Film Grain tutorial #1 is now live.

GHearHead veterans are familiar with my brain-mouth thing. I think one thing, and say something different and I don't realize it until I'm watching the video, so this latest gaff should be no surprise...

In it, I said: "The process is like reshooting your footage on film." ...that's ridiculous. If I re-shot on film I would have more DR. It's more like transferring your footage to film. The primers prep for transfer, the filmstock runs it through the emulsion, and the throttle reigns it in. You can also experiment with using 2 primers and 2 throttles... it's fun.

I've been having so much fun playing with it, I've been neglecting other things... like recording tutorials. :)

I've updated the stocks, so if you downloaded them before yesterday, delete everything in the film stocks folder except the 2 strip and Hulk, and replace with the new. If you have a 2398 in your folder, you're using the wrong one. It should be 5298.

The new film Stock Ghears are CG Pro only. Read the first half of this post http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/112506#Comment_112506

And Like I said I'm not really promoting it openly, cuz I don't have a demo put together that shows what Pro really is or how it works, so I'm only encouraging those who really want it to upgrade, and suggesting everyone else wait until they can accurately decide if its for them.

@Shian

Dude, I've been using yr invention to grade my films, I must say it works like a million dollar system. Grand software you have there.

A short question before I upgrade.

In AE, ColorGHear capitalises on 32 floating bit, that's because AE provides such a capability or function. Now with the plugin, I assume you can color grade on the fly? But the timeline in CS6 and FCP is not 32 bit, as I understand it (but I stand corrected).

If this is the case, what is the advantage of color grading on the fly?

You won't get the same color precision out of an editor that you get in a "finishing" tool. Not until editors are designed to replace such finishing suites. Adobe hasn't done this. Neither has Apple. Neither has Avid. They each offer finishing solutions with quality tailored to that level of specificity.

Editors outside the amateur/enthusiast market don't generally "finish" a project. That's the job of a colorist...a motion graphics artist...an FX artist, etc. There's cross-training, sure, for the rare individuals that are either interested or capable of taking on both jobs but the tasks have two different skill sets and two (at least) different tool sets. I'd blow my brains out if I had to do motion graphics or any facet of what I do inside of an Avid editor.

Developers adding "finishing" tools to editing packages have unfortunately mislead a lot of enthusiasts to believe that's all they need. They exist so that the editor can slap something together really fast for a client to visualize without leaving the editing suite. Once approved, someone else goes and does it for real, not in an editing package.

I'm going to sound mean for this, but I think it needs to be said, but I think that anyone who can't be bothered to do specific tasks outside their editing package aren't going to generally see a benefit from the greater precision or additional tools anyway. If transcoding and cross-training and learning to work in a task-oriented way is just too much they should just keep doing what they can do in their editor and be happy they don't have to work so hard as some people.

@Shian, @BurnetRhoades

Guys, you confirmed my niggling suspicions. Would love to support the new addition, but I agree with all that you said. Regardless, ColorGHear has my unqualified support as a great grading tool

@Vitaliy_Kiselev The risk you have doing that is making something too bloated to appeal to the very best specialists within each discipline who will potentially view a majority of the suite as a waste of money, resources and time. They might then seek out streamlined, focused and efficient tools to do what they do.

Thankfully most tools support a variety of decent standards so using specialized apps for their particular strengths, more than any time in history, doesn't mean you have to be religious with your tools. The situation isn't quite as rosy over in CGI land but it has slowly improved over the last 20 years.

Added before and after from clip that was used in the Film Stocks tutorial to flickr set.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/76276262@N04/8493209817/in/set-72157632784156675/lightbox/

Smoke 2013 is a very interesting idea... but about 2 or 3 iterations from being something I'd switch to. I played with the beta for awhile, and sent Autodesk my thoughts. But if the price isn't right... maybe not. Autodesk doesn't seem to understand anything but major $$$ workflows. Right now, I'd kill for a subscription/rental or short term plan for MAYA, like what Adobe has done for their full suite. Or just a previz capable version that doesn't render over like 720 or something, I only really use it anymore for pre-viz. Their 90 day plan is cool, but not renewable. but $199 for 90 days is an awesome price. I'd pay it every time I need to do pre-viz on a project.

They are not being very smart about it, and something tells me they'll fuck up with Smoke too. Us little guys would like to have access to the tools, too.

nope, again - $3500

http://store.autodesk.com/store/adskus/en_US/pd/productID.260181200

Congrats Autodesk - you'll make shitloads of money on this from deep pocketed post houses, I'm sure... but you eliminated pretty much the entire DSLR crowd.

ENTIRE Adobe Suite = $360 per year

Resolve Lite = free

but you eliminated pretty much the entire DSLR crowd.

I said that they know how to do business not how to please "DSLR crowd" or @shian :-)
It can piss you off, but they don't care. Good for them.

And it is good idea to compare cheapest comparable Adobe Suite ($1600) to Autodesk product. Not subscription plans.

@shian I wouldn't expect any product with DNA from Discreet Logic to ever be widely used outside of a facility. You've got the initial sticker shock and then, quite often, ridiculous "maintenance" fees.

A buddy of mine had a little boutique in Venice for several years with a Flame and an Inferno and the maintenance alone was like buying Shake nodes for a medium sized facility every single year. It was nuts. And what they were charging for really wasn't really that special.

John Egstadt, one of Nuke's core developers when it was still an internal-only tool at DD decided to teach himself OpenGL programming while coding new interface routines for Nuke. In addition to being a skilled programmer he was also one of the companies most talented compositors and very fluent in Flame/Inferno operations. He discovered, to his own amusement, that so much of what was an integral part of Flame was nothing more than basic OpenGL routines taken straight from the text.

He made a custom version of Nuke that he dubbed "Fluke" that he could sit any experienced Flame/Inferno operator in front of and they would have no idea they were actually using Nuke until they went to look at the node tree. Then they'd invariably ask, "how did you get Nuke into Flame?"

Any CG Pro users have or use Edius? I wonder if it's LUTher system will support layered LUTs, or if it's LUTs are single display LUT only.

@driftwood - nope. Not yet. Been buried in development. I suppose I could create a GHear that instantly matches them :) The main problem I had with the Shootout footage, was that i couldn;t really match the GH2 with the others I had to match the others to the GH2 because of the limited DR