Cinema Grade – Denver Riddle – Color Grading Central’s new plugin

[Denver Riddle]

Product developer here! Just chiming in to let you know we appreciate all the interest surrounding Cinema Grade! It has been our most successful product launch to date as we really think that we have keyed in on the needs, wants and desires of independent filmmakers everywhere.

I had this idea nearly a decade ago of how I would want to develop grading software if I was such a developer because I struggled with the tools back then. I imagine if I was just starting today that it wouldn’t be any different.

And it wasn’t that I just wanted to make grading easier but also more efficient, fast… modern.

Like reaching into the image and grading it directly kind of like drawing on a tablet rather than trying to get the same result with an Etch-A-Sketch.

The current offerings of tools out there are based on ideas and workflows that are more than two decades old so we felt like it was time to shift the paradigm and bring the toolsets and workflows into the modern 21st century.

Now I know that all sounds like marketing hype but we really hope that you will give it a try a base your judgment on its merit ☺

We have a really talented team of devs that have worked tirelessly on this. My business partner is a former software engineer at Baselight and we are product partners with ACES. So we do have the knowledge, talent and resources to expand it even further into an exciting and useful platform.

Exciting days are ahead! If you’re interested in giving it a try you can download a FREE 7 day trial version here: https://cinemagrade.com

[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “The problem is not in the screens, but the software that drives them. “

Well, if you are watching a grade that can manipulate up to 10,000 nits of luma range – on a screen that can only display 100 nits max – that seems like it would be a pretty serious issue.

The most easily understandable holy grail of this stuff is letting a desktop user do with motion video – what we’ve been able to do with RAW stills for decades.

Or hopefully even better!

Improved highlight and shadow recovery, is something we all want. And if HDR can ride along that would be great too.

But I’m just not seeing the monitor folks offering that very much as yet.

Time will tell.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Oliver Peters]

[Bill Davis] “Well, if you are watching a grade that can manipulate up to 10,000 nits of luma range – on a screen that can only display 100 nits max – that seems like it would be a pretty serious issue.”

There are no commercial displays capable of 10,000 nits. That’s a theoretical Dolby max. Most screens right now are at about 1,000 nits and iMacPro screens claim 500. Right now when you grade HDR in FCPX, Resolve, or Premiere on an iMacPro screen, you are still limited to a peak of 100, because of how the software talks to the screen. Not because of the hardware itself.

Even though you can work in a standard that’s capable of hitting 10,000, no common HDR grades are being done to that high of a level anyway. So for several years at least, HDR is going to be considered to be 1,000 nits. HDR theatrical levels are actually a lot lower than for video.

But, when you do HDR, you cannot saturate the full screen with the max nits – for example, a full screen of white at 1,000 nits. That’s because the circuitry of the display lowers the level to keep from damaging the display. So in reality, most HDR grades are done at pretty standard levels with spikes being allowed to go higher than 100.

[Bill Davis] “The most easily understandable holy grail of this stuff is letting a desktop user do with motion video – what we’ve been able to do with RAW stills for decades.”

Actually working with raw stills to create HDR photos is a COMPLETELY different process that has little or nothing at all to do with HDR video. That’s because there’s no such thing as HDR printed photographs or HDR paper. So in HDR photography, you are tone-mapping ranges of the image into the acceptable range for the end rest – the finished photo – which has no HDR display mechanism.

[Bill Davis] “Improved highlight and shadow recovery, is something we all want.”

Again, nothing at all to do with HDR. We have had that capability for quite a few years with raw and log video recording. HDR is entirely a post and display function. It gives you improved highlights in post. The recording didn’t change and won’t change with any of this new technology.

You might want to read these ☺

https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2018/06/14/hdr-and-raw-demystified-part-1/

https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2018/06/21/hdr-and-raw-demystified-part-2/

https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2018/07/05/more-about-prores-raw/

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

BTW – since we are bantering about displays, I will further point out that iMac Pro displays are P3 color space. This means that reds (which include any sort of flesh tone) are inherently more saturated in appearance versus Rec709 or most current computer displays.

If you grade a clip for Rec709 color using an external calibrated display – or even an older Apple Retina display – that same clip will look oversaturated on an iMac Pro. This includes within FCPX, which has no provision for the user to correct the viewer image for actual versus target color spaces. Again, this is a software issue and not a hardware issue.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Geoff Addis]

I’ve been playing with it. Scopes coming this week. It would be very useful to be able to apply a custom LUT in the Basic page.

[Denver Riddle]

We were thinking the same things. So we should that in an upcoming release as well 🙂

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Denver,

Just a had a meeting about a feature film grade on a low budget project that I am supporting.
Cinema Grade came up in conversation by the director, who is also doing the grade.
Took a look at your website, and it has clearly come a long way, so I got impressed too + found this thread.

The rest is history as they say, as I have just purchased the PPro and Davinci PC versions.
https://www.cinemagrade.com/

Looking forward to sharing tips and tricks.

Atb
Mads

cinemagrade.com

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