Does anyone know any software that will do film grading? Does Premiere do it?

Film grading is a physical and chemical process. I don't think labs use software to set the printer lights, but even if they do, that software will not help you at all.
If you are just talking about color correcting video I believe Avid DV Xpress and Final Cut 3 have decent color correction software(For the price) but it's not on par with a DaVinci 8:8:8 or other pro device.

Nota "Would love to have a DaVinci in his apartment" Mono

NotAMono Has it right. Those systems are probably your best bet for color correction, unless you have the half mill it costs for Davinci.

R. Michael "would move in with Rob if he had Davinci in his apartment" McWhorter

And you shall know us by the trail of dead.

If by film grading you mean a "film look" for video there are plugins for that as well.

Filmlook I think is one of them. The PowerPack of Xpress DV has a Film grain effect which I've used before.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

anyone heard about cinelook?
it's like $500 I think, and I heard it simulates film very well. It even recodes your video to 24 fps if you want. Sounds good..

Yes. Cinelook is what I was thinking of. Not Filmlook.

I think it's CineLook that does the color/gamma correction to simulate a "film look." But it's CineMotion that does the deinterlacing and 24 fps encoding.

So Cinelook and Cinemotion can make something shot on DV more film like? Are they plugins?

--MIKE

Ok I may be stupid here, I know film is 24 frames a second and Video NCST is 30... But does turning a video signal to 24 frames a second actually make it look like film? Or does it just make it choppier?

there is a process called FilmLook that can change video and give it a film like style.

ER is shot all in video then run through FilmLook and then it seems as if it was 35mm.

but the process I've heard is about $1,000 a minute of footage, so it's a little on the steep side.

quote:

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Originally posted by HBKDinobot:
does turning a video signal to 24 frames a second actually make it look like film? Or does it just make it choppier?

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Well, according to the article *advertisement* about the new version of Magic Bullet in the new issue of American Cinematographer it does. They sort of dance the issue about whether the motion is actually more film like, or whether it just reproduces the 3:2 pulldown artifact (Which I've never even really noticed). This is of course in reference to to doing a 2:3 conversion to 24p and then going back through a 3:2 to 29.97.

Here's the physics of it though. An object moving at a given speed will go farther in 1/48th of a second (Normal exposure at 24fps) than at 1/60th of a second (Normal at 60i or 30fps). By simply removing selected half frames the motion blur expressed on the frame is not elongated to compensate. Now, the program may have other features to achieve this and also deals with some of the other discrepancies.

Of course, film shot at 30fps still looks like film, so make of that what you will as well.

Nota "Half the frame he used to be" Mono

I've used Cinelook. It's okay, not great. I've used magic bullet. It's much better. It too will let you do a 3:2 pull down, and the frames are much sharper than a standard "deinterlace" because it uses some crazy smart field blending technology. Plus, all you have to do is set your after effects timeline to your desired frame rate and pull the "trigger" and your footage is bulleted.
[on soap box] Whatever "film look" plugin you use, please, please, don't do a 3:2 pull down treatment on footage that has fades and dissolves already in it. It drives me crazy when I'm watching something and halfway through a dissolve, the dissolve reverses for a frame. Add your dissolves after the 3:2 pull down. Personally, I don't like this effect at all, though. [off soap box]

Magic Bullet also has a "look suite" that has some really great film looks (I think this is more valuable than magic bullet itself).
Educational version is $500 and you need AE 5.5, I think. I don't work for the Orphanage and I paid for my copy.
Although I've achieved great results by creating my own "film look" treatments w/o expensive plugins, Cinelook, Magic Bullet and others are very helpful.
regards, joren

For colour correction, i'd have a look at Discreet's Infero program.

Thats what they used on "Lord of the Rings" to colour correct.

Cinelook sucks majorly. I NEVER ever had it run stably. Frequent lock ups and crashes pursuaded me it's a complete pile of *bleep*.

Besides, why do you want a film like look on video? Trust me when I say it does look awful when you show it on anything other than a computer monitor. Just light your film the way they light for film!

Richard.