The Offset Podcast EP015: A Discussion With Dolby's Nate McFarlin Pt. 2

In this episode, we continue our conversation with Nate McFarlin - Senior Content Engineer at Dolby.  If you missed part 1 of this conversation, be sure to check out Episode 14 to learn more about Nate's background and how he arrived at Dolby.  

In Part 2 we cover a lot of ground with Nate including:

- Professional & consumer display considerations for HDR & Dolby Vision
- Clearing up common misconceptions about display certification (i.e. Dolby doesn't certify displays)
- Display performance criteria from Dolby
- The pitfalls of using consumer displays for HDR mastering
- The move to individual Dolby Vision certifications vs facility certifications
- HDR first and SDR to HDR workflows
- The evolution of Dolby Vision analysis
- Dolby Vision education resources & knowledgebase
- And much more!

Big thanks to Nate for joining us for these great conversations!

Creators & Guests

Host

Joey D'Anna

Joey is lead colorist and CTO of DC Color. When he’s not in the color suite you’ll usually find him with a wrench in hand working on one of his classic cars or bikes

Host

Robbie Carman

Robbie is the managing colorist and CEO of DC Color. A guitar aficionado who’s never met a piece of gear he didn’t like.

Editor

Stella Yrigoyen

Stella Yrigoyen is an Austin, TX-based video editor specializing in documentary filmmaking. With a B.S. in Radio-Television-Film from UT Austin and over 7 years of editing experience, Stella possesses an in-depth understanding of the post-production pipeline. In the past year, she worked on Austin PBS series like 'Taco Mafia' and 'Chasing the Tide,' served as a Production Assistant on 'Austin City Limits,' and contributed to various post-production roles on other creatively and technically demanding projects.

What is The Offset Podcast?

The Offset Podcast is a semi-monthly (twice a month) podcast hosted by postproduction industry stalwarts Robbie Carman & Joey D’Anna - we’re professional colorists, educators, and polymaths in video postproduction and color. We’ve been told our detailed, informative, and easy-to-follow explanations of even the most technical subjects have helped people at all levels to improve their workflows, tackle their technical/creative problems, and even improve their approaches to business & client communication.

Geared towards postproduction industry professionals each episode feels like catching up with valued peers and is the perfect length for the average commute, lunch break, or to keep you company while you work.

01:00:00:00 - 01:00:14:12
Robbie
Hey there! Welcome back to another installment of The Offset Podcast. And today we're picking up where we left off with Nate McFarlin from Dolby talking about Dolby Vision.

01:00:14:14 - 01:00:32:16
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 DIT, or a broadcast engineer, Flanders Scientific has a professional display solution to meet your needs. Learn more at Flanders Scientificc.com

01:00:32:18 - 01:00:50:03
Robbie
All right, guys, we're back at it. if you watch part one of this little mini series on Dolby Vision, you'll know that we had a good time talking with Nate. And so much so that we actually went a little too long where we actually like to be for most episodes. so we are picking this up with part two guys.

01:00:50:04 - 01:01:14:22
Robbie
Let's get back to it. So I want to talk a little bit about the professional side of this. And I also want to talk about the consumer side. And then we can wrap up talking about education and getting, you know, the initiatives that Dolby is doing to get people more up to speed about this stuff. So, you know, one of the things that I and I encounter, I'm sure you do too, all the time is, when it comes to the professional display side of things.

01:01:14:22 - 01:01:35:20
Robbie
Right? What we refer to as the reference monitoring land. I think there's a lot of confusion about what Dolby's role in the professional monitoring landscape is like. Right. Because you hear people all the time go, well, is it a Dolby certified monitor? Right. Or well, you know, does it, does it, does that that professional monitor do Dolby Vision?

01:01:35:22 - 01:02:00:05
Robbie
And there's a lot of myths especially. I'm not there's a lot of myths on the consumer side, but there's a lot of myths also that pervasive on the professional side. And I want to just kind of get your take on them kind of kind of out of the horse's mouth, because this is where you spend a lot of your time, is validating a lot of these displays and technologies, like what makes a Dolby Vision mastering monitor, and is there such a thing as a Dolby certified display?

01:02:00:07 - 01:02:17:13
Nate
Yeah, no. Great question. And again, to your point, I answer this. This is probably a question I get at least once or twice a week. so this is also very well timed for something we, published yesterday. So I love that you brought this up, but, so right off the gate there's Dolby does not certify displays, for content creation.

01:02:17:13 - 01:02:41:02
Nate
So anytime that you go to BestBuy or Costco or wherever you buy your TVs and you see a Dolby Vision or Dolby Atmos logo on the box, what that means is that that particular panel or sub speakers or whatever has license, art technology to do proper decoding of Dolby Vision metadata and to be able to do tone mapping, tone mapping as a process, as a technology in the content creation space should never be part of the thing.

01:02:41:03 - 01:03:07:14
Nate
It's not as you're looking at a reference monitor. This should be a golden reference, right, of what the true image signal looks like. Thus, the name reference monitor. So again, there's no metadata involved when you're just creating your content. That's completely metadata. Agnostic doesn't involve anything. That being said, Dolby has a vested interest in the display and HDR ecosystem in the sense that we obviously want the best, most accurate, highest quality HDR Dolby Vision experiences out there.

01:03:07:16 - 01:03:24:00
Nate
So, like we did with the pulsar, to show the world what it could be. We do engage very regularly. Again, one of the biggest parts of my job is to talk to you all these different reference display OEMs and to be constantly talking to them about what are people saying in the field, what are we looking at, what's good ideas for our roadmap?

01:03:24:00 - 01:03:44:13
Nate
What sort of features and image quality, you know, benchmarks should we be striving for? And that's really cool. I mean, that's one of my favorite parts of my job is I get to play with a lot of cool toys. I have like 20 displays in my room at any given time, which is really awesome. But again, in the past, it was a little difficult because, you know, again, we would get these questions all the time of like, hey, you guys made the pulsar.

01:03:44:13 - 01:04:01:05
Nate
Are you guys making another pulsar or is there not another pulsar coming? you know, are you going to be certifying displays? And it got a little complicated for us. and we kind of always had this switch. I will you say Switzerland stands for it's, you know, we can't recommend any specific displays. We don't have a published list.

01:04:01:07 - 01:04:20:06
Nate
and up until literally yesterday, our stances on this were very vague in the sense that we would say, hey, for doing Dolby Vision work, we always recommend that you use the highest quality display device possible, but ultimately it's at the discretion of your client, right? So if your client is happy with, you know, the HDR grade you're making on your iPhone, that obviously doesn't exist.

01:04:20:06 - 01:04:37:11
Nate
But just to be dramatic, you know, good for you. As long as they're happy, you're good. but that created a lot of problems, right? When people were going to pick monitors because Dolby is seen as such a thought leader, rightfully so. In the HDR ecosystem, people will turn to us, to look for our blessing and our guidance.

01:04:37:13 - 01:04:54:05
Nate
I actually, you know, experience this firsthand at my time at canon. You know, a lot of our HDR displays, we would get a lot of Dolby Vision work in the early days. Right? So we said, hey, Dolby, how do we, you know, tell people that our display meets the requirements to do Dolby Vision. And, and back then again, the guidances were equally vague.

01:04:54:05 - 01:05:18:18
Nate
And at the time we use diction like, hey, this monitor meets the requirements for Dolby Vision certified facilities. And, you know, they gave you a thumbs up and but there was no formal certification. There wasn't like a testing process or whatever. So one of the things that I've been working on in the last several months is working with a lot of our really talented teams, you know, internally and a lot of our great partners externally to create, what we released yesterday, we published on our knowledge base.

01:05:18:18 - 01:05:49:14
Nate
It's called the Dolby Vision HDR display evaluation guideline. And so what this does is it outlines two different tiers that follow loosely the EBU guidance and 3320 if you're familiar with grade one, grade one B displays and kind of outlines what you should expect performance wise from these two tiers. and then I also made a whole set of test criteria and procedures that go over what sort of testing parameters you should be looking at when you're doing evaluations, what sort of patches you should be using, how you should be doing the measurements and the calculations, things like that.

01:05:49:16 - 01:05:53:21
Nate
and again, just to be clear, this is not a certification. This is an education initiative to.

01:05:53:21 - 01:05:56:18
Robbie
Make sure that it's a set it it's a set of guidelines for how to.

01:05:56:20 - 01:06:14:04
Nate
Monitor. Exactly. and, you know, and that's, in the 24 hours that it's been live, I've, it's been really cool to see people are really jumping on this. and I'll show you guys a link, of course. But that's kind of how we are viewing things on the content creation side, you know? But again, on the playback side, it's totally different.

01:06:14:07 - 01:06:22:07
Nate
You do have to have like a Dolby Vision chip and things, but that can you know, that point of confusion is super, super common. And I totally understand. Well, here's.

01:06:22:07 - 01:06:35:14
Robbie
The here's here's another thing to clarify for everybody out there. so years ago, I was super stoked to get the little, you know, little package of the badge that said, you are a certified facility. You are a Dolby, you have one.

01:06:35:14 - 01:06:36:09
Nate
I'm actually.

01:06:36:11 - 01:07:03:22
Robbie
Right. There you go. Right. And I remember your colleagues came to the shop. They looked at the monitor. Okay, you got the ECM. You in the rack over there? Yeah. Okay. You know, they did all the, you know, the checking behind things, make sure everything was plugged in right the right way. And I got this Dolby certified facility thing, and I think there's a little confusion about that now because you guys have changed the stance on that a little bit over the past couple of years, kind of more moving to the individual, having the onus as somebody who is certified rather than the facility.

01:07:03:22 - 01:07:04:11
Robbie
Correct?

01:07:04:13 - 01:07:24:09
Nate
Absolutely. Yeah. I know you hit the nail on the head there. And there was it's kind of a multifaceted reason why we had to do that. The first was just bandwidth of our engineers. and that's, you know, a good problem to have in the sense that the momentum of vision creation was so, you know, fast growing that we couldn't really afford to be sending our engineers all over the world to, you know.

01:07:24:10 - 01:07:27:16
Robbie
Materials, whatever to shop every day. I, sure.

01:07:27:18 - 01:07:42:15
Nate
we also found that people were trying to kind of, like, cheat the system. And I think I've told you this story in the past, but we would find that we would go into a place. And part of the thing that we would chuck is the monitor, and we would find that a lot of times people would kind of like swap their, you know, desktop monitor or whatever they were using with.

01:07:42:19 - 01:07:45:09
Robbie
An X 300 for the day or something like that. Right, right.

01:07:45:11 - 01:08:00:18
Nate
and so we would give them the thumbs up, we would leave and then, you know, Netflix or whoever she would call us like weeks later and be like, Dolby, what the hell is going on? Like what? What's what's up with these people? So, it didn't really make sense for us. and kind of the whole scaling sense of things.

01:08:00:18 - 01:08:17:20
Nate
So like you said, we've now switched to individual certification where, if you take our certification test, pass it, you get listed as a Dolby Vision, you know, certified individual, and you go on a big list on our website. That's really great because, you know, for people that are doing freelance or things like that.

01:08:17:20 - 01:08:20:18
Robbie
Only bouncing from facility to facility or whatever, they're required.

01:08:20:20 - 01:08:28:10
Nate
Right? Right. Totally. So I think that's been really well received. and it's been working a lot better for us, frankly, as this has continued to scale.

01:08:28:12 - 01:08:51:12
Robbie
Another another thing I want your opinion related to this is that and Joey and I have been outspoken voices about this, but it would be good to get your perspective on it, because you're dealing with this and the consumers and the OEMs and stuff every day. And that is this is that we hear so often from people that know, dude, I don't need this reference monitor.

01:08:51:12 - 01:09:14:06
Robbie
I don't need to spend 20 grand, 30 grand or whatever on a reference monitor. Everybody's watching HDR on a consumer set anyway, you know, insert LG letter or whatever. I can just use one of those for reference monitors. And I know that you know the answer to why this is not. But I just want confirmation that we are not incorrect in saying that a reference monitor, you should be seeing everything.

01:09:14:10 - 01:09:37:19
Robbie
And on some of these display technologies you're not. Is that is that an oversimplification of it really? I guess a better way of asking it is kind of what's your guys's stance on using consumer displays like me and LG? All that are similar for mastering. Obviously it can be done, but it's not something I'm imagining as recommended by by Dolby for the mastering process.

01:09:37:21 - 01:09:54:06
Nate
Yeah. No. Great question. Again. so our stance on this is actually kind of change. If you would have asked Tom or anybody, you know, 4 or 5, six years ago, it would be absolutely not. Like in no situation should you ever be using this. but the reality is kind of change in the sense that, first of all, the TVs are getting a lot better.

01:09:54:08 - 01:10:23:20
Nate
we're getting to a point where consumer technology is actually rivaling and actually, you know, outpacing some of the more reference level imagery that we're seeing on, you know, the reference displays nowadays. but it does come with a lot of caveats. So one of the hardest things, you know, whenever you're doing sort of content creation, mastering is again, making sure that you're really displaying, playing back a true reference, you know, copy of that signal that's coming off of the SDI or HDMI wherever you got it from.

01:10:23:21 - 01:10:40:22
Nate
the problem with TVs is that there's a lot of image processing that goes on. So you have things like auto brightness, limiting, dynamic contrast, true motion, all this gross crap that all everybody. Tom cruise tells you to turn off when you're watching TVs, right. and for the uninitiated who don't know about that, that's really difficult to control.

01:10:41:00 - 01:10:44:03
Nate
and a lot of these OEMs, frankly, make it fairly well.

01:10:44:03 - 01:11:09:21
Robbie
I think the I think the bigger, scarier two big scary ones for me. And I get your your voice on this, the one that Joe is always talking about is color volume limitations on some of these display technologies. Right. Particularly the RGB OLEDs and then the way that they're driven. But then the other thing that drives me crazy is that so you might have a display that can do whatever mastering level nits, you know, thousand nits plus or whatever it does, you know, awesome, perfect P3.

01:11:09:23 - 01:11:31:11
Robbie
But there's sometimes not a way to turn off any of that tone mapping action that goes on in those TVs. Right? So, like, I said it, instead of clipping out a thousand nits, all of a sudden you're engaging tone mapping. So you're cool. Everything's great up to wherever, whatever that point of that TV's performance is. And then all of a sudden this tone mapping kicks in that you can't control, you can't turn it off.

01:11:31:11 - 01:11:48:17
Robbie
So instead of clipping and showing you that clip signal, it's showing you this beautifully rolled off, nice looking highlight that you're like, yeah, look, see I'm a master at this. This looks great. And then you look at it in a reference monitor. And in the case of what Joe is always rifling about now your highlights are now, you know, neon pink or something.

01:11:48:18 - 01:11:58:00
Robbie
And what I'm talking about is you look at a reference monitor now everything is clipped to hell because you just pushed it. You're pushing against that tone mapping, right? I mean, those are really.

01:11:58:01 - 01:12:17:01
Nate
Totally that's a perfectly valid argument. you know, volumetric collapse totally exists. There's another thing now where a lot of, of the newer TVs will do highlight roll off, which again, for playback looks very esthetically pleasing. Right. But for a reference monitor and for you guys in creation, it's like I want my craft to clip, like I want to see where we're at.

01:12:17:04 - 01:12:42:02
Joey
Yeah. I mean we've and we've talked a lot today about that closed loop ecosystem. Right. If you're not looking at a reference quality output of your work to the actual standard, everything after that is now, compromised, right? Because everything else in the pipeline down to the consumer TV assumes you mastered this to the standard.

01:12:42:04 - 01:13:00:03
Nate
Right? 100%. I mean, I talked to people all the time about calibration principles and durations and how often should I be calibrating? Should I be calibrating everything? And it's like if if nothing else, you have to make sure that the the display you're mastering on is calibrated. Right. Because then, like you said, that's now one variable that's permeating down the chain of incorrectness, like exponentially.

01:13:00:03 - 01:13:17:09
Nate
Right. I do want to point out to you on the TV side, it's like not only do you run into those issues, but just from like a very basic like user experience setup wise, it's like, think about a reference display picture profiles versus a TV, right? Like a reference display. I can program exactly do 709 P3 2020 whatever flavor of gamma.

01:13:17:09 - 01:13:20:05
Robbie
Change my my data levels versus video levels or whatever.

01:13:20:09 - 01:13:38:01
Nate
What what do you have on TV? So you have like bright mode, like cinema mode, game mode, vivid mode. And it's like, how does this correlate to standards like that? Translation is not clear. I will say that the TV OEMs are getting better in this and offering like professional modes and things like this, but it's still kind of the Wild West.

01:13:38:01 - 01:13:57:10
Nate
And to your point, Robbie, it's like, yes, in a perfect world where you know exactly what you're doing and how to disable all of these different settings and you've calibrated them meticulously, which there are very calibrate able nowadays, which is great. It's still a lot of additional variables that just frankly don't exist on the reference side. even as something as simple as like, how do you get my damn signal to the monitor, right?

01:13:57:10 - 01:14:13:06
Nate
Like, if you're coming in an SDI world, you need a converter now, and that's adding another set of variables. Another thing that could break, right. so again, I, we don't have kind of an official take. I just, I the caveat I would say is that what I tell people often and again, this is another question I probably get weekly.

01:14:13:06 - 01:14:36:14
Nate
But just be very aware of the shortcomings of whatever display you're doing and whether it's a TV, a reference display, whatever technology, they all have pros and cons and you just need to think about, will this work for my system? What I'm showing, like, you know, for example, someone who maybe does primarily SDR work, who occasionally dabbles in HDR, but they never really go super high, like maybe their client likes it to be relatively conservative.

01:14:36:14 - 01:14:39:06
Nate
You know, maybe you don't need 1000Hz, right? So it's.

01:14:39:06 - 01:14:39:19
Robbie
Yeah.

01:14:39:21 - 01:14:42:14
Nate
It's all relative to what the client and your work needs.

01:14:42:19 - 01:15:02:02
Robbie
To to last things in this regard. And then we'll, we'll wrap this up. I wanted to ask you a little bit about just kind of, overview of kind of some workflow stuff. And what I mean by that is that for years at least, I feel like I was indoctrinated that the, the, the Dolby way. Right.

01:15:02:07 - 01:15:27:00
Robbie
The right way to do this is to start out with, you know, an HDR grade first and derive everything that you need from that master grade. Right. I when we first started talking today, I call that the wide end of the funnel. Right. And I think obviously you guys still promote that as, you know, a great way, working in a preferred way of working as, hey, you know, we can master once and deliver many kind of kind of thing, right?

01:15:27:00 - 01:15:51:05
Robbie
Which makes a total sense. But the reality is that especially in kind of like the great middle, when I refer to it, you know, there's the high end, there's low end, and there's the, the big middle. I think a lot of that content is, is not necessarily known where it's going to go, how it's going to go. So we end up with projects all the time that, you know, hey, we didn't SDR version of this, but hey, wait, we need a Dolby Vision version of this now, right?

01:15:51:05 - 01:16:13:00
Robbie
So we're not going to reinvent the grade. We're going to flip it over to HDR and sprinkle some HDR on on top rate. And I know related. There's some new workflows that you guys have been getting into. For example, cinema trims, being able to go to do cinema stuff, I imagine you're already starting to look at immersive stuff like, you know, Apple Vision kind of stuff and how that's all going to work.

01:16:13:02 - 01:16:35:06
Robbie
Yeah. But in general, like I think you guys, it feels like you guys have kind of I don't want to say be a little less dogmatic about your approaches about these, but can you speak to a little bit about specifically about that SDR up to HDR kind of workflow? And if that's something that you're seeing more and more of and if it's, I guess, okay by you guys, if you will.

01:16:35:08 - 01:16:58:05
Nate
Yeah. No. That's again, great question. It's it's kind of a mixed bag. And the SDR world is tough because frankly, you're dealing with people that have been working in this SDR legacy, if you will, for, you know, standards been around for like 50 years. Right. And a lot of it is and we talked a lot about education that we can have the podcast where you go to film school, everything is thought and taught in SDR world.

01:16:58:07 - 01:17:16:10
Nate
and a lot of the time there's there still exists even to this day where a lot of DPS and producers, people are not thinking about HDR on set. They're not thinking about lighting for HDR, shooting for HDR. And that creates a lot of complications because again, you've established this hero look on set, right. But then you go into post-production.

01:17:16:10 - 01:17:34:22
Nate
And then if the first thing you're looking at is HDR, I think for a lot of people that's jarring, right? You're like, whoa, what the hell? Like, this isn't what I saw on set, or this is on what we were looking at at the editing bay, because, again, most editing is still doing SDR, right? So I think it's it's understandably jarring and a big kind of dynamic shift for a lot of people.

01:17:35:00 - 01:17:53:19
Nate
you know, for the best results, I think we we absolutely are still advocating starting with HDR. I really love your funnel analogy. I think that's a perfect way to do it. because again, you're not you're not compromising anything when you're starting at the widest end of the funnel. Right. but again, for people that are used to working in SDR, it makes total sense that they would be hesitant or prefer to do it in that way.

01:17:53:21 - 01:18:18:10
Nate
We do have approaches. you know, there's there's new things that Tom and others have talked about at some trade shows and our webinars and things like we have. There's a lot of cool options now to do up conversions from SDR. think of like color front and these other rhythms that have the built in. And I think that that makes a lot of sense for more specific use cases, think of like older archival pieces, places that maybe don't have the budget to do, like a full color grade.

01:18:18:10 - 01:18:37:08
Nate
I think that there's a lot of places where that makes sense. It's just, again, when you're when you're thinking about like the high end, it just it always really should be like having a professional color is doing the HDR pass and your ACR should be, you know, what you strive to be doing. I think the algorithms to do this sort of, you know, up mapping are are great.

01:18:37:08 - 01:18:46:05
Nate
But again, for, you know, to get the most out of bang for your buck, you'd always be wanting to actually have somebody pushing those knobs or turning those, you know, things to themselves.

01:18:46:07 - 01:19:03:05
Robbie
I agree, and I think one thing I'm not I'm related to that front is something that I know Jody and I have been very excited about is it seems like and please don't take this the wrong way. It seems like for years Dolby was like our algorithms. Perfect. What are you talking about? It's your guys fault, right?

01:19:03:07 - 01:19:06:20
Nate
And certainly not your. We are.

01:19:06:22 - 01:19:32:03
Robbie
I know, you know, you hear a lot of people, you know, pontificating on. Well, I had to do a lot of trims on this particular piece of content because it was dark or whatever, like, and they, you know, they'd insert different problems that they were having with some of the algorithms. One of the things I've appreciated, from you guys recently is that, you know, yes, you got the technology out in the world, but it's still ongoing.

01:19:32:03 - 01:19:50:04
Robbie
Right. And I think the most obvious thing for me about that is, you know, the cinema trims and stuff we just mentioned, but also, some of the new analysis options that are available in some of the and some of the tools like resolve. Can you speak just for a little bit to what those different analysis options are and you know, where where they came about from.

01:19:50:04 - 01:19:51:09
Robbie
You know how they developed?

01:19:51:11 - 01:20:14:06
Nate
Yeah, yeah. No. Awesome. So a couple years ago we brought on a new product manager, Sam Bilodeau. And Sam is if you've ever got the chance to meet him, he's probably the most educated and technically minded creative person I've ever met. He's he really understands everything. And he comes from kind of that creative background, which I think serves him super well in his role at all, because he kind of talks the talk and understands what a lot of the creatives are asking for.

01:20:14:06 - 01:20:39:12
Nate
So he came in a couple of years ago and kind of ripped the hood off, if you will, of the Dolby Vision algorithm car and said, like, where are all the broken pieces? Like, what can we do to fix a lot of this? everything from how the algorithm is optimized to certain, you know, things that it was potentially over optimizing for or over, emphasizing as far as you know, one of the complaints you hear often is like, my derived SDR is way too dark.

01:20:39:14 - 01:20:54:01
Nate
and, you know, frankly, the reason that was happening is because the algorithm was placing too much weight on tiny little spaces. You have, you know, think of like in my camera setup, right. This light in the background, maybe it's super bright and but the relative APL on the scene is, you know.

01:20:54:03 - 01:20:56:12
Robbie
Biased. The rest of the analysis is just because of that bright.

01:20:56:12 - 01:21:12:20
Nate
Light, right? So the analysis would say, oh, I see this highlight. I need to maintain this highlight at whatever cost. And to do that perceptually, what do you do. You darken the rest of the image to maintain that relationship. Right. Yeah. so, you know, a few months ago we introduced the new analysis tuning that's live and resolve based light and all of our supported color correctors.

01:21:13:00 - 01:21:40:11
Nate
And this gives you essentially not only the new L1 analysis, where it's just much more accurate in the way that it's, you know, creating the metadata, but then also lets the user specify the strength of, you know, the tuning that it wants to do. we found that this is getting really, really positive reviews so far. I know you guys have gotten a chance to play with it, but I think the thing that's been really gratifying to hear on our end is like a lot of color say, hey, the derived SDR is in a much better starting place.

01:21:40:11 - 01:21:47:04
Nate
I'm having to do less trims. And frankly, like you guys are creatives. We don't want the Dolby Vision process to feel like a creative process. Like this should be.

01:21:47:04 - 01:21:49:22
Robbie
Just a the packaging thing, right? Yeah. Get it out to delivery.

01:21:49:22 - 01:22:13:12
Joey
And just to add to that, I think of this, this, this goes hand in hand with what we've been talking about all along, is this democratization and trickle down of Dolby Vision from the very highest end. I think we're seeing some more of the challenges in analysis and tone mapping and stuff as Dolby Vision gets applied to maybe not, say, worse, but lower and lower quality images.

01:22:13:17 - 01:22:40:01
Joey
You know, I think the derived SDR of something that had a major Hollywood deep, perfect color grade, everything lit amazingly on set is going to be a lot easier to get right than a running gun reality show. And in the early days, people weren't doing running gun reality shows in Dolby Vision. Now, even the reality shows can benefit from Dolby Vision, and it's great to see the algorithm kind of evolve to fit more of these more content into what it can do.

01:22:40:03 - 01:23:07:11
Nate
Yeah, totally. Absolutely. Like our biggest thing is like, we again, we don't want this to feel like a chore. We want this to feel like, hey, I do this because it makes sense and gives me the best consistency across the playback side of the fence. and that's kind of where our thoughts Ben and Robbie, I appreciated your sentiment earlier of where this is this these sort of conversations, like things we're doing right now and just talking with everybody in the industry like that's vital to the success of our, you know, analysis and our, you know, format, frankly, because we want all of you guys to succeed.

01:23:07:11 - 01:23:26:01
Nate
Like the more Dolby Vision stuff that's out there is, the better for us. And if we can make your lives easier, that's something that we're always investigating. And again, at the same time, like all these other OEMs are developing their own algorithms and things like that. So like, the landscape is changing and we really want to be on the forefront of making sure that we're delivering on what is important to the creators and.

01:23:26:01 - 01:23:46:23
Robbie
Is it is gratifying as a colorist to see that you guys are adapting to kind of the the language and semantics of, of HDR in general, right? I mean, we've talked to, you know, Joe and I have talked a lot over the years about kind of the language of HDR, you know, and, you know, early on it was very geared towards just cranking it.

01:23:46:23 - 01:24:05:08
Robbie
Right. See what we can do. And, you know, put it in your face. Everything. Turn to 11, you know. And now where because it's in more genres it's in more it's in more, different flavors of content that have different needs. We're seeing that language develop, and it's great to see that language developing side by side with you guys.

01:24:05:08 - 01:24:11:05
Robbie
Acknowledgment of different people need different things for how they're going to work this out.

01:24:11:07 - 01:24:27:22
Nate
And you just such an important story that, you know, this is another like this. Probably the biggest misconception we get actually, and we actually teach us a lot in our trainings because this comes up so often, is like a lot of people are looking outside and say, oh, Adobe and all these big studios just want you to make super bright, super punchy, colorful shows.

01:24:27:22 - 01:24:40:17
Nate
And that couldn't be further from the truth and the analogy that we like to say, Adobe is that HDR and Dolby Vision, we're just giving you a bigger canvas to paint your picture, and ultimately it's up to you as the creative to decide how to use it or if you want to.

01:24:40:23 - 01:24:57:20
Robbie
We did a part. We did what? We did a podcast. Our last episode we had was, it was coming out, I guess, in a couple of days from this recording is we did, an episode on, you know, common color grading, myth myths and kind of myth busting some of these. And one of them was we were talking a little bit about P3 grading for cinema.

01:24:57:20 - 01:25:22:09
Robbie
Right. And everybody kind of feels this compulsive need to do like a dedicated P3 pass just because it's a, it's a bigger space. And then you look at their original SDR and they're not even like anywhere near the boundaries of 7 or 9. Why are they going all the way to the boundaries of P3? And I kind of feel but to, to, to, kind of reiterate what you just said, that, that that coloring box is there, but you're under no requirements to push the limits of it.

01:25:22:09 - 01:25:57:02
Robbie
Right? Like you don't have to go to the edge of P3 or 2020. You don't have to go right up to your mastering level. You don't have to have an APL that is that whatever, you know, 700 nits, the whole show. And in fact, I just think that that is unfortunately, I think those early days of HDR bias, a lot of creative people against HDR because it looked so different and so starkly different to where now I feel like, okay, look, all the big shows that are like all the, you know, Star Wars stuff on Disney is a great example, right?

01:25:57:02 - 01:26:20:19
Robbie
You look at that stuff and yeah, there's some HDR when it needs to be a control panel or, you know, whatever, you know, Cool Sun or something like that. But what, 96% of it exists in SDR land and it's sprinkled on and like so that's the languages, I guess is what I'm trying to say is developing and it's and it's good that creatives are finally kind of getting that because I think, again, the early tendencies were just to push it.

01:26:20:21 - 01:26:23:20
Robbie
And now we're seeing a lot of different approaches.

01:26:23:21 - 01:27:00:05
Joey
See, now I won't even get out of bed for anything under 20 503,000 nits personally. But I'm just kidding. But I'll say this any amount of aggressive or non-aggressive HDR grading can still benefit from the amazing technology as a distribution and packaging system that Dolby Vision offers, right? Let's say if you did an HDR grade that only ever got to 200 nits, it's still going to look better on more consumer devices going through Dolby Vision distribution than it would be going through a traditional SDR pipeline.

01:27:00:07 - 01:27:16:08
Robbie
100%. Well, let's wrap here up here by something I think is really important and obviously something as educators near and dear to Joey and I, as hard as we started talking off the show, we were fortunate enough years ago to do some education stuff with you guys, to kind of talk about, you know, the early days of Dolby Vision.

01:27:16:10 - 01:27:37:18
Robbie
But since then, it seems like the education side of, of Dolby's, you know, push into both Atmos and vision has really has really been going strong. Can you speak a little bit to I know we mentioned earlier the individual certifications, but what the kind of current level of education is for the end user because you know, in the hour that we have, we've only barely touched the surface on a lot of these things.

01:27:37:20 - 01:27:44:14
Robbie
So, you know, you guys have in-person classes. You have I know you have some new online initiatives. Can you talk a little bit about some of those things?

01:27:44:16 - 01:28:06:04
Nate
Yeah, absolutely. I'd say that education from Dolby's perspective is as accessible and variable as it's ever been, which is awesome. So to your point, you know, traditionally years ago, before Covid, it was all kind of in-person, you know, one on one kind of white glove hand-holding type stuff. But nowadays it's we still do instructor led trains that are offered every month in every region of the world.

01:28:06:04 - 01:28:33:15
Nate
So we have one for the Americas, Europe and Asia. we also have a brand new self-guided training curriculum that we launched at the tail end of last year, which has been overwhelmed, really successful. You can access that if you just go to learn English, B.Com. But you just make an account. It's completely free. We have an essentials training and advanced training and it walks you through everything from what is Dolby Vision to the fundamentals and theories behind HDR technologies and color gamut and all that fun, nerdy science stuff we were talking about.

01:28:33:15 - 01:28:50:18
Nate
But it's come packaged in really easy to understand, you know, modules. And it's very, you know, adjustable where you can just start a module, walk away, come back, you do it at your own pace. there's quizzes at the end. And then we typically recommend for folks that are completely new, start with there. So you can kind of go at your own pace.

01:28:50:20 - 01:29:05:10
Nate
The instructor led is kind of a next step above if you want to kind of a more, you know, deep dive into a lot of the stuff you'd find in the self-guided trainings. And then, you know, we'd always encourage you to go ahead and do the certification as well. You know, actually doing Dolby Vision content creation is something that you're interested in.

01:29:05:12 - 01:29:31:03
Nate
but we also are very active on our knowledge base. We have a great community forum there. We're publishing new articles there weekly, and we're always constantly revising as technologies are changing and workflows and delivery specifications are shifting. We also have great video tutorials on YouTube. We just launched again last year. We launched our new, resolve kind of masterclass esque thing, where it walks you through everything from setting up a Dolby Vision project to exporting imfs and the whole shebang.

01:29:31:03 - 01:29:48:01
Nate
So we're really trying to make this as, you know, accessible as possible and really scale, you know, we want everybody to be thinking of when you're thinking of, you know, content creation, not just on the professional side, but social media and all these other things. We want you to be thinking of Dolby Vision that we want you to know and understand how to do it.

01:29:48:03 - 01:30:04:10
Robbie
Yeah. And big shout out to you and your your colleagues on the knowledge base stuff too, because like, obviously, you know, I'm pretty knowledgeable about, you know, the workflows and the technology, but sometimes, you know, there's little bits that just kind of go in one ear and out the other ear, and you're like, how do I how do I remember how to do that?

01:30:04:10 - 01:30:22:23
Joey
And having that reference to go back to, like, I, I remember we had to edit some metadata. I'm like, I need to change the color primaries. There's metadata before the software even could do it. Knowledgebase article exactly what to put in the XML. Done. Yeah. So having a resource that anybody can go to to look up what they need when they need it is fantastic.

01:30:23:01 - 01:30:30:11
Nate
Awesome. Yeah. And we love because that's a that's a two way street right. Like it's guided by you guys. So we have this like internal joke where it's like hey we get the same question more than like 2 or 3 times.

01:30:30:12 - 01:30:32:00
Robbie
In an article for AI. Yeah. Yeah.

01:30:32:02 - 01:30:46:08
Nate
So that's kind of been our mantra. And again, that's been really cool. You know, for me, as someone who crafts most of the, if not all the display related stuff, to see people referencing that or I've seen I've gone into facilities before where I, you know, I've seen it printed out or I've seen it kind of saved in like a desktop folder.

01:30:46:08 - 01:30:52:08
Nate
Like that's always really cool to us. So, you know, again, kudos to you guys. And we thank you for, you know, supporting us in that endeavor.

01:30:52:10 - 01:31:07:19
Robbie
Awesome. Well hey, Nate, can't thank you enough for, coming on and talking shop for a little bit. we'll have to have you on again soon, because I'm looking at my list of questions I wanted to ask you. And after an hour and 15 minutes, I still have half the list, so we'll have to, sometime soon, do part two on this.

01:31:07:19 - 01:31:17:15
Robbie
But, really wanted to, say thanks for coming on. name McFarland. Everybody has, been just a great wealth knowledge here. So I can't I can't thank you enough for that.

01:31:17:17 - 01:31:20:11
Nate
Thank you Joe. Thank you Robbie, it's been a pleasure to be here.

01:31:20:13 - 01:31:44:00
Robbie
Awesome. so as always, the offset podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, anywhere that you find podcasts. And if you are listening to this podcast and you like the conversation that we had, with Nate today, please do us a favor and go ahead and like it and subscribe. Tell your friends, your colleagues, your kids, whoever or whoever you can get Ahold of to tell them about the show.

01:31:44:02 - 01:32:04:08
Robbie
we love talking to professionals, like Nate and and learning a lot from him. And hope you guys learned a lot from this. As always, a big shout out to our editor, Stella, who makes us sound somewhat intelligible. and like we know what we're talking about. and also just a big thanks again to our friends at Dolby who have, I think the last thing I'll say about the about Nate and his is, is colleagues.

01:32:04:08 - 01:32:23:05
Robbie
Is that my experience over the past decade? They are perhaps the most approachable, conversational, relaxed, good to know people out there. you know, early on, I was worried about. Well, I'm just this little colorist and, you know, you know, in this market, not. I'm not in L.A. or New York. Didn't matter to them. They were equally as invested in.

01:32:23:10 - 01:32:45:03
Robbie
And our success with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos as just as they were with, you know, the biggest companies in the world. And so that's, something I've never forgotten. And I think I encourage everybody who's getting into to dive into Atmos, to keep that in mind, because no matter what your question is or your experience or your workflow, that team, is always there to help out, and they couldn't be any more gracious and helpful.

01:32:45:03 - 01:32:51:16
Robbie
So, Nate, please give, all your, all your colleagues a big hi five for us as well, because it's always a great experience dealing with everybody.

01:32:51:18 - 01:32:55:04
Nate
We'll do. Like I said, we love hearing from you guys. So we appreciate any and all feedback.

01:32:55:06 - 01:32:59:15
Robbie
Awesome. All right. Well, for the ole Offset Podcast I'm Robbie Carman.

01:32:59:17 - 01:33:01:10
Joey
And I'm Joey D’Anna. Thanks for listening.