EP027: Where Do DCTLs & OFX Fit Into A Grading Workflow?

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:16:04
Robbie
Hey there and welcome to another installment of The Offset Podcast. This week, we're talking about DCTLs and OFX and how they fit into your grading workflow. Stay tuned.

00:00:16:06 - 00:00:35:00
Joey
This podcast is sponsored by Flanders Scientific leaders in color accurate display solutions for professional video. Whether you're a colorist, an editor, a DIY, or a broadcast engineer, Flanders Scientific has a professional display solution to meet your needs. Learn more at Flanders Scientific account.

00:00:35:02 - 00:00:43:20
Robbie
Hi guys. Welcome back to another episode of The Offset Podcast. I am Robbie Carman and with me, as always, is my partner in crime, Joey D’Anna. Hey Joey how are you doing, buddy?

00:00:43:22 - 00:00:45:03
Joey
Good. How are you?

00:00:45:05 - 00:01:11:03
Robbie
I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. You know, we are here in episode 27 or, depending on how you count it. This would be, I don't know, our third or fourth episode of season two, you know, here in, 2025. And it dawned on me that we have not talked at all about, something that is, if you've been hiding under a rock, you know, you don't probably know about, but everybody else in the greater world does.

00:01:11:03 - 00:01:33:10
Robbie
And that is, you know, the discussion of DCTLs and effects and how they fit into grading workflow. I think over the past, what, maybe 5 or 6 years, you know, DCTLs in particular have become a little bit of a cottage industry, right? Yeah. You know, what started as a way to kind of enhance some functionality, specifically in DaVinci resolve?

00:01:33:12 - 00:01:53:00
Robbie
We'll talk about what it all means and all that stuff in just a second. You know, there's a lot of choices out there. There's a lot of options. There's a lot of people making these tools. Now, and I think in this episode today, we wanted to kind of just explore where, you know, doctors and, you know, the next step above, oh, effects, where they kind of fit integrating workflow.

00:01:53:00 - 00:02:09:01
Robbie
Are they right for you? Some things to like about them, some things to be concerned about, some things to pay attention to. So I think it's going to be a fun chat. But before we do that, of course, just some housekeeping. You can always go over to offset podcast.com and check out, additional show notes. On the show.

00:02:09:01 - 00:02:28:02
Robbie
You can follow us on YouTube or the various social media platforms. You can scan this little, QR code at the bottom of the screen here to get all the different ways to listen and to watch and just remember wherever you find the show, just do us a favor. Give it a thumbs up, subscribe. And, tell your colleagues, every little bit helps.

00:02:28:02 - 00:02:46:21
Robbie
So we really appreciate it. All right, so, Joey, let's dive into this topic. I guess the first place that I want to kind of begin and I always use you for definitions. So we'll continue that trend. What is a doctor? Let's start there. And then also what is OFX. What are those two different.

00:02:46:21 - 00:03:06:23
Joey
So let me let me go from the very kind of top of this concept. And let's just put all of this together in the bubble of what I'm going to call third party tools. Right? Our primary grading software in our case is DaVinci resolve. But this will apply to any other grading software that is expandable via other third party tools.

00:03:07:01 - 00:03:29:21
Joey
Has its own set of features, then has abilities to expand those features so individually resolve. You've got three kind of main ways you're going to expand the functionality. The first is what's called a power grade, which is essentially a saved preset node tree. Everything's built with native tools and resolve, but you can build really advanced structures that break up different parts of the images.

00:03:29:21 - 00:03:50:09
Joey
Different channels do different color management to the point where you would never want to build that yourself. And there are people that will sell you or distribute free or for a small cost, whatever various power grades of preset settings that you can then go in and edit and tweak to your liking that are great for a lot of workflows.

00:03:50:11 - 00:04:33:13
Joey
Then there is the DCTL, the DaVinci Color Transform library. This is an interesting one because it actually evolved out of ACES. You know, ACES is the open source color management tool that we all know and love. But to handle those color space transforms with, you know, programable math. And as opposed to a lookup table, they developed the color transform language, which is essentially a very C like compiled language that runs on your GPU and at its very core, takes one pixel triplet of RGB values as floating point numbers and outputs another one, a new one, a replacement one.

00:04:33:15 - 00:05:00:06
Joey
Functionally very similar to a LUT but with much more programable because you can do anything from, you know, tone mapping to bringing in some spatial elements because you know which pixel number it is. And then what Blackmagic did is they kind of took that to another level and allowed you, as the DCTL programmer to add sliders and interface inputs right on normal.

00:05:00:06 - 00:05:01:14
Joey
And it'll even.

00:05:01:14 - 00:05:04:16
Robbie
Create, even create on screen stuff too, right? Like you could have. Yeah, that's.

00:05:04:16 - 00:05:26:02
Joey
What I mean. You can create a user interface to change values, whereas the base ACES, CTL take in one color space, I'll put a different color space. You don't really have a lot of flexibility. It's not a grading tool. It's a technical transform. The custom DCTL is that you either write yourself or buy or get. However you get, you know, there's a lot of free ones out there as well.

00:05:26:04 - 00:06:00:09
Joey
Those can present a user interface in DaVinci resolve, kind of like the next kind of step up, which is the plugin. Open effects is a standard plugin system that works on various applications and essentially lets you write your own full software that accesses the image in your host software. So if you're in Resolve Premiere, After Effects, Fusion, at its core, there's an image, your open effects that you either by or right can access that image and give the software back another image.

00:06:00:14 - 00:06:21:06
Joey
But you can have your own completely bespoke user interface. It opens up in its own window. You can have it use other libraries, you can have it do all. It's essentially writing a full fledged additional piece of software that is accessible within your grading software, which is what's called the host application.

00:06:21:08 - 00:06:22:07
Robbie
So that makes.

00:06:22:13 - 00:06:35:03
Joey
All of these things are kind of different levels of functionality. And they all but they all kind of have the same idea of here's something that isn't easily one click built into resolve. Here's a way you can implement it.

00:06:35:05 - 00:06:48:06
Robbie
Yeah. So I want to start back at the top at the power grade thing, because I think that there's a, you know what? Not every I'm, I have to say this, I guess not everybody utilizes power grade, right. Like so I.

00:06:48:06 - 00:07:21:15
Joey
Think like or they utilize they make their own power grades, save their own presets. But something we've seen pretty recently in the industry is a couple of groups. The big one that comes to mind is our friend Jason Bodak and Pixel Tools. He developed a whole bunch of really great power grades that you buy as a package, and they not only work as presets for the, you know, more novice user, they work as a interactive tutorial almost as well, because everything's built out of the native tools.

00:07:21:17 - 00:07:37:06
Robbie
Right. So in that case, you know, that case, he's done something. He let's just say he has a one with ten nodes in it. Right? And he'll do things like, hey, this node is called exposure. This is the one I want. It's, you know, ready to do that on this one is called whatever. And it kind of walks you through like the steps of it.

00:07:37:06 - 00:08:02:10
Robbie
And also I think those power tools for sale power grades also get people exposed to, different methodologies for building node trees for different organizations. And like I've always found like, I, I can't say honestly that I use a ton of third party, power grades, but I think the thing for me that is, is useful to look at them is I never thought about organizing that way.

00:08:02:11 - 00:08:28:04
Robbie
I never thought about breaking these things up into that part of it. And so, you know, after taking a look at some of those I've utilized because, like, I honestly have used power grids more as, a glorified copy and paste operation, you know, for me. Right, like, if I'm doing a series and there's a host that appears in one show, I'll save a power grade, then the next show that pops up, I can just apply that same, you know, correction kind of thing.

00:08:28:04 - 00:08:46:23
Robbie
Right? So that's one way of using them. But like Jason and his team, you know, they have, various scenarios. You know, maybe there's some of them are look, some of them are more technical and in shape. But I do want to clarify one thing that you said earlier about power grades, it's like they a power grade couldn't contain a DCTL or OFX in it.

00:08:46:23 - 00:08:54:13
Robbie
Sure. Right, right. It's just part it's just part of the important part of the node tree. But I get conceptually what you're saying, it's a it's a different container.

00:08:54:13 - 00:09:18:14
Joey
And one thing I that we're going to definitely talk about kind of later on in the episode is some of the disadvantages of some of these workflows is that when you get outside of the native tools, there are implications to that. A power grade, well, being less capable because you're limited to what the internal tools and resolve can do is also very, very, very portable because any resolve anywhere can open up.

00:09:18:14 - 00:09:42:15
Joey
The project doesn't need access to the original power grade file because you've used it. It's in your node tree, right? Doesn't need to install anything, doesn't need any kind of activation or license. It is the most simple, portable way to drop in some new functionality, but because of that, it's also the most limited right. You can't do some of the stuff that we're going to talk about with some of these other tools.

00:09:42:17 - 00:10:08:13
Robbie
Yeah, no. And one more one more thought before we move on about DCTLs versus OFX. You know, one of the things, you know, and we're fortunate and fortunate enough to know a lot of these DCTL type programmers. And I think they'll all universally tell you, that, you know, their move, the reason that they're not in OFX is because there's this level of complexity that ratchets up pretty exponentially when you go for arc.

00:10:08:13 - 00:10:33:21
Robbie
So if power grades the lowest end of the food chain, right, and you go, then OFX is the opposite. And there's a big jump in knowledge, skill, coding, programing, language, whatever to go from DCTL to OFX. Because then you start dealing with things like, oh, well, I'm going to deal with processor optimization and GPU optimization and all those libraries and oh well, you know, I'm using this for my, my user interface versus this code base.

00:10:33:22 - 00:10:50:11
Robbie
It gets a whole lot more complicated really quickly. And I think that, you know, there's a reason that you haven't seen a lot of the DCTL type folks make that jump to OFX because it does, you know, pretty much require, you know, somebody who's not a hobbyist, but it's.

00:10:50:11 - 00:11:03:09
Joey
A yeah, it's writing a whole application. You know, if you want to make a simple lift, gamma gain DCTL, it's literally six lines of code, three for the user interface, lines, three for the lift and the gamma and the game. Like.

00:11:03:09 - 00:11:03:23
Robbie
Right.

00:11:04:01 - 00:11:14:12
Joey
It's so simple. Yeah. And yeah, you know, you get into trying to write OFX and you got to do your own user interface. You got to do a lot.

00:11:14:14 - 00:11:32:09
Robbie
Yeah. So, you know, in my, in my estimation, I think that this, this ecosystem is one that, you know, I, I have to say it's a little dizzying to keep up with because it seems like every other day, somebody who's released, you know, a new parent package, new, you know, new, DCTL package, this is.

00:11:32:09 - 00:11:35:16
Joey
The best saturation detail this week, right?

00:11:35:18 - 00:11:54:23
Robbie
Right. It's like at a certain point, how many you know of the same overlapping type tools can you have? But I get it. People have a slightly different approach to the math, slightly different approach to the, you know, the UI interface. Some people have really cool, cute little emoji icons next to their sliders, like whatever it might be, right?

00:11:55:01 - 00:12:16:16
Robbie
But I think, you know, the bigger picture part of this discussion, now that we defined these things is like, where does this where do these tools fit in kind of your grading workflow? And I'll give you my opinions about this first and then let's hear yours. So to me, you know, it got to a point, especially in a tool like resolve that's, you know, gosh, we're about to be on version 20 or whatever they're going to call it.

00:12:16:18 - 00:12:40:16
Robbie
And, you know, it's a rather mature set, you know, applications that and as such, you know, I think the developers black magic, whoever a little apprehensive about like, hey, we're not going to reinvent the whole wheel here in the UI. And, you know, and it's already yeah, it's already a pretty crowded application to begin with. So I think this kind of started off as like, hey, guess what were we, black magic?

00:12:40:16 - 00:12:58:23
Robbie
I'm speaking in the world. We now, we're going to start this off by creating a whole bunch of these OFX and, you know, the DCTLs and all that kind of stuff so we can enhance the, the workflow that we don't necessarily want to or able to put into the main part of the UI.

00:12:58:23 - 00:13:15:16
Robbie
Right. And I think initially that was a little confusing to users because like, I'll give you one example. So if you don't have any third party tools, just rely on black magic. You go into that, open up that effects tab and you're like, oh, okay, there's some cool stuff here. Probably don't need light rays all that often, but that's cool.

00:13:15:18 - 00:13:39:12
Robbie
And then you get to, you see something like there's noise reduction here, but there's also noise reduction down here. Right. And then you look at something like, I'm just picking one out of a hat contrast pop. Right. And you're like, oh cool, contrast pop. And then you realize all that contrast pop is, is just literally a contrast, like a preset essentially for contrast, you know, adjustment.

00:13:39:12 - 00:14:00:08
Robbie
I mean, I'm simplifying that. But like, there seems there was a lot of overlap, right? And so I think initially this was like, hey, let's, you know, kind of replicate or enhance a little bit some of the, the built in functionality. But then when third party people got started getting involved, I think that's when different stuff started taking off.

00:14:00:10 - 00:14:22:07
Robbie
And I'll give you my first example of each first example of do CTL was, I mean, probably 7 or 8 years, nine years ago I was in I was like, I was looking for a false color kind of thing, right? And I found somebody with a d ctl false color things to judge exposure. Perfect example of extending my grading workflow and extending that functionality, right?

00:14:22:07 - 00:14:33:05
Joey
If you recall, we knew before it existed in any other tool we use my custom blanking detection d CTL for nonfiction docs forever.

00:14:33:07 - 00:14:52:12
Robbie
Right? And then I feel like my first exposure to the OFX side was I had been a user of Neat video prior to, you know, its introduction, I don't know, effects. And then when it came out to OFX, I was like, oh God, we have Neat now. And so that's a whole, as everybody probably knows, it's it's a standalone application on U.

00:14:52:15 - 00:15:24:12
Robbie
UI does wonderful things. So I mean, to me, it was initially about just extending my, my workflow for things that weren't readily, readily available in the main UI. A result where it's changed for me, I think, recently is that, you know, we talked about power grades earlier. I've started incorporating some of these things into my normal node trees, my own power grades, and I have them again.

00:15:24:13 - 00:15:47:04
Robbie
It's become it's it feels much more just like a part of my gradient approach now rather than something that I have. I add on occasionally when I need it because I set up my my, my fixed node trees to have some of this functionality already built in. Right? Like I have a node that has regular resolve noise reduction, and then I have a node that already has a neat video dropped on it.

00:15:47:04 - 00:16:09:16
Robbie
Right. You know, I have one tree that has we'll talk about this later, but I have a, plug in from our friend clone Kelly called contour that just sits on a node. I can turn it on and off. Right. So I've gotten like, to me, it's become a little more integrated now that I've combined the extended functionality with something that we've done for years and that is, you know, fixed node tree structure, that kind of stuff.

00:16:09:18 - 00:16:14:00
Robbie
It becomes a little bit more integrated, I should say.

00:16:14:02 - 00:16:37:09
Joey
Yeah. And the interesting thing is, you know, there was a big transition in the mentality of how black magics adds features to resolve. I remember it well. It was version 14 came out and they had like 20 new built in all effects that everybody was like, well, why isn't this a new pain in the in the software? Well, because you'd have a billion pains in the software.

00:16:37:11 - 00:17:07:08
Joey
And now you can just put this anywhere in your node tree. It's an element that you can use inside your bigger grading pipeline. And I think that evolved out of the fact that, you know, people used to do, you know, the early days of resolve, node structures were in general pretty freeform. People would build it as they wanted, and they were usually pretty simple because the hardware capabilities to run massive, complicated node structures just weren't there.

00:17:07:08 - 00:17:27:05
Joey
And at that point, you know, having a bunch of these plugins that you would just drop into the node tree would seem kind of odd, especially because if you look at if you look at the resolve UI of very early versions, the nodes were much bigger, the node tree was much smaller. It was not made for this kind of dynamic.

00:17:27:05 - 00:17:53:03
Joey
I'm going to drop in. This affects someone drop in this effect that put them in this order. It's improved leaps and bounds over those early days to where these tools really do fit in to a modern grading workflow. And for me, yeah, there's a few that I consider to be pretty essential. Neat video, definitely being one of them, and a few DCTLs to be one of them.

00:17:53:08 - 00:18:01:08
Joey
I do have a node in my fixed node structure that is just a DCTL node. That is.

00:18:01:10 - 00:18:02:19
Robbie
That way you can pull up so I.

00:18:02:19 - 00:18:17:18
Joey
Can pull up any detail without having to drag the effect on there. But you know, all of these kind of expansions of the native software come with risks and benefits, right?

00:18:17:19 - 00:18:40:02
Robbie
Yeah. But before we before we get to that, I just wanted to mention one more thing about this general development in two are actually two more things. One, I can't tell you, I think that the I can't tell you enough or stress this enough, but I think the benefits to the greater color grading community, even if they're not on resolve, even for their on, you know, baseline or whatever, using the effects tools there or whatever.

00:18:40:04 - 00:18:59:17
Robbie
I just think this general move to, let's just say, the democratization to overuse a term of coding for this type of thing is really exciting because it used to be right that you just were force fed. Whenever the developers of the application that you're using gave you and that was that. Yeah, you could file bug reports. You could be like, oh, this doesn't work.

00:18:59:18 - 00:19:21:16
Robbie
I want it to work like that, you know, new features. But for really for the first time, I can, you know, in the 30 years that I've been using creative software, this is the first time I can really remember that. Like, if I can think about a tool and I can conceptualize it and I can, you know, have the ability to code it, I can much make a version of it, like pretty simply with dk2 tools.

00:19:21:21 - 00:19:45:16
Robbie
And if I really wanted to push myself and learn some new skills, some new libraries, new, you know, languages or whatever, I could maybe force myself into the oh effects land. And I think that's a really big paradigm shift for creative software that I'm actually surprised that more editorial tools, graphic design tools, you know, those kind of things don't really have yet because it's just sort of like, you know, we've seen it.

00:19:45:16 - 00:19:58:15
Robbie
We have friends that are smart enough. They're like, hey, man, we're I just made 30 DC LTL to do all these things I want to do. And that's a really big benefit. I think it's easy to overlook about this kind of boom, versus, you know, versus older things.

00:19:58:16 - 00:20:16:09
Joey
Yeah. Because, you know, in creative software, we've always had the highest level, right? Plug ins where they're writing whole applications. Yeah. Black magic specifically has made it super easy to do almost all of that with way less code and way less hassle.

00:20:16:11 - 00:20:41:12
Robbie
And I think the second part, some AI related to that. And then we'll move on to some of the some of the pitfalls of these tools is, I actually think it's a brilliant R&D move by the developer use black magic, right? So they can sit back in their comfy office chairs and down in Singapore. Right. And just click on the internet and see, oh, that person's doing, oh, that's really cool.

00:20:41:12 - 00:20:56:01
Robbie
We like that. But guess what? We have the resources and the expertise to take that idea. And I'm not saying they're stealing ideas. Please don't take it that way. But to look at the ecosystem and inform that product design to the next level, right?

00:20:56:04 - 00:21:32:13
Joey
Yeah. So I mean, having the flexibility that resolve has specifically is an all fronts, a very good thing. But flexibility has its own inherent. Yeah, disadvantages and pitfalls and workflow issues that I think we need to be really cognizant of. You know, there are a billion awesome DevTools and plug ins out there and you can get overwhelmed and try to I'm going to try the latest and greatest, newest thing that this guy put on GitHub and put that on my CTL and great, a whole project with that.

00:21:32:13 - 00:21:49:03
Joey
And this is awesome, right? So why would you not do that? What are the disadvantages? How can you mitigate them with a lot of evolutionary? How do you not paint yourself into a corner of absolute misery because you can't.

00:21:49:05 - 00:22:00:18
Robbie
Oh yeah. So I there's I'm curious to hear some of your because you're a little more technical about some of these things, but it's I yeah. Let's go and dive into this because there's some really good things, really good reasons not to.

00:22:00:20 - 00:22:25:17
Joey
So for me there has to be if I'm going to use a DCTL or a plugin. Yeah. In any workflow, it has to be compelling enough that I'm going to install it on three different systems here on Robby's system and our system of the office, which means every time it's updated, we need to make sure we're on the same version in five different places at once.

00:22:25:19 - 00:22:42:07
Joey
Yeah, right. And every time it's updated, that means we need to test it on minimum three different platforms. No, four different platforms. Right, Mac, ARM, Mac, Intel, windows, Intel Linux, Intel. Okay. We use all of those.

00:22:42:09 - 00:22:54:21
Robbie
And that's amplified exponentially, by the way, with OFX because the effects against, as we said earlier, rely on a lot more external libraries and a lot more in-depth code, to put it simply.

00:22:54:21 - 00:23:22:10
Joey
And all of these disadvantages are triple for OFX because just from a user perspective, okay, we do a clever thing, I think, which is in our general syncing workflow of all our projects. We also sync a shared LUT folder which then has the DCTLs in it. So when we install a new DCTL, it syncs to everywhere. We just need to kind of test it to make sure there's no issues on one particular machine.

00:23:22:12 - 00:23:49:22
Joey
Plug ins. On the other hand, OSX, there's no easy way to do that. They install differently for every product. Some might say just drop the all effects bundle in your system of X folder. Some might have a full installer, some might need online updates, which is a whole other nightmare. For example, we cannot use. We use Topaz a little bit, but only as an external application because Topaz phones home every time you open it.

00:23:50:00 - 00:24:01:21
Joey
And our main, at least my main workstation is completely off the internet. So using Topaz in a project as an OFX is a complete no go for our workflow because it needs to phone home incessantly.

00:24:01:23 - 00:24:16:20
Robbie
I'll tell you about even one that these even super in that in the in the in the effects side of things I had a couple of weeks ago, I don't know, I was just so, you know, I had some downtime and I was like, oh, I should upgrade. I should upgrade, you know, version of resolve. I should upgrade, you know, desktop video.

00:24:16:20 - 00:24:36:07
Robbie
So I did all that and then I was like, oh, look, there's an update to like Film Convert available, right? So I installed and I can't remember the pardon me, I can't remember the version numbers or whatever, but I installed an update to Film Convert and it was a big enough version that it actually necessitated, like an upgrade fee, or something.

00:24:36:07 - 00:25:06:15
Robbie
It was something like that. Anyway, I had to like, so I did that on a Friday afternoon. Monday morning comes around, client calls, you like, hey, we just got some QC notes back. Can you go and re output like a couple patches, QC patches. And I didn't realize that I had used film convert for the grain in a couple spots, but because I had upgraded on that system, I rendered out re delivered the whole show and embarrassingly didn't watch the patches down before I posted them.

00:25:06:17 - 00:25:28:22
Robbie
Got a note back that said, why is there this watermarking on all these shots about something about film convert, right? I'm like, oh right. You know, like so it's like stuff like that, right? That if you're not paying attention to, you have a legacy version of a plug in, there might even be like differences in terms of like actual output as you go from a version to another version.

00:25:28:22 - 00:25:29:09
Robbie
Two.

00:25:29:11 - 00:25:57:15
Joey
Now, the good thing is, a lot of these plugin developers are very cognizant of that one. You know, they can't do anything about the logistics of installing multiple systems, licensing on multiple systems. That's going to be a hassle no matter what. But, to not throw our film convert under the bus because I think they do have a very compelling product, when they do upgrades that change the output, even if it's in a small way, it installs parallel with the version number.

00:25:57:15 - 00:25:58:17
Joey
So when you get.

00:25:58:19 - 00:25:59:02
Robbie
A new.

00:25:59:02 - 00:26:09:03
Joey
Project, it keeps the old one. That's the biggest danger is if you upgrade a third party tool and then you open a legacy project, and now your output is different. That is.

00:26:09:03 - 00:26:17:00
Robbie
And those and those screamed out from the mountain, Sue. And actually the devs in, you know, the black matte black magic have done something similar. Now where you get the do that.

00:26:17:00 - 00:26:18:01
Joey
With all their internal tools.

00:26:18:01 - 00:26:24:10
Robbie
Yeah. Where you get the legacy tag on something if it's an older version of a transformer or something like that, you know.

00:26:24:12 - 00:26:48:10
Joey
But it's just another thing when you start using these tools again, as wonderful as they can be, those are what you need to look out for workflow wise. Is version numbers changing outputs, different platforms and making sure, okay, your license didn't expire, or some other licensing issue where you get caught kind of with your pants down because you thought everything was fine.

00:26:48:12 - 00:26:54:19
Joey
But something has changed and it's not something in the core resolve software. So you weren't really thinking about it.

00:26:54:21 - 00:27:17:21
Robbie
Yeah. And one more thing about homeworks in particular, two is that I have been caught with my pants down a couple times with not so much on Mac because the, the GPU part of that is kind of integrated just into the OS. But on windows, I've had issues where like, oh, I've updated my Nvidia drivers on a card and now the plug in doesn't work anymore, right?

00:27:17:21 - 00:27:21:07
Robbie
Because it's like it's so tied into specifically, I.

00:27:21:08 - 00:27:31:07
Joey
Use that plugin on one shot and a thousand shot show, and then you need to re output late night on a Friday. You might not think about it, and you might get yourself into an accidental chassis embarrassment.

00:27:31:11 - 00:28:01:09
Robbie
And the last, last thing I'll say in that same vein is, wow, more and more people are using Linux, because, you know, Blackmagic said, hey, we're available on Linux. The, a lot of the developers thinking about these, especially about effects, but also some of the DCTls, there are peculiarities of Linux that a lot of people don't really pay attention to, or at the best case, they don't update the tools for Linux as often as they will.

00:28:01:09 - 00:28:05:08
Joey
And in a lot of cases, oh, effects developers just skip the Linux version, right?

00:28:05:13 - 00:28:09:10
Robbie
Exactly. So like if you're stuck on Linux there, that's an extra level of.

00:28:09:10 - 00:28:13:06
Joey
Stock on Linux, if you're if you're privileged enough to be on Linux.

00:28:13:08 - 00:28:38:14
Robbie
So to me, I gotta tell you, my two biggest pitfalls about these tools. Number one is that I find when I use these tools, getting frustrated very quickly by the number of steps and clicks. Okay, so if I want to let's for a second forget that, I have a, you know, a saved node tree with, you know, one of these sitting on a node or whatever.

00:28:38:14 - 00:29:02:03
Robbie
But let's just say I'm starting from scratch, right? Well, I have to create the new node. I have to open up the effects tab or, you know, right. In the case of a DCTL, I have to add the DCTL, you know, plug in or whatever. Then I have to choose from the list. Then when I have the the the DCTL tool loaded, I now have this nice, huge long laundry list of sliders and knobs that I have to then kind of adjust and so like to get there.

00:29:02:03 - 00:29:26:17
Robbie
The initial get there is asking a lot sometimes for for all those clicks, but related to me is that, you know, when I'm on, you know, on a panel like, like you are and whether it's the big panels or the mini panel or whatever, you know, when I'm grading on a panel, like for the most part, I built up this muscle memory where it's like, hey, here's my game again, here's my contrast, here's my saturation, whatever.

00:29:26:19 - 00:29:55:09
Robbie
Frustratingly, I find to use these tools. Now they there are good mappings for the panels, right. Like you can control a lot of parameters of these DCTLs and OFX on panels. But it's the same thing for me. It's a lot of clicks to get there. Like I'm sure there's actually a probably a faster way to do this, but I'm just I'm just looking over my shoulder here at a panel and I'm thinking, okay, well, if I want to use that DCTL I got or whatever, I got to go users, then you know what I got?

00:29:55:13 - 00:30:10:16
Robbie
I got to make like four clicks to make that happen. And honestly, you do that enough over the course of a day or a week or a month or a year or whatever, it's a lot of time spent clicking around and it wears on you.

00:30:10:18 - 00:30:38:20
Joey
Absolutely. And, you know, besides all the other logistic things, that is kind of my number one reason to gravitate towards using native tools whenever possible. It is the thousand shot, 1500 shot show where you're going through and you're just it's a jam packed session. You're getting things done quickly. You're not sitting on a shot for a long time, tweaking individual things in great detail.

00:30:39:01 - 00:31:14:05
Joey
Those are the situations where these third party tools maybe don't fit the workflow, and that's fine. But where they really do fit in is really heavily graded or affected. Short form projects like promos, where you might be going in and doing incredible detail and needing these very specialized added tools, building bespoke node trees just for that shot. You know, just going into more depth and more clicks per shot because you might have 15 shots versus 1500.

00:31:14:07 - 00:31:43:11
Robbie
Yes. Yeah, I agree with that. The other thing I was thinking about, as we were riffing on what to, you know, add to this episode, was you know, I know that you have very, very, how should I say, detailed and completist opinions about UI and specifically when it comes to the resolve UI, you think all of the requests for floating windows, panels, customization and all that kind of stuff, those people just shut up and it's great.

00:31:43:11 - 00:32:01:16
Robbie
And you take what spoon fed you, right. And and for the most hundred percent, for the most part, I see the logic in what you're saying, and I, I tend to agree, it brings some uniformity. There's a lot of things I think the resolved team could do on the UI, but this is the one area where I think, well, let me just bear with me for a second.

00:32:01:16 - 00:32:27:08
Robbie
I think, combines a little bit of that custom ability with maybe not offending your sensibility over the, the fixed part about this. And that is I would love to see the developer carve out a place and resolve one, one single panel pane. And I'm going to use suggest to them that it's the info palette at the bottom right of the main color, the color page.

00:32:27:08 - 00:32:52:04
Robbie
Right. Because I don't know. I mean, occasionally I go over the color, the info, the palette, but like not really right. It seems kind of wasted space. I would love for the ability to air quotes here doc. Some one, two, three or something like that. Favorite oh effects interface or oh effects or detail interface. Is doc that two part of the main resolve UI.

00:32:52:09 - 00:33:11:03
Robbie
So they're always in view. So I can click a button or click, you know with one mouse just like I would go to the, you know, curves or go to Magic Mask or something like that, go to that tool and have it always be in focus without having to do the 27 click jumps to load it up and get it and get it there.

00:33:11:05 - 00:33:32:11
Joey
I would love that. And that actually brings me back to reminiscing about my sweet, wonderful, avid DDS that is long gone. In DDS, if you hit F2, it would bring up a temporary pop up window, and from there you could drag on any saved effect and any saved set of properties. And then what would happen is no matter where your mouse was or your pin.

00:33:32:13 - 00:33:46:09
Joey
So if you were hovered over a node in a node tree, you hit F2. The little pop up comes up exactly where your cursor is. You grab any tool from it and either click it to add it, or just drag it off into your notes like.

00:33:46:11 - 00:33:46:19
Robbie
It's like a.

00:33:46:19 - 00:33:49:20
Joey
Clipboard. And then the F2 panel just goes away, gets.

00:33:49:20 - 00:34:04:07
Robbie
Out of your way. But you know something, something like that, something like the fixed, you know, part of the UI where you can dock things like something like that would make it so much more functional to me because it's just sort of like I could get rid of the 400 clicks to get to a starting point.

00:34:04:09 - 00:34:23:09
Joey
Yeah, because at the end of the day, right, we deal in muscle memory more than anything else. And when you get into these third party tools, that muscle memory kind of goes out the window, which in my view makes them less desirable for fast paced, complicated long form sessions.

00:34:23:11 - 00:34:56:06
Robbie
Yeah, yeah. The other thing I was thinking about that I think, you know, is an aggravating is an aggravating thing about this is that I think that I think that there are some really good eqtl or effects developers, and then I think there's and I'm not pointing fingers, but there's subset that are opportunists. Right. Yeah. And one of one of the challenges I think, that you'll find in this is finding tools that are actually well optimized.

00:34:56:08 - 00:35:03:15
Robbie
There are plenty of tools out there, but optimization and I mean optimization in a couple different ways, performance playback, that kind of stuff.

00:35:03:17 - 00:35:05:17
Joey
But also also not breaking your image.

00:35:05:19 - 00:35:23:04
Robbie
Breaking your image. Right? I think there's a lot there's a lot of these tools out there that, you know, on the surface they seem really cool. And then you dive into practical use and they have they turn out that they have really kind of limited functionality or, you know, if you push it, they start, you know, tearing apart the image and the stuff.

00:35:23:04 - 00:35:23:16
Robbie
And that's where.

00:35:23:16 - 00:35:36:08
Joey
Again, you get into that thousand shot show where I just fell in love with this new effect. I'm going to use it as a base part of this look. And then you get 500 shots in, and then you find a shot that completely breaks it, and there's nothing you can do.

00:35:36:10 - 00:35:53:07
Robbie
Yeah. You painted yourself in a corner with that. And one of the benefits, you know, obviously, like having built in tools, is that the developers themselves have gone through the process. There's a beta process and all that kind of stuff. And I just, I just I've been burned by this, and I've seen so many people burned by this that they get all into it.

00:35:53:09 - 00:36:10:08
Robbie
And then only to realize, oh, well, crap, I didn't realize it was doing this to my image or like that. And you're painting yourself in a corner, right? And so like, to me, you know, I don't know if this is black magic, kind of like blessing or having some sort of certification program or.

00:36:10:11 - 00:36:11:15
Joey
Like a repository.

00:36:11:21 - 00:36:38:09
Robbie
Yeah. Something that something to say that like, okay, we've run this through these ten tests and your tool passes because it doesn't, you know, break the image or whatever that definition of that, you know, that kind of thing is, I don't know. I mean, I'm not a programmer, so I'm not sure how that works, particularly, but like, it just seems like there could be an extra level of QC, if you will, provided by Black Magic to the third party developers to kind of ensure that we have more.

00:36:38:11 - 00:36:57:07
Joey
I would actually I definitely get where you're coming from. That would be that would be good in a lot of ways. But I kind of disagree just because one, I don't think they need to be focusing on that. I think I want the opportunity for third party developers to go hog wild. I don't want the I want the APIs to be open.

00:36:57:07 - 00:37:13:12
Joey
I want them to have the opportunity to get in there and break stuff, because that's also where the power is to actually make something innovative. You know, if it comes down to the structures and the APIs get more limited, then there's less we can we can do with these third party tools. But like anything else, it's kind of a balance, right?

00:37:13:14 - 00:37:39:13
Joey
There's there's always some kind of risk in grabbing these third party tools and, and using them. To me, the best way to kind of authenticate them is to see what kind of the more advanced users in the community are saying, you know, and as we've talked about, I think I don't want to be too negative on using third party tools because I really like them.

00:37:39:15 - 00:38:03:13
Joey
But to me, there has to be that compelling reason, right? Yeah. To to get over these hurdles of portability, upgrades, complications with licensing possibilities of breaking the image. And like we talked about, like you mentioned, way too many clicks for some things. Right? It's a big ask for me when I'm going through 1000 shots to use one of these tools.

00:38:03:15 - 00:38:28:23
Joey
So if I find a tool that's so essential that I'm going to be reaching for it often in those contexts, I think that's a pretty good endorsement of the tool. And when you get on some of the user groups and talk to some more advanced colorists than me, I think they'll probably say the same thing. If if someone that you trust as a colorist is saying, hey, I love this plugin or this CTL and this is how I use it, it's probably worth your time to check it out.

00:38:29:01 - 00:38:46:03
Joey
If somebody is getting on a YouTube video and saying, oh, you've been grading wrong your entire life because you haven't been using my plugin that has my own lift gamma gain, that's better than lift gamma gain, then you're probably looking at a snake oil salesman.

00:38:46:05 - 00:39:06:03
Robbie
Yeah. And I hear what you're saying, and I do think the validation I was just thinking about what? Like the validation thing that black magic could do. And I guess in a way, they're already sort of doing that by release. Not DCTLs of course, but by releasing their own OFX with every version resolve that comes out. Right.

00:39:06:04 - 00:39:20:07
Robbie
They're they're sort of saying, you know, they're either riffing on some of the idea that's already out there and kind of incorporating it into their own, or they're kind of saying, no, this is the tried and true tested version that's been through the official process. You know, try this out and not to.

00:39:20:07 - 00:39:33:17
Joey
Say that and the good thing about these tools being kind of compartmentalized, the compartmentalization is a little bit of a downside, right? Because like we said, lots of clicks. Right? But if I right and know effects plugin, that's absolutely horrible.

00:39:33:17 - 00:39:35:00
Robbie
You're not going to you're not going to screw up.

00:39:35:00 - 00:39:38:06
Joey
It's not going to break resolve. It's just going to break itself.

00:39:38:07 - 00:40:06:18
Robbie
Well, I think the other important thing to realize about this is that, you're more like this than I am. And there are clearly a lot of people that are like you. And I think one of the things that it has done is, I'm thinking of our friend Brandon Thomas on a, TBD post on an Austin Austin, Texas great dude who, I know recently has really dove into his own exploration of programing.

00:40:06:18 - 00:40:35:15
Robbie
Right. And I think that ultimately, for the, you know, we talk a lot about the industry and the health of the industry. And, you know, where we're going. One of the things that I think is really exciting about this move is that it's getting, more people thinking about programing, tool set design, but more and particularly solving like a way of like kind of solving problems on their own versus waiting for, you know, a big company to solve the problems in the way that they want.

00:40:35:20 - 00:40:49:18
Robbie
And it's like, so it's one of those things that like, if you are willing to if you have if you would identify problems in your workflow. Right. That's not being satisfy by by existing tool sets. This is for you, right. Yeah.

00:40:49:20 - 00:41:12:01
Joey
If you having a possibility you know we talked to we did we did a two part series on DIY for post. Right, right. The biggest thing is can you describe the problem. Right. Can you look at a need I need this and then can you actually, you know, describe in detail what it needs to do and how it needs to function with these capabilities.

00:41:12:01 - 00:41:25:01
Joey
Now it can be made whether it's you making it, someone else making it, whatever. We've run into this a lot where we just need a little quick tool just for one thing that we're doing. I can whip up a script or a DCTL just to do that one thing.

00:41:25:03 - 00:41:50:17
Robbie
Yes, totally. Your your blinking was a great version of that. Your pillow boxing one that you have. Right. And so so I do I do think that like that kind of thing is really interesting. And I think that those are there certain thought leaders I mentioned Brandon, just a second ago, our buddy, Karen Hendrickson, Jason Bowden, Colin Kelly, there are there are some people that I would say are doing this better than others and are pushing the boundaries.

00:41:50:22 - 00:42:15:15
Robbie
And so if you're looking to mimic or, you know, kind of replicate or get into the zone, like look at, as you said earlier, like look at who everybody's talking about, the tools that are the most popular. There's probably a reason that they are. Those are be a good place. Let's wrap up this episode because I think we talked about a lot of good stuff, but let's talk about, I know that we've made it sound like, oh, well, we don't we stay away from the software, but the reality is, is that we have some favorites.

00:42:15:15 - 00:42:20:01
Robbie
Right. Let's let's dive into a little bit of those, some favorite tools and, and just a quick.

00:42:20:04 - 00:42:23:10
Joey
Yeah, some we can there's some that we can, I think wholeheartedly recommend.

00:42:23:12 - 00:42:34:10
Robbie
Quick synopsis of why you like it. Like kind of a high level, you know, the the headline of why you like it and, you know, riff on 3 or 4 of them, I'll do the same. And, we can then we can wrap this one up.

00:42:34:12 - 00:42:55:07
Joey
Yeah. In terms of OS x, we've talked about it multiple times in this episode. Neat video. I don't need it for every shot, but for the shots I need it for, it's so good. And it's customizable. You can go in, you can dial in. And that's exactly where being able to bring up a whole OS X custom UI really comes into its own, right?

00:42:55:07 - 00:43:17:01
Joey
It's a tool like neat video, where I need to draw selections around noise areas and then look at their little graphs and charts and really examine the noise in the image. Neat video is a perfect use case for an open effects plugin, because you need that advanced UI. You don't need the tool very often, so those couple extra clicks to use it.

00:43:17:07 - 00:43:38:05
Joey
The juice is really worth the squeeze there, because you only need it for those shots that really need it. And there's not much else that can do it. Another favorite of mine film convert. Of all the generations of film, convert because it does fit into a workflow of color management that is already established how I already work.

00:43:38:10 - 00:44:13:10
Joey
You can go log in, log out with Film Convert, and then you can do all kinds of nice, cool things. It makes a really pretty grain. It has some really pretty kind of film looks, volumetric color transformation, stuff like that. One thing that it does really, really well that I think a lot of people should play with and use, I actually personally don't use it because I've already built my own using built in tools that I have muscle memory for, but it does a color managed film like highlight compression.

00:44:13:12 - 00:44:41:08
Joey
One thing you'll find with a lot of color matte, especially in ACES, right? These color management systems were designed for beautiful cinematic footage, which usually is not overexposed with lots of peaky highlights. When you get into crappy run and gun docks, and you run them through a color pipeline that is designed for beautiful cinematic footage, sometimes you really need to wrangle those highlights, and Film Convert does a great job of that.

00:44:41:10 - 00:45:16:08
Joey
As far as open effects, those are kind of my only ones that I have that I use at this point. I've played with some others, but, film convert and and Neat video are the only open effects that I have install on every machine, which also means I'll actually use digitals. I've got a pile of custom ones that I made that I use, but, anything made by our friends car and Jason Bodak, who have actually recently teamed up together to combine their stores are really, really good, really good.

00:45:16:10 - 00:45:45:02
Joey
And our friend Kevin Kelly, his new tool contour, is a really interesting development tool because it it functions in a way kind of different than some of these other tools, where the gains and the weights of each individual slider vary based on the other ones. So if you push a really high contrast look and then you try to dial in some split tone, how aggressive that split tone is is dialed in based on how aggressive your other controls were.

00:45:45:04 - 00:46:00:18
Joey
So it does kind of, if anything, save you some clicks because it doesn't you don't have to get in and really fine tune stuff because it kind of adjusts the gains and weights of those tools for you. So those are kind of some of my faves.

00:46:00:20 - 00:46:23:12
Robbie
Yeah, yeah. So I, I have some of the, the same paper ones. I'm going to break them down actually into two categories. Some of the effects and digital. So obviously neat screen. I have been getting into contour a lot because, you know, and contour is interesting to me because, I think Colin's one of the smartest guys out there.

00:46:23:12 - 00:46:43:19
Robbie
Obviously, he was, very early on in kind of recognizing DuckTales in particular as a way to enhance capability. And I think, you know, I think that that's obviously he's famous for, and, you know, now with Contour, his sort of OFX tool that has GPU acceleration, all sorts of stuff. It's more of the kind of the next level.

00:46:43:21 - 00:47:00:18
Robbie
But I just want the only reason to point that one out is because this is a case in point where, I think you, you know, when you're identifying and shopping, if you will, Colin and his team are people that actually really do understand the underlying color science now. And they also.

00:47:00:18 - 00:47:03:00
Joey
Use the tools to do well, not.

00:47:03:02 - 00:47:17:14
Robbie
Not just throwing something on the wall and seeing if it sticks. Right. So that is one thing that I really do enjoy, even if I don't use it all the time. One thing I do like about contour is that I know that there's been a lot of thought into how the maths work, about preserving the image quality in that case.

00:47:17:14 - 00:47:38:02
Robbie
So that's one, my other one that I you did not mention, but I and and admittedly, the pricing structure is a little whack. But when it comes to the simplified use of this, when it comes to the general film emulation, I'm a big fan of, Film box by Video Village. They also make, screen, which is a video player.

00:47:38:02 - 00:47:55:00
Robbie
You might have heard of lattice, which is like, you know, a lot. And kind of, transform management tool that one of them and I tried them, you know, dancer I've tried, you know, film convert obviously. I really like film convert for its grain. I don't use it so much for its profiles because it's like, got it.

00:47:55:00 - 00:48:10:17
Robbie
Download this guy, download that, whatever. And I found the other one I found that is a little confusing. Is dancer just because it has it's great. It's good. It just has 19,000 sliders, which is like, hey, I'm I'm moving fast. It's just a lot to look at. So I do, I do like, I do like some box color.

00:48:10:17 - 00:48:50:19
Robbie
And Jason, with some of the DCTLs, I am like a lot of DCTLs that do utility type things rather than creative type things. I'm not really bought into all the six vector stuff and all the plethora of negative saturation tools and like, you know, all that because, like, yeah, they have a point. I see them, it's a couple things that I really like from color that are great peak limiter, which is solves a problem that is exists in the world of HDR, that is rounding errors going from widescreen RGB when you make peak enabled stuff is as a brick wall limiter, you need to do something at a thousand nits.

00:48:50:19 - 00:49:18:21
Robbie
There's no rounding errors. Bam! It's done. That one is just it's worth its weight. I love, love that one. The other one that that have been using a little bit more from them, which is kind of cool, is something called White Balance Checker. And the reason I tell you why I'm using that is, I work right now, this, you know, past couple months I've been doing a, a house, you know, real estate show that features, I don't know, 15,000 various shades of white walls.

00:49:18:23 - 00:49:36:02
Robbie
And you just get kind of desensitized to it over the course of a thousand shots, like what's really white? That's been, that's been really cool. Again, that's from Corey Hendricks. And that's a really, really, really good one. And then there's one last one that I love from him that I use all the time is, what is it called?

00:49:36:04 - 00:49:55:02
Robbie
Phil shaper. Okay, so what is one of the, one of the really cool things, you know, when you're when you're developing a shot, your set, your black level, when you're setting your white level, it's that kind of like fill in the gap light sometimes that you can't really emulate with a mid-tone, but you sort of can.

00:49:55:02 - 00:49:56:01
Robbie
But when you do it with the mid.

00:49:56:01 - 00:49:59:08
Joey
Yeah, midtones is too high. Shadows low.

00:49:59:12 - 00:50:19:00
Robbie
Right. And then you end up doing this like, you know, finger gymnastics where you like you just the mid-tones and then go back to, you know, lower your shadows, whatever. Yeah. One of the things I love about, the, the fill shaper is that it's just like it feels like real lighting to me. Kind of just like pumping up that middle ground in a way that's diffuse enough.

00:50:19:02 - 00:50:22:13
Robbie
That kind of does what it says. It fills. Right. So that's a.

00:50:22:19 - 00:50:33:02
Joey
That's one of those cases where it's a great thing to just drop on a node in your fixed node structure with it set to zero. So you can just jump to it and open it on your panel and avoid some of those extra clicks.

00:50:33:04 - 00:50:57:10
Robbie
Yeah. The other one that just it should be, top of our list. I don't know why we didn't mention earlier. Neither one of us mentioned, but just came to mind is that if, you're looking for a really great set of tools, the time and pixels stuff, with, no, no, on the scope, that will actually obviously works as a separate application, but it does work directly as a plugin inside of results.

00:50:57:10 - 00:51:14:05
Robbie
So if you don't want to have to run on a different computer and go out your video, I o or whatever, you can do that same thing with some of, the tiny pixel, all the other tools they have, like they're they're false color is a great one. The no display. Like, there's a lot of good tools from them as well.

00:51:14:07 - 00:51:29:20
Robbie
And then last thing I'll mention is just, I don't know, I really besides the third party ones, we haven't really talked about the built in ones as being like a thing, but there are a lot of those built in ones, oh. Effects that I use.

00:51:29:20 - 00:51:48:18
Joey
So I'm gonna I'm going to stop you here because I want to do a whole episode on kind of nontraditional uses of all of those built in effects, because there's tons of great stuff in there. And I think if you kind of open your mind up, there's a lot of nontraditional uses. So I want to do a whole episode on that.

00:51:48:23 - 00:52:05:21
Robbie
And that's a good idea for an episode. I'm glad that we can think on the fly like that. Love that. We'll we'll pencil that one in for another. Another time. Very cool. I mean, so I think that, you know, you know, to wrap this up, I think that these tools have a place, I think, that you have to kind of manage to click and, you know, kind of UI part of it.

00:52:05:23 - 00:52:28:10
Robbie
Hopefully black magic is still kind of hopefully refining some of their thinking on, on how to, to, to best utilize this. Again, if you're listening, I would love a panel like a doc, like my favorite three here that would be great. But, yeah, plenty of tools out there. You know, you vet them, look and see what's popular, just, you know, keep some of the pitfalls of, you know, versions and managing some of that stuff, some of those things that we mentioned in place.

00:52:28:10 - 00:52:44:18
Robbie
But I do I definitely think that these tools have a place in a great workflow, and I definitely think that they're empowering a lot of users to think outside the box, come up with, you know, solves the problems that they're having. And that in general is only a good thing for the community, you know?

00:52:44:20 - 00:52:45:21
Joey
Absolutely.

00:52:45:23 - 00:53:03:11
Robbie
Cool. All right, guys, well, hey, thanks for checking out this episode. Just as a reminder, you can follow us on YouTube and social media. You can head over to offsetpodcast.com, to find episodes as well. And, yeah, we'll see you next time. For The Offset Podcast. I'm Robbie Carman.

00:53:03:13 - 00:53:11:11
Joey
And I'm Joey D’Anna. Thanks for listening.