Thursday, March 4, 2010

Thoughts on SCRATCH, Nuke and Smoke...

I saw an interested discussion on Twitter between Shawn Nelson and Emery Wells. It goes like this:

Shawn: "what's a good way to understand Nuke vs Flame vs Inferno vs Smoke vs Fusion and how they fit together or dont?"

Emery: "Think Nuke for one shot a time. Smoke for bringing it all together. Flame is like Nuke and Smoke combined. Fusion me no likey."

Shawn: "Thanks man! Which ones do you use in your pipeline? Or do you not handle that side of post?"

Emery: "Scratch for grading, Nuke for compositing, and getting Smoke for finishing."

Shawn: "Scratch for grading? I loved the results of the Quantel Pablo! I'm also interested to see Lustre in action. Why go Scratch?"

Then, Yohance Brown jumps in with this:

Yohance: "...price. Scratch $70K, Lustre $150K, Pablo $400K"

Emery adds: "Scratch still has the strongest red support in my opinion. Pablo is great but 6 times the cost. Bout 400k..."

These are all GREAT people you should be following:

http://twitter.com/ShawnNelson
http://twitter.com/emerywells
http://twitter.com/yohance_brown

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Question: Is a $2000 industrial plasma good enough for critical monitoring?

Adam Wilt reports on a science experiment conducted by Pete Putman via HPA:

"Question: is a $2000 industrial plasma good enough for critical monitoring? (LCD problems: costly, high black levels, off-axis color/tone shifts, bad color gamut on CCFL backlights). Took stock Panasonic TH-42PF11UK and tweaked with calibration tools. Got stable gamma with a couple of “speed bumps”, consistent if not perfect RGB tracking, great blacks."

"Color gamut exceeded 709, even large portion of P3. Green was a bit shifted towards cyan (for brightness). Gamma at 120 nits was 2.5; looked very smooth (movie mode), a bit of a bump in 2.2 gamma. Max gray drift was 145K in the shadows; bit of a blue bump around 70%. Brightness 100-120 nits (29-35 ft-Lamberts), contrast 1189:1 (checkerboard), 11370:1 sequential (gamma 2.2), black level 0.124 nits."


"Wanted better; got a Cine-tal Davio using a 3D LUT to correct residual color and gamma errors (as seen in the demo room). After calibration, color accuracy was comparable to reference-grade CRT. Best of all: a very cost-effective solution."

You can read more on this--plus other fantastic reports over at Adam Wilt's excellent HPA 2010 coverage on Pro Video Coalition.