I've become a bit of an evangelist about Blackmagic Designs of recent and it's no surprise why. I'm still in the glow of getting a Blackmagic URSA Broadcast, which I will be shooting a test video with in the next week or so, but I am still blown away by Davinci Resolve. It was such the right decision I made a couple of years ago to invest my time into it. It really does rock. Read More...

MERCS Moonsamy, the prequel to MERCS, is being editing and mastered on Davinci Resolve 15. Did I mention that Blackmagic release awesome feature rich updates? Well this is no exception, v15 comes with a new page, Fusion! Yep, they have integrated Fusion into Davinci Resolve. So now, the entire workflow can be done inside Davinci Resolve. For now though, due to familiarity, I will do any visual effects in After Effects, but fairlight has also got some cool new features such as ADR, and built in effects. I have setup the project to mix to both stereo and 5.1 surround. My studio now has an additional amplifier to power the rear and centre speakers, so can now monitor in 5.1 Read More...

A couple of months ago, BlackMagic Design released V14 of Davinci Resolve. This edition has just got it's own dedicated Audio page called Fairlight. Now for some, I'm sure it's a bit confusing because it's a little unconventional, but for me, having grown up in the era of the analog mixing desk, this make absolutely perfect sense. If your mindset is structured around signal flow, then it's logical. You can route audio from inputs to channels, map channels to submixes, add inserts and effects, it's amazing. It's like having a full blown mixer built in (which is exactly what it is).

Now, in Davinci Resolve, the integrated workflow just got tighter. You go from the media management through to Editing, colour grading, sound design, and delivery. There is no need to roundtrip anywhere. The only caveat though is with visual effects, which at the moment, I am still accomplishing with After Effects CS6 although I have downloaded the FREE copy of Fusion 9, but will need to find some time to properly have a look.

The fairlight page is a dedicated audio workflow. What's really, really nice about having an integrated workflow, is that you have full access to the source clips as they exist both in the media pool and more importantly, as on the timeline. You can switch between editing, colour grading and sound design so easily. Audio round tripping I have always found as one of the hardest, or at least, the one with most compromise. AAF vs OMF is one of the challenges, but with fairlight, you can just access all your individual audio edits and not have them lost in complete stems. I have now decided to switch my post production entirely over from FCPX and Premiere Pro to Davinci Resolve (with the exception of After Effects CS6). From what I've seen, it's a no brainer. The colour grading is probably the best, the timeline operates like most editing packages (FCPX decided to do it's own softplay approach, I tried it, didn't like it, although roles are interesting but really, just another wrapper around something where there wasn't a problem to be fixed), and now with the integrated sound, I am struggling to find a reason to stay with my older packages. Also, Davinci Resolve just works with multichannel sound files! I now have the task of getting fully up to speed with the new features and exercising resolve on a project from the beginning. I have every confidence it will be the right decision, it's well made software.
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I have used many different packages over the years for editing and post production activities, from Sony Vegas (PC only), Final Cut Studio 7 (Mac only), Premiere Pro (PC & Mac), and FCPX (Mac only). Each of these has it's strengths and also has companion packages for doing the specialist features or tasks in the post production work cycle. What these have in common is that you need to roundtrip the project between the various separate components that make up a post production suite. It's a real pain, and I mean, a real pain. Davinci Resolve is cross platform, PC, Mac & Linux and is growing in functionality. Is Davinci Resolve the future? I think it really could be.

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Electronic cameras will at some point in their lifetime exhibit dead, or hot, pixels. These take form by a single pixel, or small cluster of pixels, remaining on all the time. Sometimes red, sometimes white, but in every case, but always there. It’s not always easy to spot them, depends on where they are and the colour of the underlying action. You may not even notice them if you are following the on screen action, but as soon as you do, it becomes very distracting and undesirable. Getting rid of these, in most cases, is much easier than you may think. This article describes what I would argue is the simplest way of doing this, particularly as it can be incorporated into the DIT phase of a project. Read More...

A minute silence for the recently departed Color Assist product from Technicolor. Yes, just 7 months after launch I received an email, like all users, that Color Assist is no more and that all development has ceased, support to end in September 2013. For the time being customers can get support by emailing CinestyleHelp@technicolor.com.

It’s a shame, although seemingly simple, what it did do it did well which in my book should be the goal of any tool. So I previously declared that it was my color grading tool of choice, now I will need to put up with the others which all work, but are either bloated, or missing an essential element, but importantly, not real time. I personally think that Technicolor were on to something with this tool, but it was not meant to be. Who knows the reason why it was pulled, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a higher level corporate shareholder profit driven decision. It will go into bucket of other extremely useful but deprecated software such as Combustion, Final Cut Pro, and Apple Shake. Read More...

I am one of those people that like to have a tool for any job, so inevitably, I do seem to have quite a bit of software. Some of it sits at the bottom of my toolbox and gets used occasionally whilst other titles are firmly strapped into my tool belt ready to be used at a moments notice. There are some that I like, some that I love, and some I think are awesome and that I can’t do without.

Technicolor Color Assist is the latter and has already become the pencil behind my ear. It doesn’t (at present) have all the features of other colour grading tools that I have access to, yet there is something quietly amazing about this software. It has been designed such that what it does do it does really well, but still there is something else above functionality that makes this software so nice to use. Read More...

About 8 years ago (I think), I remember using a couple of products from a small, little known company called FXHome, based in the United Kingdom, for doing special effects and compositing. In fact, I think they were the first tools I used for doing such tasks and at the time they were called Composite Lab and Effects Lab. They were easy to use, fast, and had excellent features for the price. At that time, I was involved in an ambitious zero budget film that utilised a lot of green screen and scenes that had to be fabricated (17th century ships, buildings etc), object removal, tracking etc etc. Read More...