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Color grading on remote


Emily Haine

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Hey all. Can you recommend a software only solution for a color grading session with the director? I know it's not how it should be done, but the director can't be at the session and asks to follow on his MacBook so I need to find a solution for that. 

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If it doesn't need to be Resolve, you can use SCRATCH... it has a native live streaming option
(and is free of charge until end of October right now).

You can either let it stream to you a (private) Youtube live channel, or Vimeo, or Wowza, or your own rtmp server if you happen to have one.
Youtube has about 2-3 seconds delay, if you have a decent bandwidth and set the stream on Youtube to "Ultra Low Latency".

I've seen custom setups with delays less than 1sec going halfway around the globe.

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  • 4 months later...
  • 5 months later...

Just wanted to add to this in case others are browsing with the same question. Parsec is free and works great for basic editing. If you pay for the full version, you can get 10-bit and dual monitors which makes it somewhat usable for coloring. For a serious solution, it's worth checking out Teradici PCOIP or other lossless remote desktop software. PCOIP will require hardware and not be cheap, but will provide extremely accurate colors (sacrificing frame rate a little). This is going off recommendations from the colorist subreddit.

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Popping back in too- most clients don't have calibrated displays at home so Zoom has been getting us by. I have the 8K Decklink card that I just loop back into itself and Zoom recognizes the input as a camera feed so it works pretty well to send a signal like that. As long as client knows the limitations of their displays and quality loss they're fine and it's cheap and something they're all used to using at this point. I supplement the feed with postings and high res stills.

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I have a 3rd monitor (dell UltraSharp) I use for a live feed out of Resolve and screenshare that. I tried the above recommendation for discord, which I find has better color quality. However, if you upgrade to nitro, you can output HD. Downside, Client needs to upgrade as well to actually view in HD. 

 

With the deck link, are the clients able to view the higher rez or they are seeing the mpg version of it. I guess it depends if they are using the paid Zoom, no? 

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Oh nice, yeah before I had the Decklink Card I had a spare studio monitor thunderbolt to HDMI converter laying around and I popped that in to spoof a third monitor basically. I found the screen share to be pretty taxing on the CPU though.

 

And since I pay for Zoom and host the sessions I don't think there's any limitations there. It's pretty cheap a month. I kinda hate Zoom and their security practices so definitely not advocating for it, but it's working for now. And it's just receiving that SDI signal Resolve is outputting like it would send to a monitor or the Teranex. I'm outputting 1080p from the card and I've attached a screenshot of the options Zoom gives for the "camera feed" aka the input signal from the Decklink. I just use the 8bit 1080p 23.98 option. In Blackmagic's Desktop Video Setup app you can assign the SDI ports on the card In or Out functions. I'm not sure if Zoom has to do any post processing or transcoding of the camera feed to make them work for their app but the color accuracy seems good enough to work for our uses.

 

Also my internet upload speed is very limited where I live and pretty garbage (30mbps) so I'd assume my feed is choked by that. I work with some folks who screen share their GUI from zoom and just crop in to the viewer and they say it looks good on their end. When I park on a frame everything looks good and color accurate when I check my iPad but when I hit play it starts to get a bit funky and pixelated until it catches up. Again, it works when paired with stills and postings. Or maybe with a better upload speed it would be better!

 

Gonna give this Discord thing a shot though to see how that goes.

Screen Shot 2021-02-18 at 4.02.03 PM.png

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Psyched to see new activity on this thread!

In an unexpected turn of events I’m stuck abroad for the coming months, and Nobe display / NDI has been a lifesaver for my remote workflow. Now I can use my iPad Pro (paired with a custom LUT captured with Color Munki) as an external monitor, and send a feed to clients tuning in via Zoom, OBS, etc. Not to mention their support team is quick with response and quite friendly - shoutout to Tom Huczek for building me a beta version of Nobe Display for my new M1 on short notice. Can’t recommend them enough: https://timeinpixels.com/nobe-display/

Edited by Morgana McKenzie
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15 minutes ago, Jacob McKee said:

Oh nice, yeah before I had the Decklink Card I had a spare studio monitor thunderbolt to HDMI converter laying around and I popped that in to spoof a third monitor basically. I found the screen share to be pretty taxing on the CPU though.

 

And since I pay for Zoom and host the sessions I don't think there's any limitations there. It's pretty cheap a month. I kinda hate Zoom and their security practices so definitely not advocating for it, but it's working for now. And it's just receiving that SDI signal Resolve is outputting like it would send to a monitor or the Teranex. I'm outputting 1080p from the card and I've attached a screenshot of the options Zoom gives for the "camera feed" aka the input signal from the Decklink. I just use the 8bit 1080p 23.98 option. In Blackmagic's Desktop Video Setup app you can assign the SDI ports on the card In or Out functions. I'm not sure if Zoom has to do any post processing or transcoding of the camera feed to make them work for their app but the color accuracy seems good enough to work for our uses.

 

Also my internet upload speed is very limited where I live and pretty garbage (30mbps) so I'd assume my feed is choked by that. I work with some folks who screen share their GUI from zoom and just crop in to the viewer and they say it looks good on their end. When I park on a frame everything looks good and color accurate when I check my iPad but when I hit play it starts to get a bit funky and pixelated until it catches up. Again, it works when paired with stills and postings. Or maybe with a better upload speed it would be better!

 

Gonna give this Discord thing a shot though to see how that goes.

Screen Shot 2021-02-18 at 4.02.03 PM.png

Ive just used the Live Feed out of Resolve. I haven't messed with converters and what not. CPU is fine this way and seems to do the trick just fine. *poor man's remote:) 

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  • 4 weeks later...

If you haven't given Setstream.io a try yet I highly, highly recommend it. I've been using it for the last few months and the latency is stunning (less than a second) and it has a few different codec options. Their site has a lot of resources for color management and the best way to send the signal out of your machine. I can hold my iPad Pro up next to my Flanders and I'm stunned how close they are. I've even been able to evaluate grain on the stream using VP9 and a cranked bitrate. It's obviously still a little chunky, but it's a huge improvement over Zoom or YouTube/Vimeo. 

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It’s supposedly the best for low latency, but I personally think using OBS is the way to go. SetStream has a great write up on color accuracy in their support documentation. Their new beta features are really impressive so far as well, so even better things to come in the near future. 

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