[Marc Wielage]

If it looks good inside Resolve, what if you ignore sizing in Avid after importing Resolve’s AAF?

What if you just finished inside Resolve? The other alternative would be to just export a flattened textless file from Resolve and do whatever titling and finishing you needed in Avid. There are a few ways to get this to work. The key is to stop Avid from changing the image size on import (whether with the files or with the AAF).

[Marc Wielage]

I know of some LA houses that use Vidcheck or Cerify, but I’ve been told the software is many thousands of dollars and fairly customized. All of these companies will give you a time-limited demo so you can try it out and see if it works for what you’re trying to do. I think they’re particularly good for checking audio levels, ITU Loudness, out-of-gamut color, and stuff like that, but they won’t tell you if the picture necessarily looks good or if the shots match.

[Marc Wielage]

[Dan Davis] “HD delivery at the moment. But if I was asked to deliver HDR can I monitor to an extent using the monitor I have?”
My opinion is no. You have to actually calibrate the monitor for SMPTE 2084 and/or 2020 for HDR/extended color gamut. It won’t work with a display designed for Rec709.

I personally wouldn’t worry about it until such time that HDR becomes a big delivery requirement. In theory, you will be able to hook up an HDR display then change the output gamut/gamma of Resolve, then do a trim pass to compensate. The chapter on HDR & Dolby Vision in the 12.5 manual (pp. 177-190) go into a lot of detail on the issues involved. I’m not convinced a $995 Costco “HDR” display is going to work for color grading.

[Marc Wielage]

Ah, that makes sense. It is potentially dangerous to change file names for image sequences. I generally tell clients to drop them in a folder and change the folder name instead (or the metadata), but if it works, it works.

[Marc Wielage]

Window the guy’s face, track it, throw some fill light on him, and then optimize the sky right on the edge of clipping. Bring up the mids if it’s getting too contrasty. You may need a tracking articulated window on the guy’s entire body if the contrast range is fairly drastic. Sadly, intense color correction can’t always compensate for bad lighting. We can always make it better, but we can’t always make it optimum.

[Marc Wielage]

Here are a few companies that make QC software:

VidCheck:
https://www.vidcheck.com

Tektronix’ Cerify:
https://www.tek.com/file-based-qc/cerify-video-content-analysis

Telestream Vantage:
https://www.telestream.net/vantage/vantage-analysis.htm

DigiMetrics Aurora
https://www.digi-metrics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=102&Itemid=499

Veneratech Pulsar
https://www.veneratech.com/pulsar/overview/

Bear in mind these do not eliminate the need for skilled humans to actually watch the picture and make judgement calls about levels, glitches, creative intent, and so on. Note also that this software is not cheap.

[Marc Wielage]

It depends on the nature of the scene and the composite. I think you can do simple composites within Resolve, but for really precise results, you’re better off using a dedicated compositing program like Fusion or After Affects or Nuke or something like that.

Pages 970-972 of the Resolve 12.5 manual go into detail on how to do a match move to composite a sky replacement and match it to the foreground movement.

[Marc Wielage]

What happens if you ignore sizing on the import?

In truth, I’m telling more and more clients to just finish within Resolve and not round-trip it back to Avid. I concede that not everybody is ready to do this, but it can work.

[Marc Wielage]

I have never dealt with JPG image sequences, but I have dealt with TIFF and DPX image sequences. What happens if you convert all the frames to identically-named DPX files and then try that?

In theory, as long as the files are numbered sequentially with the same prefix, like SCENE_101_000111, SCENE_101_000112, SCENE_101_000113 and so on, it will work. But JPG’s are unusual for this kind of thing.

[Marc Wielage]

Laptops are not ideal for Resolve. You need very powerful GPUs and CPUs to handle 4K material. You can do HD material to a point, but you’ll often run into problems with intensive operations like noise reduction and OFX. Debayering R3D files is also rough.