Nat Jencks
Forum Replies Created
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Ha, thanks as always Bob.
The ultrascope is 10bit vs 8bit, supports error logging and can show the 6-up display rather than the 2-up. But you know all that.
The smartscope duo is ok. But I would prefer to use the ultrascope if it would work on the hardware it now says it is supposed to work with.
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Hi Josh,
I’m trying to contact you here since you seem to be informed about this issue, and BMD support has literally told me “I’m not sure how much help I can be” when I emailed them.
When I saw that BMD had released a new version of the ultrascope software that said specifically:
“What’s new in UltraScope 1.8
Pocket UltraScope support for Mac Book PRO laptops with Retina display”subsequent patches specifically noted that the 13″ MacBook Pro with retina display was supported.
Needless to say I was excited about this since like many other users in this thread I had battled with trying to find supported laptop hardware in the past.
So I spent the day going down to B&H, and buying a brand new pocket ultrascope and a brand new 13″ MacBook Pro specifically for use with the pocket ultrascope.
You can imagine my disappointment when I set everything up and found that the ultrascope software simply said “No INPUT” when being fed a video signal. Just to test things I tried using the same pocket ultrascope with the same USB cable and same video feed going to a Mac Pro tower (trashcan) and it works like a charm.
How can this be I thought, it specifically says this machine is supported in the release notes.
So I emailed support hoping to get a quick answer.
You can imagine my continuing disappointment and growing rage when I was told by support that they were not sure why it wasn’t working and “I’m not sure how much help I can be”.
!@#!@!!!
How on earth to you guys expect to gain the confidence of your customers when the products don’t function as advertised and support fails to take these issues seriously? Sorry for the rant, but this has in fact happened to me a number of times with BMD products.
Thanks Josh, and let me be clear this anger is not directed at you, only BMD as a company, and I realize that none of this is your fault, and in fact you are going above and beyond to try and help customers by even taking part in this non-company forum. So thank you.
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-Nat -
Since its just a few frames and its giving you trouble with the methods you suggested I’d try replicating the frames rather than grading to match. E.g. use optical flow in AE/Nuke using twixtor or Kronos, or even Premiere Morph dissolve, Avid Fluid Morph, or resolve’s new “smooth cut”, all of which are designed to help smooth over jump cuts but which may be useful in regenerating these frames. worth a shot if your other approaches are not working.
Its also worth noting that if your grading in log (or ACES) this is easier than in a gamma encoded space like rec709 since changing exposure with lift/gain/offset are much more closely aligned with actual real world exposure shifts than in a gamma encoded space. Can still require some fitness with curves but much easier in Log, or even scene referred lin than in a gamma encoded space like rec709.
best
-Nat -
Peter, long standing feature request:
Can this be updated so that scaling is concatenated?
In other words if you have a 4K source and a 2K timeline and want to render a 4K output, it would be great if you could just do so directly from the delivery page.
Resolve seems to already have the capability to render at higher resolution that the timeline without changing the timeline resolution since you can choose to render individual clips at their source resolution.
Changing the timeline resolution at the end of the project after working is not a great solution as it can’t absolutely guarantee that nothing will change positionally.
It would be REALLY great if resolve simply concatenated scaling operations like Nuke does so that you could always know that your output was being rendered at the highest resolution available.
Most feature films I grade in resolve shoot at 3K (Alexa) or 4K/5K (Red) and we grade in a 2K timeline for targeting our main 2K and HD deliverables. However it would be great to be able to easily render out a 4K or UHD for clients that request it.
Please consider this?
Thanks
-Nat -
If like me, you think this would be an INCREDIBLY useful feature, please email BMD and feature request it.
I’m surprised that the bigger shops doing tent pole films with thousands of VFX have not insisted on this but I know many of them are still doing external conform in smoke/autodesk so perhaps its a moot point if your not using Resolve as a conform tool, but I see it as a really big deal if your doing a VFX heavy job with tons of Mattes and using resolve as the conform tool, it would be a huge time saver.
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-Nat -
Now if only there were a way to use the embedded alpha as a matte in the same way one would use an external matte! This would make my life dealing with tons of VFX with external mattes so much cleaner!!
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-Nat -
If you are grading in Rec709 then they conversion to DCI-P3 is accurate since DCI-P3 is a larger/wider color gamut. Going the other way is inaccurate as you cannot represent DCI-P3 fully in Rec709.
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-Nat -
If you are accurately monitoring your image in rec709 gamma 2.4, and you are using the easyDCP plugin for resolve there is no need to transcode to any intermediaty format in DCI/P3. The DCP is encoded in XYZ.
Just set your source timeline settings to rec709 gamma 2.4 in the color management settings which lets the DCP encoder know your source settings so it can convert to XYZ correctly.
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-Nat -
Steve, can you be more specific about the problems you had with premiere and NAS? I do use premiere. And FCP. And Nuke. And After effects, and etc etc etc. Resolve is my main thing and where I am 99% of the time, but if any of my other apps may have issues I need to know what type of problems they might be.
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!
What protocol were you using NFS, SMB, of AFP?
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Nat -
YES for !@#! sake yes. Please, BMD folks that are monitoring this thread do not discount this as cranky colorists who will never be happy with a single layout. This is a HUGE issue.
Yes this subject has been brought up countless times before, and there’s a reason for that.
I would easily pay $10K for ability to remap the elements, or even better, just to have a decent default mapping. Its not just the price of the big panels thats unappealing, but the form factor.
Obviously everyone’s definition of “decent” is different, and everyone will always have their own 2 cents to add, BUT no one could possibly use the existing mapping for a job and think its good. Can you get used to it eventually? Of course.
SAT, HUE, CONTRAST, OFFSET, BLUR/SHARPEN should all without doubt be available without going into sub-menus… ideally so should HIGHLIGHT / SHADOW and maybe RGB lift/gamma/gain.
Really the main thing is to design the layout with the intention of absolutely minimizing the amount of shifting between pages and sub-menus. Seems obvious but…
best-
-N