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
Massive LUTs Required for HDR
According to at least one study, in order to achieve a comparably error-free 3D-LUT to those used for SDR, a LUT size larger than 55x55x55 is required for 12-bit HDR (Rec.2020 ST2084). Of course, such gargantuan LUTs aren't currently feasible! "In 10-bit SDR, in order to achieve unnoticeable interpolation errors using the trilinear interpolation method,... Continue Reading →
DaVinci Resolve Update Fixes HDR Controls Bug
DaVinci Resolve firmware update 17.4.6 addresses an issue that caused the app to crash when using some of the HDR controls with Apple Silicon. Prior to the update, clicking on any of the range indicators in the HDR palette - the small icon to the upper left of each of the HDR wheels that allows... Continue Reading →
Cullen Kelly’s Kodak 2383 LUT + DL
The aggressive compression algorithms of streaming platforms destroy grain, which is why we don’t upload videos with grain to YouTube. Instead, we’re offering subscribers the opportunity to download clips, allowing you to view the picture as it was intended. We recommend throwing the movie on the timeline of your favorite NLE, setting the project to... Continue Reading →
Cullen Kelly’s Kodak 2383 LUT
Adding a Kodak 2383 LUT is one of the easiest ways to add color separation to your videos. We just used the LUT at around 25% strength here. https://youtu.be/-RDIfpD_0nQ
Generate MaxCLL and MaxFALL HDR10 Metadata in DaVinci Resolve
As consumer HDR displays have differing peak luminance and contrast capabilities that are not infrequently less than the mastering display, it's necessary to map PQ content to match the capabilities of the target consumer display device. This scaling or mapping is controlled and managed by metadata. According to YouTube's help page, "HDR videos must have... Continue Reading →
ICtCp, or Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
Here at the Daejeon Chronicles, we've tirelessly championed RAW for a long time now, for a multitude of reasons: it responds better to grading than heavily compressed, low bit rate chroma subsampled codecs and is less prone to banding; sharpening, noise reduction and white balance aren't baked into RAW files, giving more flexibility in post;... Continue Reading →
Grade Reveal & Download with Grain Added
This video is the culmination of the many changes we've made since around the time we switched over to P3-D65 - some tiny, some significant - from shooting S-Gamut3.cine rather than S-Gamut3, avoiding yellow in the false color guide of the Ninja V for anything but specular highlights, monitoring with video levels instead of full... Continue Reading →
HEVC Main10 vs. HEVC Main 4:2:2 10
A little while back, we reported that Blackmagic Design had added support for HEVC 4:2:2 Main10 on Apple Silicon in DaVinci Resolve. What we didn't realize at the time was that the render page now had three selections for encoding HEVC: Main (8-bit), Main10 (10-bit 4:2:0) and Main 4:2:2 10. Using Invisor, an app brought... Continue Reading →
The Daejeon Chronicles 