kmeh7 wrote:Looks like there are no colorist here with an ideal workflow.
Because there
is no "ideal" workflow where there is some kind of magical solution or wand to wave and the software reads your mind and spits whatever out so that it can be used in any context.
Why is it that so many people jump in (wrong-head first) and the first thing they want to do is overcomplicate things so that it
looks like they're doing something really difficult, when what they are doing is messing themselves up, probably overtaxing their hardware platform, and in no way understand concepts of colorspaces, gamut transforms, how to read a scope (if they have one) and fundamentally assume that all software is the same, that something like Resolve is just Photoshop for movies.
Rec709 is a description of image media that is suitable for delivering broadcast programming. Resolve works in 709, pretty much by default and does not require any other interventions. A "LUT" is not a "look", at least it did not start out that way. A Look-Up-Table, as has been discussed at great length, is simply a method of mapping one set of values to another. If you are working in 709, you do not require an input LUT if you are dealing with footage shot in 709. If you are working with a calibrated broadcast display monitor you do not require a display LUT. In a sense,
every correction is a LUT. There are some tables that have the specific function of transforming the image values found in a particular medium to suitable values for display in another. We used to have daily re-calibrations to apply Look Up Table transforms to final masters for accurate film-out reproduction. The reason for this is that the laser RGB values used to expose Original Camera Negative (various film stocks, and yes, real emulsion) stimulate the dye layers non-linearly, so we have to alter them so that the release prints kind of resemble the digital grade. And still, the lab guys are still tweaking away because of bath variables, concentrations, chemical exhaustion, temperature... stock variance... at once, this is an exact science and a flying-f**k at a rolling donut. Even DCI is not so clear-cut. Clearly defined is not the same as easily achievable.
If you are not operating in a completely controlled environment, calibrating all your references to specific display preferences with clearly defined delivery goals, then it will be extremely difficult to achieve consistent results. Today we have to take an ever-expanding roster of wildly different delivery platforms. I almost pine for the days of NTSC and PAL...
almost. But even with such a narrow definition, the multi-million dollar suites of not-so-long-ago required daily attention to stay on the numbers, employing high-price, high-time professionals with proprietary equipment that worked. I have a collection of T-shirts, but it almost seems quaint and faintly ridiculous now (never mind if they still fit).
It seems almost hilarious that complete neophytes expect the same performance, and with commodity assets, when what is really happening is that the "workflow" is just getting
more chaotic, ambiguous and capricious.
Latest pet peeve... what is "4K?" Because one manufacturer says its "this", but you still have to deliver "that", and the commodity suppliers are rubbing their hands together in glee, because they are, in a practical sense, incompatible.
jPo