DNxHR 444 Support When???

They're both really good guys. And way above my capabilities and knowledge, and it's an honor to get to 'hang' with them. And like most of the other colorists I know, oh my ... can they get into detailed arguments WAY down the rabbit hole!

I haven't been able to meet with Lars Borg in person, but I've had a number of emails and one long phone call with him over some tech questions for a tutorial I was doing for MixingLight.com. Another very, very knowledgeable person. He's quite a bit the engineer/scientist type, he knows his stuff in deep detail and doesn't budge for anyone who doesn't have the solid technical argument for support.

But I've noted in the many conversations at NAB or MAX that I've had with engineers for Premiere, SpeedGrade (yea, that was my first couple NABs some years back now), AfterEffects, and Audition ... even though every one of them is actually a good user of their product, they tend to have a certain viewpoint from the engineering side. Most of the time I can actually keep up with their explanations of why X option is set the way it is, though in the end, I'll note that both as a user and as some one who helps others learn this massive app ... it don't make no sense.

And then yes, we go have that beer. Though I tend to prefer darks and stouts, personally.

IBC ... um ... oh yea, wanna get there. I do some teaching and testing for several companies/organizations, and the missus and I are hoping one or more will decided my presence at IBC is worth paying some airfare/hotels. There's quite a group of European folk I've met over the years online, at NAB, at Max, and they are occasionally 'here' for NAB/MAX, but normally 'there' for IBC.

Having dinner on boats in the canals ... in Amsterdam in September ... which has to be a LOT more beatiful than Vegas in any weather!

Neil

This sparked a fun set of responses on a private Slack channel.

Two major colorists, "A" works a lot with the BlackMagic team and teaches Resolve for BM at things like NAB, including demoing both the full $30G panel and the editing keyboard full-time in the BM booth. He was part of the on-screen team for DolbyVision's in-house produced series on working in Dolbyvision HDR.

The other, "B", is another major colorist, also noted as A for his technical knowledge of the media and the craft. Both have done their share of features, docs, shorts, commercials, and episodic work.

A says that well, it can be argured either way technically, but Avid currently treats it like legal range in Avid, so ... that's probably how everyone should treat it.

B came right back saying that is just WRONG. As a general rule, if the codec is full RGB then you don't need to have over/under values to account for gamut/encoding errors. This technically should be full range, and Avid um ... screwed up.

A says well again it could be either, BM gave up and decided to go with Avid, but Premiere doesn't have a way to allow the user to over-ride their view of codec standards.

B comes back with ... its' wrong, fella, just admit it's wrong ...

A says ok, Avid is wrong about a lot of things, but hey, they made this format ...

B says "Thank you for admitting it. Your honor, I rest my case."

I've personally discussed this in the past with Lars Borg, chief color scientist for the Adobe video apps. His take is purely technical: as a full RGB codec, by all that is right and Holy in video formats and codecs, and like all other full RGB codecs, DNxHR 444 should be treated as full range. And further, he also made the same statement as B's comment, that as a non-chroma subsampled codec it doesn't need protection from overs/unders and rounding, which is the only reason to continue the whole full/legal range mess to begin with.

Even though I'm not an Adobe staffer, I do considerLars ...  a bit above my pay-grade. As well I do with the two colorists mentioned above.

Yea, I would personally prefer we had the option in Premiere to 'set' full/legal as in Resolve, but currently we don't. They do ship the full->legal and legal-> full Lumetri presets which if you drop onto the clips in the bin, it will appear on them as a Master clip effect. This will accomplish that for you the same as if you had a switch.

They have options for 8, 10, and 12 bits each way. The use a LUT in the Basic tab of that Lumetri effect, so if the clip ... clips or crushes ... create another Lumetri effect, put it above the other one in the Master tab, and trim the clip while viewing the scopes and monitor for best blacks/whites.

Neil

I've had several pro colorists tell me full ... but I'm asking a few more to get further information. I've no personal experience with Avid software unfortunately.

Neil

Some general information ...

DNxHR 444 is an RGB space codec, unlike say DNxHR HQX and the other DNx formats, which are YUV.

RGB codecs are nearly always full range, YUV tend to be legal range.

Premiere ships with several Lumetri presets for converting legal to full and full to legal if you need them.

Neil

Hi,

please add a feature request here: http://www.adobe.com/go/wish

When entered through the feature request form, it is directly sent to the Premiere team

Hope this helps,

Seb