The Offset Podcast - The Offset Podcast EP027: Where Do DCTLs & OFX Fit Into A Grading Workflow?

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

The built-in tools in grading applications like DaVinci Resolve are immensely powerful, but sometimes, you need a tool that goes further—or, at the very least, approaches a task in a slightly different way. In this installment of The OffSet Podcast, we're exploring how power grades, DCTLs, and OFX fit into a grading workflow.Specific topics we discuss in this episode include:Defining Powergrades, DCTL & OFXThe benefits of extending the toolset without cluttering the user interfaceIntegrating DCTLS and OFX into fix node tree structuresThe DCTL ecosystem as R&D for Blackmagic DesignKeeping DCTLs & OFX in sync, up to date, and on multiple systems and locationsExploring how to NOT paint yourself into a corner with DCTLs & OFXHow DCTLS and OFX require a lot of steps and clicks for useThere could be better interface & panel integrationSome of our favorite DCTLs and OFXBe sure to check out our library of episodes, and if you liked the show, be sure to like and subscribe to the show wherever you find it.

Hey there, and welcome to another installment of the Offset podcast. This week, we're talking about DCTLs, OFX, and how they fit into your grading workflow. Stay tuned. This podcast is sponsored by Flanders Scientific, leaders in color accurate display solutions for professional video. Whether you're a colorist, an editor, a DIT, or a broadcast engineer, Flanders Scientific has a professional display solution to meet your needs. Learn more at flanderscientific.com. Hi guys, welcome back to another episode of the Offset Podcast. I am Robbie Carmen and with me as always is my partner in crime.

Joey Deanna, Joey, how you doing, buddy? Good. How are you? I am 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 probably don't know about, but everybody else in the grading world does. And that is, you know, the discussion of DCTLs and OFX and how they fit into grading workflow. I think over the past, what, maybe five or six years, you know, DCTLs in particular have become a little bit of a cottage industry, right? What started as a way to kind of enhance some functionality specifically in DaVinci Resolve, we'll talk about what DCTL 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, DCTLs and the next step above OFX, where they kind of fit in a grading workflow, 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 offsetpodcast.com and check out additional show notes on the show. 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 its favor. Give it a thumbs up, subscribe. tell your colleagues every little bit helps, 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 DCTL? Let's start there, and then also what is OFX? What are those two different things? So 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, has its own set of features,

then has abilities to expand those features. So in DaVinci Resolve, you've got three kind of main ways you can 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 in Resolve. but you can build really advanced structures that break up different parts of the images, 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. Then there is the DCTL, the DaVinci Color Transform library. This is an interesting one because it actually evolved out of Aces. Aces is the open source color management tool that we all know and love. But to handle those color space transforms with programmable math as opposed to a lookup table, they develop 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. Functionally is very similar to a lot but with much more programmability because you can

do anything from tone mapping to bringing in some spatial elements because you know which pixel number it is and then what Black Magic did is they kind of took that to another level and allowed you as the DCTL programmer to add sliders and interface inputs, right? A normal ACE's CTL. Even create on-screen stuff too, right? Like you

could have a user interface to change values. Whereas the base ACEs CTLs take in one color space, output 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 DCTLs 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, 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 plug-in 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 buy or write can access that image and give the software back another image. 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.

So 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. Yeah. So I want to start back at the top at the power grades thing, because I think that there's a, you know, not every, I have to say this. I guess not everybody utilizes power grades, right?

Like, so I think, 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 in 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 an interactive tutorial. almost as well, because everything's built out of the native tools. Right, because so in that case, in that case, he's done something. Let's just say he has a one with 10 nodes in it, right?

And he'll do things like, hey, this node is called exposure. This is the one I want. It's ready to do that on. This one is called whatever. And it kind of walks you through like the steps of it. And it also, I think those power, it was for sale power grades also get people exposed to different methodologies for building node trees, for different organizations. stuff. And like, I've always found, like, I can't say honestly that I use a ton of third-party

power grades, but I think the thing for me that is useful to look at them is I never thought about organizing that way or 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 grades more as a glorified copy and paste operating. 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, 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 looks. Some of them are more technical and in shape. But I did want to clarify one thing that you said earlier about power grade, too. It's like a power grade could contain a DCTL or no effects in it. Sure. Right. Right. It's just part of the node tree, but I get conceptually what you're saying. It's a different container. Yeah. And one thing 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 while 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 the project. Doesn't need access to the original power grade file because you've used it. It's in your node trait, 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. Yeah. And one more thought before we move on. about DCTLs versus OFX, you know, one of the things, you know, and we're 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 ratches up pretty exponentially when you go.

So if power grade is the lowest end of the food chain, right? And you go, then OFX is the opposite end. There's a big jump in knowledge, skill, coding, programming language, whatever, to go from DCTL to effects. 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 user interface versus this codebase. 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

pretty much require somebody who's not a hobbyist but is a... Yeah, it's writing a whole application. 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 gain.

Like, it's so simple. Yeah. And yeah, you know, you get into trying to write OFX, then you've got to do your own user interface. You've got to do a lot. lot. Yeah. So, you know, in my, in my estimation, I think that this, this ecosystem is one that, you know, I have to say it's, it's a little dizzying to keep up with because it seems like

every other day somebody's releasing, oh, new power grade package, new, you know, new, uh, DCTL package. This is the best saturation DCTL this week. Right, 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 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 may be, right? But I think, you know, the bigger picture part of this discussion,

now that we define these things, is, like, where does this, where do these tools fit in kind of your grading workflow? I'll give you my opinions about this first, 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. And, you know, it's a rather mature set, you know, application set. And as such, you know, I think the developers, Black Magic, whoever, are 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, it's already a pretty crowded application to begin with.

So I think this kind of started off as like, hey, guess what? We, Black Magic, I'm speaking in the Royal We now, we're going to start this off by creating a whole bunch of these OFX and, you know, DCTLs and all that kind of stuff. So we can enhance the workflow that we don't necessarily want to or able to put into the main part of the UI, 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, any third-party tools, just rely on Black Magic, you go into that over. open up that OFX 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. And then you get to, you see something like, well, 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. know, adjustment. I mean, I'm simplifying that. But like, there seemed there, 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. And I'll give you my first example of each. First example of DCTL was, I mean, probably seven, eight years, nine years ago. I was looking for a false color kind of thing, right? And I found somebody with a DCTL false color thing to judge exposure. Perfect example of extending migrating workflow and extending that functionality, right? If you recall, before it existed in any other tool, we use my custom blanking detection DCTL for nonfiction docs forever. 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 as an OFX. And then when it came by it in OFX, I was like, oh, God, we have neat now. And so that's a whole, as everybody probably knows, that's a standalone application, the own UI does wonderful things. So, I mean, to me, it was initially about just extending my workflow for things that weren't readily available in the main UI of 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, like, it's become, it feels much more just like a part of my grading approach now, rather than something that I add on occasionally when I need it, because I set up my fixed node trees to have some of this functional. I have a node that has regular resolve noise reduction and then I have a node that already has Say neat video dropped on it, right? You know, I have one tree that has we'll talk about this a little later But I have a plug-in from our friend Colin 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, fix no tree structure, that kind of stuff, it becomes a little bit more integrated, I should say. Yeah, and the interesting thing is, you know, there was a big

transition in the mentality of how Black Magic adds features to resolve. I remember it well, it was version 14 came out and they had like 20 new built-in OFX 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 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. 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. I'm going to drop in this OFX. I'm going to 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. I do have a node in my fixed node structure that is just a DCTL node that is blank. Yeah, that way you can pull up what you want. So I could pull up any DCTL 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? Yeah, but before we get to that, I just want to mention one more thing about this general development. In two, actually two more things. One, I can't tell you, I think that the benefit, 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 unresolved, even if they're on resolve, even if they're on.

on, you know, baselight or whatever, using OFX tools there or whatever. 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 forced fed, whatever the developers of the application that you're using gave you, and that was that. Yeah, you can file bug reports. You could be like, oh, this doesn't work or I want it to work like that, you know, new features. But really for the first time that 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 pretty much make a version of it like pretty simply with DCTL tools. And if I really wanted to push myself and learn some new skills, some new libraries, new languages or whatever, I could maybe force myself into the OFX 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. We have friends that are smart enough. They're like, hey, man, I just made 30 DCLs to do all these things I want

to do. And that's a really big benefit that I think is easy to overlook about this kind of boom versus, you know, versus older things. Yeah. In creative software, we've always had the highest level, write plugins where they're writing whole applications. Black Magic specifically has made it super easy to do almost all of that with way less code and way less hassle. And I think the second part semi-related to that, and then we'll move on to some of the pitfalls of these tools, is I actually think it's a brilliant R&D move by the developers 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. We like that. But guess what? We have the resources and the expertise to take that idea. 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? Yeah. So, I mean, having the flexibility that Resolve has specifically is on all fronts a very good thing. But flexibility has its own inherent disadvantages and pitfalls and workflow issues that I think we need to be really cognizant of. You know, there are a billion awesome DCTLs and plugins 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 Git hub and put that on my DCTL and grade a whole project with that and this is awesome right so why would you not do that what are the disadvantages how can you mitigate them have a lot of I have a lot of how do you not paint yourself into a corner of absolute misery because you can yeah so 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 yeah let's go let's dive into this because there's some really good things, really good reasons not to.

So for me, there has to be, if I'm going to use a DCTL or a plugin in any workflow, it has to be compelling enough that I'm going to install it on three different systems here, on

Robbie's system and our system at 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. Right? And every time it's updated, that means we need to test it on minimum three different platforms, no, four different platforms, right?

MacArm, Mac Intel, Windows Intel, Linux Intel. Okay? We use all of those. And that's amplified exponentially, by the way, with OFX, because the OFX, again, as we said earlier, rely on a lot more external libraries and a lot more in-depth code, to put it simply. 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. Plugins, on the other hand, OFX, there's no easy way to do that. They install differently for every product. Some might say, just drop the OFX bundle in your system OFX 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. And our main, at least my main workstation, is completely off the internet. So using Topaz in a project, an OFX is a complete no-go for our workflow because it needs to phone home incessantly. I'll tell you about even when these even super early in that in the in the in the oafx side of things I had a couple weeks ago I don't know I was just like I had some downtime I was like oh I should upgrade you know version of resolve I should upgrade you know desktop video 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 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 on, or something, it was something like that. Anyway, I had, like, on a, so I did that on a Friday afternoon. Monday morning comes around, client calls, he's 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, got a note back that said, why is there this watermarking on all these shots about something about film and convert?

Right? I'm like, oh, price. So it's like stuff like that, right, that if you're not paying attention to, you have a legacy version of a plugin, there might even be like differences in terms of actual output as you go from a version to another version too. 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 friends at 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 sense. small way, it installs parallel with the version number. So when you go back to an old 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. And they'll scream that from the mountains too. And actually the devs in, you know, the black, at black magic have done something similar now where you get the legacy. They do that with all their internal tools. Yeah, where you get the legacy tag on something if it's an older version of a transformer or something like that. you know. But it's just another thing. When you start using these tools, again, as as wonderful as they can be, those are what you need to look out for workflow-wise is version numbers, changes in 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, but something has changed, and it's not something in the core resolve software, so you weren't really thinking about it. Yeah. And one more thing about OFX in particular, too, is that I have been caught with my pants down a couple times with not so much on Mac because 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 plugin doesn't work anymore, right? Because it's like, it's so tied into specific drivers. And if you use that plugin on one shot and a thousand

shot show and then you need to do a re-output late night on a Friday, you might not think about it and you might get yourself into an accidental QC embarrassment. And the last thing I'll say on that same vein is while more and more people are using Linux, because Black Magic said, hey, we're available on Linux. The, a lot of the developers thinking about these, especially about OFX, 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 would. And then a lot of cases, OFX developers just skip the Linux version.

Right, exactly. So, like, if you're stuck on Linux, that's an extra level of... Stuck on Linux. If you're privileged enough to be on Linux. So to me, I got to 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. So if I want to let's for a second forget that I have a saved node tree with one of these sitting on a node or whatever. 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 DCLTL 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, the initial get there is asking a lot sometimes for all those clicks. But related to me is that, you know, when I'm on, you know, on a panel 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've built up this muscle

memory where it's like, okay, here's my Liff Gamma Gain, here's my contrast, here's my saturation, whatever. frustratingly, I find to use these tools. Now, 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 probably a faster way to do this, but I'm just, I'm just, I'm

just looking over my shoulder here at a panel. 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 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. Absolutely. And, you know, besides all the other logistic thing, 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 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. 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 1,500. 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 completest opinions about UI, specifically when it comes to the resolve UI, you think all of the request for floating windows, panels, customization, all that kind of stuff. Those people who just shut up and it's great. And take what you spoon fed you, right? And for the most... 100%. For the most part, I see the logic in what you're saying, and I tend to agree. It brings some uniformity.

There's a lot of things I think that Resolve Team could do on the UI, but this is the one area where I think... Just bear with me for a second. I think combines a little bit of that customability with maybe not offending your sensibility over the fixed part about this. And that is, I would love to see... see the developers carve out a place and resolve one one single panel pane and i'm going to use

to suggest to them that it's the info palette at the bottom right of the main color the color page right because i don't know i mean occasionally i go over the color the info the palette but like not really right 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 OFX or D.C.T.L. interfaces, dock that to part of the main resolve UI. 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 there. I would love that.

And that actually brings me back to reminiscing about my sweet, wonderful avid DS that is long gone. In DS, 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 pen, 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 note tree. It's like there. And then the little F2 panel

just goes away. Gets out of your way. You know, something like that, something like the fixed 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. 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. Yeah, yeah. The other thing I was thinking about that I think, you know, is an aggravating thing about this, is that I think that there are some really good DCTL and OFX developers.

and then I think there's, and I'm not pointing fingers, but there's a subset that are opportunists, right? Oh, yeah. And one of the challenges I think that you'll find in this is finding tools that are actually well optimized. There are plenty of tools out there, but optimization, and I mean optimization in a couple different ways, performance, playback, that kind of stuff. But also not breaking your image. Breaking your image, right?

I think there's a lot of these tools out there that 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 like that. And that's where 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. Yeah, you painted yourself in a corner with that. And one of the benefits, you know, of 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've just, I've been burned by this and I've seen so many people burn by this that they

get all into it and then only to realize, oh, well, crap, I didn't realize it was doing this to my image or like that. And you painted 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 like a repository yeah something that's something to say that like okay we've run this through these 10 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 of develop to kind of ensure that we have more. 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. 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, the structures and the APIs get more limited, then there's less we can do with these third-party tools. But like anything else, it's kind of a balance, right? There's always some kind of risk in grabbing these third-party tools 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, but to me there has to be that compelling reason, right? Yeah. To get over these hurdles of portability, upgrades, complications with licensing, possibilities of breaking the images. 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 a thousand shots, to use one of these tools. 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 someone that you trust as a colorist is saying, hey, I love this plugin or this DCTL and this is how I use it, it's probably worth your time to check it out. If somebody's 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 Lyft Gamma gain that's better than Lyft Gamma gain, then you're probably looking at a snake oil salesman. 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 of resolve that comes out, right? They're, they're sort of saying, you know, they're either riffing on some idea that's already out there and kind of incorporating 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 say that 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 write an OFX plugin that's absolutely horrible, you're not going to screw up anything. It's not going to break resolve. It's just going to break itself. 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 down at TBD Post down in Austin, Austin, Texas. Great dude who I know recently has really dove into his own exploration of programming, right? And I think that ultimately for the, you know, we talk a lot about the industry and the health of the industry and the, you know, where we're going. One of the things I think is really exciting about this move is that it's getting more people

thinking about programming tool set design, but more in particular. solving like a way of like kind of solving problems on their own versus waiting for a you know a big company to solve the problems in the way that they want and it's like so it's one of those things that like if you are willing to if you have if you've identified problems in your workflow right that's not being satisfied by existing tool sets this is for you right yeah and having that possibility you know we we talked we did we did a two-part series on DIY for for post, 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. 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 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. Yes, totally. Your blanking was a great version of that, your pillar boxing one that you have, right? And so I do think that like that kind of thing is really interesting. And I think that those are certain thought leaders. I mentioned Brandon just a second ago. Our buddy Cara Hendrickson, Jason Bodak, Cullen Kelly. There are there are some people that I would say are doing this better than others and are pushing the boundaries. And so if you're looking to mimic or kind of replicate or get get into this own. Like, look, 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 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 these shy wave. But the reality is, is that we have some favorites, right? Let's, let's dive into a little bit of those, some favorite tools and just a quick. There's some that we can, I think, wholeheartedly recommend. Quick synopsis. of why you like it, like kind of the high level, you know, the headline of why you like it. And, you know, riff on three, four of them. I'll do the same. And we can, then we can wrap this one up. Yeah, in terms of OFX, 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. That's exactly where being able to bring up a whole OFX custom UI really comes

into its own, right? 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, the juice is really worth to 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. 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. One thing you'll find with a lot of color, especially in ACEs, right, these color management systems were designed for beautiful cinematic footage, which usually is not overexposed with lots of peeky.

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.

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 neat video are the only open effects that I have installed on every machine,

which also means I'll actually use. DCTLs, I've got a pile of custom ones that I've made that I use, but anything made by our friends, Carr and Jason Bodak, who have actually recently teamed up together to combine their stores are really, really good, really good. And our friend, Colin Kelly, his new tool, contour,

is a really interesting look development tool because 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. 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-tuned stuff

because it kind of adjusts the gains and weights of those tools for you. So those are kind of some of my faves. Yeah. Yeah. So I have some of the same favorite ones. I'm going to break them down actually into two categories, some of the OFX and DCTLs.

So obviously neat. It's great. I have been getting into contour a lot. And contour is interesting to me because I think, I think Collins, one of the smartest guys out there. Obviously, he was very early on in kind of recognizing DCTLs in particular as a way to enhance capability. And I think, you know, I think 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 kind of the next level. But I just want to, the only reason I point that one out is because this is a case and point where I think you, you know, when you're, identifying and shopping, if you will. Cullen and his team are people that actually really do understand the underlying color science. And they also use the tools to do real radio. Not just throwing something on a 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 image quality and that kind of stuff. That's one. My other one that I, you did not mention, but I, 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 a screen, which is a video player. You might have heard of lattice, which is like a, you know, a lot and kind of transform management tool. that one and I've tried the deanser 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 to download this got to download that

whatever and I found the other one I found that as a little confusing is de hancer just because it has it's great it's good it just has 19,000 sliders which is like hey I'm moving fast it's just a lot to look at so I do I do like film box cower and Jason with some of the DCTLs uh I 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 kind of. Like, yeah, they have their point. I see them. It's a couple of things that I really like from Kaur that are great.

PQ limiter, which solves a problem that exists in the world of HDR, that is rounding errors. going from YCBCR and RGB. When you make PQ enabled stuff, this is a brick wall limiter. You need to do something out of 1,000 nits. There's no rounding errors. Bam, it's done. That one is just, it's worth its weight.

I love that one. The other one that have been using a little bit more from them, which is kind of cool, it's something called Weight Balance Checker. And the reason I'll tell you why I'm using that is I work right now, this past couple months, I've been doing a house, you know, real estate show. that features, I don't know, 15,000 various shades of white walls.

And you just get kind of desensitized to it over the course of a thousand shots. Like what's really white? That's been a really cool. Again, that's from Cori Hendrickson. That's a really, really, really a 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? Phil Schaper. Okay.

So one of the really cool things that, you know, when you're developing a shot, you're set your black level, you're set your white level. It's that kind of like fill in the gap light sometimes that you can't really emulate with a midtone. Like you sort of can, but when you do it with a mid-thones. Yeah, mid-tones is too high, shadows too low. Right, and then you end up doing this like, you know, finger gymnastics where you like you adjust some mid-tones and they go back to, you know, lower your shadows or whatever. One of the things I love about the Phil Shaper is that it's just like, it feels like real lighting. me kind of just like pumping up that middle ground in a way that's diffuse enough that kind of

does what it says it fills right so that's a and 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 yeah um the other one 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 pixel stuff with no Omnioscope, that will actually obviously works as a separate application, but it does work directly as a plugin inside of Resolve. 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

time pixel, the other tools they have, like they're false color. They're false color. is a great one, the node display. Like, there's a lot of good tools from them as well. 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, O-FX, that I use. So I'm going to stop you here because I want to do a whole episode on kind of non-traditional uses of all of those built-in OFX because there's tons of great stuff in there.

And I think if you've got to open your mind up, there's a lot of non-traditional uses. So I want to do a whole episode on that. That's a good idea for an episode. I'm glad that we can think on the fly like that. Love that. We'll pencil that one in for another time. Very cool. I mean, so I think that, you know, to wrap this up, I think that these tools have

a place. I think that you have to kind of manage the click and, you know, kind of UI part of it. Hopefully Black Magic is still kind of hopefully refining some of their thinking on how to best utilize this. Again, if they're listening, I would love a panel and I could doc like my favorite three, too. That would be great. But yeah, plenty of tools out there. You know, vet them, look and see what's popular. Just, you know, keep some of the pitfalls of, you know, versions and managing some of those things that we mentioned in place.

But I definitely think that these tools have a place in a grading workflow. I definitely think that they're empowering a lot of users. to think outside the box, come up with, you know, solves to problems that they're having. And that in general is only a good thing for the community, you know? Absolutely.

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 Karnan. And I'm Joey Deanna. Thanks for listening. Thank you.