[Joakim Ziegler]

FCP and Compressor are, in my experience, always the same, which makes sense, given that they’re both Apple products and probably use a lot of the same tech internally.

Sorenson I haven’t used in a long time, but I seem to remember it had more problems with color shifts and so on. Not that Apple is free of that, their h.264 implementation in particular is pretty atrocious.

—
Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor

[Joakim Ziegler]

As an aside, don’t worry about rendering in FCP first if you’re going from DVCPROHD to ProRes 422 HQ. ProRes is so much higher quality than the source, in practice very close to uncompressed, that you’re unlikely to lose anything.

When working on projects sourced from video, we regularly convert everything to ProRes 422 HQ first just to homogenize it, even if the final result is going to (yet) another codec. It’s just easier to work with.

—
Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor

[Joakim Ziegler]

Which CPU is this, and with how much RAM?

Also, instead of changing the screen resolution, have you tried just changing the setting for opening the app in high resolution in the application Info window? Does that work?

—
Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor

[Joakim Ziegler]

I’m not sure what you’re basing “The next Mac Pro will probably not be a very good Resolve solution” on, unless you have some inside info. It’s a shame it won’t be out until next year, but I see no reason why it shouldn’t be an excellent Resolve platform, especially now that Apple seems to be moving back to Nvidia for GPUs.

—
Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor

[Joakim Ziegler]

While I do think there will be a completely redesigned Mac Pro, Thunderbolt is not necessarily a motherboard thing. Asus is doing Thunderbolt on a PCIe card. It’s actually pretty obvious how that works, since TB is just an extension of PCIe.

Apple has apparently also confirmed reports of new Mac Pros for next year, so it seems yesterday’s feeble “update” was indeed meant as a stopgap signal that the line’s not dead.

—
Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor

[Joakim Ziegler]

While I don’t normally work with Avid/MXF workflows, I can tell you that Resolve is a pretty good option for applying LUTs to Quicktimes in general. It’s definitely one of the fastest ways of doing it.

—
Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor

[Joakim Ziegler]

All of this opens up an interesting question: What’s up with the new 9.0 UI and resolution? I actually completely forgot to ask at NAB, but it’d be interesting to know if the UI rewrite will allow a more flexible interface and scaling to more resolutions.

—
Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor

[Joakim Ziegler]

Haven’t used the DLA-RS65U, but have lots of experience with the DLA-RS60U. A few points:

* Color gamut and contrast/black level is quite good.

* Warm-up of about half an hour is required to get consistent color.

* There is some drift over time, so you should probably be able to profile and make your own LUTs on a regular basis. That means getting something like a Hubble probe and CineSpace.

* The Davio has always been able to do HD-SDI to HDMI, and that works fine with this projector.

So, all in all, it is pretty solid, with a few small caveats. If you’re willing to work around those, it performs well, and looks very good.

I don’t know if I’d recommend it for rec.709 finishing, though. A monitor (like a Panasonic plasma) is much more suitable for that, when properly calibrated.

—
Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor

[Joakim Ziegler]

Actually, I’m kind of the other way around, capturing in as much resolution as you can makes sense, and sending it to VFX in 4k makes sense too (those extra pixels help in tracking, matching, and all sorts of stuff), but seeing color is not resolution-bound.

For me personally, we also do film out and DCP only in 2k at the moment, but that might change soon (well, it may change for DCP, film out is dying).

—
Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor

[Joakim Ziegler]

On the other hand, monitoring in 4k is kind of useless. I mean, it looks good and everything, but how important is it for making critical color decisions? Lots of other factors, like color gamut and consistency, calibration, etc., are much more important.

Of course, being able to generate 4k deliverables is very nice, but that doesn’t mean you have to monitor in 4k while you grade.

—
Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor