[HN Gopher] Show HN: Filmbox, physically accurate film emulation...
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Show HN: Filmbox, physically accurate film emulation, now on Linux
and Windows
We released Filmbox two years ago, and it has gotten a great
response. It's been used in huge movies like "Everything Everywhere
All At Once". It's been a huge rewrite to get this working on
Linux and Windows from our original Mac and Metal code. We also
have some interesting uses of cross-platform Swift + Electron in
our plugin manager app, and cross-platform Swift generally in the
plugin. Hopefully we can detail that in a blog post at some point.
There's a free Filmbox Lite version to try, if you're interested.
Author : wilg
Score : 183 points
Date : 2023-02-08 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (videovillage.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (videovillage.co)
| Etheryte wrote:
| As a photographer, emulation like this is of great interest to
| me. Like in cinematography, film is often held in high regard in
| photography with the caveat that it isn't even remotely as
| flexible as digital options.
|
| Have you considered creating a parallel product as an Adobe
| Lightroom plugin and/or a standalone app for still images?
| thejarren wrote:
| My understanding is that you can edit images inside of Davinci
| Resolve just like video, though I haven't attempted it myself.
| wilg wrote:
| > Have you considered creating a parallel product as an Adobe
| Lightroom plugin and/or a standalone app for still images?
|
| Yes.
| buildbot wrote:
| I second this, many photographers would be very interested,
| myself included.
| photoGrant wrote:
| Put a DNG into Resolve, enjoy a node based workflow, use this
| plugin, and export the frame at the same res :)
| keepquestioning wrote:
| [dead]
| jansan wrote:
| The skeuomorphic user interface below "A tool for purists and mad
| scientists alike" is really nice, but I doubt that is really how
| the app looks like.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Can you discuss the technical details of how this was
| implemented? From a high level perspective, I can imagine it
| involves creating a 3d LUT from a color chart.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Neat product. I know I'm asking in the worst possible place, but
| it'd be really cool if someone made some ShaderToy demos that do
| the same thing as a post-processing step.
| thejarren wrote:
| What's the difference between this and Dehancer?
| wilg wrote:
| Filmbox looks better.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Cool software though not something I would pay for.
|
| If you're interested in getting most of this effect for free I
| highly recommend using the venerable Hald CLUT library found
| here: https://github.com/cedeber/hald-clut
|
| These are lookup tables made using film scans and do a damn good
| job of emulating the film "feel" especially when used with HDR
| input without burnt highlights or crushed blacks.
|
| I personally recommend RawTherapee for photo editing, which
| includes native support for these.
|
| To further emulate the effect you can use a film grain overlay
| (hundreds available one google away) and a color-weighted bloom
| filter.
|
| ffmpeg and OBS also natively support this LUT format, I'm sure
| there are ways to use them in the FOSS video editing suites as
| well, but I basically do everything in ffmpeg commandline
| nowadays so I don't have firsthand experience.
| CarVac wrote:
| How does this compare to my Filmulator, which basically runs a
| simulation of stand development?
|
| https://filmulator.org
|
| (I've been too busy on another project to dedicate too much time
| to it the past year, and dealing with Windows CI sucks the fun
| out of everything, so it hasn't been updated in a while...)
| expensive_news wrote:
| I remember trying to get this installed on my Mac a while ago.
| Do you know if it can run on M1 now?
| jcynix wrote:
| Film simulations are cool. While I always take RAW images, I
| often use the builtin film simulation bracketing of my Fuji
| X-Systems to generate three JPEGs at the same time. This often
| gives me nice JPEGs which I can immediately pass on to family and
| friends, who view them on the smartphones or tablets and are
| happy without me doing time consuming RAW processing.
|
| Interestingly you can generate those simulations later in camera
| too while reviewing your images. And Darktable has some Fuji film
| simulation recipes builtin too for a start.
|
| Last but not least some sites, for example
| https://fujixweekly.com/, publish and review various film
| simulation recipes.
| caseyohara wrote:
| Fuji's film sims are lovely and make for great images right out
| of the camera. I have an X-T4 and X100V and the simulations are
| one of my favorite parts of the X system. I also bracket the
| film sims, but I often have trouble choosing my favorite
| between the three.
| jcynix wrote:
| > I often have trouble choosing my favorite between the
| three.
|
| Same problem of choice here too, and that's where the somehat
| tedious manual post-processing in-camera comes to the rescue,
| if needed.
| pinum wrote:
| Those results look excellent. I'm trying to gauge whether
| something like this could potentially work in realtime, i.e. in
| games. I know it inevitably depends on hardware, resolution,
| settings, etc but do you have a ballpark figure for how long it
| takes to apply this to a frame? (And does it have a temporal
| aspect which requires access to frame N+k to render frame N?)
| ladberg wrote:
| Out of curiosity, is it normal for the Mac-only (until now)
| software in the film industry to get any traction like this one
| has?
| gnopgnip wrote:
| Arguably the most popular software in the industry is Mac only,
| Final Cut Pro
| deaddodo wrote:
| Which part of the industry are you talking about? Final Cut
| Pro is most definitely not the most used by television and
| film studios.
|
| The Avid/Nuke/Maya stack is _far_ more popular, in that
| realm. Followed up by Adobe's stack on the lower end.
| photoGrant wrote:
| Always loved your software, glad to see you here. Polished and on
| point for 99% of my DIT use cases.
|
| Lattice being particularly close to heart. Thanks!
| subhro wrote:
| Not sure how many people shoot film here, but I could have one
| look at the lite version processing and say this is just an
| emulation, especially in the shadows. The grain is predictable
| unlike "real" film.
|
| Funny that people will spend so much time, money and effort in
| making digital photos look like film, but refuse to shoot film.
| Just sad. :(
| jrm4 wrote:
| What you're saying is probably true, and also almost certainly
| will be false in the long run. Given art AI, etc, it's not hard
| to predict that this will get to the point where it would be
| indistinguishable.
| moffkalast wrote:
| All this effort is likely still cheaper than shooting real
| film.
| deaddodo wrote:
| The part that I found oddest was showing off the physical film
| vs digitally altered. Instead of having a neutral comparison.
|
| As a non-Photographer, the film versions looked better in
| almost every case. I wasn't sure what the filter was actually
| meant to be used for. But a comparison with neutral stock would
| have made it look better, in all probability.
| Kevcmk wrote:
| I shoot exclusively film and am thrilled to see attempts at
| this. The medium is far too expensive and need not die in the
| name of exclusivity
| dusted wrote:
| A part of me think this is great, I love how film look.. Another
| part of me hates the idea, that something merely _looks_ like a
| thing, rather than _being_ the thing.. Can't explain why..
| Especially since I can't watch film anywhere anyway, not even in
| cinema anymore..
| jjgreen wrote:
| There're still a few cinemas in London screening 35mm
| netsharc wrote:
| Monsieur Baudrillard would like to have a word with you...
| [deleted]
| conpervative wrote:
| Are there any demos showing a side-by-side comparison of raw
| footage versus post-processing by Filmbox? I'd be interested to
| see the difference.
| wilg wrote:
| Last time I posted someone asked this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25368352
|
| The TL;DR is that "raw footage" is sort of meaningless with
| video. You could make the comparison look as good or bad as you
| want.
| carlosdp wrote:
| This is awesome!
| ahoya wrote:
| Is there a pricing for students or people who just want to make
| their videos look cool for their families and friends?
| Unfortunately I really like the effect but can't afford this is a
| hobbyist.
| jholtom wrote:
| https://license.videovillage.co/buy/filmbox-lite-ofx/non-com...
| klabb3 wrote:
| This is pretty awesome of them. They also have a free version
| with fewer options but without time limit and watermarks.
| That's very generous.
| basch wrote:
| The link you replied to is the free version with fewer
| options and without time limits or watermarks, aka Filmbox
| Lite.
| Joeboy wrote:
| No Linux version though.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > It's been a huge rewrite to get this working on Linux and
| Windows from our original Mac and Metal code.
|
| Would be interested to read more about the technical details in a
| blog post.
|
| Did you end up porting your Metal code to something else which is
| then translated into Vulkan, Metal, DX12? Or do you now maintain
| your original Metal code alongside ports to Vulkan and DX12? Or
| something else?
|
| If you were to start another project today, would you go the same
| route of Metal first and then whatever else you did? Or would you
| go directly to the way that you are currently doing it?
| wilg wrote:
| Resolve only supports Metal, OpenCL, and CUDA extensions.
| Filmbox currently uses Metal and CUDA and we are probably going
| to support OpenCL to support AMD cards.
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(page generated 2023-02-08 23:00 UTC)