So with the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro, Apple added a cinemtatic mode to video that is basically Portrait Mode for video, which does a post processed Depth of field using the different lenses to create a depth map. It is not going to be perfect, but certainly will look more cinematic than the deep depth of field you normally get with an iPhone lens, and you can re-focus after the fact in Final Cut Pro, iMovie and in the Photos app. It even has HDR color depth, but then why is it only at 30 Frames Per second?
I just don’t get what Apple was thinking here, especially since it should be easier to process 23.976 than 30 frames a second. And films in movie theaters are in 23.976, and our eyes are used to that amount of motion blur to be cinematic, and not 30 frames, which is much more TV looking, as everything is sharper.
I think eventually will add 23.976 to cinematic mode, but likely not till IOS 16 or the next iPhone with better Cinematic mode.
Honestly I have an iPhone 11 Pro and Cinematic Mode would possibly tip me to getting a new iPhone, but it is the 30 FPS thing that really screws it up for me.
Now I do have a weird relationship with 23.976 vs 29.97, as when I am cutting commercials I would prefer 29.97 because Motion graphics looks less stuttery at 29.97, but we are talking “CINEMATIC” here and for “CINEMATIC” that is 23.976!
I think Apple made a mistep here, and hope they will fix it sooner rather than later.
Of course I also think that they should have figured out a way to use the LIDAR on the Pro model which is used for low light photos to make a better depth map. I know it would split cinematic mode for the 12 and the 13 pro models, but a better depth map would be welcome.
OpenEXR support has recently been updated to include compression, and it is a stll format in case of crashes, you save your renders (though have to also render out audio if necessary). EXR is a format developed by VFX Proffesionals for the purpose.
The 4K at up to 30 FPS uses the entire 7K Width of the Sensor, which 4K 60 FPS uses a 1.5x crop, which uses 4.6K and can use SD UHS II cards except one setting which needs a CFExpress Type A card. And it can record for more than hour without overheating!
The one big video issue is that unlike the III you can’t do 16 Bit RAW Video to an external recorder, in fact their is now RAW video, which is very unfortunate.
Still I would love this camera, but the video capabilities of the BlackMagic 6K Pro are superior, but it doesn’t have the still capabilities of this camera. My current still camera is non full frame DSLR the Canon 60 D, so I have lenses that would work for the Blackmagic, but this would be an amazing replacement.
This company is amazing, Excalibur has become my favorite tool for Premiere Pro in how it speeds things up. And they just keep coming out with new tools.
The video goes into 2D layers and precomps (rendering from the bottom up), and then 3D layers which is where Binning comes in, which connects all 3d layers that are next to each other in the timeline as a single render so you don’t get motion blur issues of individual layers in a created object. The new beta includes labels to show you how 3d layers are binned in the timeline, which will prove very useful to anyone who does a lot of 3d within After Effects.
It is funny, he started on After Effects 3, and I believe I started on version 4, though he is certainly more of a master than I am.
I have posted about this before, but here are some more topics that I can’t believe don’t have more upvotes.
The first is with a problem that has been bugging me lately that Essential Graqhics automatically scale when you change the sequence size, and I want them not to, or to have control if they automatically scale as you can do with Motion Effects. I often have to do a 1920×1080 and a 1080×1080 sequence so I cut it in 1920×1080 then do a 1080 version. Now I want the graphics to stay the same, but they don’t.
So I have long hated the AMIRA lut added to Alexa Footage. It has been notorious since it was added, and has been known to cause project bloat. It used to show up as a Master Clip effect (now a source clip effect) but this has been changed (though strangely I can’t find it anywhere in the Premiere Pro help files) to be in the new Interpret Footage Color Management section.
Unfortunately they have gone Full Screen as default and it took me a while to figure out how to turn it the hell off, but when I did it fixed a big complaint which was DaVinci hiding my damn dock.
I love DaVinci, and I love all the free updates at a rapid pace, but my biggest complaint about DaVinci is it’s lack of customization, and I find forcing full screen mode to be another customization annoyance.
My big complaint with Final Cut Pro (x) is that it feels designed by engineers who want to force you to use a program how they want to, and not how you want to. I have always felt AVID and Premiere allow you to set things up how they work best for you, and I always customize allot, with DaVinci you are forced to work how they want to, down to being forced to hide my dock, and now being forced into full screen mode. And honestly my biggest complaint of this is the menus. i want the menus there all the time, not dissapearing and coming back when I put my mouse there, that loses efficiency!
OK anyway, to turn it off, you have to bring up the menu, then when you see the stop sings, hit the green one.
Full Screen Mode in Davinci with Hidden menusWhen you put your cursor in the menu, the dots come up under the menu and the green turns off full screen.Exit Full Screen
And even better once I exited Full Screen mode, DaVinci added something new, for the main screen I can now resize the window and it even shows my dock! WOOHOOO.
I have never liked Full Screen nor having my dock go away, as I leave it up always on my main monitor, so actually I think this is great.
Now if only the second screen worked like this as well, this is how the second monitor works in Final Cut Pro and I hate it there as well.
And there is a ton more to like in the new update, look at all these features:
What’s new in DaVinci Resolve 17.4
Key Features • Hardware accelerated Apple ProRes on Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max. • Faster DaVinci Neural Engine performance on Mac OS Monterey. • Native HDR viewers and 120 Hz playback on supported MacBook Pros. • Native Dropbox and Dropbox Replay integration with render presets. • Sync markers, comments, annotations with Dropbox and Dropbox Replay. • Export timeline markers as YouTube video or QuickTime chapters. • Steinberg VST3 support with access to even more audio effects. • Simplified auto color management settings with SDR and HDR selection. • Improved 3D keyer and matte finesse controls. • New Resolve FX including film halation and custom mixers. • Text+ support for combined glyphs, right to left text and vertical layouts. • Subtitles can auto resize backgrounds and decompose to parent timeline.
Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max • Hardware accelerated Apple ProRes on Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max. • Faster DaVinci Neural Engine performance on Mac OS Monterey. • Smoother 120 Hz UI and playback on M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros. • Native HDR viewers on M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros. • Native full screen mode on Mac OS.
Dropbox • Dropbox login within DaVinci Resolve preferences. • Render presets for Dropbox and Dropbox Replay with background uploads. • Sync comments and annotations with Dropbox Replay in Studio. • Sync markers and comments with Dropbox in Studio.
Edit • Subtitle and caption backgrounds now auto-resize to fit text content. • Subtitle tracks in nested timelines now decompose to the main timeline. • Adding a new subtitle caption now auto-focuses on the text area. • Simple titles and subtitles are faster on Apple Silicon systems. • Improved ease in and out functionality for position curves in the timeline. • Options to include effects and grades for render in place operations. • Switch multicam angles in the edit page with the speed editor. • Ability to mark selection for timeline gaps. • Edit asymmetric audio transitions created in the Fairlight page. • Trim video and audio transitions asymmetrically using cmd/ctrl. • Fine audio clip gain adjustments using shift + mouse drag. • Support for pasting retime attributes on audio clips. • Option to limit audio sync to the first timecode match. • Preview composite modes by hovering over each mode in the inspector. • Ability to set per-clip deinterlace quality in the inspector. • New square iris transition. • Support for custom aspect ratio controls for shape transitions. • Improved overlays for Fusion tools in the viewer. • Improved undo support for Fusion effects and Text+ in the inspector. • Support for folder based organization of effect templates. • New customizable key actions to go to previous/next timeline tabs. • Ability to close timeline tabs with middle click. • Preview generators and titles from the effects panel in the cut viewer.
Color • Support for an automatic mode for color managed projects. • Support for ACES 1.3, gamut compression and new CSC transforms. • New 3D Keyer with new modes, better selection/stroke logic, live feedback. • Improved HSL and luma keyers with updated matte finesse controls. • Track forward and back with a single action in trackers and magic masks. • Node tooltips now indicate LUT and effect type present. • Dragging new links to layer and key mixers auto-creates node inputs. • Dragging color nodes over key links creates key-to-RGB connections. • Added individual primary and secondary tool icons for faster switching. • Clip filters for timeline clips with Dolby Vision analysis or trim. • Disabled clips are now shown as gray in the timeline. • Support for applying camera LUTs and CDLs to ARRI MXF ProRes clips. • The printer light state is now persisted across application restart. • Navigating to markers in the timeline now auto scrolls to center marker.
Resolve FX • Film halation emulates film stock reflections and scatter with Studio. • Custom mixer to combine effects and grades with finer control. • Improved 3D, HSL and Luma keyers in edit and Fusion. • Better noise handling and key refinement for existing keyers. • Improved patch replacer with ability to align source and target. • Film grain with interactive previews and grain freeze options.
Fairlight • Support for Steinberg VST3 audio effects on Mac OS and Windows. • Ability to reorder, move and duplicate effects in the mixer. • Support for copying clip ranges with partial fades. • Single sided audio transitions are now displayed as fades. • Support for multi channel audio outputs on Linux. • Waveform displays visible at smaller track heights and lower zoom levels. • Ability to shift-click and cmd-click on keyframe selections in the timeline. • Navigating to previous or next timeline marker now selects the marker. • Improved default processing order in Fairlight mixers. • Automation curves display current values when no automation is present. • Flashing edit cursor in edit selection mode. • Improved column order and search behavior in the clip index. • Improved jog, scroll and shuttle with the editor keyboard and speed editor. • Fairlight FX meters have resizable displays and improved channel labels. • Improved audio performance when using Blackmagic monitoring devices.
Fusion • Text+ support for combined glyphs and right to left language layouts. • Improved vertical Text+ layout, vertical glyphs, rotation and line direction. • Improved Text+ character grouping, spacing, underlining and borders. • Text+ supports per-character stylistic sets for supported fonts. • Support for OpenType features, including old-style numbers in Text+. • Multiple Text+ improvements for character styling and animation. • Hover to show tool descriptions in the effects panel and add tool window. • Improved default tracker search and pattern size for grid warps. • New search area scale slider in tracker options.
Codecs and File I/O • Improved encode settings for YouTube render preset. • Option to export a timeline marker color as YouTube video chapters. • Option to export a timeline marker color as QuickTime chapter markers. • Support for decoding opus audio in QuickTime and MP4 clips. • Hardware accelerated Panasonic 8K AVC decodes on Apple Silicon. • Improved decode speeds for ARRI ARX clips. • Hardware accelerated H.265 encodes on free version on Windows. • H.264 encode profile options on supported Nvidia systems with Studio. • H.264/H.265 encode bit rate controls on supported Windows Intel systems. • Faster hardware acceleration on Windows Intel systems with Studio. • Support for rendering EXRs with ZIP1 compression. • Ability to add custom languages in DCP/IMF composition naming options. • Ability to use approved operator / rating / region lists for DCP naming. • Marker support in the IO encode plugin SDK. • Ability to bypass re-encodes for Sony XAVC Intra clips. • Improved retention of comments metadata for third party XML workflows. • Improved display of render job names with tooltips.
General • Right click audio icon to adjust volume on media, color and deliver pages. • Auto-identifying media storage sequential image formats as stills or clips. • Prompt to overwrite existing projects when invoking save as. • Locked project indicator for PostgreSQL databases with usage info tooltip. • Ability to clone a PostgreSQL database from the project manager. • Ability to export PostgreSQL access keys from the project manager. • Option to import into current timeline when importing an AAF. • Scripting API support to access inspector properties for video clips. • Scripting API support to set playhead position on the timeline. • Scripting API support to get color version for video clips. • Scripting API support for reflecting upload status in render job APIs. • Scripting API support for setting network optimization in render jobs. • Scripting API support for H.264 multi-pass encode option in Mac OS. • Improved scripting property set when querying MediaIn nodes. • Addressed an issue with Vimeo login. • General performance and stability improvements.
Minimum system requirements • Mac 10.15 Catalina. • 8 GB of system memory. 16 GB when using Fusion. • Blackmagic Design Desktop Video 12.0 or later. • Integrated GPU or discrete GPU with at least 2 GB of VRAM. • GPU which supports Metal or OpenCL 1.2.
