Fstoppers on getting perfect color with X-Rite Color Checker and DaVinci Resolve

Fstoppers has an article with a video on the awesome X-Rite Color Checker (why doesn’t Premiere support it?) of which I personally use the Passport edition.

I do find that sometimes it doesn’t work (and I have yet to figure out why) but when it does it gives an awesome baseline for every shot. You just have to convince the camera department to shoot it every time the lighting or setup changes.

Still this is an awesome tool and one everyone should shoot with.

Some videos by Daria Fissuon who wrote black magic design training on DaVinci Resolve 17

Daria Fissuon literally wrote the DaVinci Resolve 17 Training Guide, and she has some great tips and tricks for using DaVinci.

From Casey Faris

Aslo from Casey Faris’s YouTube Channel

And this one from Craig Beckta at FStoppers which I need to watch again, because she goes into how to setup and export your videos to deal with the Mac Color shift, which is huge!!!!

BlackMagic RAW has been updated to 2.1 with improved Premiere Pro Performance and M1 Support

Blackmagic Design has upgraded it’s BlackMagic RAW plugin to version 2.1 with M1 support and improved Premiere Pro Performance.

  • Added native support for Apple Silicon on Mac.
  • Added optimised CPU decoding for clips captured by Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K.
  • Added Blackmagic Generation 5 Color Science Technical Reference document.
  • Added support for Panasonic Lumix S1H, S1 and S5 Blackmagic RAW clips captured by Blackmagic Video Assist.
  • Added support for Nikon Z 6II and Z 7II Blackmagic RAW clips captured by Blackmagic Video Assist.
  • Blackmagic RAW Adobe Premiere Pro plugin performance and stability improvements.
  • General performance and stability improvements.

Improvements to performance are always welcome and M1 support is as well.

Adobe adds Speech to Text to the Public Beta

Adobe has added Speech to Text to the Public Beta, you no longer need to sign up to use it. Of course if you you are already signed up you can also use it in the release version.

Speech to Text is so good for doing testimonials I don’t know how i ever lived without it. It is fast and works so incredibly well. And having the script helps with comprehension so my edits just go faster. This is the most impressive feature in years, and it has quickly become essential to my workflow.

Should graphics with transparency use Straight or Premultiplied Alphas

I was rendering some graphics in After Effects for use in Premiere Pro and started thinking about Alpha interpretation. I have been doing graphics professionally since I started editing the behind the scenes footage for Lord of the Rings , The Fellowship of the Ring and over the years I worked out that Straight alphas almost always worked out better for me, with better edges. Now I have read that Final Cut Pro prefers a premultiplied alpha, but I have certainly had better luck with with a straight alpha. I wanted to dive into what the differences really are, and a great definition is in Help for After Effects.

Image files with alpha channels store transparency information in one of two ways: straight or premultiplied. Although the alpha channels are the same, the color channels differ.

With straight (or unmatted) channels, transparency information is stored only in the alpha channel, not in any of the visible color channels. With straight channels, the results of transparency aren’t visible until the image is displayed in an application that supports straight channels.

With premultiplied (or matted) channels, transparency information is stored in the alpha channel and also in the visible RGB channels, which are multiplied with a background color. Premultiplied channels are sometimes said to be matted with color. The colors of semitransparent areas, such as feathered edges, are shifted toward the background color in proportion to their degree of transparency.

Some software lets you specify the background color with which the channels are premultiplied; otherwise, the background color is usually black or white.

Straight channels retain more accurate color information than premultiplied channels. Premultiplied channels are compatible with a wider range of programs, such as Apple QuickTime Player. Often, the choice of whether to use images with straight or premultiplied channels has been made before you receive the assets to edit and composite. Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects recognize both straight and premultiplied channels, but only the first alpha channel they encounter in a file containing multiple alpha channels.

Setting the alpha channel interpretation correctly can prevent problems when you import a file, such as undesirable colors at the edge of an image or a loss of image quality at the edges of the alpha channel. For example, if channels are interpreted as straight when they are actually premultiplied, semitransparent areas retain some of the background color. If a color inaccuracy, such as a halo, appears along the semitransparent edges in a composition, try changing the interpretation method.

And that explains it, since with premultiplies the edges can get some of the background color leaking into them in some cases, which is not the case with straight alphas.

And while quicktime and Apple may prefer premultiplied alphas that does not make them better or desirable, Apple already has it’s whole gamma shift issue with quicktime that is a disaster, so adhering to what they want isn’t always the best idea.

Adobe needs to bring back SpeedGrade as Lumetri Pro and have a proper finishing workflow

Now I was a huge fan of SpeedGrade when it existed, and greatly lamented it’s passing when it went away. For those of you who don’t know, SpeedGrade was a professional color correction software much like DaVinci Resolve that Adobe purchased and added to their creative suite for a while, and then gutted it and that is where the Lumetri color panel came from. What I miss the most was that unlike with DaVinci where you render out movies with the grade baked in, the grade from SpeedGrade could be exported a single movie or movies of each shot, but you could also roundtrip to premiere and the entire grade came back to Premiere as the Lumetri plug in on your clips! Not only was this much faster, especially since most Lumetri grades would play back in real time without rendering in Premiere, but it saved hard drive space too and made the whole round-tripping thing a real pleasure.

Sure it wasn’t quite as powerful as DaVinci Resolve at the time, but it was plenty powerful and at the time even beat DaVinci on a couple of things.

Of course by this point DaVinci has vastly moved on from SpeedGrade, but this is Adobe we are talking about, and they could certainly update it (and give it multi-monitor support). And maybe bake in some After Effects tools for masks and tracking and the like.

Now Premiere Pro has the Lumetri Color Panel, but it isn’t near what SpeedGrade was and no where near what Premiere can do. So the Adobe Creative Suit really needs a high end color correction package and it could be the evolution of SpeedGrade or as Randi Altman called it Lumetri Pro (I wish I could take credit for the name).

Arclight Sherman Oaks movie theater being Re-Opened as a Regal Cinemas Theater and getting an upgrade

Deadline is reporting that Regal Cinemas has signed a new lease for the Arclight Sherman Oaks.

Regal will reportedly sink $10M into renovating the cinemas bringing it up to date on par with its Regal Irvine Spectrum which reopened last fall for Tenet. Regal recently opened a brand spanking new multiplex in North Hollywood, six miles East of Arclight Sherman Oaks. The new Regal at Sherman Oaks will have 4DX, PLF screens as well as ScreenX which is a three-screen wraparound auditorium (Regal already has one at their Valencia Town Center location in Valencia, CA). Both Regal and Douglas Emmett acknowledged the new lease in the L.A. Times report.

Woohoo, the theater was never one of the best Arclights (though vastly superior to the Santa Monica), as it really only has 2 impressive theaters.

Living in the valley I am so glad it will be back. Now I just hope Decurion, which stills own the land under the Cinerama Dome (though not the Arclight Hollywood next to it) and the Pacific Winnetka, opens the Winnetka back up. The Winnetka used to be a crappy theater, big screens, but crappy seats, but they recently upgraded every theater but the biggest one with recliners and took out multiple rows to do it, so unlike AMC you can still walk in front of the reclines seats, and this made it my favorite theater in the valley. So Decurion come on and re-open your damn theater!

Adobe announces Substance 3D Collection, but it is in addition to Creative Cloud Subscription!

Adobe just announced the new Adobe Substance 3D Tools, though for those excited to try them out, they are not included in Creative Cloud, and are instead a separate subscription. Can you say, WTF!

You get Substance 3D Stager to put models together, material and light a 3D scene to produce virtual photographs and renderings, which sounds like a high end version of Adobe Dimension (which is in Creative Cloud).

You get Substance 3D Painter to paint textures and materials on a 3D Object.

Substance 3D Sampler to create materials and textures with a photo.

And Substance 3D Designer to create your own textures, materials and models.

There is also a Substance 3D Asset Library and a private Beta of Substance 3D Modeler.

I know companies love there subscriptions, and that 3D programs are getting really high subscription prices, but this should have been included in Creative Cloud. Of course I also think it should be more than creating stills as 3D motion product shots would be amazing to be able to make quickly and well.

Maxon Updates Universe to 4.0

Maxon has updated Universe (formerly Red Giant Universe) to 4.0. Universe is a set of Transition and effects plugs ins for editors and motion graphics artists, and is red giants fast rendering transitions.

The suite has 3 new plug ins, Electrify to add electrical effects, Analog to add the look of Analog video, and Texturize Motion which adds animated textures to your footage for a sketchy stop motion look. They have also included 100+ presets for the new effects and 140 new presets for Array Gun and Typographic.

Universe is available as a subscription for $199 a year, or as part of Red Giant Complete for $599.99 annually or Maxon one with all their products for $1199 a year or you can pay a monthly for $30, $79 or $149.

Personally I have used the Red Giant plug ins for many many years, and they have many of my go to effects. They are also fast and work across editing software for the most part. It is a big expense every year, but I find it very worth it for the suite of tools. And honestly if I could afford it would love to add Cinema 4D to the mix.

Randi Altman’s thoughts on Adobe Premiere’s Interface Update

https://postperspective.com/thoughts-on-adobe-premieres-interface-update/#utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss

Randi Altman from PostPerspective has a post about the Input, Output and Home tab in Premiere Pro that I just posted about.

I like his thoughts on import which is a simplified version of DaVinci’s cut page (since you can quickly assemble a sequence) are interesting, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but then the Cut page isn’t really for me or how I work, though I do like some of it, it just isn’t there for me.

And the fact that he asked adobe and they will eventually update everything including the timeline (just don’t learn anything from Final Cut Pro X please) is pretty huge news.

And he is right they need to make Lumetri Pro, which would be a new version of SpeedGrade and bring back the grade just being the lumetri plug in premiere. OMG I WOULD LOVE THAT, I have missed SpeedGrade since it went, and it is really the one thing Adobe is seriously missing a powerful finishing program.