The Mass Migration Edition — Sunday Morning Color Grading Newsletter

It’s been quiet on the Mixing Light website these past three weeks.

But quiet doesn’t mean at-rest. In fact, ML Southern Command has been burning the midnight oil for almost three straight weeks. It started on 18 March with a single question:

Hey, Claude: Can I create clickable Chapters that instantly take members to that point in the video?

On April 1, after completing my background research, I roadmapped an entire project for a custom-built JavaScript video player and began working on it full-time.

This week, members will have a new, fully custom-built video player. Created with Claude Code over the past 10 days (with only Sundays off), I’ve also migrated the 1,253-video library to Amazon CloudFront. Every video is being retranscoded for optimal performance and improved streaming quality.

Every video will have this new player embed.

Interactive, searchable transcripts now accompany ALL 973 video Insights

Every Insight now includes a high-quality transcript and captions. The transcript plays along with the video, and you can scroll forward/backward and click it to instantly jump to that location.

I’ve also built a ‘Search Transcript’ tool so you can type in a keyword and see every instance, for instant click-and-watch.

In short time, interactive transcripts (with captions) will be available in all of our Resolve Fundamentals Courses.

Did I mention the advanced keyboard controls?

J-K-L, volume/mute, 10-second skips – almost everything has a keyboard shortcut, just like a post professional expects.

I’m particularly proud of the auto-captions

At the last minute, I decided the ‘auto’ captions were sub-standard – and frankly, embarrassing. So Claude and I did a 5-way bake-off of Transcription services with six different Mixing Light Insights, laden with jargon, industry acronyms, and multiple speaker accents. A service I never heard of blew the competition out of the water! I couldn’t be happier with its quality.

While not perfect, these auto captions are far more tolerable than I expected and generally reflect well on Mixing Light.

Plus, the player will detect whether we have human-curated captions and swap them out whenever they’re available, mostly for insights created in the past three years.

I’m going to turn that Transcription Bake-Off into an Insight because the results were extremely educational and I think relevant to any editor or finisher who has to go through this process. And so that you don’t have to email me, the winner: Deepgram.com

There’s a lot more coming.

Also – Mixing Light Insights will start flowing again this week!

But that’s not all that’s on my mind…

NAB Las Vegas begins next weekend!

Mixing Light will not have an official presence. But the Colorist Mixer will always be part of the Mixing Light/Tao Of Color legacy, and Kevin Shaw + Warren Eagles have been carrying it forward with strength and excellence. If nothing else, readers of this Newsletter attending NAB should definitely get their tickets now! They usually sell out.

Happy Grading!

Sincerely,

Pat Inhofer
Chief Photon Wrangler, Publisher
MixingLight.com

PS – If you find an item you think should be in this newsletter, email me a quick note.

PPS – As a Newsletter subscriber, comment on this article at Mixing Light (login required).

If you’re in Vegas and you’re reading this Newsletter, you should attend. Don’t wait until the last minute; they usually sell out.

Team Mixing Light taught at PPW for most of the 2010’s up through the lost Covid NAB. It’s always a good time.

If you’re looking to skill up, beyond just looking at the latest gear, it’s a good reason to attend the show and jam in a bunch of learning you’d be hard-pressed to gather in any other 3-day event.

Click through to learn more from one of the instructors, who also gives you the general lay of the land.

On the Blackmagic Design channel, BMD is streaming their NAB reveal at 1 pm ET on Monday, 13 April.

“I was definitely walking into an established look and world that my director, George Kane, and I were keen to uphold. There was a lookbook, which featured a lot of color and leaning into the weirdness wherever possible. It was clear they wanted a bold visual style for the show, which supported the tonal direction of the script very well.”

The article is a good read.

“Tomkins refers to the method as “protection through destruction.” By committing to that structure in a LUT, Morris exposed more generously and let the curve define the image. “If there was something on-set we couldn’t see in the shadows in the LUT, we had to light for it, even though it was comfortably there in the LOG.” The Alexa 35 retained highlight information while preserving subtle color in darker areas.”

A good read.

“Everything we currently know about color,” Stamper states, “could plausibly be traced back to one point in modern history.”

“The number of Executive Producers on movies has more than doubled since 2000. And this kind of credit inflation is also present in other producer credits. Why?.”

“A studio releasing its own model suggests Netflix sees strategic value in shaping the tools layer rather than waiting for vendors to build what it needs. It also creates a recruiting signal: Netflix is doing publishable AI research that ships into production workflows.”

But I ask: Why does Netflix need to alter filmmakers’ images by meaningfully changing the actions and stories within the frame? I appreciate that it’s an open source project. It’s the impulse that makes me wonder.

From the Canonical Ubuntu channel. “The main point of this presentation is that desktop user experience (UX) has stagnated for over two decades … Scott Jenson argues that in order to truly innovate, the open-source community must look beyond simply polishing existing interfaces and focus on foundational, long-term experimentation.”

“Master DaVinci Resolve Fusion’s Node Graph with essential tips for faster connections, cleaner layouts, and efficient keyboard shortcuts.”

“Discover the 40th ASC Awards winners with trailers, crew credits, and curated resources for each cinematography category.”

“Explore Genesis, Cullen Kelly’s film emulation plugin for Resolve, with tips on negative stocks, development controls, bleach bypass, & more.”

From the Cullen Kelly channel. “Learn how to build your own film emulation for free that beats many other plugins and techniques out there.”

Hector likes the workflow. A workflow Cullen shared in an Insight a few years ago.

“As a native Premiere panel, ShotNotes lets editors organize their projects by adding detailed notes directly to their sequences. You can add timecode to the notes, link to other sequences, and even keep track of how long editing tasks take to do.”

Multiple embedded videos in the article.

“Users can process up to 20 video or image files at once, or work with image sequences of up to 2,000 frames. A preview frame is generated instantly, allowing results to be assessed before committing to full processing. For more complex shots, an interactive masking interface enables precise subject selection, giving users control over exactly what remains in frame.”

“If you are not familiar with FoolCat, it is a program that generates camera reports, complete with thumbnails and extended metadata. It is available for macOS and Windows.”

I was not familiar with FoolCat until now.

Huh. I didn’t realize Vegas Pro was still around. I wonder if they’ll follow the trend and drop: ‘Pro’?

“At the moment there are no plans to add a huge amount of extra content, that takes money and more importantly, time. But, we are keen to hear your thoughts on the site.

Is it something we could give to the community? Would somebody want to run it back up to speed again? Could some crowdfunding keep the lights on and pay for journalism? Anything is possible!”

If FCP is part of your workflow, reach out to them and share your thoughts.

“All of the new servers we are announcing today support two M.2 drives internally for the OS, and anywhere from 4 to 24 U.2 SSDs in the front (and sometimes the back!) for storage.”

“In some cases, reducing memory capacity slightly can yield meaningful cost savings without affecting performance. In others, insufficient RAM can significantly slow down your workflow.

We’ll walk through how to track your RAM usage and highlight specific workflows that may use more system memory than others. This will give you the information necessary to determine how much RAM you need now, as well as how much you may need in the future.”

“The list of affected memory products includes CFexpress Type A, Type B, and SDXC/SDHC cards, although a few models of Type B and low-end SF-UZ series SD cards remain in production.”

“Modern shows sometimes take up to three years to produce eight episodes. The other complaint is that everything is too dark in modern Hollywood productions. Gone is the Technicolor of the past, and in its place are muted colors and night scenes so dark that one can hardly tell what’s going on.

A new report indicates these two things are related…”

Click through to learn the surprisingly fun answer…

“A rare long-period comet returns after 170,000 years — here’s how to find comet C/2025 R3 (Pan-STARRS) before sunrise this April, with key dates, viewing tips and the best mornings to look.”

“Steam Link is currently available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. But when it launches on Apple Vision Pro, you’ll be able to access games from your Steam library inside visionOS too.”