-
outgoing – incoming frames viewable simultaneously?
-
Ok. Thanks for having a second look Mike. Sorry for the rant…
C.
Chris M. Oben
-
Check g474 in the manual, only because your reading it may give you a better way of dealing with you concerns than how I think you mean/want to deal them…
But the long an short of it, Rt-Click Veiwer and pick you preference for Split-Screen mode.
eric b johnson
online editor | colorist | workflow
https://vimeo.com/ebjohnson/colorreelSome contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Vimeo framework” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
-
Thx for idea Eric. Sadly there is no real way to do it in split screen it seems. For now grabbing a still of the last frame and comparing it the first frame of the next clip works but is too many key strokes to be viable for a 500 shot edit. I’ll keep researching and trying. It’s just such an easy way to work. I think if it were available many colourists would appreciate it – especially for Q/C’ing. These days we just don’t have time to pore over every single frame multiple times. I don’t use premiere for grading as a rule but this feature is incredibly useful to me…
C.
Chris M. Oben
-
[Chris Oben] “For now grabbing a still of the last frame and comparing it the first frame of the next clip works but is too many key strokes to be viable for a 500 shot edit.”
Wow, I’ve been doing it that way for about 30 years (or at least as long as we’ve had still frames in a color correction program), and it actually works pretty well, even for projects of many thousands of cuts. The other philosophy is to just roll through the scene and see how the two moving shots work against each other and whether the color naturally flows or not. If something sticks out, it’s wrong.
Muscle memory, dexterity, and experience will get you there. It helps to use a control surface.
-
Saving a still and wiping to it is the method colorists have used for the last 30 years (using dedicated still stores and a video switcher at first, and later the DaVinci Gallery), and for many shows that have a lot more than 500 shots. The key is to clean up after yourself. Once you have a match, don’t insist on comparing every single outgoing frame to every single incoming frame if the shots are being re-used. If they matched 2 cuts ago, they probably match now. Resolve has restored and maintained the ability to use single keystrokes to recall the last correction and the “second to last” correction, even if you don’t have the DaVinci panel set. That feature alone has allowed colorists to speed through narrative productions very, very quickly once the two or three angles being used are established. Speed has been a necessary part of the entire DaVinci approach for as long as I can remember (and I can remember pretty far back…), so you might want to try these time tested approaches before you decide that you need something more “automatic” to achieve efficiency.
Ooops, just saw Marc’s post. Similar experience, similar conclusions. Great minds think alike 😉
-
And of course, I agree 100% with Mike’s post above.
I know of a very famous A-list director (whose initials are Michael Bay) who gets irate if any colorists show him still frames to match to. He has to see the cuts in context, and couldn’t care less if the stills precisely match. For him, it’s all about the flow. I totally see his point: I don’t give a crap about the match as long as it feels right in the specific cut.
Side-by-side comparisons are nice, but I have had directors balk because then the image size is too small and they can’t make a relative choice with a picture 50% smaller than normal. We had that feature for years and years in Baselight, and it’s helpful for certain things but not always important in the grand scheme of things.
-
Marc – is that feature still a part of the Baselight toolset?
C.
Chris M. Oben
-
Yes, the side-by-side comparisons are part of Baselight. But it’s been awhile… I’m not sure if you can see the outgoing frames of one scene simultaneously on the screen with the incoming frame on the other half of the screen. I just used stills like I always have and popped back and forth.
-
I would add that “popping back and forth” is the method that I (and nearly all colorists who I came up with) normally used. Split screens are visually confusing and a bit time consuming to bring up. The only time I really used them were to closely match a particular item in the shot – a product shot of a bottle in a beer commercial, for instance. For “normal” continuity matching in narrative work, I would usually cut between my current correction and a still, then massage the current correction (continually popping back to the still) until I walked my way into a perceptual match. The problem with split screens is that they usually lead you towards matching specific items rather than the overall “feel.” That might work, as I said, in a product shot, but in narrative work, you’re looking for a comfortable flow, not specific item color matches. After I decided the “flow” felt right, I would play the last few shots to see if it was all working, and build the scene and the show that way. Getting the feel right sometimes requires doing things that seem counterintuitive if you only look at stills, because overall shot flow is based on mood rather than specific balance. In a warm scene, it is immediately obvious if one shot doesn’t have the same degree of warmth as the others, but it’s not necessarily as obvious if you just look at each shot individually as a still and see that the waveforms line up. Continuity is about feel, not necessarily precision.
-
[Mike Most] ” Continuity is about feel, not necessarily precision.”
I have been reminded many times by directors and cinematographers that lighting and exposure aren’t all about scopes and levels and pixels; it’s about emotion. To that end, I will often ask the client about the beginning of the scene, “what’s the mood we’re going for here? Happy/sad, poignant/hilarious, grim/frightening… which?” Matching the last out and next in is easy… it’s the feel and the mood that’s hard.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up