🎨 Colorist Newsletter #484

Published: Sun, 06/06/21

Issue CDLXXXIV: The DV Leap Edition
The Tao of Color Grading Newsletter
Curated links of news, reviews, thoughts, career advice, and humor for professional Video / Film Colorists & Finishers. Delivered Sundays.
From The Publisher
It's going to be an interesting week at Tao HQ. Two words: Dolby Vision.

This week I get my first taste of the Dolby Vision cake. We're remastering a 90-minute 1080p project from a few years ago to UHD with Dolby Vision (and ATMOS).

I hope I'll be able to talk about it in more detail. I'm currently neck-deep in preparations - both project prep, restoring the project from its deep freeze back to camera-originals, and studying/preparing for the Dolby Vision workflow. 

Along those lines, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the official instructor-led multi-day Dolby Vision Training course. Dolby's Aby Mathew's introduction to HDR, Dolby Vision (DV), and the problem Dolby Laboratories was trying to solve with DV is top-notch.

The sessions are calibrated to speak at the level of creative colorists who want to understand how to think about the technology that girds this new aspect to our craft. It then goes into the technical weeds for creating, managing, QCing, and delivering Dolby Vision images.

If you're not already creating DV content then definitely bookmark Dolby's live training. The pricing is reasonable (but not inexpensive). You won't want to wait until the last minute - since you might have to wait a few weeks until the next live class (currently, June 15).

Wish me luck as I wish you another week of:

Happy Grading!

I'll see you next Sunday.
(and remember - if you have a story that's a fit for this Newsletter, hit reply or email it to '[email protected]'! Include a quick reason for the suggested link.)

- Patrick Inhofer
Colorist | Publisher | Coach

Join the 'Color Cartel' Protein Folding Team - Rosetta@home allows you to donate the spare CPU cycles of your rig to the scientific fight against coronaviruses and cancers! The Tao Newsletter's Color Cartel is a Top 5% team and climbing. Join Rosetta@home, set up an account, start 'folding', and connect to The Color Cartel team.
The Craft
Featuring the work of creative craftsmen, the theory of color, and industry news. Learn practical workflows, useful theories, and actionable insights from existing (and emerging) leaders and teachers in our industry.
If you've been looking for a reason to join SMPTE, the replay of this event may well be worth its price with a terrific lineup of panelists: "We discuss the impact of adding additional primaries on the color gamut: reduction in metamerism and the ability to provide expanded colors outside the current color gamuts. We can display what has never been seen on earth before now: the colors in between the colors.
 
During the SMPTE+ event you will hear from technologists, creatives and NASA experts on the importance of color and research in the area of multi-primary color and expansion of the color gamut beyond RGB."

"We interviewed working cinematographers to find out how they’re already using 12K as a tool, and we sat down with Blackmagic Design to hear their rationale for pushing capture resolutions even higher."

A good pithy primer: "Contrast means so much more than the separation of light and dark. Understanding the different types of contrast can train our photographic eyes and improve our Images."

This is an easy to read article that has a few interesting ideas if you find you need to change things up across a never-ending sea of Zoom calls and client reviews.

A roundup of commentary about the new films hitting the silver screen as the pandemic-inspired mandates are easing in the USA: "You’ve got that big screen that just takes up your whole field of vision. It’s so much more immersive. You’re in the dark. Your phone is not ringing, no one’s walking back and forth in front of you, going back to the kitchen or doing whatever, it’s that movie feeling."

The tools are new but the techniques stretch back decades: "Those of us that are old enough to remember hooking two VHS VCRs together and editing with the pause button because we didn’t have a flying erase head can probably appreciate a lot of what is going on in these apps."
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The Tools
Our craft keeps changing. And growing. Learn about updates to your favorite software. Discover new tools to help you work faster or more creatively. Build your toolchest with new techniques and approaches. 

This link takes you to the change log on their forum.

(video) The tip is embedded on this page. Plus, if you're reading this on Sunday then you've still got time to take advantage of their 20% discount off Warren's fxPhd class.

(video) "DaVinci Resolve offers two methods to substitute your original media for enhanced performance. The traditional method has been to create optimized media. Since DaVinci Resolve 17 a new Proxy Media workflow is available as well."

(video) From a SGO email: "Introducing a dedicated Dolby Vision Color Interface, displayed in a more visually attractive way, facilitating HDR grading with Mistika’s professional color toolset – including an all-new interactive hexagon tool."

(video) "In this video, we're exploring some of the characteristics and concepts that often accompany the "video" look, and what we can do to improve them."
I'm happy to see this: "Divergent media has released ScopeBox 4.1, and it includes support for Apple Silicon, beta previews of new timecoded alerts and file based QC workflows and more."

If you need high-quality, color-accurate reference stills of popular movies, tv shows, or commercials, this website is fast becoming the premiere repository. It's also just put everything behind a pay wall. Click through for pricing. (via Marc Wielage)

A good detailed article for my production peeps out there: "The software I’m using now is essentially Assimilate’s DIT Pack that combines Live Looks for on-set live grading and Scratch Dailies for transcoding. I like that Assimilate software runs on both the Windows and macOS as it gives me flexibility in my work and in building my DIT cart for different projects."

An explanation of the workflows and tools that support it.
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Pushing Photons
These stories are from MixingLight.com's membership Library of color grading articles, tutorials, and podcasts (Tao Of Color is co-Owner). Do you want to read a story listed here but not a member? Sign up for a free 7-Day Test Drive.​​​ There's also color correction Practice Projects for purchase.

Also, Mixing Light continues running its 'Work From Home' permanent discounted pricing offer as our industry is still trying to find its footing after the year-long lockdowns.

"Dan shares some grading inspiration from the 2020 best colour grading nominees at the UK music video awards"

"Cullen Kelly kicks off a new exciting series about DCTL coding. Learn the vocabulary, syntax, and techniques to create DCTLs to aid your color grading."

(video) "In Part 2 of his series, Joey shows you how to take remote color sessions to the next level by adding macros & remote control to your ATEM switcher setup"
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Gear Heads
Stay updated on the latest hardware that's shipping - because the craft of color grading isn't just about software. Plus, keep an eye on future equipment trends and hardware odds-and-ends.

"How fast does the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT run versus other GPUs connected to or installed inside the iMac Pro?"

(podcast) "Blackmagic has several solutions that make production and post-production life easier when teams are in different locations. We take a deep dive under the hood and talk about DaVinci Resolve 17 and Cut for next-gen editing, Fairlight, Crew in a Box, how to get better sound with Zoom interviews, the Pocket Cinema Camera 6Ks and ATEM Mini Pro switchers, and more!"

"Follow our step-by-step guide to get important stats on the viability of your Mac’s SSD using Terminal and smartmontools."

If you're in the market for a dedicated hardware scope: "This instrument is built from foundational technology developed over decades by the Tektronix Video team which is now part of Telestream. The instrument continues to push beyond earlier technological boundaries to include several tools useful to color grading."
Sunday Fun(nies)
Random thoughts, tidbits, and fun stuff that caught my attention this week. Maybe it's color grading related. Maybe not. Ya got'ta read to the end of the Newsletter to find out.

"Amazon's experimental wireless mesh networking turns users into guinea pigs." Not funny. (via Robbie Carman)
If you're like me then this is definitely fun - but you'll need to click through to find out what 'MoCA' stands for: "MoCA 2.0 gives up to a full gigabit worth of speed and should be more than adequate for my friends’ ~400Mbps internet plan." (via Robbie Carman)
 
Th- th- th- that's all folks! I'll see you next Sunday.