Marc Wielage
Forum Replies Created
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And then there’s BT1886, which is a little bit of both. This is more complex question than you might think.
The thought behind BT1886 is pretty sound. I know of post houses around LA who are aligning the mid-tones and whites to 2.4, but the low-end to 2.2. Spectracal covers it pretty well:
https://www.spectracal.com/Documents/White%20Papers/BT.1886.pdf
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[Shane Ross] “Send a Timecoded QT Reference file and ask the colorist to try to mimic the look…or if you are the colorist, do it yourself. “
I like to think we’ll make the look better, not just mimic it. I agree it’s a good idea to have a good idea of what the director and editor have been staring at for the last few weeks (or months), because there can be a danger of straying too far from the look established while shooting. -
This would be a job for Mocha Pro.
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[Tim Wilde] “I’m unsure what you mean by “normalize the exposure so that the blacks, mids, and highlights are essentially neutral”. I shot with the color balance already set, so color temp just shifted the trace in the vectorscope off center.
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Adjust the levels before adjusting color. Get the blacks, mids and whites where they need to go, and (if necessary) use offset to balance out the RGB channels.Bear in mind many old-time colorists worked with no charts at all for decades and basically just had to wing it, based on gut reaction and experience. The charts make it easier, particularly when you’re trying to get specific chroma values very close. As Art notes, generally one or two vectors often wind up a little low compared to everything else, and it’s not hard to use a curve (rather than a secondary) to bring it up in a mild, not “stressful” way. The harder you push the image, the easier it is to break it.
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Generally, color and sound (for features & TV) are done simultaneously in different rooms by different people. Once the editing is locked, the sound people use a timecoded copy and edit & mix the dialogue, music, and effects as required. Meanwhile, the colorist conforms the show from the original camera files, or in some cases uses high-quality DPX or EXR or ProRes 444 transcodes of the camera files. Once making sure that the conform precisely matches the locked edit, then the colorist color-corrects the entire show.
The recent book Modern Post: Workflows and Techniques for Digital Filmmakers goes into these processes in great detail. It’s fair to say it’s a complicated world out there. You can make a good argument nowadays that Resolve is flexible enough that you could use it to not only do final color, but also do final delivery of the finished show, once the remixed soundtrack is added, along with the titles. It’s not necessary to go back to Premiere for anything, particularly if you’re already working in 4K in Resolve.
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I think you’re making it way, way more difficult than it needs to be.
First, normalize the exposure so that the blacks, mids, and highlights are essentially neutral. Once you do that, bring up the saturation so that the color swatches are in the ballpark of the reticles (boxes) on the Vectorscope. Use Color Temp to help get the entire image neutral.
Once you do that, use a Hue vs. Sat to pull each vector pattern where it needs to be. If necessary, use a little bit of Hue vs. Hue. These should be in baby steps.
I don’t think Qualifying an actual key is the right way to go, because the results will start falling apart in different luminance ranges. A curve is a lot softer and more subtle. Art Adams, who invented the One-Shot Chart, provides this advice:
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No real problems for me, though the Point Tracker broke again. Was working before. Basically, the cursor won’t change to a + for me. Was fine in 12.5.2.
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Make a duplicate of the timeline, then highlight the audio tracks only, un-link them from the picture tracks, and delete it. Now, consolidate this new video-only timeline. This should also work with Media Management, if you want to do it that way.
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[Joseph Owens] “But lets talk about densitometry. When you try to make “black” on a white or silvery, reflective screen, that’s really where the rubber meets the road. Emissive vs. reflective are so fundamentally different, the only hope is for a reasonable compromise. Any colorist who has spent any time at all trying to get a black balance knows there can be a lot more going on between “0” and “1”, than there is between “1” and 100.””
That’s very true. I know an infamous case where a certain post house attempted to use a DLP projection system for broadcast grading, and let’s just say it did not go well. My opinion is that you have to at least do a trim pass in the environment to which the final product is intended to be viewed.Already, there are questions as to whether grading on Laser Projectors will translate to DLP Projectors, and there are issues between OLED monitors, plasma monitors, and LCD monitors. Even when calibrated, the experience is different.
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A group grade — by its very definition — can’t be done on a clip-by-clip basis. You could put every other clip in a different group, but there’s a point where it becomes irrational and difficult.
I think you may need to reevaluate your node structure philosophy and come up with a better way of approaching the problem. Me, I just add a couple of nodes to the Clip Node itself and just change it if it needs changing. I don’t need to make any group grade at all. Heck, I rarely use Group grades unless I have a client situation where they say, “hey, all these scenes in the kitchen… can we make them a little brighter?” If they already match, then an overall correction is fairly simple.
The alternative would be to use a Timeline grade and then just manually put a start/end keyframe, but again, there’s a point where it becomes too unwieldly. I think it’s a question of knowing when and how to use Pre-Clip/Post-Clip grades, when to just make a change within the Clip grade, and then when to use a Timeline grade. I use all of them all the time, but I only make per-clip adjustments within the “real” correction for that shot. To me, it all boils down to speed and efficiency.