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The reason we are NOT buying a full DaVinci control surface is…
How bad the HSL keyer is.
In prosumer Colorista, a clean key is fast and easy. In Davinci it often borders on impossible, or is just plain impossible. In fact, of all the color grading tools – and I’ve tried them all – the color keyer in DaVinci is by far the worst and most likely to required tons of windows and shenanigans to work, if it can be made to work at all.
Key Blur just spreads out the noise into big, moving blobs, as often does grow/shrink, who’s functioning is so unpredictable it’s not even documented in the manual. These rarely solve the problems they are supposed to solve, that I know.
I’d say the HSL Keyer is not in tune with modern client expectations – people expect that it will be easy to change a shirt color, brighten someone’s face, etc. – Or modern workflows where absolute real-time performance is not relevant, as nobody is playing out to tape anymore, and if they are, they can just do a pre-render and play that. What clients care about now is quality – sure speed too – but more overall project completion speed, not 100% real time playback speed – and if it takes me 20 minutes to figure out how to pull a key, how is that saving time?
The other reason is that grades done in RedCine X do not carry over accurately to Resolve, as soon as the RedCine X grade uses the L/G/G pots the imported Red footage looks completely different. It looks teh same in Premiere and After Effects, so this is a Resolve shortcoming, not a Red SDK one.
The way MANY high end workflows happen is the Red footage is graded “pretty well” in RedCineX and then transcoded to DNX or ProRes for editorial. Then the XML of the edit is imported into DaVinci for fine-tuning.
Often, everybody likes certain grades done in RedCine as seen during the edit, and want to keep them or at least use them as a starting point.
Because the Davinci Red importer is lacking, it now means wasting time rendering out DPXs from Premiere, or wasting time trying to re-create the grade that was done in RedCine X.
Fix this guys, and you can have my 30K. until then, I’m looking at other platforms to give my 30K to.
And please, don’t tell me which big movies used DaVinci to grade. Those big movies are not my projects (their footage maybe had less noise, needed less change, etc. than many of my client’s work – not to mention they probably had a VFX department to separately prepare key mattes whenever there was a problem.) Besides – I’m sure those big movies would have loved a decent, easy to use keyer as much as we would.
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36 Replies
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well, the hsl key tool needs a better blur function. it has been discussed here already and
i guess bm does know this and are working on it. -
I’m just going to go ahead and say everything in your post is wrong. Seriously 100% wrong in every way.
They keyer is great. If it takes you 20mins to pull a key then you just need to practice more.
No job I have ever graded has been graded in Red Cine X first. If the clients prefer the Red Cine X grade from the offline better than yours then your not doing your job as colorist very well.
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Dan Moran
Colourist
Smoke & Mirrors: London
http://www.danmorancolor.com/blog -
I began reading this thread assuming it was going to be about some operability issues with the control surface, and discover it has nothing whatsoever to do with the panels themselves…?
If an operator has an issue with the software HSL secondaries, it is going to be the same whether they’re using $29,000 knobs or a $1500 Wave, or a $100 graphics tablet. Do we understand the difference between the software and the controller? I somewhat agree that it can be occasionally tricky to get the best separation performance from Resolve, but that mostly has to do with the quality of the source material, codec, noise, resolution, GOP; its a long list. At the same time, I’ve hit many “one-click” qualifications– but it doesn’t happen every time, perhaps I don’t necessarily expect it to, but that might also come from pulling keys for nearly 40 years, including Ultimatte, SHAKE, Primatte, Keylight, and the beat goes on.
Should the matte separation in Resolve be as good or better than a dedicated compositor program? Very often its about simply feathering out a single hue… but when it comes to completely re-painting an article — the ubiquitous flipping the hue of a shirt comes to mind — its amazing the number of times it comes as a surprise to some that the shirt isn’t just one shade (!), and maybe an operator is going to have to build something to account for its actual range. Yes, there are color substitution nodes in some composting applications — they don’t always work perfectly, either, and sometimes require a lot of intervention — tracking, blurring, eroding, garbage matte, cleanup, repaint…. sometimes not as easily as it can be done in Resolve.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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Let’s compare apples to apples, shall we? As Joseph correctly pointed out, the shirt’s color can be a combination of number of colors. HSL keyer often may have difficulties dealing with it, because of the way it is designed. Now, let’s look at competing offerings from FilmLight, Digital Vision and Autodesk, even if their product is EOL. All of their grading packages in addition to standard HSL and RGB keyers offer a third keyer, which is specifically designed to work with non contiguous colors. In Baselight it is called D-Keyer, Lustre’s is called Dimond keyer and FilmMaster’s is called an i-keyer. So, personally, I wholeheartedly agree, that HSL keyer in Resolve is outdated, underpowered, slow and in need of some serious update.
And as far as client preferring the offline look as a starting point, seriously? It’s AN age old problem. By the time piece finished EDITING, client gets so used to the look of the offline, they often would like to stay close. What is so wrong about that argument?
The name of the thread could be misleading though. I personally would not buy a $30K panel to go with my $1K software, that does only one thing, but that is just me. Also, I hear the $5K version of the panel is coming, so…. -
I feel guilty for being a bit short earlier on so I’d like to offer you some help keying. If you are up for it I’d happily point out a few tips and tricks I use. Mail me at dan ( at) mixinglight.com and I will do my best.
One last point from a grumpy colorist is that it is fact that people like Dave Hussey and Stefan Sonnenfeld use the same software and same keyer as the rest of us they are just dam talented at what they do. I seen this first hand when I moved to London and seen the amazing grades coming out of people like Jean-Clement Soret and my boss Mark Horrobin.
Happy Grading!
D
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Dan Moran
Colourist
Smoke & Mirrors: London
http://www.danmorancolor.com/blog -
Whatever gave you an idea, that I need help grading? A bit pretentious, I’d say…
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Not you man! I was apologising to rob and try to offer tips on the keyer to him
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Dan Moran
Colourist
Smoke & Mirrors: London
http://www.danmorancolor.com/blog -
Jake, I think we can all be better. People who think they can’t learn from others are in denial and bound to fail eventually.
Dan, I’ll happily take you up on your generous offer, whether it was directed at me or not.
Colorist | Online Editor | Post Super | VFX Artist | BD Author
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Yes Juan, we can all learn new tricks and use some help from time to time. Why do you think I’m here? But saying “your not doing your job as colorist very well” is not helping.
Actually Juan, I noticed, that you not open to any type of criticism of Resolve. Why is that? I can say it with certainty, that those satisfied with the status quo are “bound to fail eventually”, as DaVinci had proved repeatedly in the past. -
Got it. I may overreacted as well:-)
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