Managed colour from scene to screen
FilmLight are actively growing the BLG (Baselight Linked Grade) ecosystem to make it even easier to pass colour-managed, sophisticated looks throughout the production and post-production process. The BLG Tools initiative opens this technology to areas of the image processing chain where only 3D lookup table processing is available, such as with a LUT box or professional monitor.
The first integration is with Pomfort Livegrade Studio; click here to find out more.
Baselight Linked Grade
BLG is a multi-track OpenEXR file that you can use to create, transfer and review looks. This small portable data file enables looks to be exchanged with all FilmLight systems: Baselight, Daylight and Baselight Editions. It is enabled through grading and look development within Baselight, in dailies with Daylight, through editorial within Avid, and through VFX with both NUKE and Flame. All of these software applications accurately render the BLG look through a GPU renderer, which is not always available in the low-power, low-latency hardware particularly seen on set.
The BLG Tools initiative provides an SDK to allow partners to integrate the BLG pipeline working colour space, Baselight grade stack, DRT and so on into a processing-constrained environment, such as with on-set preview displays.
Advantages
BLG files provide several distinct advantages over the traditional LUT and CDL combination when passing looks to and from set:
- Support for authoring with the full set of Baselight primary and secondary grading tools, which behave identically to a full Baselight system, including spatial operations. In the case where only a LUT is supported in the viewing pipeline, the BLG still contains the full creative intent such as a highlight soften.
- Integrated colour management. The working colour space in which the creative grade and any CDL adjustment is applied is defined in the BLG. Input Device Transforms (IDTs) into that space are selectable, allowing the same look to be applied to different cameras. Baselight’s Display Rendering Transform (DRT) family is also encapsulated allowing, for example, HDR grades to be previewed on SDR displays.
- Integrated metadata handling. Rather than having a list of shots and their respective look plus CDL, the BLG saved for each shot – as well as specifying colour grade information – also contains the metadata for the shot (clip name, source timecode and so on). Within Daylight or Baselight placing the correct grade stack on each shot is a simple case of multi-pasting a directory of BLG files onto the timeline.
- Reference source and graded EXR poster frames to enable complex colour pipelines to be visually debugged.
