Following the praise lavished on Apple's new MacBook Pro lineup featuring Liquid Retina XDR mini-LED displays, industry watchers are now betting on rivals sitting up, taking notice and following suit, increasingly incorporating either OLED or mini-LED displays in their own notebooks. This can only be a good thing, as the 270m notebook market lags deplorably... Continue Reading →
Colorist: MacBook Pro XDR Display Is Cheap Walmart Trash
In a forum thread about the new MacBook Pros, sleazy BMD contributor and colorist Marc Wielage compares Apple's marvelous new Liquid Retina XDR miniLED display to dime-store garbage, saying, without a hint of irony: "I can add to this discussion by saying I got the new MacBook Pro M1 Max about 3 days ago and it's been great... Continue Reading →
BenQ Ambassador: Apple Displays Are Going to Be the Standard Going Forward
While calibrating a new MacBook Pro with miniLED display, BenQ ambassador Art Suwansang had this to say: “A few things I wanted to share while this is flashing all these different cool amazing colors is that how the display behaves when you change into different reference modes is very similar to that of a hardware... Continue Reading →
Stupid Fast Exposure Adjustment!
We've written extensively in these pages about how to use false color and how it makes nailing exposure idiot proof, but for some reason it never occurred to us to make a video illustrating just how stupid fast it is. So today, we redress that oversight. https://youtu.be/tTZnp4CVLXo
Why We’re Picking Up the M1 Max MacBook Pro
We've currently got a 2019 16" MacBook Pro with 2.3 GHz 8-core Intel i9 processor, 32GB memory, 1TB SSD and AMD Radeon Pro 5500M and our machine just crawls. It took 1 hour 52 minutes to transcode a 4 minute 50 second ProRes RAW HQ clip to HEVC 10-bit in Apple Compressor for delivery to... Continue Reading →
M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros Crash While Playing HDR YouTube Videos
MacRumors is reporting that some 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro owners have complained of crashes when watching HDR YouTube videos. Watching an HDR YouTube video in Safari then scrolling through comments resulted in a kernel error, according to one reader. Apparently, watching YouTube in full screen and then exiting full screen mode can also cause... Continue Reading →
Our Response to a Colorist Insisting HDR YouTube Videos Can’t Be Graded on a Mac
All we’ve got to say is how grateful we are for the handful of intrepid YouTubers working with less than Grade 1B reference monitors, because it seems the only ones who can justify purchasing $30,000 displays are post production houses working on multimillion dollar shows that are lit in an SDR environment and monitored in... Continue Reading →
Mind Saturation & Noise Reduction
Saturation While the extended color volume of HDR results in perceptibly more vibrant colors able to retain saturation and brightness without compromise, it pays to be cautious with saturation. Glowing skin and radioactive foliage are indications that saturation is cranked up too high. To assess saturation, use the vectorscope. In order to see the highlight... Continue Reading →
Download ProRes RAW HQ Sample Footage
Download 4.2K 23.976 ProRes RAW HQ. https://youtu.be/kcdZGA7LW44
MacBook Pro and iPad Pro to Feature Double-Stack OLED in 2025?
In what could turn out to be seriously exciting news for HDR video creators, Apple is said to be exploring OLED or microLED panels for its MacBook Pros - possibly as soon as 2025! The two-stack tandem structure of the rumored OLED panels would consume less energy, allow ProMotion similar to the iPhone 13 and... Continue Reading →
Grant Petty Sells Home for $4.5 Million
Blackmagic Design founder Grant Petty has sold his home at 39 Cardigan Place for USD $4.5 million after purchasing another AUD $10m Victorian-era home in the same suburb in June.
Nikon Z9 ProRes RAW Internal: Yawn
We’ll let you in on a little secret: being able to record RAW internally is all well and good, aside from the fact that XQD and CFexpress Type B cards cost a king's ransom compared to SSD and the Nikon LCD is all but useless for HDR - making an Atomos recorder a vastly superior... Continue Reading →
Do Not Upgrade to Resolve 17.4!
The other day, we cautioned Mac M1 users against updating to Resolve 17.4 because of acknowledged issues with getting HDR on an external display and today we learn that Resolve 17.4 can't export Dolby Vision IMF files. Aaron Hayden, colorist and owner of Color Monkey, writes: "Trying to export a UHD Dolby Vision IMF using... Continue Reading →
Mac M1 Owners: Do Not Update to Resolve Studio 17.4!!
A Blackmagic forum member writes: "I use a Mac M1 with HDMI directly connected to LG CX. Using the same settings, 17.3.2 can easily watch HDR. After upgrading to 17.4, the exact same color management settings and other settings were tried, but HDR could not be activated. After downgrading to 17.3.2, without making any changes, it directly shows HDR...... Continue Reading →
Remote Collaboration
Aaron Hayden, colorist and owner of Color Monkey, a post-production house located in Los Angeles, California, in response to Vincent Theo's comparison of Apple's iPhone 12 Pro to the Sony BVM-X300 reference mastering monitor, adds the following: "No joke, in the current Covid environment and everyone working remotely, Netflix recommends producers review HDR color/online on... Continue Reading →
Download ProRes RAW HQ Sample Footage
ProRes RAW HQ 4.2K 24p HDR footage for download. https://youtu.be/CwajLXYxmGE Ninja V waveform monitor Ninja V false color Downward curve applied to ETTR clips Color correction using X-Rite ColorChecker, Hue vs. Hue and vectorscope Skin tone line on vectorscope
Camera Reviewers Could Learn a Thing or Two From This DP
The footage we've seen from the DJI 4D looks amazeballs; and that DJI has committed to working with the following DPs on their upcoming works with the 4D is an arrangement unprecedented in our experience: Rodney Charters, ASC, CNSC, NZCS; Takuro Ishizaka, JSC; Rachel Morrison, ASC; XiaoShi Zhao, CNSC; and Academy Award winners for Best... Continue Reading →
Why We Won’t Be Picking Up the a7 IV
Having seen the reviews and checked out the footage, we're afraid we're going to have to take a hard pass on the long awaited a7 IV. The colors aren't as nice, it appears to have worse underexposure latitude, the rolling shutter is pretty awful and there's that 60p crop. For reasons they couldn't pinpoint, CVP... Continue Reading →
The Daejeon Chronicles 