Joseph Owens
16
COW Coins
16
DaVinci Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Mark Longchamps] “d there was a spark by sapphire called Flicker Remove. “
There is a de-Flicker node in the ancient VFX application SHAKE, and I still use it from time to time. You grab a reference still, box the reference area and let it render. It anchors to the reference area, but it doesn’t fix any other non-linearities in the exposure curve.What would complicate any other auto-de-flicker module would be that there are so many types of intra-frame density fluctuation that you would have to design VFX to look for specific types of frame differences. Those that are brought about by T-stop changes, and those that originate at the source. Those would affect the mediated values in different ways. The other source of flicker — beating between the frame rate and the lighting source due to strobing — ie shooting 2398 or 2997 fps with 50Hz lighting is most common, especially for reality. The difference will cause a kind of “hum bar” to migrate through the frame, but it does not affect the frame uniformly from top to bottom… and it travels harmonically proportioned to the difference between the periodicity. In some countries where the mains frequency is not strictly controlled the dark bar is just chaotic.
How would a VFX module differentiate between “flicker” and naturally occurring level differences, even if it was simply a person turning their face into the light?
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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Yes, dealing with this all the time. No AUTO. There really are at least three types of exposure trajectory. Manual twist, auto-iris (which usually bounces and settles), and then there are the electronic sensitivities which hop between exposures, jump, jump, jump up and down. Actually easier to track the last type.
Pick your poison, save a still, split it with the live footage and if you want to fix it perfectly (if it hasn’t been crushed or clipped into oblivion) and then be prepared to essentially keyframe the whole transition. Generally its not just the gain that’s changing, its the whole gamut — whether its going up or down, the black point will shift, the contrast ratio is wandering off somewhere else…
Jut make sure you are charging by the hour, or get the cinematographer to pay for the session. Yeah, like thats going to happen…
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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Juan has a good question — you might look at downscaling the 2K especially if your release is going to be 1998×1080 DCI or lower.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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You will have to move to Mavericks to support the Titan Black and update all your drivers and CUDA. The OS 10.9.3 update broke nvidia support for the Titans (which worked for a while in 10.9.2) but new drivers were just released a few days ago. With the new web driver you are required have to move to CUDA 6.0.46 — none of which have been officially certified by Black Magic, but I expect that is just a backlog issue with Resolve Evelyn imminent.
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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If you are dedicated to generating VFX in Resolve, then perhaps the crop tool isn’t the correct choice and maybe using a power window would be more flexible. Send the key output to the layer alpha channel. Same as a green screen garbage matte and all the softening, tracking, keyframing options will be available.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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You’re exporting an FCP-Ten (X) XML.
It should be exporting a: YourProject Name (Resolve).xml file which is 7 compatible. Don’t know at this point whether you are round tripping or pushing a timeline created in Resolve Ten.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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Couple of mechanisms might be responsible.
Can you tell if it crashes at some specific point in the timeline?
Are all the file names legal in that reel?
Are all the media types legal– codec, resolution, frame rate…?
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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Sometimes it boils down to six of one, half dozen of the other.
As the Mocha trainers advise, you have to start thinking like an animator. Roto is cruel and unusual punishment at the best of times, so being strategic is key. If the objet you are trying to isolate is travelling too much or in less than ideal 2-D trajectories, then a blend of keyframe/track/manual is going to be the result. Watch your clip through. Where is the least amount of work? Make your shape for that, see how much the tracker can do for you, then start keyframing shape changes and re-tracking, until the errors grow too large again… Try to pick “tangent” targets that a sort of linear interpolation will take care of, and then iteratively trim out the largest departures along that track by inserting dynamics…
And, you know, make sure you’re on the right node, that sort of thing…
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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I thought the point was to achieve a specific look.
And it apparently takes a lot of rigging.
Now somebody like Bill Maher might observe that it takes a lot of resources to provide the 0.1% with a fast, cushy laptop holder so they can make more pie charts. While the Antarctic ice sheet slides off its ice cream cone.Everybody thinks they just invented sex.
This tedious argument even predates the flap around “Blair Witch”, whereupon it was proclaimed that Hollywood movies would be shot on HandyCams thence.
How is that going?
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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Started out at an RCA-equipped television station. TR-1, TR-4, 2xTR-60, TR70-C (no time code on any of them) — edited machine-to-machine — producer punched a “start all” button in the control room, and did all the switching and fader bar transitions. Big deal when the BVU-200s arrived with their 2 machine controller, whatever BVE it was. Then three VPR-1s arrived, which were replaced by VPR-2s. I moved to a post house that could gang 3 time-code enabled AVR-3’s together, optimize record current everyday, set ScH for every edit session — at least it was good for in-frame match edits so we didn’t need to do A-B rolls. The engineering department there pioneered an Apple II-based “film conform” system that converted a foot+frames EDL paper list to a paper EDL that we could enter into the Ampex (pre ACE) machine controller. DVE was a Vital Industries “Squeezoom”… four channels of SD video! Tumble turns! Learned how to operate a 3M D8800 character generator.
Moved to SONY. Then on to an AV department where I encountered M-Format (“Recam”)… and a lovely BVH-2000 that was a real workhorse. Grass Valley system — GVG-100/ DPM-100 and whatever controller was integrated. Over 20 years ago. Then started working as a colorist and went over to daVinci Renaissance although I was trained on an 8:8:8, which didn’t arrive at the facility I was hired at until 5 years later. Rank-Cintel URSA, eventually with MetaSpeed and a TLC-II controller (best multi-machine multi-format controller I have ever seen), and now, you know, a bunch of Macs and software.
I have to stop and dab an eye when I think about the millions of dollars of scrap metal out there, and the blood, sweat and tears shed over media that will never be seen again. Was it all just wasted time? Thanks, Don Henley.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.