Marc Wielage
Forum Replies Created
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If the transcodes lose no quality of the original, you can use those for final color. That’s a big “if.”
Bear in mind I’m not a fan of 8-bit color, and I think that puts a huge limitation on how hard you can push the image in Resolve (or any other color correction program). Not enough bits.
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[Michael McCune] “But often I recollect and yearn for a paint brush type of *spatial* selection tool, as we have all used in Photoshop. It’s spatial edge detection works quickly and well. And those marching ants with a paint brush can further refine the edges. “
I would not be surprised to see greater collusion (if that’s the right word) between Resolve and Fusion for those who have enough RAM to run both programs at once. As far as I know, similar color-correction software like Baselight, Lustre, Nucoda, and Pablo all have limitations on tracking; Lustre has the advantage of being able to hand off to Flame, and I would bet there’s some edge-detecting features there. Mistika does have some very interesting VFX capabilities, but I’ve been told it has more issues with color correction.Often, my sad lesson learned over the years is that what you have to do in order to solve problems is to adapt to the software, not to curse the software for not being what you want it to be. There’s always a workaround, and I’d also say no one piece of software can be a Swiss army knife that does everything for everybody. You might look into Boris Continuum and see if some of those features would help as an OFX plug-in.
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Not a problem, Paul — and I get that there are budget-challenged projects and small shorts with which people are just learning and having fun. Those are fine for DSLRs. I would recommend you avoid clipping the highlights, shoot color charts if possible, and consider transcoding to ProRes (on Mac) or DNxHD (on Windows) for post. You should also shoot camera tests and know the limitations of 8-bit color up front.
I’ve been dealing with that for the past couple of weeks on a project that’s pretty well-shot, but the stock footage is mostly 8-bit H.264. I’m a little stunned to find that some of this material is 3840×2160!
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Is it possible to add a second GPU in your system? I would bet that would improve performance, provided you have a slot available and your operating system can handle it. There are always prices to pay to get real-time performance, but it can be done to a point.
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I think the best answer is not to shoot on little cameras like DSLRs for long projects. I don’t have a problem with people who have limited resources and want to do an internet short or a student project on a camera like this, but for entire features, you really need to go to a camera that can handle 444 10-bit. Whether HD or 4K or beyond is another issue. But the devices shooting H.264 8-bit give you far more limited options in post.
I’ve started to call 8-bit “Hate-Bit” lately, because it creates a lot of problems in color. And there’s a ton of that material that people routinely use for stock footage.
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But is the 422 material 8-bit or 10-bit? If it was 8-bit, you could see some weird effects like this.
My advice would be to take a grayscale ramp, make a compound clip out of it, and apply that same window and see how it looks on the scopes. If there’s any “stepping” or any other kind of artifact, you’ll see it there. Sometimes, a solid color gray screen can show similar problems if they exist.
Also, try a new version, blow out the correction, and create a new correction and a new window. I have seen rare cases where a node becomes corrupted and starts exhibiting unpredictable behavior. It’s very rare and unusual, but it can happen.
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No, my opinion is there is no affordable HDR display that’s good enough to calibrate and use for color-correcting HDR material. Not yet.
My advice would be to get a decent display that works for Rec709, then once that’s done, book some time in a room with a Sony BVM-X300, set it up for true HDR, and do a trim pass for a day or two and “massage” the project for that specific release format. Anything else will be a gross compromise.
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Covered on pages 943-945 of the Resolve 12.5 manual.
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Note that Mark Sanford above is a 7-times Emmy winner, an expert camera engineer going back more than 40 years. If anybody knows what a gray card is for, he would. Mark does very good work.
To answer the question: it kind of doesn’t matter what the eyedropper tool looks like, because it has no meaning in worlds with different color standards. A scope is a better tool, and even then, a lot will depend on how the chart is exposed and the specific color temperature of the lights on the set. If the set is lit with colored gels, and you make the gray chart precisely gray, everything else will be wrong.
I’m a big fan of the DSC charts, but I’m also fine with just a big 10-step grayscale chart for camera matching. If I can get that, I’m 2/3 of the way there in terms of matching the cameras and making everything consistent. In truth, I’ve been on many shows (including film shows) that had no charts at all, so we just had to do it by guts, eyes, and scopes.
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Do a Google search on “2013 Mac Pro Repair Program.”
Be warned that the D700 GPUs are not reliable (at least in my experience) and they constantly crap out. There are three things you can do to minimize glitches:
1) let the computer sit stone cold for a half-hour minimum time before booting it up.
2) install Macs Fan Control and ramp up the internal fan to 1800RPM.
3) start the render, run it at no more than 10fps, and have absolutely nothing running in the background.
TNR, SNR, and Blur modes tend to stress the GPUs more, so that’s something to be aware of.
Some have reported that when Apple has replaced the GPUs, the problem completely went away. For me, after 3 replacements the problem went down by about 50%, and I’m just working around it as best I can… or at least until I reluctantly switch to Windows.