[Oliver Peters]

I know a lot of people don’t like subscriptions, but there are pros and cons both ways.

If you look at cost of the software over 10 years, perpetual with yearly updates is significantly greater than subscription paid annually upfront. If you are an occasional user, then paying by the month makes incredible sense, because it’s dirt cheap.

I know the arguments – Apple FCP, BMD DaVinci Resolve, yada yada yada – but those companies don’t live in the real world financially the way most other companies do.

So while it may be a shock to some, this does make a lot of sense.

[Oliver Peters]

Just a point on technical terminology. You are seeing a change in the color correction, but not color space. Color space is something like Rec 709 or Rec 2020 and is based on the timeline. Obviously something wonky is happening, but technically it’s not a change in color space. Just to check, make sure there are no other keyframes at those points other than scale/position. What happens when you turn off GPU processing and go to a software-only render? Render just that clip and see what happens.

Also, turn off Nitrate and see what happens.

[Oliver Peters]

Glad to hear it. Good luck.

[Oliver Peters]

All noise reduction processes are slow renders. They get slower the higher the source and timeline resolution. Resolve has a considerably faster rendering engine than Premiere, but RED and NR is going to be slow, no matter what.

The third route would be a simpler roundtrip, but it limits your future options. That would be to strip out all effects and graphics from the sequence. Go into your RED settings (source settings) and set the files to log color space. Make sure you have a consistent temp/tint/exposure. Render the timeline out at timeline resolution as ProRes4444 or ProRes4444XQ.

Bring that long clip into Resolve and slice at the cut points. Grade. Then export the full movie again and bring that back into Premiere for other effects, FilmConvert, graphics, etc.

The reason that this might be preferable is so that you won’t have to rebuild effects, AE comps, and so on, once the sequence is back in Premiere. The downside is that the file is locked and flattened without handles on the clips. So potential future changes aren’t easily made. Plus the file is locked at the rendered resolution. If your original files were 6K and you rendered at 1080, you are at that size. If for some reason you needed to generate a 4K file later, you’d have to go through this process all over again. Or take the quality hit from an upconversion.

[Oliver Peters]

It depends on where and how you plan to apply noise reduction.

First of all, have you tried adjusting the RED camera raw setting in Premiere (source settings)? This called up the raw controls and most of the tools from Redcine X Pro are there. If you change color to IPP2 you should see a denoise function, which affects chroma noise. You can also adjust ISO.

So if you intend to color correct in Premiere, make those adjustments first, then do Lumetri, then add Neat (or other noise reduction), and finally add FilmConvert. Render and come back in a month 🙂

If you intend to grade in Resolve, you have the full raw controls, plus Resolve’s noise reduction. If you go that route, you would XML the raw clips to Resolve. Grade, including internal NR. Then XML back to Premiere to conform (reconstruct) your sequence. Add Neat (or other) as needed, as well as FilmConvert. (Note you can also get FilmConvert for Resolve, which would let you integrate the process.)

[Oliver Peters]

Nothing wrong in trying to establish a look. It’s just that Premiere is a terrible place to try to do the finishing work on something like a feature film.

But if you plan to be the one driving Resolve, be sure to give yourself plenty of time to get into the weeds. There are a few gotchas. I believe you will need to get the paid Resolve Studio version ($300) for the noise reduction.

The free version does nearly everything most casual users need, but it is limited on some of the effects. Its renders are also limited to UHD as the maximum export size. Whereas, with Studio, if you have 6K source clips, the single-clip exports can be at that same source resolution, even though the timeline may be 4K or 1080.

The built-in noise reduction is good for some types of sensor noise and is often all you’ll need. However, Neat is still better. Or just put a blanket of film grain on top and call it a day 🙂

[Oliver Peters]

Yikes. That’s a lot of timeline junk for Premiere to deal with 🙂

I would highly advise a Resolve roundtrip. Do the basic grade there. Use the noise reduction available within the raw control panel, as well as Resolve’s built-in noise reduction. Render source-resolution ProRes 4444 with handles. Then back in Premiere, add the FilmConvert Nitrate to taste.

You should also look at Neat for anything that’s still a noise issue after coming out of Resolve.

[Oliver Peters]

I would personally stay away from any of these science projects, including Hackintoshes, home-brew custom PCs, Linux, etc.

If you are a serious Resolve-based business, making a living out of grading day in and day out, stick with either a Mac Pro (if you want Mac) or a reputable PC (Dell, HP, Puget). Yes, it will be expensive, but you are planning for longevity and want a robust machine.

If you are a light user – editing plus grading, short render requirements, mix of apps – then the last run of Intel 27″ iMacs (fully loaded) are also cost-effective for a Mac. Or do both. Get a high-end PC for serious work and a Mac M1 mini to supplement when you need to do something that’s purely Mac-based, like use FCP.

I would also avoid Nvidia GPUs these days. Apple has written them off, plus the supply chain is too affected by the bitcoin-mining idiots. Not to mention, Nvidia has other interests these days than the M&E space, like supporting the UI for automobiles.

[Oliver Peters]

Bingo! Thanks. Honestly I never noticed that or forgot about that after setting the viewer background ages ago. Not sure why that should be the default, however, the manual actually states the blue-gray isn’t for color critical works :/

[Oliver Peters]

I wonder if BMD has any valid reasons for it other than it just looks different than other dark backgrounds.