In this short clip, we're primarily interested in how Y'CbCr chroma subsampling affects skin tones in HDR video. Y'CbCr results in hue shifts and luminance errors. From our own testing, it appears to make skin tones yellowish-green, darker and oversaturated. HEVC Main 4:2:2 10 is preferable to HEVC 4:2:0. Download the comparison here. If you... Continue Reading →
DaVinci Resolve Studio 18 Depth Map Comparison
We applied the depth map, then went ahead and added some blur.
Thoughts on Nikolaj Pognerebko’s RAW Convertor (Revised!)
https://youtu.be/if7IzD9tl4w Not a few of us have dreamed of being able to work with native ProRes RAW files in DaVinci Resolve, but realistically, it appears as though that’s not on the horizon. We'd been transcoding to ProRes 4444 with variable success for a while when it was announced last year that a Czech filmmaker by... Continue Reading →
Teaching Daily Routines
One of the twenty-eight classes I teach each week in Ho Chi Minh City. I consider myself lucky, since many foreigners had to leave the country because of tightened restrictions on visas or loss of employment opportunities, including a large community of Ukranians.
Create Textural Depth II
The viewer’s eye can be drawn to the subject in a number of ways. Two of the techniques employed here are color separation, achieved through split-toning, and obscuring the surroundings using a mask and reducing brightness. Another approach is to create textural depth by accentuating the texture in cooler, darker backgrounds while de-emphasizing grain in... Continue Reading →
Projector Central Weighs in on 4:2:0
Over at Projector Central, Michael J. McNamara, former Executive Technology Editor of Popular Photography magazine and a renowned expert on digital capture, storage, and display technologies writes: “Does using 4:2:0 subsampling significantly degrade image quality for movie viewing versus using 4:2:2? Not according to most viewers who've enjoyed any number of 4K UHD SDR and... Continue Reading →
Cullen Kelly’s Core Elements Creative LUT Pack Sample Footage
Download the version with Dehancer grain added (HDR) here. https://youtu.be/X_b4y5ylmIE
Create Textural Depth!
During an appearance on Cullen Kelly’s Grade School, the brilliant colorist Jill Bogdanowicz revealed a secret to accenting texture without it looking over-processed. While working on Joker, the colorist used Live Grain - which separates out the red, green and blue channels, creating grain that resembles scanned film - to accentuate texture in the cooler,... Continue Reading →
Not A Grade Reveal!
A few caveats: first, the original footage was green and overexposed; secondly, we didn't use the recommended DaVinci Wide Gamut; and lastly, as we do all of our grading before the LUT, the original footage looked nuts when we removed the LUT for the grade reveal, so we normalized it for the video. https://youtu.be/3Bv3RUGbwEc