detailed video tutorial on each of them.

1. Lens Filter
2. Two Level Merge
3. Local Adaptation
4. Filmic Curve
5. Color Grading

Finally, we’re putting together some more advanced videos that show how to use different combinations of parameters to get better looks, and the first one is on getting more detail from your skies. Enjoy!

Ginger HDR Parameters: Lens Filter

Ginger HDR Parameters: Two Level Merge

Ginger HDR Parameters: Local Adaptation

Ginger HDR Parameters: Filmic Curve

Ginger HDR Parameters: Color Grading

Getting More Detail from your Skies

You know how you get behind on something, and then the more behind you get the bigger the problem becomes, which causes you to get even farther behind? That’s sorta how I feel about the Tutorials for Ginger HDR. The workflow videos are admittedly very out of date but now that Ginger HDR is officially launched I finally had time to make some new ones. Hopefully, these new workflow videos should get you started. And don’t forget: It’s on sale for $129 USD until March 31 and then the price goes back up to $199.

You can check them out by clicking on Tutorials at the top of the page. Or you can just check this list to see what’s new.

So first off, there is a new introduction video.

Here’s one on the magic lantern workflow.

One more on using Ginger HDR with regular footage.

And creating an HDR Timelapse.

Finally, this video goes over how to shoot your video footage to maximize your dynamic range. By shooting to maximize your practical dynamic range you can often improve the contrast and lighting balance of your shots without going full HDR.

Enjoy!

Hello everybody. The time has finally come, and Ginger HDR is now available for Mac and Windows. The official price is $199 (USD), but for early adopters Ginger HDR is available for $129 (USD) until March 31, 2012. Purchasing a serial number lets one user install Ginger HDR on up to 3 computers. And there is no OS restriction so if you want to use the same serial number for both Windows and Mac machines that is fine. You can also try Ginger HDR with a 30-day trial.

One more thing: The Merger is now FREEWARE. In the download, there is a tool called the Merger which can:

• Batch Convert a sequence of RAW Files to EXRs.
• Process Magic Lantern footage into a sequence EXRs, or it can split them into an Underexposed and Overexposed track.

The backstory there is that we were really hoping that someone else would solve the problem of merging footage to HDR and then we would just sell the tonemapping software. As it turns out, if you want it done right… So the tools for creating HDR footage are free, but the After Effects plugin to process the footage is paid.

To download or purchase Ginger HDR (or the Merger), just go here:
19lights.com/license/download.html

We’re still tracking down a few bugs here and there but it should be working for most people. If you have a problem please let us know immediately.

One more thing: Yes, I know the tutorials are very out of date. We’ll have new ones up soon.

Open Beta:
Now on Mac as well as Windows: http://19lights.com/license/ginger-hdr-beta-download.html. Extended to March 15.

New Videos:
The previous video on HDR Workflow with Magic Lantern is very out of date so I made some quick new ones. It should be pretty self-explanatory, but let me know if anything is unclear. Also, for those of you who want to do manual blending of your Underexposed and Overexposed tracks you can do that too, although I’m personally not a fan.

New Ginger HDR Plugin Features:
The parameters have been changed with a few big changes.

• The order has been changed so that operations happen in the order that they are listed, which should make the controls more intuitive.
• The big feature that everyone was asking for is grading controls for shadows/midtones/highlights. It’s now included.
• One of the “old-school” ways of controlling dynamic range is to use a gradient ND filter. That option has been added plus the ability to rotate and fine-tune the gradient.

New Features Magic Lantern:
There have been some major changes from the previous version of the Magic Lantern workflow.

• Optical Flow: Algorithm has been completely changed so you should get much better results. It will never be perfect, but there is always room for improvement.
• Merging: The algorithm for combining the underexposed and overexposed track has been completely rewritten. There were a lot of problems and color artifacts with the previous approach, and the new version works much better. In particular, I’m seeing much better skin tones.
• Batching: This was a feature that a lot of people asked for. Now if you have a bunch of clips to run, you can run them all at once without having to manually start each clip.
• Fixing Flipped ISO: Sometimes with Magic Lantern a frame will have the reversed ISO. I’ve seen this mostly on my 5D Mark II. If you are using another workflow that is based on slowing down the tracks and blending them together you might see 3 frames that look really bright or dark. That happens because the middle frame is the wrong ISO, and good luck fixing it manually. So the Merger can now detect when this happens and fix it automatically.
• Extract Over/Under Track: As mentioned above, some people want to merge the tracks manually. You can now export the frames with optical flow applied to them, but not merged to HDR.
• Audio: This feature was one that I wanted. It was a pain for me to constantly load the previous MOV file, detach the audio, and re-attach the audio to the new one. So the Merger can now export the audio for you.
• 5D Mark II: The beta version of the Magic Lantern firmware is available for the 5D Mark II. I’ve found that it works pretty well, except for the occasional flipped frame. If you want it, you have to make a donation. It can be for any amount, but they’ve put a lot of time and effort into the firmware and those donations really help them out. You can get it here: magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Unified

TIPS:

• Most camera manufacturers (Canon included) like to make the response curve more contrasty so that it looks better to your average consumer. But if you want to grade your video in post then you actually want to shoot a flatter image. Also, to get the tracks to merge to HDR cleanly you want to shoot as close to a flat, linear response curve as possible. So these are the settings that you should use for best results:
  1. Preset: Neutral
  2. Sharpness: 0 (all the way to the left)
  3. Contrast: -4
  4. Saturation: -2
  5. Color: 0

  These settings will give you much better HDR results than Standard or any other preset. Also, on the 5D Mark II, you should set Highlight Tone Priority to OFF for HDR shots. If you are shooting regular LDR footage then I suggest turning it ON, but for HDR mode it should be OFF.

• Don’t overexpose your brighter image too much. Common wisdom with HDR is to shoot an overexposed track and an underexposed track. But you will get better results by shooting your “overexposed” track right around the overall exposure that you want in the final shot, and then overexposed a little bit. Then think of your underexposed track as highlight protection.

That’s it for now, and as always let me know if you have any questions!

Well, we’ve got a lot of news to report. First off, the Beta has been extended to February 17th. You can download it for Windows at 19lights.com/license/ginger-hdr-beta-download.html.

Also, included in this version is the optical flow workflow. In the Merger application just select Magic Lantern HDR Video, select your video file and the Exposure difference, and click go. That will merge your video to a sequence of EXRs using optical flow. If you use the full speed option you will get a video at, well, full speed. If you use the half speed option, it will use optical flow to merge the underexposed frames but leave the overexposed frames as-is. That tends to result in a much cleaner merge. So if you are delivering for the web at 720p, half speed might be the best option for you.

Of course, it uses optical flow so it’s not the fastest horse in the race. One high priority is to include a lower quality option to get a faster merge in those cases where you don’t have much movement. Also, the CUDA version works but needs to be more robust before releasing it. It’s not fully optimized yet, but so far seems like it should be several times faster.

Here’s a video captured with 720p @ 60fps settings and then “slowed down” to 30fps. The merge looks very clean so far and handles movement pretty well. It has a tough time with anything that moves very rapidly and dramatically changes shape, like the flickering flag in the second shot. Also, I’d recommend staying away from 1600 ISO on the Rebel T2i. In these shots you only need about 3 stops, so if I were to do it over again I’d shoot it at 100/800 ISO.

This video was shot the same way. I wanted to see how well this workflow would do with a fast pan and the results were encouraging. The optical flow solver only goes forward, not backwards. That’s why at the top of the frame you see some major artifacts when the camera is tilting down but looks fine when it’s going up. There are ways to fix it, but of course it will be slower so you probably don’t want that option on all the time.

Every day I get more and more excited about the possibilities of HDR video with Magic Lantern and Canon SLRs. I finally broke down and got a 5D Mark II as well as writing some optical flow algorithms. Obviously, the guys at RE:Vision Effects (Twixtor) and The Foundry (Kronos) have been working on optical flow for years and I’ve spent about 3 weeks, so I’ve got some catching up to do. That being said, there’s no “magic” behind optical flow and all the research is publicly available. The videos above use our custom optical flow solver. They are an encouraging start but there is still a long way to go. There are a lot of “standard” improvements that aren’t in this optical flow solution yet.

So will the results be good enough to actually use? As always, it depends. If nothing moves very fast, the optical flow solver is rock-solid. And so far the tests of pans look clean. But excessive motion causes the typical “warping” artifacts around fast moving objects. Over time it will get better but the problem will never completely go away.
Continue reading →

Just a quick note: The beta for Ginger HDR is extended until January 31. The emergence of Magic Lantern has pretty much thrown off the schedule here. We’re working on getting a feasible Magic Lantern workflow ready as well as the Mac version, bug fixes, website work, etc. So we need a little bit of a delay, but hopefully this will be the last one. You don’t need to download a new version, but you will have to re-run the License Manager to fetch a new license.

Happy New Year! For those of you looking at Magic Lantern HDR workflows, I’ve just put up a new video. Support was added for the Merger to merge Magic Lantern HDR videos into a sequence of EXRs a few days ago. Keep in mind: The merger right now is a very, very beta product.

Just wanted to share this with all of you. With Magic Lantern (a firmware replacement for Canon SLRs) you can now alternate the Exposure or ISO for every single frame. So every-other frame is bright then dark. In other words, you can do HDR! AWESOME!!! Well, sortof. In this case, I matched up the dark frames to the bright frames with a simple blend. Open up on vimeo for a more complete description.

The big question is frame interpolation. There are other videos up as well and a bunch of people are trying different workflows for interpolating frames cleanly. If it turns out that every single Canon 5D owner actually owns a legit HDR camera that would be truly amazing.

So congrats to magic lantern. You should check out there site for more info: http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Unified and get to work finding better ways to interpolate data!