Bruno Mansi

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are pushing the ACES system, and some of the grading software mentioned above have already added ACES 1.0. The advantages to ACES is supposed to be "seamless interchange of high quality motion picture images regardless of source".  What I understand this to mean is that we can all bring in, or export material (or metadata) from  other departments (eg. Editorial, VFX) and not have to worry about different colour spaces etc.

You need to backup your database as everything (apart from the media) is stored there.

Blackmagic recommend you back up  before any upgrade to your Resolve software. There is also mention of the fact that once backed up on a particular version of Resolve, you may not be able to open the database on a previous version of the software.

If you want to backup individual projects you can use the the File/Export Project command. Additionally, you can archive the media by using File/Media Management to copy the media used in one (or all) of the timelines in your project to an archive directory/disk.

16 hours ago, Abby Bader said:

When the first Resolve was put on the market you had to buy a separate DNxHD license. Avid don't change for it anymore and it's my impression that it slowly takes the position that ProRes have had the last years.

You may be right, but there still seems to be a slower take-up for the DNxHR codecs. For example, AJA have announced that they've added DNxHD support for their Ki Pro Ultra 4K Recorder/Player/Monitor.

http://nofilmschool.com/2016/09/aja-ki-pro-ultra-adds-avid-dnxhd-support?utm

However, there's no mention of DNxHR codecs, which you'll need to capture UHD or 4K. The specs clearly show that if you want to record above HD resolutions, you have to use ProRes. Since AJA have gone to the trouble of adding Avid codec support, why not include the DNxHR codecs? Seems damn strange to me!

11 hours ago, Tom Evans said:

This format also whispers a long goodbye to the Apple format that we all love so much...

If you're talking about Apple Quicktime then yes, it does seem to be slowly being written out of the requirements of most newer software versions. Prores however, still seems to be going strong. Lots of new cameras will have Prores as a recording format, whereas DNxHR isn't so common. This could be due to the fact that traditionally, Avid have charged manufacturers for using their codecs, so those that incorporated them into their products have often passed the charge on to customers. I know this to be the case with some hard disk recorders. I would have thought Apple would also want to charge, but I've never heard of Prores being a paid option.

Some of the popular video software doesn't like certain versions of the Avid codecs. Nuke Studio for example, doesn't seem to support the MXF atom files that Avid generates in it's Mediafiles folders, which makes AAF linking a pain, as you have to transcode the footage to something Nuke can use, (Like Prores).

I don't think anyone is saying that Resolve isn't a capable editing platform, but the reason I started this thread was not to compare one piece of editing software over another. My original comments were more to do with my reaction to what the Blackmagic rep was saying about the future development of their product.

Now, I don't know if his views are representative of Blackmagic's direction for the software, and I was really looking to see if anyone else had any other insights or ideas about how they think the product should develop.

5 hours ago, Margus Voll said:

Mostly old studios or edit bays have it and new comers use the tools that fit their need more?

I know you personally don't like Avid (having called it 'evil') but to suggest that the software is being consigned to the backrooms of old studios, while new companies/facilities are likely to choose Adobe or Blackmagic products is simply not true, at least not here in the UK.

In London, Many of the top broadcast facilities have around 10 times more Avid cutting rooms than Premiere or FCP seats. One top facility recently opened it's fifth site, and added 18 new Avid suites and two FCP to meet demand. I am of course talking about the broadcast and features market - I appreciate that corporate and independent film makers are tending to go with all-in-one solutions such as that offered by Adobe Creative Cloud, but as Nicolas pointed out..

On 11/09/2016 at 4:40 PM, Nicolas Hanson said:

Specialized tools and staff are important in professional work environments. The same guy can't to everything on the same machine.

I think this is the point of what I was saying. If Blackmagic want to carry on offering it's software for free, whilst trying to offer both a grading and editing platform that's fine for certain sectors of the industry. My impression is that they seriously want to duplicate the success of their grading software with their editing functions, but they're up against the likes of Adobe Premiere in the corporate/independent market and Avid just about everywhere else. 

My feeling is that they should develop their editing features for finishing work, and provide better integration with the likes of Media Composer and Premiere Pro.

I've had Resolve running on a Quadro 4000. Quite an old card, but passes the test, and will generally play 1080p material with a couple of nodes in real-time if you view in half resolution mode. This was on a Win 7 dual processor workstation running Resolve 12.5, using the latest Nvidia CUDA drivers.

 I've seen these cards second-hand on Ebay for around 100 dollars.

Interesting comparison.

Did you try this with the latest version of After Effects?

Adobe have just announced After Effects CC  13.8.1 | August 2016 where they state...

"This release of After Effects introduces a superior video and audio preview architecture that delivers real-time playback of cached frames with synced audio."

Looking at the Adobe video of the new features, there's a demonstration of live, interactive playback, where they're adjusting a composition’s properties and even re-sizing panels without stopping playback.

57 minutes ago, Nicolas Hanson said:

Can I run DaVinci without OpenCL by deactivating the option?

I don't think there's way of disabling the startup GPU test. I suspect Resolve would not work at all without OpenCL/CUDA capable GPUs. Even if you have a qualified card, Resolve won't start if you don't have the correct GPU drivers installed. I've had this happen to me when I update the software to the latest version.

I don't think you can really compare Ultimatte and Keylight because they really specialise in hardware keyers for news and live events. I'm guessing Balckmagic's acquisition is more like they did with Teranex, with a new line of Blackmagic hardware blue/greenscreen products.

Televisual magazine recently did a UK survey on production technology which makes interesting reading.

It shows Resolve being the most used standalone grading system (at 36%), but also noted that Baselight was catching up fast with 25%, that's up on last year's 18%.

On other fronts, Blackmagic's products fare pretty badly, with their cameras accounting for only 1% and Resolve's editing toolset not mentioned at all in the list of systems used. Avid came out the clear winner at 50%, with Premiere at 27% and FCP at 13%.

I think it's fair to say Blackmagic cannot realistically think that somehow everyone is going to abandon Avid or Adobe editing products in the near future, so it would make sense to find better workflows to exchange projects between systems. Maybe Baselight's improved share of the grading pie is due to their superior workflow when it comes to sending grades back-and forth between colorist and editor. I've heard good reports about the Baselight-to-Avid metadata workflow, with one major UK ITV company using it exclusively for their flagship soap opera, which airs five nights a week. Avid are undisputed kings of the features industry, partly because the editors are familiar with the product, but also because they have worked out the issues of collaborative workflows and centralised storage. If I was head of Resolve development, I would certainly want to explore ways of better integrating with Avid products. After all, it's great that they offer the software for free, but ultimately, I'd be wanting large facilities to buy many seats of Resolve to integrate into their workflow. That's good for business and for the future development of the product.

I recently had the chance to talk to a representative from Blackmagic about all things Resolve, and came away with the feeling that you had to do things 'their way or the highway'.

I first asked if they were going to make the layout more customisable, maybe with dockable/undockable tabs similar to Premiere Pro. He said that they were keen not to let users 'muck-about' (his words) with the layout too much. Pointing to the timeline on the Color page, he said 'that's where we think the timeline should be' and didn't feel users should be given the option of putting it any old place.

I then asked him if they had any plans to produce plugin versions of Resolve for other editing/compositing programs, which might provide for more seamless round-tripping between applications (similar to what Baselight are doing). His response was very much that they wanted the convince users to do it all in Resolve, hence their addition of full editing capabilities to the Resolve toolset. I did point out that this was exactly what they were doing with Fusion and the Avid Connect plugin, and that I thought it was unrealistic to expect users to abandon programs like Media Composer, Premiere Pro or FCP, no matter how good the current toolset was. He agreed that Media Composer would be around for a long time yet, but it didn't change his standpoint of wanting users to edit on Resolve. I also came away with the impression that this also applied to the hardware side as well, and that they were not going to open up Resolve to use AJA output cards.

Slightly disappointing attitude, and I'd be interested to know if any other user's experience with Blackmagic personnel was similar, or whether I just caught him on a bad day!

Given that your going to spending quite a few thousand dollars/euros on this setup, apart from sheer pleasure(?), is there any reason you're choosing to build rather than buy a ready made system?

The HP Z workstations seem to be the 'no-brainer' choice throughout the industry - designed to run 24 hours a day without problems, plus you get their 3 year on-site warranty.

Videoguys have an interesting article which goes into some detail about moving over to HP workstations which you might find useful.

http://www.videoguys.com/blog/videoguys-guide-to-hp-z-workstations-the-video-editors-best-choice/

It's a little out of date, so the info doesn't factor in the newer Pascal GPU architecture, or the latest SSD technologies, but it makes some good points on the advantages of going for the HP workstations. The article is aimed at building editing systems, but I think the basic arguments hold for whatever use you might have for a high-end system.

In case anyone's interested, a number of years ago, I was working on an Avid system which had this plugin installed. I was grading a short scene where two people were talking to each other in a London street. One person was shot in sunlight, but by the time they'd shot the other person, the sun had gone behind some clouds. By using the Light plugin and a soft, leaf shaped gobo, I was able to improve continuity by making it seem as if the second person was under a tree, with sunlight casting shadows on his face and body.

Tiffen have a plugin called 'Light' which does exactly this. I think it was originally a Photoshop plugin, but now it's included in some of their plugin sets for OFX. The sets aren't particularly cheap, but if you're feeling lazy and you've got money burning a hole in your pocket, the plugin includes a library of over 1300 gobos for you.

This link describes the filter in more detail:

http://software.tiffen.com/products/dft-products/light

On 31/08/2016 at 7:08 PM, Fernando Lui Latorre said:

I´m setting up a room for color grading for both commercials and feature films.

I´ve been looking into 2 monitors for color reference:

- Flanders (FSI) DM250

- Eizo CG-318-4K 31.1" DCI 4K

 

Any thoughts on them?

Well of course, the obvious difference between them is that the Flanders gives you SDI inputs whereas the Eizo is HDMI only. Also, the Flanders is a 1920x1080 display whereas the Eizo is 4096 x 2160

The price of the DM250 is around three times the price of the CG 318, so if you're working in HD and money isn't an issue I'd recommend the Flanders, which gives you lots of features you'd expect in a professional monitor for TV/film. If you need a 4K display then the DM250 isn't going to be of much use.

You also need to think about profiling/calibrating your monitors at regular intervals, so it's worth considering how easily you can achieve this in your particular situation, as this will vary with different monitors. If you want to do this yourself, I would have a look at the Spectracal and Light Illusion websites, which will give you information on what software/hardware you might need. The Eizo does have a built-in probe for measuring your display, but this won't be very accurate, and if you're going to be grading commercials and features, you really need to be looking at more professional probes such as the Klein K10A.

There's an interesting walk-through by Scott Freeman on the Avid site, which explains the whole Avid/Resolve roundtrip workflow, where he explains how to get the Resolve renders into Avid's MXF folders, and how to re-link them back to your sequence.

Follow this link:

http://www.avidblogs.com/how-to-roundtrip-davinci-resolve-to-avid-media-composer-tutorial/

On 28/08/2016 at 9:27 PM, Andy Minuth said:

For example BaseGrade will not offer just one control for highlights, but several highlight regions, which is probably necessary to effectively sculpt a HDR output. 

 

I saw a demo of Baselight 5 at the Filmlight's offices in London about a month ago. I can confirm that the BaseGrade's way of splitting the picture up into zones seems very flexible, not only for HDR but also for regular SDR images.

31 minutes ago, Tom Evans said:

And It will not limit my computer's maximum performance compared to the standard edition? 
 

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'standard edition', but I'm assuming you're referring to the responsiveness of the plugin compared to using Avid's built in CC tools. The Baselight plugin uses the processing power of your GPU to provide real-time performance. In fact, I don't think it will run properly without a reasonably modern graphics card. I've run it on systems with a Quadro 4000 card, which is quite a few years old (and sells on Ebay for around $150) so I'm not talking high-end.

The plugin is very responsive, and appears as a green dot effect on the Avid timeline. It can play in real-time, but this is going to depend the complexity of the grade and what else you've got layered on your timeline. The effects render pretty quickly - 10's of seconds rather than minutes for the average length shot.

If you want to see it in action, the best thing is to head over to the Filmlight web site and look at some of the tutorial videos for Baselight Editions.

The z840s are an incremental increase to the popular z820 and as you mentioned, have an updated chipset. This means you can have the newer V3 E5 Xeons (820 only accepts V1 & V2) which is (I think) required if you want to take advantage of the DDR4 memory. Looking purely at bench tests, there seems to be a 20-30% increase in raw processing power using this combination, but of course that doesn't always tell the whole story. Other things like disk throughput and GPU speed/cores will also need to be factored in, to decide how much better off you would be with Z840.

I would say that you should see an improvement using Fusion which probably makes good use of the CPU. Resolve relies heavily on GPU muscle for it's performance, so a Z820 with a GTX1080 GPU would probably give you more bang-for-your-buck.

On 27/08/2016 at 7:49 AM, Igor Riđanović said:

My main issue is that it has to be applied to each clip as an effect. You can't just advance to the next clip, or any clip in the sequence. You always have to drag and drop the effect. This is not a weakness of the plugin but merely the way Media Composer FX presets work.

This is not strictly true as you can apply the Baselight effect once on a filler layer above all your shots, open the Baselight UI, use the subdivide effect command to apply edits to the filler layer to match the shots below, and step through the shots using F5 & F6.

I posted a  brief explanation on the plugin on the Avid forums, which I've reproduced below...

If you still want to retain the convenience and speed of the Symphony colour correction, the Baselight plugin makes for a good additional grading tool to give your material that extra polish. You can add the Baselight effect on a separate filler track above your shots. The plugin has a feature to allow you to subdivide the effect based on the shots below (similar to the subdivide function in Avid's reformat effect) so you can grade a group of shots or one shot per baselight effect.

The way I've used the plugin is to do a base grade using Avid's tools and then do all the secondary correction using Baselight's vastly superior matte/power windows/keyers to make precise selections.

Baselight opens in the LH screen in a dual screen setup.

With the plugin open, you cannot control/select anything else in Symphony, so previewing is done within the plugin. You can only preview the shot you're currently parked on, but you do get the preview on your external monitor. You can jump to the previous/next shot using the F5/F6 function keys.

The Baselight plugin effect is supposedly real-time, but this depends on your hardware, complexity of the grade and your quality settings. I found working at green/yellow (half) resolution seemed to give me the best trade-off between quality and real-time performance. Rendering Baselight effects is fairly fast.

Because Baslight has a single monitor interface, things are a little cramped (compared to a full Baselight system) so you don't get a layers view/timeline or a gallery of stored grades. You can store grades just as you would store any Avid effect, but that means having to jump out of the Baselight plugin. Luckily, Baselight provide a 'scratchpad' (using the numeric keypad) where you can store and retrieve grades.

Baselight is a layers-based system, rather than a node-based approach (as in Davinci Resolve), so if you're not used to working with nodes, Baselight will be more familiar to the way you've worked in Avid.

As previously mentioned, you can take your Baslight-graded timeline to another Avid (Symphony or MC) and using the free Baselight playback plugin to view your grade without having to render the effects or copy any media across. Of course, you cannot make any changes without the full plugin installed.

One of the beauties of the Baselight system is that if you do want to roundtrip to a full Baselight system (using AAF), it's just a transfer of metadata. The AAF just references the media, so once the full Baselight system has a copy of the media, you can round-trip as many times as you want without any rendering or copying of new media, and you can always change a grade in Avid that you've received from the Full Baselight.

Hope this helps.