{"id":427,"date":"2008-07-25T10:21:35","date_gmt":"2008-07-25T15:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ywwg.com\/wordpress\/?p=427"},"modified":"2008-07-25T10:21:35","modified_gmt":"2008-07-25T15:21:35","slug":"avid-leave-my-levels-aloooooooooonnnnee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ywwg.com\/wordpress\/archives\/427","title":{"rendered":"Avid, LEAVE MY LEVELS ALOOOOOOOOOONNNNEE!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Avid has posted a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kwancentral.com\/blog\/post\/2008\/07\/Avid-Editor-Quicktime-Work-Flow-For-Proper-Brightness-Levels.aspx\">little tutorial<\/a> on how to export and import quicktimes &#8220;correctly.&#8221;  After reading it several times, I noticed that the author doesn&#8217;t cover what I think is the most important use-case: I would like to export video and not touch the levels at all.  And then I would like to import it, and not touch the levels at all.  Leave my levels alone!  Don&#8217;t clip them, don&#8217;t make them colorsafe.  My job as the online editor is to make the show broadcast-safe, and I don&#8217;t need the &#8220;help&#8221;.  When Avid screws with my levels, it makes it impossible to roundtrip between Avid and Shake so I can do vfx work.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to this article, however, I think I finally understand what the Color Levels options in Avid mean:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;RGB&#8221;:   This material I am importing or exporting is <strong>EVIL RGB<\/strong>, and needs to be fixed to proper broadcast safety.  Please Avid, I am incapable of using a color corrector, won&#8217;t you squish (RGB option) or clip (RGB source) my levels for me?<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;601\/709&#8221;:  <strong>LEAVE MY LEVELS ALOOOOONNNEEE<\/strong>.  I&#8217;ll do my own correction, thanks!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you select 601\/709 everywhere you can, Avid won&#8217;t touch your levels and will preserve the full range of the image.  I have confirmed this by exporting a dozen files with all sorts of settings.  I was able to make the process work two ways:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Avid codecs using Format Settings \/ Video Settings \/ Options \/ Color Input: 601\/709, and Color Levels: 601\/709, then importing 601\/709<\/li>\n<li>Animation codec with Color Levels: 601\/709 and importing 601\/709<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With the Avid codecs, selecting Color Input: RGB <strong>clips<\/strong> data off the top and bottom, and selecting Color Levels: RGB squishes the levels to broadcast safe without clipping.<\/p>\n<p>I have been exporting and importing files incorrectly for <strong>years<\/strong>.  Along with alpha channels, importing and exporting in Avid is <strong>insanely<\/strong> complex.  Having backwards alpha channels doesn&#8217;t help.  This needs to be fixed.  Here is how these options should read:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Color Levels: Maintain color levels<\/li>\n<li>Color Levels: Import as broadcast-safe<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Avid has posted a little tutorial on how to export and import quicktimes &#8220;correctly.&#8221; After reading it several times, I noticed that the author doesn&#8217;t cover what I think is the most important use-case: I would like to export video and not touch the levels at all. And then I would like to import it, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ywwg.com\/wordpress\/archives\/427\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Avid, LEAVE MY LEVELS ALOOOOOOOOOONNNNEE!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,5,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ywwg.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ywwg.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ywwg.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ywwg.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ywwg.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ywwg.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ywwg.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ywwg.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ywwg.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}