Can You Save This Shot? Part 2

Patrick’s Solution in (mostly) Real-Time

One of Mixing Light’s core principles here in the Insights Color Correction Library:

A single Insight is a single thought.

There are a few benefits by sticking to this philosophy. First, it keeps each Insight very focused and from getting off-track, spinning into unintended tangents. Second, it keeps important information on secondary topics from getting buried. Third, it keeps Insights short enough to be consumed during a render or lunch break. Until now, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than one or two video Insights that run over 20 minutes.

Until now.

This Insight is an experiment in longer-form ‘how we do it’ videos

Since the launch of Mixing Light 2.0 we’ve had members ask for longer-form videos that more slowly work through our approaches to color correction. And while editing this Insight, I’d normally cut it when I started to Version it out, to keep it shorter. And then I’d pick it up in Part 3 – resulting in two 15-minute Insights.

Instead, in response to member requests, I’ve decided to keep this as a single Insight and not break the flow of thought and the flow of execution. I’ve also left in my misfires and mistakes, rather than provide a ‘scrubbed’ version that makes it seem like I never make a wrong move (which would be a lie). As a result, this Insight clocks in at 31 minutes. If you find it’s too long then let us know. If you want to see more like this, at this length, then let us know.

We are also experimenting with higher-Bitrate streaming (when it makes sense)

Since this series is also about taming compression artifacts exposed by our color correction adjustments, we are compressing at a higher bitrate. This series especially, makes it difficult to see my final results since the h.264 compression exaggerates the latent compression issues in this footage. This higher bit rate will make the download sizes larger, but we think it’s worth the hassle. If you find these videos stutter during streaming or don’t play back well on your system, let us know!

Note: In the video I say we’re providing a separate download – but after much experimentation, we decided the higher bitrate is just as effective, results in much smaller downloads, and looks just as good streaming as it does downloaded. So there is no extra download.

Saving This Shot – The Workflow

In this Insight, I continue where we left off in Part 1 where I explained the goals of saving this shot. Following those goals, I show you how I go about fixing shots that have multiple serious problems (including the footage being 8-bit).

Typically, I attack every shot in the same manner:

• Fix the broad problems, first.
• Then fix the smaller, more specific issues.

On this shot, I had to break one of the smaller issues into two parts. A single solution just wasn’t possible. And all the while I put the Noise Reduction node at the end of the node tree. I tend to do this since I like grading with the raw footage, seeing if the Noise Reduction can cover the artifacts I’m exposing. But feel free to try this with Noise Reduction at the start of the node tree and if your results differ.

Enjoy!

-pi

PS – in the next day I’ll upload my DRX. I have a client job that needs to get done and I’ll circle back here to finish this Insight off very shortly. Update: The .drx is now available for download for Premium members.