Epic > RCX > DnXHD > MC5 > Dark footage?

[Eric Haase]

You are very right in investigating and in doing tests, and you have chosen the right tools (Rocket, SDI connections, properly set up monitors).

But none of this is simple, nor will it ever be simple again - or so I fear.

I assume that the reasoning is as follows:

- if you are absolutely certain that you need to restrict to SMPTE 16-235 levels, you can set the option
- if you know what you are doing, you can use the non-restricted transcodes to get some more headroom and footroom when video grading (without going back to the R3D's).
- if you don't know about any of this (and we all know these folks are around), you are likely to not restrict, which gives the folks that need to post your footage a bit more latitude when doing a video grade (without going back to the original R3D's). So less risk to do any long term damage.

It's sort of safe.

Now here's what bothered me: last time I checked, even when you select the SMPTE restricted levels, the black bars on a 2:1 image (inside a 16x9 canvas) would be superblack (0, not 16). But this was some incarnations of RCX ago.

P.S.: I've written a whitepaper on importing and luma level ranges in Media Composer and Symphony. It might help clear things up for those needing to import QT's and graphics into MC.

For me, as a cinematographer, the most egregious part of this is that I dial in a look that I want- that represents my (and the director's) vision of what the footage should look like. We use (mostly) properly set up SDI monitors and look at scopes on the monitor and in the software. The footage gets transcoded and loaded into Avid or FCP. Agency, client, everyone watches dailies and cuts but footage looks darker and more contrasty than I intended because of these issues. It's unacceptable.

[Job ter Burg]

And you are a better cinematographer for caring about all this. Seriously.

Demand that your post teams get on board. Might be tricky if they use FCP (very unpredictable when it comes to gamma and color levels as it is QT-based).