[Michael Mccune]

Thanks, Dmitry; … did not quite understand: are you saying simply that:

1) version 12.5 was the first to include alpha channels in some Delivery tab format options??? [agreed] and,
2) that the black-and-white image export method (still) works; [agreed] and, finally, that
3) the Resolve alpha channel is indeed not recognized by other applications, e.g., Fusion)???

If so, we are on the same page in that regard!

Or, perhaps I misunderstand and you *ARE* saying that the Resolve alpha channel *IS* recognized by external apps, such as Fusion. True???

Please clarify.

Going forward:
FWIW, as you already know as a professional, Fusion matte tools such as LumaKeyer work wonderfully for the purpose of creating a matte from a natural image (i.e., not from a green or blue screen image source). I discover, among other things, that it includes its own LumaKey gamma and contrast sliders among other refinement controls.

Experts will know better than I, but it seems to offer more control than with a natural image source than the control possible when starting with a B/W Resolve output source, as much of the range and potential for Fusion key refinement is, at that point, already baked into the Resolve B/W output.

In fact, if I understand this correctly, the irony would seem to be that the greater the delineation and definition (usually desirable in a matte) that is baked into a Resolve B/W output actually and severely limit the potential for Fusion to apply its LumaKey adjustments, such as contrast and gamma adjustments.

Am I understanding this correctly?

Please clarify any misunderstandings you find here.

Thanks, Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Could not agree more: managing complexity may start with avoiding it, sez I!

And thanks for the tip regarding the number of cores with respect to the amount of ram: of course each core needs their own ram allocation.

Just to be clear, the main reason for this tracking work-around, which is to copy tracking from the same clip in a different project, as opposed to simply tracking it again in the original project, is that the original track effort fails due, mainly, to overall sluggish performance on an admittedly already overly creative clip grade. Then tracking the same clip in a new project, without all of that exuberance, yields a fast, reliable track. Then that fast, reliable track is copied to the sluggish exuberant project.

But by winning this battle one can lose the war.

True enough, this project, though successful is so many ways–six to nine masks, many independently tracked, in every clip in the timeline, with other gradations and color adjustments to sky, overall vignettes, etc.–there must be a better way to apply all this goodness to a single clip.

The good news is that Resolve itself is so excellent at color.

But the burgeoning size of the project literally causes it to fail under the weight of its own success in applying so many adjustments.

Must be a better strategy to grade and apply multiple masks with tracking; that is, some way to create them independently and then assemble them. Minimizing interaction. Then easy to tweak each one as needed as they are assembled.

Thoughts anyone?

Chaucer said, “The life so short, the craft so long to learn…”

Thanks, guys. Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Marc; very welcome perspective, that this sort of problem can be solved by throwing sufficient hardware at it. Seriously.

FWIW, I recently tried to upgrade my 32 GB, buying the exact brand and part number to match. Quality G.Skill items. Didn’t work. Why? Their tech support–a knowledgeable real person who answered the phone reasonably quickly!–said this is not uncommon and they can only guarantee their memory sold as a complete SET. Even additional sticks of the same part number cannot be guaranteed to work. I guess the technology now is so refined that this is the case.

And yes, my Nvidia 1080 series card made such a huge improvement that another one begins to seem, considering your comments, like a certain fix for some situations.

Thanks again, Marc.
Mike

[Michael Mccune]

You mention The Revenant and its relatively heavy use of masking and color and the consequent huge number of hours and budget required.

I would love to know more detail about that film’s “making-of” processes. It is one of only a few films which I have watched several times because of its beauty and visual poetry.

Is there a Revenant “behind-the-scenes” or “making-of” video online, especially regarding the colorists’ work ???

I have seen all of the “behind-the-scenes” videos at Cinematography Database (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJU3Jni9TyM), Every Frame a Painting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q3eITC01Fg), Variety (https://variety.com/v/video/), and other videos.

Thanks, as always Mike

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[Michael Mccune]

Totally agree regarding knowing the tools one has as thoroughly as possible though this sometimes requires the patience of a saint.

AND a little realism regarding the actual effort to learn a new application sufficiently to be useful gives me pause as well.

Nevertheless for these knotty issues of tracking and making, perhaps Fusion is “most likely to succeed.” It is, after all, a compositing program.

And I find myself with– yes, it’s true– two or three dozen nodes for a single shot. Say, three people, each with perhaps three masked areas for face, eyes and clothes. Plus some background objects to be lightened or dimmed. Using almost everything: layer, parallel and key mixers, pre-clip vignettes, hundreds of keyframes.

Wish tracking didn’t crash so much; makes me nervous. Seems to relate to animation that uses both standard timeline keyframes AND tracking timeline keyframes.

Onward and upward!

Thanks, Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Thanks, Joseph. Yes, I understand this issue. Had some of it in the past with hd from a Canon 5D.

But firstly this is uhd recorded prores 422 and also I wasn’t clear about the banding. You clarified with the expression, “discontinuity” for that problem.

This it’s not a discontinuity characteristic of macro-blocking. Rather it is a band with a continuous shift from light to dark to light. My apologies for the lack of clarity.

Since then I have wondered if this is an artifact arising from interaction with other effects or keys.

But no clear answer yet.

Thanks again for the post.

Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Thanks, Marc and Andy; You asked about the source: it is Sony A7s into a Shogun as UHD ProRes 444 (though this Sony has only 8 bits, of course).

In short, you both seem to suggest that, yes, it can be made to work :).

And, as you both suggest, there usually is a way, perhaps requiring a few extra steps, to get a cleaner key. Both of you seem to point to handling the key itself, after the initial qualifier setup, and not simply taking the qualifier output as it might come off the clip.

Or creating a separate video grade for the purpose of pulling the key, such as, perhaps, a high contrast B&W version. Or perhaps a color adjusted version that tries to separate colors and tones. Perhaps LAB color might help here as it can quickly and dramatically separate colors in a scene along its two axes, blue-yellow and green-magenta. (Photoshop ACR additionally has a red-cyan axis: why not Resolve?)

(BTW, I have really gotten to like the Resolve temp and tint controls for fine adjustments: nice numeric handles along known axes. Quick and easy to eyeball the balance point for each axis. Color wheels are intuitive but a little fuzzy when attempting fine adjustments: like trying to type with gloves on.)

I understand that 12.5.2 has the ability to feed keys into the video input of a separate node for the purpose of massaging the key using the wider range of tools available in video as opposed to just the qualifier adjustments, including the new clean black and white controls, which I find to be the best adjustment tools.

And I haven’t really given the 3D keyer a good chance yet: so that, too.

Regarding rotoscoping, why doesn’t Resolve have a tool–used every day in Photoshop– the venerable and reliable Magic Wand tool? It quickly can edge-detect shapes and show a marching ants selection for a mask. And it just as quickly allows for corrections. True, this is a quick solution that is usually refined further in Photoshop, but might be a great start for masking and rotoscoping. And, surprise, might be more than adequate in many situations.

And, Marc, you mentioned tracking. I have come to have a love-hate feeling about tracking. Fantastic when it works, but I–and others, it seems–have had projects crash repeatedly when it is unhappy. My half-baked theory is that this is a devilish database problem and it gets confused: lots of data.

And, BTW, I find the relatively tiny tracking window too constricting for comfort. How about a tear-off, re-sizable window? With a longer keyframe timeline? Easier control over scale adjustments? Tools to manipulate individual tracking keyframes? Yada Yada: stuff anyone would see. Next Resolve version?

OK, onward and upward with qualifiers: gotta be a reliable method.

Thanks, Marc and Andy. Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Thanks; I have an Nvidia 1070. No DeckLink card. 1080 timeline with no issues usually in playback, depending upon the number of nodes and various color adjustments.

I have found since last post that all is well IF there is no tracking.

I created a new database (hey, when you are desperate …), and new project. Loaded a TWO-HOUR long UHD video, which was one continuous head and shoulders clip. Purpose is minor color correction within a window, among other things.

A black mic against a nearly white background provided a nearly perfect tracking object.

But it quickly failed, again, as in the past. That is, crashing so frequently that I was saving constantly and saving was taking longer and longer, in the 15 second to 30 second range.

The tracker at first seemed fine, but–again, as in past experience–began to crash. I think it even corrupted the application as restarts would not show the dual screen layout nor other user interface options. (Finally re-installed Resolve 12.5.2 and the UI restored to normal.)

Became utterly unusable. Deleted all tracking, leaving the mask window, qualifier settings, vignette, other gradation effects:

NO TRACKING, NO PROBLEMS. AND SAVING IS BACK TO THE HALF-SECOND DURATION WE ALL LIKE TO SEE.

Thanks again, folks. I realize this stuff–which we would all like to assume is fool-proof and take for granted–was only a dream a few years ago.
Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Thanks, all.

Yes, to confirm, this is a single 2-hour take, an interview recording, primarily a head & shoulders shot, intended to be a beautiful production. This leads to tracking various aspects of the foreground and background, applying various simple color, luminescence, contrast, blur and vignette effects. Perhaps 12 nodes, with multiple parallel node face and objects, with keys, key mixers, etc. LAB color for some tweaks.

This exercise, while very satisfying with respect to the artistic goals attempted so far, gradually kills it as the data builds up.

And, yes, I did break the timeline into separate clips and even into separate timelines. (See notes below on another much shorter project with the same overload issues: 30-minutes total, multiple clips, multiple timelines).

And, yes, I am running the uhd original in HD monitoring, with HD timeline and grading, optimized and cached.

I wonder if the cumulative congestion issue is not at the clip or timeline level, but rather at the project level. That is, the total size or work load of all the clips and timelines.

There must be a way the big boys use this program for serious work.

With multiple cams and complex effects, do they experience the same issue and offload to multiple networked processors??? Does Resolve Studio have built-in processing solutions for data overload, aside from the collaboration features???

NOTE: I have now a similar issue with another project, about 30-minutes total. Beautiful sunrise beach wedding. Same attempt to isolate individuals for tracking, rotoscoped outlines with various color effects to bring them out from the surrounding individuals, add shading, vignettes, etc. Sky enhancement, slow mo on the waves, etc. These effects are marvelous and succeed wonderfully. Until it slows to the point of trepidation and fear of the not-infrequent crashes.

To avoid slowdown, there are eight timelines to break up a concentration of effects. All good in that regard but encounter the same disaster in regard to gradual slowdown and not-uncommon crashes. It now takes about 1 1/2 minutes to save, and today it crashed and was lucky to salvage it. This required re-installing 12.5.2 Resolve and even then it failed to load the project. But a previously duplicated version of the project created as a fail-safe did load. Thereafter the current version loaded. What’s that all about???

But it is so problematic now that I wonder if this level of simple but multiple effects really works.

ANY FURTHER THOUGHTS WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.

Thanks again, Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Actually the goal is to apply effects only to portions of a clip.

Sorry, I was not clear.

For example, if a pan within a clip captures an offending wall window with its overly bright light levels and prominent but uncomplimentary color elements, one can use a qualifier to manage that color and a mask to isolate the effect to that spatial area.

But that effect remains throughout the clip.

True, one can use keyframes to enter and end this mask effect within those keyframes. That is, turn off the mask. But the color effect does not turn off and it remains throughout the clip.

The goal, then, is to play the clip to the point needing an effect, create and apply that effect only for the duration needed, and thereafter continue to the end of clip without that effect.

Thanks,
Mike