Steve Fishwick wrote:I don't see the need for independent filmmakers to necessarily need it, though. If you're lucky enough to get your film on Netflix and the rest, you'll have to go through established QC channels, somewhere. The broadcasters do their own again. It's not necessary for most anything else. PSE epilepsy Harding test is mandatory here; but again not something the individual is obliged to bother with normally.
I have worked on indie films where as part of the distribution agreement, the filmmaker had to pay for an outside QC to be done. And the distributor had a list of maybe 5 or 6 QC companies they would accept -- you couldn't just pick "anybody." In LA, what I see is a combination of a human QC operator and QC software... so they work together in tandem just to check little things that might go wrong.
For example: I've gotten some memorable QC reports where they complained, "there are footsteps
on concrete in this scene that takes place
on carpet." Or "bad ADR -- does not match production sound." Or "the lady's third close-up is more red than the first two close-ups." Show me some QC software that can flag these problems. Or: "L & R surround channels appear to be reversed." That stuff happens. And trust me, Amazon, Apple, and Netflix are very tough on this stuff.
I saw a huge, massive $200M film on streaming a few months ago, and (because I'm me) I stuck with it all the way through the studio logo at the very end... and the studio logo was in
log color space, with blacks up to 50 or something. I fell off my chair when I saw that. I noted the name of the post supervisor, who was somebody I actually knew at <company X> and I sent them an email and warned them of the problem. They never wrote me back, but "maybe" it was fixed in subsequent versions. Would QC software catch that?
I totally agree that QC software can fix obvious glitches, blanking problems, letterbox changes on cuts, glitches, wrong formatting, and all that stuff. Omniscope does some of this, but it's not their primary business. I think of Resolve as a conform / editing / color / VFX / sound tool, yet it can sorta do other things like making DCPs. Do we want to add QC to that list? Hell, I'd be happy if they greatly improved the Title tool, and that's something I use all the time. I've been whining about that since like Resolve 10.