Blackmagic Design has reduced the price of ATEM Mini Pro and ATEM Pro ISO by $100 each

 

Now I think you only need the $295 ATEM mini if you attach it as a web camera to stream your edit live, but if you want your edit to be live on YouTube or to record it you could go for the mini pro.
Still the Web Presenter may in fact be a better solution for streaming for me. Since I have the $495 Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4k, I have spare SDI ports and that way I could stream a 4k sequence as the ATEM MINI only accepts up to a 1080 60p sequence while the Web Presenter accepts up UHD 60p sequences though streams out at only 1080 60p. Of course I lose the ability to see me in a picture and picture via a gopro.

Frame.io’s Lisa McNamara and Zack Arnold ACE on Adopting a Post-Production Workflow from March 2020 is well worth a read

Lisa McNamara has written an article with the help of Zack Arnold ACE on the Best practices for Adopting a Remote Post-Production Workflow at Frame.io, and it is well worth a read. It goes into the challenges and security concerns, managing media, communication, collaboration, and even morale, well being and sanity. It is of course also selling Frame.io, but it is an article by them, and the article is great and very in depth including other companies solutions.

Every post supervisor or producer overseeing a team working from home should read this article.

Allan Tépper at ProVideoCoalition does an in depth review of the Blackmagic Web Presenter

 Allan T�épper at the ProVideoCoalition has done a very in depth review of the Blackmagic Web Presenter, and since this is one of the real-time remote streaming solutions and the way Sofi Marshall did her streaming, I thought I would link to this awesome review.

I still think that Atem Mini might be the better solution with it’s build in picture in picture, but I haven’t actually tested it, so I don’t know for sure.

The Hidden cost of Apple changing it’s hardware architecture for editors and motion graphics artist is plug-ins

 

So of course Apple is moving to the M1 processor for all of it’s computers, moving away from intel. This is the 3rd hardware switch Apple has made, from it’s initial motorola processors, to power pc, to the ARM based M1 processors. And while the current M1 is very fast, but not a pro processor, especially with shared graphics and normal ram and a limit of 16 GB of total RAM. 

For everyone sticking with Apple this will eventually mean new hardware to move to M1 from Intel, though for a few years at least Apple will continue to support Intel hardware.

The hidden cost though, that is something different, and for a professional editor or motion graphics artist the hidden cost is plugs-ins.

Plug-ins can be an expensive investment, but can really help your workflow and speed things up and let you do things that couldn’t do without them. And the move to M1 will certainly be a paid upgrade, even for those still on Intel hardware. And those plugs in upgrades can cost hundreds, and over the upcoming period there are going to be a lot of upgrades to M1.

And while DaVinci and Final Cut Pro X already run on M1’s and the Premiere Pro Beta runs on M1, to get your old plug-ins to run you have to run them via Rosetta 2, which means running the Intel based versions of the host software to get the plug-ins working. And that is going to mean running the software slower through emulation, and could cause many issues and add more stability issues.

Now of course subscription based plug-ins will have the price included in the subscription, but the lack of more money for the upgrade might mean a lot longer before they upgrade to M1, even if it should mean they should upgrade sooner since you are already paying monthly or yearly for the software.

And yes the fact that our Intel Hardware will last a few more years with upgrades means that the upgrades will happen over a few years, so we can pay it, but for me it is a lot of plug-in upgrades, that will be followed by an expensive hardware upgrade to whatever form Pro M1 Macs take.

And of course their will be the exceptions, companies that treat their customers correctly and will upgrade to the new architecture without charging anything. One such company is RE:Vision Effects, which I got an e-mail from and they are developing M1 versions of the current versions of all their plugs ins. And have already released OpenFx and Twixtor M1 betas for FXPlug versions and RSMB for FXPlug is next.

Sofi Marshall’s Ultimate Real Time Remote Editing Workflow and how I am considering adapting it to my workflow

 

Sofi Marshall, Editor, Writer and Workflow Expert has an awesome post on the Ultimate Real Time Remote Editing Worklflow. You can check out her IMDB page to see her experience, which is extensive.

Now I talked a bit about this in my recent post on Work from Home thanks to the Covid-19 Pandemic. And I have been thinking about getting a workflow working because I would like to be able to work from home as much as possible.

And I too loved iChat theater in Final Cut Pro 7. It was amazing technology that worked really well when the entire Internet was so much slower.

As for the Workflow, obviously the BlackMagic Web Presenter has been updated to the Web Presenter HD to include the front panel, but there is another option as well that is either the ATEM Mini or the ATEM Mini Pro which are switchers and include picture in picture abilities.

Now the Mini Pro includes the ability to stream directly to YouTube, FaceBook or Twitch (or I guess you program some others like Vimeo but it isn’t easy, nor is that going to be all that secure) but the Mini for $295 seems like a viable alternative as it has the USB port to act as a web cam and it has multiple sources possible, so if you have a camera with an HDMI port and I have an old GoPro Hero 2 which has mini USB out and a usb for power.

Personally since I have an BlackMagic Ultrastudio 4k, I would hook this up to the ATEM Mini as my main source, and the GoPro as my personal camera, and then I would hook up the ATEM Mini to my Windows Surface and run Zoom on there to save resources on my editing Mac.

The one issue is the single HDMI out on my Ultrastudio 4k, so to get it to my monitor, I would have to take the HDMi out of the switcher which will likely put it on more of a delay from what I am editing, but this would only be necessary when live streaming.

And because of the Ultrastudio I would not be streaming any of my desktop, but the direct output from my editing system, though I would still uncheck disable video output when I background, so the output signal remains as a source.

Now with using my Windows Tablet as the zoom machine, I will have to use it as the audio monitor as well (though that precludes all the setup with Rouge Amoeba’s LOOPBACK which makes things easier) though not sure how great it will sound through the headphone port and have to check audio levels using the ATEM Software Control (which should work fine on Windows).

Best would be to cut off audio to the gopro and use a good mic through the switcher’s microphone ports, but that is of course an extra expense.

And honestly I should probably run the audio out headphone port into my Emotiva-XDA-1 and it’s connected heaphone amp, just so I can control the volume better.

Of course I have to hook it up and try it to see how it works, and if it didn’t I could do it all from my iMac, but that shouldn’t be necessary.

 

EDIT: Awesome, so Sofi Marshall has done a small update to the post to add the ATEM Mini as an option. Basically it works the same, with the ability to do picture in picture form multiple sources, but it has one downside. The ATEM Mini can only accept 1080 inputs, while the web presenter can accept 4K inputs, and the ATEM Mini is a bit larger as well. Good to know.

EDIT: OK so maybe the Web Presenter is the better solution. It has SDI, and I have SDI to spare on my Ultrastudio 4k, and it accepts up to 2160 60p video  and exports up to 1080 60p. The ATEM mini and Mini pro accept up to 1080 60p video, so it wouldn’t accept a UHD sequence direct from Premiere, but I would also lose the ability to have a camera on me via the switcher. Hmmm.

 

 

DaVinci Resolve Ext Matte issues in Color Page

OK so I am running into some issues on  DaVinci Resolve right now using an Ext Matte in a color correct node, and I am wondering if I am doing something wrong, if this is how it is supposed to function.
I have some shots that were shot just as the sun was going down at the end of a shoot without enough lighting. So the exterior is way too dark, and it has to match the daylight exteriors. Now I tried to do matte’s in DaVinci and even tried the new smart mask on the people, but I found I could get a better matte in After Effects with the Roto Brush. The matte is the exact same size as the shot in the sequence in the show, for this shot 1 second and 10 frames, so I made a matte that started at the first frame and is exactly 1:10 in the frame, but when I add the Ext Matte to the shot, while the scale matches up, it certainly does not match first frame to first frame.

So I unchecked Lock Matte to be able to  adjust the clip manually. And had to adjust the zoom, tilt and offset to get it to work. I don’t get why I have to set the offset to -14, since the matte is the same length as the visible portion of the shot in the sequence, and the full shot is much longer than 14 frames. SO I AM TOTALLY CONFUSED BY THE OFFSET.

 

Even weirder to me than the Offset though is the tilt. I had to set it at -571 to get it to line up (and why can’t there by a match for position, but change the offset?) and that is weird to me, because I have below the transform for that clip within the edit panel. The zoom matches at .6, but the position is -150, so where does the -571 come from? I should be able to match the 2 clips by using the same numbers, not completely different numbers! WTF!

Not sure what I am doing wrong here, but if anyone can explain to me why the offset and tilt are like they are it would be greatly appreciated.

Some really cool online editing tools at EditiingTools.io

EditingTools.io is a very cool web site with some very useful tools online. You might not need them right now, but when you do it is going to be great to remember they are there.

EditingTools.io is a collection of generators, scripts, converters and machine learning applications made over the last years for various projects & productions. 

They accept donations to keep their free tools online.

There are some very useful tools for converting or combining AVID Log Exchange files or ALE files.

XML to Splitscreen XML to perfectly do split screens.

A very useful Marker Converter to convert timeline markers from Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Frame.io, SubRip Subtitle, CSV, PDF and more.

A subtitle tool & converter.

A tool to generate an Editor’s Codebook from ALE files.

A Music Cut Sheet creator from XML files (woohoo, awesome if you have to make them).

A Edit Shot List / VFX Shot List from XML.

And so much more. These are great tools to know about in case you need them.

Apple Quicktime on Mac and it’s awful issue of Gamma Shift in Video from Premiere and DaVinci Resolve

An image from a short film I have been grading, on the left is the image as shown by quicktime, and the right is in VLC matching what you see in DaVinci, you can see that they are quite different. It is the damn Apple Quicktime Gamma shift!

So I have been having issues with the gamma problem with my producers viewing my movies, since I am working from home, and we are running Premiere. I knew about the issue in the past, but have been looking into any solutions, and found some amazing articles on the subject that you should certainly read to know more about this frustrating issue.

Todd Dominey has an awesome article on the issue from Janurary 24th, 2021, that is a must read.

And Dan Swierenga has another great read on DaVinci and the issue at his blog The Post Process.

For those who don’t know is that basically Apple and Quicktime have a Gamma shift issue with Video Footage that has to do with Apple Colorsync and how it tags video. So if you play your videos on a Mac in Quicktime or in any Colorsync application (life Safari) a video from Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve they will be brighter and less contrasty than they actually are. It can be a huge issue when sending to clients.

The issue does not occur with Final Cut Pro X because it uses ColorSync (not having to be cross platform).

The solution is to use a non-colorsync application to play the video back and it will look correct (or at least more as it was intended). This can be done with Mozilla Firefox or VLC.

You could add a LUT to try and fix it (and Adobe actually has one) but for people on windows or using a non-color sync app the image will be too dark, and the the fix is never going to be perfect.

So the problem become getting people to use VLC as Apple is never going to fix it’s messed up Gamma settings.

Blackmagic Design has released the full version of DaVinci Resolve 17

 

So Blackmagic Design has brought DaVinci Resolve 17 out of Beta and released it today.

Check out the What’s New section for the new features, which are extensive.

Some highlights include

  • Next Generation HDR Grading Tools, let you grade in very specific tonal ranges, and control the exposure and saturation for each zone. (this is awesome, as I loved have more granular controls in speedgrade way back when).
  • Color Warper for Refined Grading.
  • Targeted Grading with Magic Mask. I have not tried this out yet, but look forward to giving it a try as anything to get better masks easier is a good thing and will speed up any work flow.
  • DaVinci Wide Gammut Color Space and Advanced Color Management
  • Updated 3D Professional Scopes
  • Additional LUT support (easier to make 17 point 3D luts from Timeline
  • New Viewer Wipe Modes including diagonal, venetian blond and checkerboard.
And many many more.
Looking forward to diving into the 350 page New Feature Guide and really seeing what this thing can do.

Blackmagic Design announces Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro

 
Blackmagic Design has announced the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 6K Pro camera, and even more impressively released it at the previous price of the BMPC 6K $2499. This camera includes the same sensor as the 6K camera, but with some features people have been clamoring for. 

First off is the articulated screen which can tilt up or down (though not to the side for vlogging) which is hdr and 1500 nit brightness. This is huge, there have been kits to upgrade the screen in previous models, but this is built in.

Next are 3 motorized ND filters with infared, including, 2, 4 and 6 stops of ND.
 
The battery has been changed to the larger Sony NP-F570 battery, which should provide longer run times and the Battery Pro grip which adds 2 more batteries doesn’t replace the internal battery and lets the 2 batteries in it to be swapped while still recording.

Then we have an additional mini xlr input, for 2 mini xlr inputs.

 

And it will now include the color science 5 from the 12K camera, though that is also coming to the 6K and 4K models.

And you can aslo add for $499 an EVF eye piece with glass lenses that will shut off the touch screen when in use.

All this does mean the camera is even larger than the previous 6k model (which will make it interesting for stabilizers), and people are already complaining about the still having an ef mount and not the new rf mount at least. 

I don’t see any of that as a problem, this is a very impressive camera, and I want one.