Color Grading with CineDream

Color Grading Central has been an innovative developer in the color correction ecosystem for editors – first with LUTs and then later in 2018 when they launched the Cinema Grade plugin. That has now been replaced with the newly redesigned CineDream. Although similar in style to Cinema Grade, CineDream has been rebuilt from the ground up with new tools and features. It works with Final Cut Pro, Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Photoshop, and Lightroom Classic. It also happens to work with Motion, but not with After Effects.

Basic operation

Unlike a regular effects plugin, CineDream combines a separate companion application with plugins for the various hosts. When working with one of the supported editing applications the plugin will launch the CineDream application and take care of round-tripping the color correction data between the two. To use CineDream in Final Cut Pro, Premiere, or Resolve, simply drop the CineDream effect onto one or more clips in the timeline and click “Open Controls” in the effects control panel. This will automatically launch the CineDream application.

All of the grading work is being done in the companion application. If you selected more than one clip, you can move from one clip to another without leaving the CineDream interface. Make your corrections and click “Apply” to transfer that grade to your clips inside Premiere, Final Cut Pro, or Resolve. The grade is not baked into the clip. If you want to revise the look, just click “Open Controls” again and you’re back in CineDream with the existing grade, ready to be modified.

Some users are more comfortable twirling color wheels and moving sliders to adjust color; but, CineDream uses a completely different and possibly more intuitive way of grading an image. They call it “Click and Grade”, which is a method by which you use the mouse to perform a live grade by pointing directly on the image. Change exposure by hovering over the image and then drag the mouse up or down. Some functions, like curves are controlled by the area of the image you select. For example, if you hover over a dark section of the clip, then you are adjusting the lower part of the curve. Hover over a bright section to adjust the upper portion of the curve.

If you prefer a more traditional approach using sliders and color wheels, then CineDream also includes fly-out panels for scopes and color controls. Adjust the wheels and sliders in the color inspector panel instead of on the image itself. There’s also a filmstrip panel. If you are only working with one clip, then the filmstrip slider lets you update the live frame to work on (clips cannot be played in real-time within CineDream). If multiple clips were selected and opened, then you’ll see those in the filmstrip. Select the individual clip from the filmstrip view for color correction. Finish one, move on to the next and so on, all without exiting CineDream.

A filmic toolkit

The CineDream interface might look simplistic at first. Don’t let that fool you. There are three major working sections at the top of the interface: Base Correction, Shot Matching, and Final Grading. You don’t have to work with them consecutively. For instance, you might go straight to Final Grading.

Working left to right, let’s start with Base Correction, which is broken into four processes: 1) Develop (camera profiles for log footage, look presets, basic tonal adjustments), 2) Basic correction (exposure, contrast, temperature, saturation), 3) Advanced correction (color wheels, curves, HSL, vectors), and then 4) Effects (vignette and gradient).

Use Shot Matching to copy-and-paste grades from one clip to the next. There’s also a side-by-side view to compare a current and a hero clip and adjust accordingly.

Select from a series of preset looks, including various visual styles, film stocks, etc in the Final Grading section. “Accept” a look to apply it to the image and make your adjustment. All of the corrections, like exposure, contrast, or color wheels are still active, so you aren’t locked into any preset look. However, the Final Grading section also includes additional film tools, such as LUT adjustment sliders, Film Density, Halation, Bloom, and Grain. Those last three are often separate, optional effects in other color correction products.

Once you become familiar with the layout and workflow, the operation is fast and intuitive. Unlike other color correction approaches, you don’t need to stack multiple effects, layers, or nodes. Everything happens within a single interface. You can certainly use this in conjunction with an application’s built-in color tools, but that’s a matter of personal workflow and preference.

Why use CineDream in DaVinci Resolve?

Adding CineDream to Premiere or Final Cut Pro seems obvious. But, why would a Resolve user even want it? After all, Resolve is built upon a world-class color correction toolkit. However, there are many new users to Resolve who have only worked as editors and not as colorists. Moving from the Resolve edit page timeline to the color page with multiple nodes can be daunting for some.

Unlike most other NLEs, there is no separate color correction effect that can be applied to a clip in the Resolve timeline when you are working in the edit page. For instance, you can’t adjust color correction in the same way as you would in Premiere using the Lumetri effect. CineDream adds that type of functionality to Resolve without ever needing to work in the color page. That’s appealing to editors considering a switch to Resolve as their preferred NLE.

The version of Resolve that you install must be the latest one from the Blackmagic Design website, not the one from Apple’s Mac App Store. That’s due to Apple’s sandbox restriction, which prevents the “Open Controls” command in Resolve from launching the external CineDream application. However, it works perfectly well with the standard version downloaded from Blackmagic Design. This restriction affects other developers and plugin products as well – not just Color Grading Central and CineDream.

CineDream and still photos

Throughout this review, I’ve been talking about CineDream in the context of a plugin within various video editing applications. However, you can also use CineDream with Photoshop and Lightroom Classic, as well as a standalone application to grade still image and photo files. Photoshop uses the “Send To” command to round-trip the image. Camera raw image formats (CR2, DNG, etc) require Photoshop as the first step in order to properly decode and “develop” the raw file before sending to CineDream.

The CineDream application by itself without an external host supports a range of flat image formats, such as TIFF, JPEG, and HEIC. Simply drag-and-drop the image into the CineDream window to start. Make the same adjustments as with video and then export the still as a JPEG, TIFF, or PNG image in the original or custom size.

CineDream supports Windows 10 or 11, and Mac (Silicon or Intel) running macOS 13.4 or later. A single license (perpetual or annual subscription) is good for all of these applications that you have installed on your computer.

The article was originally written for ProVideo Coalition.

Musik Hack SweetEQ

Mar14

Some audio plugin developers seek to produce effects that correlate one-for-one with vintage hardware. Others throw that playbook out the window and engineer intelligent software tools that make sense in the modern world. Musik Hack fits that latter mold. Its previous products – Master Plan and FUEL – combine several functions into each control. Their latest product is SweetEQ, which is an intelligent, saturation-based EQ with a very minimalist interface. Thanks to the way it works, you can use a single plugin to do the work of several others. All three products install in the usual plugin formats and are compatible with most DAWs and NLEs.

There are four basic SweetEQ parameters. Low boosts the low end saturation. There’s a Pitch slider to set the frequency of the low shelf between 0 Hz and 500 Hz. Density adds emphasis and saturation across most of the spectrum. Lift pushes up emphasis in the mid-to-high range. High adds more air to the upper part of the signal with an added Calm control to modify the result. The Input, Output, and Mix dials work as expected.

The middle portion of the plugin’s user interface shows a simplified spectral display that reflects the sound signal, as well as the changes when you adjust these controls. It’s a little less obvious, but the small brackets at both end of the spectral display control high-pass and low-pass filtering. As you drag them inwards, a pop-up text box appears in the blank space above the mix control to indicate the resulting frequency range. Also, as you mouse over the other dials, you’ll see the percentage for that effect. Rounding out the main UI are toggles for unity levels (auto-gain), oversampling, and whether to clip the peaks on output.

Click the SweetEQ logo to cycle through UI colors. Below the logo is a pull-up menu for additional settings, including six dials to modify the UI color settings. The style is very customizable and there’s even a “focus” mode to change to a monochrome appearance. The whole interface is easily resized simply by dragging on the lower right corner.

At first glance SweetEQ may appear simplistic, but that hides a lot of complexity under the hood. The best way to use it is simply to apply it to a track or bus, play audio through it, adjust the controls, and listen to what sounds good. With a moderate signal, you can crank things pretty high before hitting serious distortion. It also comes with numerous, curated presets.

With SweetEQ, subtle changes can create noticeable improvements. For example, I applied it to a vocal bus, adding a bit of Low, Density, and Lift. Without going crazy, these tweaks really brought the singer forward in the mix in a way that a single, traditional effect would never have done. SweetEQ is at its best when used to enhance, rather than to go over the top with adjustments. You can if you want to, but that should be a special case. SweetEQ isn’t simply for music mixers. These types of subtle adjustments are just as useful on mixes that an editor might do in an NLE like Premiere.

Some users may still prefer the lure of analog-style emulations and their associated interfaces, complete with faux wear-and-tear. I’ve certainly reviewed my share and most are pretty good. This isn’t that type of plugin. Don’t let the simplicity fool you. It’s a new way of processing audio without relying on a complex digital interface. I appreciate when a developer can pack sophisticated processes into a simple interface design without sacrificing functionality. Musik Hack has only released three products to date – Master Plan, FUEL, and now SweetEQ. They take their time, instead of dumping even more variations of the same plugins onto the market. So far, each has been excellent and SweetEQ is no exception.

Pan Law for Video Editors

Mar8

Mixers and recording engineers, especially those mixing music, will be quite familiar with the concept of Pan Law. Most digital audio workstation (DAW) software includes Pan Law settings to determine how you want panning to impact the levels within your mix. However, to my knowledge, no nonlinear editing (NLE) application offers the equivalent settings. Values are simply fixed in whatever way the software engineers designed it to be. As a consequence, video editors are often unfamiliar with the workings of Pan Law.

How does Pan Law work?

Let’s start with a DAW application with the Pan Law settings at 0dB. Pan a mono clip from left to center to right within the stereo output of your timeline. As you pan, the readings on the meter will stay the same, but the apparent volume of the audio will be louder in the center. That’s simply because the energy of both left and right speakers are now combined for that signal. With a lower Pan Law setting, such as -3dB, the same panning results in a higher VU reading left and right than in the center. However, the apparent level of audio sounds the same across the pan. There’s no center bump in volume from the speakers.

To test this, start with a mono tone at 0VU when it’s in the center. Leave the Pan Law setting at 0VU. As you pan 100% left or 100% right, the level on the meter stays at 0VU for either channel. But when a lower setting, such as -3 is selected, the signal on the VU meter typically increases for either left or right channel panned at 100%.

In Logic Pro (and others), you can set the Pan Law value to 0db, -3db, -4.5db, and -6db, with or without compensation for all, except 0dB. The exact setting you use is based on your own preferences, but generally you should stick to one and move on. At 0db, your fader level stays at 0VU. But with -3, the fader level at center is decreased to -3 and then increases to 0 as you pan left or right. When -3dB Compensated is selected, the center level starts at 0 and then increases to +3 left or right. Never change these project settings in the middle of a project, because it will alter your mix. In addition, Logic Pro let’s you apply these values (or not) to the stereo balancers (more on that in a moment).

Pan Law and your video editing application

Moving over to NLEs, most seem to use the -3dB Pan Law value. But it’s not quite that simple, because the audio architecture differs for various NLEs. For instance, Premiere offers several different audio track types: Standard, 5.1, Adaptive, and Mono. Additionally, if you pan inside the track mixer panel, then the audio behaves like there is no compensation. But, if you pan within the clip mixer panel, then a mono clip behaves like compensation is enabled.

In Premiere, a mono tone set to 0VU on a Mono track, but will be 3dB lower on the left and right outputs of the stereo output of the timeline. If you place it onto a Standard track type, stereo is assumed. The individual track and the timeline outputs will be at the same level. On the other hand, if you use an Adaptive track type, then that level will be 3dB higher on both the individual track and the stereo output.

Resolve follows this same 3dB offset for mono tracks on a stereo timeline. Stereo tracks in a stereo timeline will be at the same levels on the individual track, as well as the stereo output. If you pan the mono or stereo tracks left or right, the level will increase as you pan to either side.

Final Cut Pro is a bit more complex, because it doesn’t use a traditional mixer or timeline tracks. Before you start, pay attention to how clips are imported. Professional broadcast cameras often have two to eight possible audio channels, depending on the camera. However, it’s unlikely that all channels will have something recorded to them. Typically, it might be a lav mic and an overhead boom. Most DSLR-style cameras usually permit two channels recorded as a stereo signal. This might actually be stereo or it might be two different (dual mono) signals, like a lav and a boom as before.

In FCP you can opt to remove any silent channel. If you do this and only one track has a recording, then a stereo signal from the camera file is automatically turned into a mono audio channel within FCP. This will impact the panning behaviors.

Stereo panning versus balancing

I’ve been taking about panning, but that primarily applies to mono sources. The stereo control features (knob, slider, other) in all NLEs are not stereo pan controls, but rather stereo balance controls. A DAW like Logic Pro let’s you select between these types. NLEs only offer balancers. Premiere uses knob-style controls. Resolve uses a surround graph. Final Cut Pro uses a slider, but you first have to change each clip’s pan mode from None to Stereo Left/Right.

So what does that mean? A stereo balancer allows you to shift the relative intensity of the left and right signals in relationship to each other. Adjust the knob or slider a bit to the left and you get more left channel volume and less right channel. Same in the other direction – less left, more right. What it does not do is shift the left channel signal into the right side nor vice versa. That would be actual stereo panning of a stereo signal, which isn’t used in most NLEs that I’m aware of.

Take a stereo clip with only audio in the left channel. That could be a camera file with only audio from the lav mic recorded to channel one (left). Within the timeline, audio is present on channel one (left) and silent on channel two (right). As you adjust the balance knob/slider from center to 100% left, there is no change in level. As you adjust it to the right, the left channel level decreases, but nothing enters the right. At 100% to the right, both channels are silent.

If you are unsure about how your software works, simply download a mono test tone reference file and play around. This way, it’s pretty easy to see what the software is doing. Ultimately, no matter how your software behaves, its Pan Law values don’t really matter – as long as you aren’t actively panning a clip across the stereo field. Assuming that your panning is fixed at center or some percentage of left of right, then set your levels for the best sounding mix and that’s all you need. Just remember that if your application does allow settings for Pan Law values, stay consistent and don’t change settings mid-project, unless you’re ready to re-adjust the mix accordingly.

Safari Audio’s Unconventional Effects

Mar4

When it comes to unconventional effects plugins, Safari Audio is the king. Formerly Safari Pedals, the company has rebranded itself to better reflect its wider product line. Up until now, most of the Safari plugins have used interfaces designed to look like guitar pedals and are usually adorned with playful “Animal Cracker” style graphics. In fact, these are not guitar pedal or stomp box emulations, but rather a full range of audio effects plugins suitable for any type of audio track or process.

Instead of simply trying to recreate digital clones of vintage analog hardware, Safari’s engineers use them as a starting inspiration, but often combine various tools and add their own spin. Safari Audio is the umbrella for these products, as well as their Tuned Plugins offshoot, whose plugins sport a different visual style. Now Safari Audio has introduced SuperKeys – a new line of instrument products.

Cubby

The first product under the new SuperKeys banner is Cubby, their first virtual musical instrument. Cubby is a lo-fi virtual keyboard. It’s intended to be playful and reminiscence of early consumer keyboard instruments. The sounds generated are distinctly video-game-like (hello, Mario). It installs as both a standalone application and in all of the usual plugin formats.

I am not a keyboard musician, so at first I was scratching my head as to how to use it – especially, since I don’t own a music controller/keyboard. Thankfully Logic Pro comes to the rescue with its virtual session player. It was as simple as starting a session with a virtual keyboard track. Start with piano. Then open the inspector for that instrument and replace the default virtual piano with Cubby. Adjust the MIDI notes and chords as you need to for the right melody, drone, or whatever you are composing. Open the Cubby interface to set the sounds.

The Logic Pro session player format includes plugin inserts with certain internal plugins applied by default. You can easily replace any or all of those with other built-in or third-party plugin effects, including others from Safari Audio, such as Camel Strip or any other.

Cubby offers four basic lo-fi sounds: piano, flute, fantasy, and violin. The rest of the settings run across the top of the UI. You can adjust sustain, arpeggiation, de-tuning, as well as width, reverb, and tone filtering. There are direct and speaker modes. The speaker mode mimics the sound as if it were coming from the built-in speaker on the physical “toy” keyboard. Start from scratch or use one of the factory presets.

It’s a little hard to properly describe what you can do with Cubby in a way that would do it justice. Create you own video-game track or use it for sound design or eerie sci-fi sounds. There are plenty of interesting and playful possibilities. Watch this review for a better understanding.

The Herd

Getting back to the pedal-style products, a recent release is The Herd, which is a parallel compressor plugin. It uses three compressor circuits inspired by different analog modes. Opto offers smoothness, VCA is a tighter form of compression, and then there’s Devil for when you want grit. Of course, the developers didn’t stop there, because there’s also a Wild switch for added distortion. Like most compressors, you have input and output levels, as well as attack and release times. The Herd also includes a Tone control to tilt the sound warmer or brighter.

A unique feature of The Herd is that all three compression modes can be either individually or simultaneously engaged and blended in any combination. This gives you unique compression results, which can be dialed in full or backed off for parallel use. To round out the feature set, you have a blend control, metering, and an auto-gain function.

In actual use, you get really good results right from the start. Apply The Herd to a drum bus, for example. The default setting has a bit of the Opto mode and a bit more of the VCA mode applied. Without too much tweaking, the drum mix is instantly improved. Dial the Tone control to shape the sound – left for more bottom, right for more sizzle. The Devil mode is best used when you intend to use this compressor for parallel processing. Same for the Wild function. Add these in and then dial down the blend control for it to sit best in the mix.

The Herd, like Safari’s other plugins, works not only in most DAWs, but also video editing applications. If you use a tool like Premiere, then The Herd works perfectly fine in those mixes. Insert it onto the mix track and adjust for a clean, compressed result.

Standard Audio Level-Or

Deviating for its more common pedal style, Safari has also recently introduced the Level-Or plugin. This is in collaboration with Standard Audio and is based on their 500 series hardware unit. It’s a character-filled device favored by many noted audio engineers when punch is needed. Safari has added its own extras, like tone shaping tools.

There are two compression modes: Mk 1 (crunchy) and Mk 2 (extended range/more surgical). Both Mk 1 and Mk 2 modes offer Level or Crunch settings. Use Crunch for when you want more grit. Mk 1 offers only fast or slow attack/release modes with fixed settings. Mk 2 adds a medium setting. The Tone control helps to shape transients and can be applied pre or post-compression. You can bypass the compression function in either mode; however, the Tone control is always active. This is useful if you only want to use the plugin for tone shaping.

Let me caution that Level-Or is for grit and color. I wouldn’t recommend it for general compression or limiting. There’s no auto-gain or even metering for the amount of gain reduction.

As with most of Safari Audio’s effects plugins, these interfaces are easily resized simply by dragging the lower right corner. They are available as single effects, as part of various bundles, or optionally through their All Access Pass subscription. Installation is easy and plugins are activated via a license key.

The Lurssen T-RackS Mastering Bundle

Feb25

The process of music mastering originated with the need to optimize recordings for vinyl LPs and singles. Modern audio mastering has become quite sophisticated and is a key part of shaping the recorded music that we enjoy. One of the top studios is Lurssen Mastering, a multi Grammy award-winning mastering studio in Burbank. It’s headed up by engineers Gavin Lurssen and Reuben Cohen. Like most mastering studios, Lurssen Mastering’s process uses a custom chain of analog hardware. Lurssen and Cohen have now partnered with IK Multimedia to offer a software bundle of plugins that mirrors their hardware chain.

Getting started

IK Multimedia offers a wide range of hardware and software products, including many plugins as part of their T-RackS collection. The Lurssen Mastering Bundle is a curated set of thirteen essential plugins. It includes EQ, compression, de-essing, and limiter options along with a multimeter. At $199 for the bundle, the cost per plugin is pretty reasonable.

To start, download and install the IK Product Manager to handle plugin trials and purchases. To use plugins that you’ve purchased, you have to stay logged into this application for license authorization, but you don’t have to stay connected to the internet. A second app, the T-RackS Module Manager, lets you enable or disable selected plugins. AU, VST3, and AAX formats are supported.

The Lurssen package is being marketed as a mastering bundle; however, these are individual plugins that can be used anywhere in the mix. Since Premiere, Final Cut Pro, Resolve, and Media Composer also support these formats, the effects in this bundle are useful to editors, as well as mixers. In fact, mastering a final mix is important in video projects, too. Adobe Creative Cloud and Apple Creator Studio subscribers have access to Audition and Logic Pro, respectively. So you can master your mix within the NLE or bounce out the unmastered mix and then take that file into Audition or Logic Pro for a mastering pass. Then bring the exported master file back into Premiere or Final Cut Pro and marry it to the final picture. Resolve users can do this all within Resolve, using the Fairlight page.

In addition to a set of plugins designed around Lurssen’s mastering chain, IK Multimedia has also partnered with Gavin Lurssen and Reuben Cohen to offer a 10-part (approximately 2.5 hours) set of tutorial lessons on how they use this chain and why they used the prescribed settings. Those lessons are a separate purchase of $99, but it comes with a 50% discount on the bundle. Effectively, if you purchase the lessons and then the plugin bundle, the cost is equal to buying the bundle alone. In addition to their lessons, this tutorial includes sample files, Lurssen’s plugin presets, and a Pro Tools session. If you are serious about mastering, these tutorial lessons are far better than simply scouring YouTube for advice.

The mastering chain

I personally adhere to the idea that it’s best to separate mastering from the actual mix, even for DIY or hobbiest mixers. Often it’s best to finish the mix and then start fresh with the mastering session a day or so later, because you’re in a different head space. This is not unlike a mixer completing the session and then using an outside mastering engineer or service. In the case of Lurssen, they use a bespoke chain of analog hardware in their mastering suites. This bundle mimics that process, starting with a specific set of six plugins from the bundle. In addition to these six, there’s typically a native gain or trim plugin at the start of the chain, as well as the meter at the end or on the mix output.

The standard Lurssen plugin chain is applied in this order: Lurssen Mastering EQ, IK EQual digital EQ, IK De-Esser, IK Bus Compressor, IK Classic Clipper, and IK Brickwall Limiter. Most of these are IK Multimedia’s emulations of various pieces of vintage gear. For example, the Bus Compressor is a VCA-style compressor, based on the SSL G-Series Bus Compressor. The Lurssen Mastering EQ plugin is an emulation of Lurssen’s analog EAR 825Q (Esoteric Audio Research) stepped, tube mastering EQ, used in their suites. The order is important, because the signal passing through each plugin is intended to cascade into the one following it. The starting presets included with the tutorial have been developed with this in mind.

While the six mentioned are the standard chain, this bundle includes six more plugins for other types of tracks. Obviously any of them can be used individually. In the context of the mastering chain, these can also be used to augment the initial six plugins or be a substitute. They include the IK Black 76 Limiting Amplifier (an 1176 emulation), IK Classic Compressor, IK Classic Equalizer, IK Dyna-Mu (a Vari-mu emulation), IK Stealth Limiter, and the IK VC-670 Vintage Compressor (a Fairchild emulation). Rounding out the package is a multi-display meter that includes VU, spectrum, phase, and loudness readings. Some of these, like the VC-760, will provide more colored sonic results, while others, like the Stealth Limiter, are more transparent.

How to use

As I said before, these are all individual plugins that can be applied in the same way as any other. However, if you do want to set up a mastering workflow, regardless of whether that’s for a music mix or a video programs, start by creating a template project in your preferred audio application. Apply the standard Lurssen chain (first six plugins) in the order mentioned and recall the Lurssen starting point presets. Save this project as your template.

On your next project, bounce out the mix and bring that file into a duplicate of this template. Adjust the settings to taste. Add one of the other six plugins if you feel that it’s warranted or more appropriate for the genre. Bounce out the final, mastered file.

Final thoughts

I enjoyed working with these plugins. It was interesting to see how very small adjustments made noticeably positive changes to the overall mix. While I don’t typically put stock in a company’s tutorials, I do feel that the Lurssen tutorials were useful in understanding how and why to use this curated set of plugins in the way they were selected. Mastering is sometimes dismissed as voodoo or smoke-and-mirrors by some. However, these tutorials demystified the whole mastering workflow and showed that the process was more than simply making it loud.

I was a bit surprised that this bundle does not include any stereo image/widening feature or plugin. This is common with many other mastering tools. Maybe Lurssen and Cohen achieve this through other means, like mid/side EQ. Stereo spreaders can cause phase anomalies. The bundle also doesn’t include any multi-band compression nor any exciter plugin. None of these are deal breakers, but simply tools that some competitors do promote with their packages.

Across the board, these plugins do not enable resizing of the interface. There are also no oversampling options. I didn’t hear any noticeable artifacts, but I would love to see IK Multimedia’s developers correct those two issues. Otherwise, it’s a solid package that can easily take the place of other, similar emulations. In fact, it’s a versatile collection of plugins that could easily cover most of your needs.

Several DAWs have been adding AI-based mastering tools, such as Logic Pro’s Master Assistant. These do a nice job, but the process offers little control if the results aren’t quite right. Having a set of specific tools and knowing how to use them is where the T-RackS Lurssen Mastering Bundle shines.

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digitalfilms

a blog by Oliver Peters