[Marcus Smith]

DNXHD renders extremely slowly on 3 systems I’ve test it on. The 440 format renders 4 times as slow as 422 HQ Quicktime.

PPro also can’t tell which flavours of DHXHD are very well and footage exported from other programs, say Davinci, require rendering, despite being of the same type of footage. Also I’m not convinced it’s a great intermediate format on OSX as I’ve seen gamma shifts come out of it in PP export. This may change in the future.

In regards the to PPro degrading the colour space it is definitely a QT related bug, as I’ve tested all the different flavours of QT and get the same results. I’ve onlined features in CS6 and used the Blackmagic RGB 10 bit format, which worked great. Now even that format bands. Don’t have CS6 currently installed to test it now.

What video output card you using?

Thanks,

Marcus.

[Marcus Smith]

[Walter Soyka] “I did test your file, and I see the same thing as you do — but as above, I think that your test pattern will band with ProRes 422 with any system”

Thanks for checking. On our systems this test dpx does band a little on FCP, Davinci and Smoke, but in no way near as badly as it does on Premiere Pro. FCP Davinci and Smoke preview a dissolve on this dpx in an almost identical way, Premiere Pro on the other hand shows far more banding.

[Walter Soyka] “I tried it on my Smoke system, too, and got the same banded result.”

Were you checking on it inside a Smoke timeline, on your monitor or from a pro res HQ rendered file, outputted by Smoke? I’ve had trouble with Smoke’s output to Prores HQ file via the export function which I haven’t had time to work out yet, but Smoke views the gradient with almost unnoticable artifacts compared with PPro when previewing to the monitor and outputting to tape.

[Walter Soyka] “If you try non-synthetic footage, or if you change the design of your test pattern to eliminate the other variables, you’ll see Premiere outputs clean 10-bit ProRes.”

One of the main reasons I started this post is that since we’ve moved from FCP to PP for online, we are seeing banding on natural shots, skies, water and other gradients in Premiere Pro Prores 422 HQ sequences. You mainly see this type banding when a gradient is accompanied by a dissolve. These same aberrations are not present in Davinci, Smoke or FCP when dissolving on the same shot. Our online editors are having to dissolve noise into the shots to fix the problem!

It seems to me that from your tests the output module in Premiere Pro is writing a 10bit file fine, its just appears as though something nasty might be happening at the RGB to YUV conversion in PPro before it gets to the file output stage in the chain. This would explain why going to DNXHD 444 and and DPX works fine.

Walter I feel you’re still not convinced there’s a problem, so the best way for me to show you is with vectorsope screen shots.

File attached here:

https://www.hightail.com/download/OGhlRm8zTkFtUUc1eDhUQw

Included are two screen shots, both of two different pro res 422 HQ files. One is the pro res gradient rendered in PPro and the other the same file rendered in FCP. I’ve just done it quickly with the low res Davinci scopes but here you can clearly see the FCP gradient is alot smoother, colours are evenly distributed. In the PPro screen shot, you can see colours clumped together and a noticable degradation in signal quality.

Now the interesting thing is if you are in a PPro unrenderd timeline viewing the file, on the vectorscope the image will look perfect, like the FCP one. As soon as you render a preview and PPro reads off the Quicktime the degradation appears on the vectorscope.

Thanks again for you time!

Marcus.

[Marcus Smith]

Thanks again guys for responding,

Daniel, I’m viewing my output through a Black Magic Decklink via SDI on a Sony BVM HD CRT, so its not that.

Walter I appreciate you sending that file through, the link doesn’t work however.

Thanks!

Marcus.

[Marcus Smith]

Hi guys,

Did any of you find an answer to this problem? I’m having a similar issue, which has been logged here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/3/947161

[Marcus Smith]

Thanks for checking Walter,

I wonder how are you verifying your output is not truncated to 8 bit? Visually or with an external 10 bit vectorscope? Unless your working in high contrast gradients the difference is almost impossible to see with your eye.

I have created an example project with a gradient and included a Pro Res output render so you can see clearly the banding we are getting.

You can download it here:

https://www.hightail.com/download/OGhlb2VBMm1veE9ybHNUQw

So far the only codec inside PPro CC that does not introduce banding is the DNX440 one. Which is an incredibly slow codec to render, making PPro unrealistic to use as an online tool.

I would really appreciate anyone who has the time to check the project and post your results.

Thanks!

Marcus.

[Marcus Smith]

Hi Kevin,

That blog link is for CS6, and the settings have changed a little since then, but yes, Maximum color depth is selected but makes no difference.

This is true for all flavors of Quicktime.

Are you running OSX PPro CC? I’m wondering if this is only a MAC issue.

Thanks,

Marcus.

[Marcus Smith]

Hi Kevin,

Great news! Is it any good?

Thanks,

Marcus.

[Marcus Smith]

Hey Joseph,

I couldn’t agree with you more. Although I think Resolve Beta testers receiving a high level of support is symptomatic of an open source community rather than a “democracy” as you put it. Still a fantastic and important part of an agile software development process.

The only problem is if you are a business owner who does not possess the time, staff or technical expertise to participate in such a community. You may have many licenses but how are you to present a smooth and continuing Davinci Resolve experience for you clients as the updates roll out? The majority would avoid updates right up until they absolutely have to, but in a world where codecs are fast turning over and the platform is moving fast it’s hard to resist jumping in at the wrong time. In these instances businesses would benefit from a paid subscription where the payee has a higher level of support and service.

There are many software companies like Red Hat’s distribution of Linux and Magento’s E-Commerce platform that offer both a cheap or free use of their product but also a paid subscription for a higher level of functionality and support. Granted we haven’t seen much of it in the Post Production sector yet but I think BMD and their customers could benefit greatly from it in the case of Resolve.

Marcus.

[Marcus Smith]

Hi Andrew,

I think some of the points you bring up are excellent, but a higher level of service by the BMD team, one that would involve checking and advising on your configuration for each release, would require more resources at the BMD end.

With grading and online programs that cost 10 times the amount of Davinci this is often included, or at least given for a yearly fee of a few thousand dollars. Resolve on the other hand costs less than a thousand dollars, and because they don’t include or offer a paid support service, can use a more agile form of software development and bring out releases at least three times faster than their competitors.

I think the level of value we as a community are receiving from BMD through Resolve is enormous. Especially if bought version 7 and have been enjoying the free upgrades ever since. The cost you need to factor into your own situation is the development time and experimentation you need to keep your suite running smoothly. This cost is more a personnel time one but is still a fraction of the cost of their competitors paid support contracts, let alone the software cost itself.

That being said there are some of us that could really benefit from a paid support product from BMD. It would be great to see a higher priced option / support add on for Resolve that has a better documentation for known bugs and working configurations. Maybe this add on could let you access some higher mapping functions for controllers and other solutions for things lacking in Resolve that pro users get a little frustrated with at times. I know that some people in the community also get a higher level of support for Resolve from the BMD support team than others. This at least would formalize such a level of support and pay for it the same time.

Cheers,

Marcus.

[Marcus Smith]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for responding. In regards to markers, from what I understand they are keyframes made on a clip that can animate the grade, so adding them during playback to use as a reference, (which is currently not supported as far as I can tell), would not be ideal in keeping the consistency of a grade. (i.e. you could change a grade before or after the marker and not realise that you accidentally created a popping grade). So I think the the use of these sort of markers for note taking purposes would not be ideal.

Actually, I’ve just realised that I’m totally confused over the use of “Markers” terminology in the interface design as “Add Static Keyframe” in the “Mark” menu, does the same thing as “Add Marker” from the same menu. Also right clicking on the clip gives you an entirely different “Markers” menu which includes an option to create coloured pins on the timeline. This feature, or the flag feature, looks fantastic and is exactly what we’re after, if only we could add them on the fly during a screening and skip to them on the timeline quickly with menu or hotkey commands. Also, in a similar vein, the ability to type in a timecode directly from the color mode and jump to a position on the timeline would make all the difference for speedy reviews of grades with clients. These kind of features are considered industry standards in post production, timeline focused software and I hope that you bring them to Resolve.

Thanks again for your support,

Marcus.