[Joseph Owens]

[Danny Thompson] “looks like the worst part was your promising a 24 version..”

The vast majority of the source media is originally 2398 anyway, so its actually the best part. If given the option, my sense is that most people in the post world would far rather work in 2938. What’s not to like about 20% fewer frames to deal with, especially if you are hand-roto-ing a matte or something?

Its the necessity to have to keep backwards-compatibilty with NTSC that is the real pain here.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

[Nat Jencks] ” it would be great to push white up and down in temp (along the plackian locus). “
That would be the “Planckian” locus, for those wishing to go google-diving.

Here is where it gets interesting, of course. When we look at the xy CIE-chromaticity diagram, its 2-dimensional thinking. What is really going on though, in practical cinematographic terms, is that we are also running up and down a luminosity hill, which is also being distorted by the real-world toe and shoulder of a sensor’s exposure range. Take a look at the MacAdams construction:
https://www.scholarpedia.org/article/File:ColSpFig11.jpg

and you will see how the Planckian locus also gets twisted as you depart from the Z/zero axis. Even in a mathematically perfect world. An attempt to unify this response, especially de-convoluting log transform characteristics seems to be built into the ACES workflow, tailored for camera types, but I would like to hear from others whether that interpretation is on the right track or not.

Something else that occurs to me is the real-world compensations that human-eye colorists do intuitively, when we are dealing with simultaneous dynamic contrast in both hue and luminosity. You know the old optical illusion of surrounding two identical grey patches with brighter/darker, and/or complementary hues — the grey patch, even though it is mathematically identical in all comparison examples, looks different, relative to its surroundings. A machine would never pick that up, because it is something our brains do.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

Received a locked one-hour doc this morning which has every format and frame rate known to man, including Long-GOP XDCam 23.98 over 29.97 and a bunch of SD-miniDV. The main edit sequence is currently 23.98P, but the primary deliverable is broadcast 2997i. It will likely take much longer to prep and re-assemble than it will to grade it, and then strike the rest of the outputs.

It would be great if the mixed-codec, mixed-framerate stuff all did actually work, but ultimately I am going to have to deliver both the contract 2997 and a 2398 universal master. In this case, I will have to FRC the 2997 material back to 2398 for the theatrical/streaming/DVD/BluRay/DCP… but what would the point of that be with respect to the broadcast deliverable? Why not filter out the 2997 anyway, apply corrections and rerender, then natively re-imbed that in the 2:3 pulldown master when that version is created? Other than being a PITA.

Why wouldn’t the creative team edit the mixed format on a 2997 timeline to start with? Well you may ask.
For starters, my first guess would be because FCP7 is even more clueless about mixed frame rate when you start looking at what its doing at a fundamental level.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

[Adam Claude Jones] “Because if you use the on camera auto white balance, it will change on you as you move around,”

Whatever became of a “momentary” AWB that you set and lock?

If the situation is leading the camera around, then you are in trouble.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

[Nat Jencks] “White balance tools are really not for amatures,” [sic]

I’d lean toward agreeing, but not completely.

Geez, what does that AWB button do that’s provided on the camera? And why wouldn’t a cinematographer use it?

(Maybe for the same reason a colorist wouldn’t?)

Everyone is correct that it is a complex matter. IF a shot is overexposed, then at 110IRE (clipped) value R already= G, already =B, so no change. As far as a no-brainer-white-balance goes, its electronically already there…. And under fluorescent, like we find everywhere in those industrial low-budget shoots that would be where the OP thinks would find the auto button most useful… if there is a practical in the shot… as far as the camera is concerned, it already is white balanced… but everybody is green. Huh.

So picking an arbitrary value somewhere in the what-should-be-grey scale and making that R=G=B would solve everything, right? … Maybe I haven’t been doing this long enough, or else maybe I’m now “too old”, but… not in my experience. Cross-light? Worse. (I mean balancing a shot with a mix of color temperatures… ie., a fluorescent-lit office with floor-to-ceiling south-facing windows admitting natural daylight.) Now that’s what I call entertainment.
There is a discussion over on the Blackmagic Post forum about “color temperature” sliders, to deal with someone who would like this approach, or at least an implementation to deal with someone else who thinks this is how it should be done. There is a response involving “printer points”, another approach to coarse RGB adjustments that emulates an approach that is pretty much now totally abandoned, since we don’t really “print” film anymore, and for sure not attempting to adjust (“time”) dye layer values with chemistry and filters, which was a black art if there ever was one. How about the time I was grading a session where the DP was holding up a Mired-shift filter from one of those Rosco sample-swatch fans and shouting out incomprehensible (or at least untranslate-able) numbers? Uh, when he really meant “warmer”, or “cooler”. As much as some people would love to obfuscate the discipline with mumbo-jumbo science (for their own reasons), yes, we need to be “calibrated”, but the notion of just “making it look nice”, even if it doesn’t win every time, should.

Sure, a one-touch magic button would be great, but, and maybe this is being harsh?… even as far back as Delacroix, a pure, technical white is as boring as it gets, and is usually, or should be, your first clue that a blunt instrument was in use.
Check out his “Tiger” series of oils, sometime. I took a series of digital snapshots at the Louvre last fall to illustrate how effed-up the electronic version was re-presented. For some reason, the camera was trying to sell me on the idea that the cats’ fur should be “white”. Nope. Not really true so much.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

[andrew sableton] “Surprising to see a film get that far and look like that….”

Were that only the case, but that “flat” log look has become a style.

Not knowing the post path, there is also a low probability that what you are seeing on Netflix could also simply be a “push the button” conversion done by one of the distributor’s nephews on his laptop. (Gender-specificity intentional.) It might have been a master version that was intended for another LUT-facilitated DCP output. Who knows?

I’m curious to double-click on it, but also apprehensive about what else the service is going to start recommending for me…

Also, don’t you have a “deep-gamma” log-lin setup for your home receiver?

(Don Lafontaine voice over):
“In a World Gone Mad…..”
“Someday all films will be made this way…”

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

[andrew smith] “its the editors gig no money for a colorist”

So not likely either to have been or become a “client” of a professional colorist, so really no harm in pointing to another free source of services, so that party can subsidize someone else’s work. Frankly, I encourage this, as long as it costs someone else money. Its all a part of “democratization”, right? Like “selfies” democratize portrait photography.

I see that there is a “What Is a Colorist” thread on the LinkedIn channel — an ‘educational piece’, and nicely illustrates the value-added benefit gained by investing in a grade. Acknowledgement: Warren Eagles. Its a good question, though. With so many FX features being built-in to image-processing software nowadays, where do we cross the line between what began as a way to accomplish electronic film timing, to what is now a one-stop “change everything in the picture” service? Literally, we now have an almost infinite amount of “blur”. A famous colorist once proclaimed that he was NOT a roto-artist… but if you want to survive today, you better get a feel for it… and electronic makeup, and green-screen compositing, and layering up graphic treatments, because the people who (sometimes) pay for “coloring” now expect it.

Much has been made of “one-button” click-and-add power looks… and they can be just perfect… if you want your work to look like everyone else’s. I’m vaguely amused, but mostly alarmed, that the third party in this case before us today wants the starting point, but then expects to tweak away to try to fine tune their result. The fallacy here is that once the graphic treatment has been trowelled on, really… there is no point in further adjustment. For the viewer, just like a restaurant patron… once the steak has been bathed in ketchup… it doesn’t matter how much you tweak the ketchup –> its ketchup. Even Dijon Ketchup is just tomato pulp in high fructose corn syrup and vinegar. If you are an actual chef or have studied food or color, they’re both disgusting.

Its too bad that the lay consuming public has adopted the buzz-word “LUT” to describe a generic adjustment. In the olden times, like… less than 10 years ago… LUTs were only developed to support cross-media transfers, for example, to support gamut translation between digital and print film (now mostly 709 to XYZ)… which evolved to support log transfer characteristics for linearizing gamma reproduction in the vain hope that users would know a) there is, and b) what the difference is, between colorspaces. But no, nothing but confusion (because, you know… I’m more of a “story” person…). So an engineering approach was co-opted to stand in as a creative choice, and now when you get something that is flatter than a pancake, you really don’t know what to do with it — ”errrr…. is this what you wanted….?” “Oh, yeah, yeah, its cool… or phat, or sick or… whatever”…. (thinking… and so, you are here because…???)

Maybe I’m fortunate that I do have a nickel for every time I’ve heard the phrase “I’m not a colorist, but…”

But. I am thrilled and relieved that, well, not every time I settle into the chair, I don’t hear “I’m not really a dentist, but…” or… “I’m not really a pilot, but…” or “I’m not really a lawyer, but…” you know, but meh, nobody dies. Or, “I’m not really a writer, but…” (and you’re still reading this?)

From the Wikepedia entry on soapboxes (aka: public ranting)
Hyde Park, London is known for its Sunday soapbox orators, who have assembled at Speakers’ Corner since 1872 to discuss religion, politics and other topics. A modern form of the soapbox is a blog: a website on which a user publishes his/her thoughts to whomever they are read by.

1872? Wow, that’s more than 10 years ago… like… uhhh…. (can’t do the math)… uhhhh…way more…..

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

Years ago, when EDWin was introduced in the 8:8:8 series, we had the option of adding softness to the boundary qualifier — 4 pixels worth! Uh, not useful, we said. Sorry, said (small-d) daVinci. We’d have to re-engineer large components of the software, and what we have is a situation where we’d have to build a whole new floor in the house… sort of similar to a customer wanting a spa/sauna on the second storey above the kitchen and the ceiling is not load-bearing… that sort of thing. Actually like the example I was told, but I may be paraphrasing.

There is probably merit in the argument that a user-map (as much as I would appreciate it myself) is just not in the cards yet because of the UI overlay that it would require. I know that even with my Elements, occasionally I get beach-ball crashes just turning a knob, so really, even what currently exists is not quite bullet-proof.

The BMD panel is still the way to go, because it is tightly integrated, probably intrinsic, and is something that they can stay on top of. Users are getting really complacent about what a ridiculously complex task is being accomplished with this software. In real time… now with even more added features… and so on.

The price tag for the BMD panel system, for a professional startup, is NOT out of line. It is cheap. But I can see why someone who is interested in the Lite/Free offering wouldn’t consider it to be a very good deal. I have a broom closet now full of controllers dating back ten years as various dataports were exploited and discarded as grade software has evolved. Yes, I would like to see more of the moving parts on the Elements put to good use — it would have suited me better not to have had to spend good money after bad when my -200 series panels were obsoleted.

that’s progress. Surf or Die.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

[Roddy Blelloch] “have been unable to load into Resolve 10 Lite. “

You should be able to import supported media by navigating to it in the “media” page. Lasso the clips and “add into media pool”. This should create a Master Timeline with all your clips on it, ready for treatment.

This procedure is required for the application to function as a “dailies” workflow. More insight may be gained by reading the manual section on creating dailies. An added feature of this workflow is that you can create either an XML or AAF that will serve as an entree to the NLE of your choice for importing your treated footage.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Joseph Owens]

Even if the only thing was the use of the fourth ball as a mouse cursor, dot- and ring- left and right clicks. That would be a large stride forward.

What is restrictive about the current Element layout is that we still need to dig down through layers and swap A/B menus to get to most-commonly-used upper hierarchies — Primary corrections are A-side, while Window controls are B-side… and there are potentially destructive commands just one fumble-finger keystroke away from deep-sixing your project, Undo aside.

After using both my Wave and Elements panels going back and forth between my main and remote studio spaces, frankly the Wave is faster for simple tasks, admittedly not wildly efficient for poly-node, multiple window, qualifications up the ying-yang kind of work, but… unless you are asking for thousands of dollars an hour for that kind of detailed labour… its going to be kind of hard to justify the asset overhead.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.