I’ve been going through a lot of different themes and trying to organize the site so it’s as clutter-free and usable as possible, including eliminating all the distracting widgets in the right sidebar and adding category menus for quick navigation of the blog. I’m also slowly going through my old posts, particularly the post-production workflows… Read More
a7s III HDR10 Grading Breakdown
Grading tools in Final Cut Pro may be seriously limited when compared to DaVinci Resolve but that doesn’t mean there’s not a whole lot that can still be done to improve the look of your videos. Up till now, I haven’t done any grading of my HDR videos at all (apart from neutralizing the green… Read More
ProRes 422 or HEVC?
In our untiring commitment to being the ultimate resource for those seeking factual information on uploading HDR videos to YouTube, we’ve added another comparison that aspires to settle the question: should you be transcoding XAVC S-I to HEVC or to ProRes 422 when uploading to YouTube? This 10-second clip took 83 seconds to finish processing… Read More
Editor Goes Through Hell So You Don’t Have to
My first long format HDR video, things didn’t go so well… After playing the video for a couple of minutes, ASBL kicks in and pretty soon the picture is too dark to watch comfortably. I believe that lowering contrast to 80 and turning off Peak Brightness prevents ASBL from activating, but that defeats the whole… Read More
a7s III Slow Motion Sample Footage
This morning when I woke up I was greeted with a brainless comment on one of my YouTube videos basically saying that Sony colors suck and that the Venice is the only Sony camera with decent colors. I promptly deleted the comment, but rather than making another rant video, I thought I’d just upload a… Read More
Is Noise Reduction Making Your Videos Worse?
RAW video is noisy af and benefits from noise reduction. However, because denoising ends up softening the image, we’ve got to add sharpening. In this video, we test drive Final Cut Pro’s built-in noise reduction software. I dislike grainy footage, so I’ll probably choose to set NR on ‘medium’ and sharpening on ‘low’ until I… Read More
BMD UltraStudio 4K Mini Fan Noise
Some have complained of fan noise from the UltraStudio 4K Mini, so I’m sharing a recording of the sound, first from right up against the unit, then after sitting at my desk just a couple feet away. Compared to my MacBook Pro and LaCie hard drives, the unit is virtually silent.
S-Log3 or ProRes RAW HQ?
This is just a superficial comparison between Sony a7s III S-Log3 and ProRes RAW HQ. Because I was recording them simultaneously, one internally, the other to a Ninja V, I had to settle on a compromise exposure. For S-Log3, I normally use the camera’s own zebras set to custom 2 lower level 94% and for… Read More
Begone Green Tint!
I hadn’t graded any of my previous HDR videos until just a couple of days ago, when I ended up spending far more time than I care to admit trying to rid the model’s face and hair of green tint. I suppose I could’ve just applied an adjustment layer to the entire project and dialed… Read More
Tip for Better Color
After spending an extra hour correcting the green tint on my latest video, I thought I’d try out a tip from Gerald Undone that he posted on Twitter the other day. Video coming shortly!
