Using Grain As An External Matte On A Still & Broadcast Safe Workflow

In this edition of From The Mailbag we’re back to our usual 2 questions format and we have two great ones from Mixing Light members.

Remember, if you have questions that you’d like to get an opinion on please use the contact form.

Your questions can be aesthetic, technical or even client related. We’d love to hear from you, and your question might make future episodes of From The Mailbag.

Using A Grain Clip As An External Matte On A Still

Grain is something that many colorists use to enhance the feel of a shot, and one way to add grain is with an external matte, but how you properly configure the use of a grain clip as an external matte can be a bit tricky.

In Part 1 we discuss a question we got a question from one of our members (he/she asked to be anonymous) who asked about applying grain as an external matte not to a video clip, but to a still image.

It sounds like they have everything setup properly with one problem – the grain is static and it doesn’t move!

Pretty much in realtime Patrick sorts out what’s really going on in Resolve by applying grain to a still and discovers the issue.

As you’ll hear in the Episode when it comes to adding grain to stills Resolve handles things slightly different than with video clips and we have the fix to get things working again.

In this episode, we also discuss using Film Convert as an OFX plugin for grain and a couple other strategies for adding grain to clips in projects.

Broadcast Safe Workflow

Next up, we got a great question from Mixing Light member Gabe who asks about broadcast deliverables and specifically the best workflow for keeping things “legal”.

Gabe also mentions in his question that after he does a legalization pass contrast is really off.

So, after covering using a legalizer (and Robbie singing a silly song about legalizers), vectorscope and gamut scope options, using soft clip and hard clipping in Resolve and even using the new Resolve 11 Broadcast Safe option, we realize that Gabe as another problem that’s probably contributing to his contrast being off:

Rendering to ProRes 4444 and not quite understanding how the full range, legal scale and auto options really work.  

Our suggestion?

Leave everything set to Auto when rendering to ProRes 4444 unless you have a specific reason not to!

As always, enjoy the MailBag and please use the comments below if you have more to add to the conversation or have other questions. 

-Team Mixing Light