[Axel Schreiter]

@Bill:
I think I know what you are trying to say. Unless we are not sure what this is all about, we shouldn’t panic. When first confronted with FCP X in 2011, I thought: this doesn’t work for me. As we all know now, this was not just a panic reaction. The first versions were very buggy. They weren’t stable. I saw the beachball too often, and performance was worse than on FCP7.

The new timeline paradigm (along with the new naming conventions) was the part where Apple was ahead of everyone. But this particular point wasn’t the reason for the famous PR disaster.

I came on board late. I think it was 10.0.6. Watched someone edit on a set on a MBP, and I was impressed. Wouldn’t have been if the app had crashed then …

Same with the Color Board. Not too long before X, I had learned Apple Color. Now instead of implementing a grading suite, they adopted the iMovie tool. I thought, they must be kidding.

So I learned Resolve. Almost without noticing, I found myself using the Color Board. It is so fast and intuitive. Is Resolve superior? You bet, but it’s not necessary for 90% of what I do.

While not being a colorist, I do follow professional advice on how to perform CC/grading, with primary and secondary iterations and using scopes for accuracy. For my way of approaching secondaries, HSL curves are my tool of choice, and now that they are in FCP, I am very happy.

Before having seen Simons video, I was already irritated that the new Color Wheels seemed to be less powerful than the pathetic Color Board. It’s like you say, I thought I must be missing some new ingenious paradigm. Is there one? I wish your color scientists could help us with a plain explanation. In my understanding, the existence of a, er, “3-way-color-corrector” just implies that each of he ranges is a selection, and of what use is any selection if it’s almost unlimited? This is the simple question your experts should answer.

[Axel Schreiter]

Probably you monitor 8-bit, and that’s all you probably have recorded. FCP X calculates with floating point accuracy, so you won’t ADD more banding etc. to your material, regardless which bit depth or chroma sampling you use. Stay with optimized media, then export as RGB Tiff sequence, as mentioned (and described in the documentation of the software). Though you can’t judge the conversion to the XYZ color space Open DCP does for you, I assure you that the images will look the same on the screen – provided that you calibrated your monitor with care and know how to color correct.

Anyway, don’t expect too much of 8-bit in comparison to the genuine 12-bit clips surrounding your film on a big screen. 8-bit is just enough to represent colors, there is no glory to them. Also: If you have the possibility to monitor surround, make it surround. Sound adds a lot to the feel of a film, stereo is not good for big rooms and mono is kind of thin.

In short: Try to imagine a very big image, move closer to your monitor, be very critical. You will learn to judge the shortcomings and avoid ugly surprises.

[Axel Schreiter]

Why give your film “to the lab”?

Download Open DCP
https://code.google.com/p/opendcp/
and make the film yourself. The film would not be key-protected, but do you care?

The problem – afaik – is, that there still is no reliable player to check if everything went well. As a digital projectionist, here is my advice: Find a cinema near your place, talk to the projectionist and spend coffee and cake, then give him the USB stick with your film and check it.

What kind of codec do you need to export? An RGB Tiff sequence. Be aware, that the DCP server needs a preset for your film size to play it properly. Most should have 1080 x 1920 (HD 16:9, though the standard cinema distribution format is 1108 x 2048, Widescreen 17:9).

The sound needs to be exported as 24-bit PCM 48 kHz, nothing else.

As frame rate, use 24 fps.