Don Kotlos

@Dustin I would not get a mac for Premiere. If you want to stick with mac, you are much better off building a hackintosh. I have one and it has been running more stable than my 2016 macbook ... It is a fairly straightforward process and you can find all the info you need from here: https://www.tonymacx86.com/. With a windows desktop though you can really benefit from the latest Core i7 8700K : https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Premiere-Pro-CC-2017-1-2-CPU-Performance-Core-i7-8700K-i5-8600K-i3-8350K-1047/ Another route would be to use an external GPU. I have had a great experience with them (see here), you just need a Thunderbolt 3 laptop. The new Razer blade stealth with the razer core is an excellent choice. You can get more info here: https://egpu.io/forums/. But don't stress out too much about the GPU. Unless you want full resolution 4K real-time playback with effects, you can just lower the playback resolution (see here). In any case, if you can hold until CES 2018 this month when the new 6core mobile CPUs are going to appear. Then you can either get a latest gen 6 core or the previous gen at a lower price. Good luck!

I agree with Thomas's conclusions : "Anyway, I'll continue to do some more testing, but to be honest, I’m not sure I would use the X-Pro 2 for video. There are just too many limitations in my opinion. Apart from not being able to adjust the picture profile, there’s also the really frustrating issue of not being able to switch between the EVF and the screen when recording. The sharpness is too high for my tastes too. If you’re shooting in controlled conditions the dynamic range is probably not going to be an issue, but outside, it limits what you can do, to an extent. It’s all well and good having all the different picture profiles, but in any situation with any kind of scene with a dynamic environment, most will be too contrasty to be usable without sacrificing highlights or shadows. At the end of the day though, much of this is subjective, and I’m sure there will be people who vigorously disagree with me, but that’s ok. If it works for you, that’s great. If you’re on the fence about buying a new X-Pro 2 and are considering it for video, don’t. If you want to stick with Fuji, the X-T2 will still be a better option as you can adjust the picture profiles and sharpness. Otherwise, the Panasonic GH5 or Sony a6500 are much better options at the moment if you want 4k. "

iMac Pro does not look great. Unless you are working with H265 or RAW, you are better off with the iMac:

Yep, and most generated content is not even stylized that much to require extremely flat profiles. And in most cases with 8bit compressed codecs (or even many 10bit), you will get better results by getting natural colors in camera, and then using rec709 LUTs in post for stylization. The problem with the Sonys is that the default profiles (without the PP) are really only usable with daylight. At least for me, PP are NECESSARY to get the colors where I need to in any lighting condition. The control of the color with PP is so amazing that I find hard to use any camera that doesn't have them. Even a non-Sony. What all companies should implement is baking in LUTs both in video and in stills. Computationally it is trivial (they already do that), and it would add a tremendous amount of color control without the need of bandwidth-heavy codecs.

Everyone would be better off in the future if they just use Cineform. When someone asks for Prores delivery, tell them that Cineform is better. If they insist tell them that they should be paying extra for the mac ecosystem, because at the end of the day it is costing you more money. Now it is open source. https://gopro.com/news/gopro-open-sources-the-cineform-codec https://gopro.github.io/cineform-sdk/ I am a mac user, but please stop using proprietary codecs. Especially the ones that don't work across platforms by design like Prores.

If you like the genre, try Melancholia from Lars Von Trier. P.S. If anyone complains about the political connotations, it was shot on a RED.

Perfect mount system.

Very true

The cable I made. I couldn't find one with such a flat connector so I cut one up, soldered the wires and epoxied everything together. The wind screen I got from ebay. The dimensions were 40x12mm (length x opening) but you can go with 13mm. Can't find the one I ordered but it was something along these lines: https://www.ebay.com/itm/10pcs-Pack-Handheld-Stage-Microphone-Headset-Windscreen-Foam-Mic-Cover-40x12-mm/252005425736?epid=1362261739&hash=item3aacb1a248:g:I2EAAOSw~gRVikqe

Yep, I used velcro in order to filter out most of the vibrations. Its much easier to detach/reattach as well...

Yeah the FF/S35 + clear zoom gives you an amazing range. Plus you can use anything from medium format to c-mount lenses. 4K 60p and low light will be great, but for me the only factor to get the A7SIII over the A7rIII is if they use the same fast readout as A9 when taking pictures. Having a silent camera without a rolling shutter is truly groundbreaking but they f*cked up with the A9 by omitting PP. @tellure Don't be afraid to use the clear zoom... You can use that during recording, but I wish they could make the transition smoother. But you can get a remote to make it smooth :

I think that is a good lesson for everyone to look at the footage (and listen the audio!) before calling a wrap.

Well, the new Adobe cloak technology comes to mind but that has not been released yet... Maybe ask them to be a beta tester?

I think most of us are holding off the a7r3 for the soon arriving a7s3.

So in 1080p it is practically close to a global shutter. That is the same speed as the A9 has in electronic shutter mode: http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2017/08/22/a-new-test-debuts-at-ir-the-sony-a9-rolling-shutter-is-pretty-minimal

Well, after reading a bit more on this you are right. It's funny how most sites refer to the newer models as non-upgradable, but in reality, the SSD is not soldered and most of them propagate the wrong info (myself included, and I even have one of these damn things). Now how wise it is, I am not sure Here is the only vendor I found for those custom made PCI-E SSDs: https://beetstech.com/product/solid-state-drive-a1708?gclid=CjwKCAiA1O3RBRBHEiwAq5fD_C7YrlEL44i9gw1SsVrMs0HkbtQ6R_XNweVL7BbKBhwSIqbf-s9N-RoC_2AQAvD_BwE Personally, for the same price (~$1000), I have raided 2 2TB 2.5" SSDs with the Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini. I get ~850MB/s with 4TB and I can connect it to any computer...

There is no big difference in performance between between the two models. The GPU is practically the same. You can't change anything in the latest models so choose according to your hard drive needs. You will see the biggest difference in performance once you use an egpu solution cause resolve needs as much GPU power as you can get. That will work with both models.

@Gregormannschaft Slog2 can give great results especially in high contrast conditions like outside or even during a night walk in the city when there are very bright and saturated colors. But what I have found is that once I grade it, I end up with a file that looks very close to the Cine2 profile. Since I am not a hard grader I almost always shoot Cine2 unless the I need the extended dynamic range. My main problems with slog2 (other than the occasional banding) are: 1. The skin tonalities look much better with Cine modes with minimal work in post. 2. Slog2 is actually clipping the hardest when compared to any of the Cine profiles. So to make the highlights look good I have to make the clipping smoother when grading by clipping even more but more gracefully. Take a look at my post here and observe how fast the highlights drop from the clipping point: You also see how Cine2 (& Cine3 but not shown) use the full legal range whereas S-log2/Cine1/Cine4 need to be adjusted. This video is very informative as well and you can compare the 6400 slog2 to the 3200 cine2 (to reflect the overexposing that slog2 needs):

But it is getting better. A novel made with the help of AI actually got pretty good reviews http://bigthink.com/natalie-shoemaker/a-japanese-ai-wrote-a-novel-almost-wins-literary-award I expect AI to significantly improve color grading as well based on the content of the image. And if you haven't heard AI generated music before I strongly suggest visiting this link and playing with the parameters: https://deeplearnjs.org/demos/performance_rnn

Eliminate not, but improve yes. Banding depends on bit space, color space, compression, and of course how close are the tonalities that you want to represent in the log space. The source of the banding is when you are trying to represent fine tonalities that don't exist in the file because of the limited resolution in bits especially when in recording in a log space. But color sampling such as 4:2:0 and heavy compression can exaggerate the banding (watch this recent discussion for example). Other than external recording you can do the following: 1. Use a less aggressive log space such as slog2. 2. Increase the saturation in the camera settings. 3. Bake in a LUT with the external recorder. 4. Use a smaller color space such as sgmamut3.cine or Pro or Cinema.

You have said many things which most of them are wrong really. The graphs should indicate to you that there are different analog circuits used at different ISOs. Thats the basis for Panasonic's dual iso or Sony's Dual Conversion Gain. Thats what I said earlier: These are few of your replies to this:

Let me illustrate it for you

They literally say that they use different analog circuits on every pixel. Not the same circuit or sensor but same method as Sony, same method as Aptina. Definitely not what you are claiming: So I am not sure why you disagree. If you want to learn a bit more about this you can read the documents that I attached my original reply.

No they just change the analog circuit at different ISOs just like Sony and the aptina sensors instead of just applying a gain.