David Roth weiss
Forum Replies Created
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[Nat Jencks] “Although of course its true technically that prores4444 or proresXQ are compressed formats, the real world perceptual difference between a Prores4444 or Prores XQ and uncompressed DPX is frequently zero.
“Precisely! Not to mention, I sincerely doubt the original poster has the hardware necessary to playback DPX files seamlessly.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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Duke,
It’s clear after reading your post that you’re making a fundamental mistake – you mentioned that you’re “shooting flat,” but then you added that you’re using “a variety of different profiles depending upon the situation.” What you’re missing is that you’re NOT shooting flat, the built-in profiles you’re using are essentially identical to LUTs that are built-in to your camera.
When you add a LUT to those clips already affected by a profile, the LUT will never have the intended affect, because you’ve already significantly affected those clips in-camera. For example, a LUT designed to emulate film, which typically crushes the blacks and increases contrast, won’t look like film if you’ve already adjusted the look in-camera by adding a profile. By adding the profile, you’ve first limited the available dynamic range available to you in post, and second you’ve probably adjusted some or many of the very parameters the LUT would be used for in post, but now those parameters are burned-in.
So, if you’re shooting flat, shoot flat… Only use the camera profiles for stuff you’re either not going to color grade, or stuff you’re only going to adjust a bit here and a bit there. But, using profiles in-camera and LUTs in post together is a sure-fire recipe for getting unexpected results.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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VBR is pretty useless for most users, unless you don’t care what your encode looks like, and you only care about squeezing it into a specifically sized space.
The algorithm compares the pixels that change from frame to frame vs those that remain the same, and it saves space by devoting bits to only those pixels that change. Unfortunately, unless you’re really expert and are using the best software, VBR tends to produce lots of artifacts, and because it’s variable, those artifacts tend to shift from frame to frame, not scene to scene, which draws more attention to them. Thus, CBR is most often the better choice for most users.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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[Lance Clayton] “Here’s the problem:
There are at least three ways to ‘bring’ media into Premiere.
1. Dragging it into the project bin
2. File > Import
3. Media BrowserAdobe don’t make it clear (unless you’ve read the Premiere User Manual) that the first of these 3 methods work okay 90% of the time, BUT only bringing media in via the Media Browser works 100% of the time and is the correct method to import media. Thus, I suggest making it a rule to live by that you only ever import media into Premiere via the Media Browser.”
Clearly, the problem is not the fault of Adobe, it’s that users don’t read the manual or even bother taking a minute or two to watch the many very clear, concise, and free online tutorials Adobe has kindly spread all over the Web.
Unfortunately, for those of us who do know what we’re doing, this is a business filled with many people who don’t even know the most basic fundamentals of editing, but who nonetheless call themselves professionals. All we can do is hope that Darwin was correct and natural selection will give manual readers an evolutionary advantage.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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You did the right thing by posting about Cinemartin and quoting their sales manager. He clearly has no idea what customer service and support are all about, and there’s just no excuse for his threat to send you to spam simply because you’re complaining about software that does not deliver results as marketed.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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I have had not had very good luck in the past with the Datacolor Spyder – the one I had was simply not predictable in a video-centric environment. Though they may have upgraded there products in recent years, I have been led to believe that Spyder is essentially designed for print-centric environments,.
Yes the Spyder products are more affordable than most, but you do get what you pay for in this world, and you’d probably be better off with one of the calibration packages from Spectracal at the following link: thesehttps://calman.spectracal.com/calman-studio.html.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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An interesting find Herb. Yes it’s a bit OT, but educational nonetheless.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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You’ve mentioned every component in your NLE except your media drive(s). Based upon the red render line under the graphic on your timeline, it appears you’re most likely editing off of a single hard drive that’s generating enough throughout.
So, what precisely are the specs of your media drive and how is it connected?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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ProRes is owned and licensed by a small company known as Apple, and Apple competes head to head against Microsoft, so you decode ProRes (play it, encode from it), but you can’t encode ProRes (write to the codec) in Windows, at least not without purchasing an expensive app that includes and expensive license for ProRes.
Your alternative is to install the free Avid DNX codecs, which you can download from the Avid website. The DNXHD codecs are essentially identical to the ProRes codecs, only they work cross-platform, since Avid works on both Macs and Windows machines. Google Avid DNX and you’ll find a chart that will help you to select the proper version of DNX with an alpha channel.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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You really should be conferring with the same vendor from whom you’re purchasing your SAN or NAS, as some DAM/MAM solutions play better with certain systems. For example, AXEL has to operate on a Mac server of some sort (often a Mac Mini), and you really don’t want to hang a Mac server on the back of some SAN/NAS systems.
Also, some systems, such as SNS, have built-in software MAM that may not be as feature rich as dedicated software such Catdv, but which will suffice for many small companies.
In addition, you really don’t want to setup MAM/DAM for just one or two users in your office, that typically ends up being a mistake.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.