How to convert log or HLG footage from your camera properly
Tell Vizard Agent what camera and profile you shot on. It researches what that camera actually records, converts the colour space properly rather than grading the flatness away, compares a true conversion against tone-mapping on your own frames, and checks the result against skin tone before it commits.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Name the camera and profile, and ask to see the options rather than the answer. Colour conversion has more than one defensible outcome, so the useful version of this request ends with you looking at two frames, not being handed one. Vizard Agent looks up what that combination records rather than guessing from the file.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
Footage shot in a log or HLG profile looks washed out on purpose: it carries more range than a normal display can show. The fix is a conversion, not a contrast slider. Tone-mapping compresses a wide range into a narrow one; a proper conversion maps a known curve to a known standard. In the session behind this article it:
- Researched the camera's video formats and probed a UHD HLG test clip for what it was really carrying.
- Compared tone-mapping variants and grading variants, then rendered the test clip at the 1080p delivery resolution and checked it for edge artefacts.
- Compared a true Rec.709 conversion against tone-mapping side by side, then tested stronger variants with the black point moved.
- Rendered a full-resolution still, inspected it, and applied the chosen treatment to a second, different clip.
- Tuned the grade against the face, calculated the white balance by measurement rather than by eye, and built a comparison image of the old and new skin tone.
When does this not work well?
Conversion assumes the footage was exposed correctly for its profile. Log and HLG are unforgiving about exposure, and a faithful conversion by Vizard Agent reproduces exactly what was recorded, mistakes included. Underexposed log brings noise up with the shadows, blown highlights were clipped in camera, and footage already converted once gets worse the second time.
Common questions
Is tone-mapping wrong? No, just different. That is why Vizard Agent shows you both.
What if I do not know my profile? Say the camera and Vizard Agent works out what the file carries.
Why not just add contrast? Because contrast pushes the colours the camera recorded somewhere they were never meant to go, and faces are where you notice it first.