[Michael Gissing]

I found the new Text+ a tad confusing until I saw a video that showed it’s the way to create a timeline clip for generating text in Fusion. I’m sure inside Fusion a whole world of complex title animation can be achieved but for what you want to do you can probably just use the simple edit page text generator.

Within that you can generate a background that will sit behind all text. You can highlight and adjust font type, size, spacing etc of individual elements and then globally position it where you want. I really haven’t bothered with the lower thirds generator and do all my name supers with the simple text gen.

[Michael Gissing]

Recently I was sending graded footage for GFX as DNxHD. It came back as a ProRes4444 as it needed alpha to overlay and the gamma changed. Always overall darker and needing to be gamma corrected. Originally the GFX house was sending DNx444 which didn’t have the same problem but had an issue with dirty alpha that they couldn’t solve except to export as ProRes4444.

I used to see the same issue years ago sending graded renders from Color back to Final Cut Pro 7. So even within the FCP family this gamma shift and darker pics happened with ProRes4444. So unless I need the alpha, I never use 4444 codecs for final renders.

[Michael Gissing]

I would test with a couple of different codecs and wrappers. ProRes4444 QT has always been problematic with gamma shifts between different applications.

Try another flavour of ProRes like HQ and DNx wrapped as mxf. If they all return the same then the problem is likely a timeline node or project setting issue. The fact that it is ProRes4444 makes me suspect this codec in a Quicktime wrapper.

[Michael Gissing]

Firstly the calibration for -23 or -24 is in the preference menu. If you want to run the loudness, you need to reset and run from the beginning. Assuming you have done all that do you have everything at unity levels, no EQ or dynamics and correct patching and panning?

I have no issue dropping a correct LUFs mix file into the timeline and outputting it before QC confirms the exact same levels. I have also confirmed the Fairlight page levels are correct on the same mix files but there are lots of ways clip level or track levels can be changed.

[Michael Gissing]

In a presentation to the ACS society (Australia), experienced DP John Seale tells of his experience shooting day for night on Mad Max Fury Road. On the advice from his DIT, he overexposed shooting with an Alexa 2-3 stops then graded down. As a film trained DP he had always underexposed but was told this did not hold true with digital cameras and modern grading software.

So shoot a test and see what works best, but do not assume underexposing is the right approach. I have only limited day for night experience and certainly prefer the shot is not underexposed. I want to experiment with 2-3 stops over. It makes sense to preserve shadow detail and just play with grade luma, saturation and cast.

[Michael Gissing]

Resolve is free and can be used to batch convert DVCPro to DNx or ProRes (on a Mac) or it can be used to do the edit without transcoding as it reads DVCPro files.

[Michael Gissing]

Curious what was the codec of the FCP project?

[Michael Gissing]

Try the xml in Resolve. It imports the same FCP xml as Pr. Quicktime is dead but quicktime files should be able to be read by Resolve and I would have thought Pr as well.

[Michael Gissing]

I reckon this thread has totally gone “off the track”. Hardly unusual if we are too quick to line up behind our partisan flags. Hardly a debate though, just nay-saying.

[Michael Gissing]

Resolve is reluctant to change certain settings like frame rate after a project starts. So all the more important to get settings right before starting the edit. Happy to help