[Mike Most]

You can force the reel name to be the file name by using the format string on the Configuration page to extract the file name from path name, using “assist using…”. This is explained in the user manual, but what’s not really made clear is that doing this affects everything you put into the media pool (even if it’s already there). Since it’s identified as the page as being a “conform assist” function, it’s not obvious that what it actually does is control the reel number that’s assigned to clips in the Media Pool. Enabling it and creating a proper expression in the string will do what you want.

[Mike Most]

It’s basically a preset for the Luma keyer that selects either the brightest or darkest areas without having to do a color pick.

[Mike Most]

There is no way I know of to put an offline split on the output monitor, at least not while it’s playing, control surface or not. You can access the different wipe and mix modes by right clicking on the left monitor on the Conform page while selected on the Offline tab.

[Mike Most]

The most common technique used by 2K operators for years is to lower the master RGB gain and increase the Luminance gain. You might also lower the luminance lift a bit to crush the blacks cleanly, but you’ll increase saturation in the blacks by doing that.

[Mike Most]

Ultrascope has always been intended to run on its own computer. One shouldn’t think of Ultrascope as software. One should think of it as a standalone box that replaces existing hardware scopes. And in any case, it definitely should not be co-resident with Resolve in one box. Besides, Ultrascope is Windows based, at least the last time I looked. So you’re not only stealing performance from Resolve, you’re trying to run it under emulation. I’m surprised the hardware card for Ultrascope even works in that type of scenario.

[Mike Most]

If you’re using the Avid media anyway, why not just export a video mixdown from Avid along with an EDL and do a pre conform workflow?

[Mike Most]

You could just use screen sharing (assuming it’s enabled on the remote computer) to do that once the coloring session is complete.

[Mike Most]

I think you mean HP Dreamcolor (there is no such thing as “Dreamcast”).

I would echo what Robert said. There is no point to color correcting on a standard computer monitor unless that’s the only way the work is going to be viewed. For anything else, you need to be using a monitor that displays a proper image in order to have any kind of sensible feedback. There is no substitute for that.

[Mike Most]

Is it possible that either the clips are 23.98 and you’re trying to play them at 29.97, or vice versa? By your description, it sounds like a frame rate discrepancy.

[Mike Most]

I’ve never really understood everyone’s interest in coming up with elaborate ways to pass numbers to a colorist. Colorists are only interested in images. This is true for many reasons, but the primary one is that color grading is a specialty skill. You can achieve a “look” in many different ways, but some will be much cleaner, have more depth, and better color separation than others. It’s the colorist’s job to be able to achieve that, and it’s almost impossible to achieve in the atmosphere of production, for all of the reasons already mentioned and others. If whatever is decided during production is simply baked into the editorial dailies, and the show is conformed to that from original files, the offline cut itself is the visual indicator of the original intent. Numbers are almost useless because in most cases, the final colorist won’t want to work from someone else’s grade anyway, especially when the colorist has a better tool set and a better environment in which to work. Doing so would just be a return to tape to tape color correction days. CDL is a very, very limited pallette with which to work, and in a world where we’re now dealing primarily with log coded images, a very inappropriate approach, because proper contrast can rarely be achieved using CDL controls without seriously crushing blacks. The CDL was developed to deal with “normal” video gamma images, not the log images we’re working with now. So unless you combine the CDL with a proper log to video conversion, you’re not really coming close to what can be achieved with a proper grading toolset.

I wish everyone would forget about figuring out how to pass numbers that are essentially discarded anyway, and just be concerned with creating images.