No Film School Was ‘House of Dragon’ Too Dark, or Is the Problem Your TV?

The Article by Alyssa Miller goes into the issue which is similiar to the one on the big battle at the end of game of thrones. And honestly we didn't see it too much, but I have my TV properly calibrated or at least as well as it can be, and we have overhead canned lighting and can do it dimmer over us, so likely the room is darker than for the last season of Game of Thrones, but we do see this more and more. They are color correcting way too dark for TV. And I think the problem is obvious. Color bays are too dark and they use too good screens in the dark. That is absolutely fine for films which are meant to be seen in a darkened room, but homes have light, and most people don't watch television in the dark. Honestly there should be a higher level of ambient light in editing bays for TV, to take account people have lights on in their house. And have a consumer display to finish to as well, to check how it looks. I know on these signature shows they want you to turn off the lights and only pay attention to it, but that isn't an option for everyone. And if there are significant complaints, you are doing the grade wrong. You need to remember this is going to be viewed by people at home, not in a darkened theater!

Scott Simmons at PVC on Avid Media Composer 2022.7 adding keyboard layouts for Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve

Scott Simmons posted this article Avid Media Composer updated to 2022.7, now with competing keyboard layouts. I can honestly say I never though I would see the day when AVID was really trying to get people from Premiere and DaVinci. Personally I always learn the default keyboard setup of a program, but this is great for a quick jump for people.

Scott Simmons at PVC on his single most loved feature in Adobe Premiere Pro, customization, and he is right

Scott Simmons at the ProVideoCoalition has a great article entitled, "My single most loved feature in Adobe Premiere Pro." Customization is really the best thing about Premiere Pro. Of course AVID was the start of this because every editor doesn't want to work the same way or have the same setup to work on, so being able to have your own setup is so important and AVID premiered this feature in the editing space. The original Apple Final Cut Pro also had this feature. The new Final Cut Pro, previously Final Cut Pro X, did away with this and wants you to edit their way. You don't have as many ways to do things and you really can't do a lot of customization in the workspace. DaVinci Resolve has added editing to it's color correction program and it is great, but it also does not let you customize, it is once again how they want you to edit. Yes you can use one or two monitors, but the windows are all very fixed where they are. Premiere though is like AVID in customization, but adds to it, especially with so many available 3rd party extensions, like from AESCRIPTS, and it's extensive keyboard shortcut options. Scott Simmons is so right that Premiere's customization abilities are it's absolute best feature and it is a shame that DaVinci Resolve doesn't allow the same customization.

DaVinci Resolve 18 Public Beta 2 released

BlackMagic Design after just 2 weeks has already updated the Beta of DaVinci Resolve 18 to beta 2. This software update adds new object mask capability in magic mask, improvements to Dolby Atmos immersive mixing, support for Dolby Atmos production for Linux and Apple silicon as well as support for rendering Dolby Vision compatible H.265 clips. In addition, this update improves collaboration workflows when working with restrictive firewalls, adds better proxy indicator status and improved performance for sizing presets. You can download the regular or studio versions at their support page.

Red Giant Updates for NAB 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQG5BfHv2QE Red Giant has updated Universe to version 6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZUeLt-ynXU VFX Suite 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnddPjuAtVQ Magic Bullet Suite 16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q152QWFo_XE And a new tool Real Lens Flares. In past Red Giant has also released in depth videos showing off how to use the new features, but unfortunately it looks like they haven’t done that this year. Hopefully this isn’t how things will always be with the now Maxon owned company, bug I have the feeling it is. I guess will just have to play around. The video for Real Lens Flares looks good, but will have to see if it is better than optical flares from Video Copilot.

Blackmagic Design releases DaVinci Resolve 18 Beta and a whole Cloud workflow with new hardware

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr8ft07qX_g&t=1923s They have released the Beta of DaVinci Resolve 18. It has extensive new features in addition to Cloud Collaboration. This includes Blackmagic Cloud, a new Proxy generator with simplified proxy workflow, intelligent Media Management. New features include Intuitive object mask, automatic depth map, track moving warped surfaces, and updated resolve fx beauty. It also has enhanced subtitles, reverse shape, iris and wipe transitions, it can view 25 multicam angles, and has YouTube and Quicktime Chapter Markers. Fusion updates include GPU Accelerated Paint and Text and Shape Acceleration. Fairlight updates can convert legacy projects to flexbus for high track counts, automatic binaural rendering, decomposition of nested timelines and innovative space view 3d display. Other new features include DaVinci Neural Engine Acceleration, Laptop HDR Monitoring on Apple Displays, Atmostpheric Simulation, Edge Detection, DaVinci WIde Gamut Color Space, 8K Real Time Color Correction and better M1 Ultra Performance. AI Tools include a Person Mask, Superscale uprez, smart reframe for Social Media, Stylize with Open FX Library, Fave Refinement, Dead Pixel Fixer, Object Removal, Patch Replacer. For Content Creators it adds upload to YouTube, Vimeo and Twitter, Import ATEM Mini Projects, Advanced Noise Reduction, optical flow speed change, Mix 2000 tracks in reral time, track and follow objects, and upgraded Color Warper for Refined Grading. Also new is the Blackmagic Cloud Store drive with 4 10G Ethernet Ports for local network and built in cloud share via dropbox, with proxy creation. It has super fast SSD drives. There is also a Cloud Store Mini for smaller situations or where you will use your own 10GB switch. And the Cloud Store Pod, which can have 2 USB C drives connected to it. And the HyperDeck Shuttle HD a desktop recorder and player for ATEM MIni Switchers, that can also be used with the Cloud Store. Wow, this is huge. A full cloud solution for DaVinci including sync. This is so impressive. I wonder if there will ever be solutions to use this with Premiere?