- So you've seen me post these tri-stacks on Instagram and YouTube community, and one of the most asked
questions that I get on these is, "What is Rec.709?" So in this video, I'm going
to define what Rec.709 is, we're gonna put it in a practical use. And we recently did a survey. Majority of you,
regardless of the skillset, are struggling with shot
matching, skin tones, balancing, and working with 8-bit footage. So, I created a one-hour
long free training that covers all of that. Plus, we'll wrap up the training
with an extensive Q and A, and you'll also get a link to
download the practice footage, powergrades, and some of my personal LUTs. So make sure to check
out the link down below, and sign up for the training. And guys, if you're enjoying the content, smash that like button,
subscribe to the channel, follow me on Instagram,
and let's roll the intro. (upbeat music) Rec.709, or BT.709, is a color gamut developed in 1990 by ITU-R, International
Telecommunication Union Radio Communication Sector. Now, before I tell you
what color gamut is, let's take a quick detour. So you're looking at the
visible light spectrum, basically colors that a human eye can see. Past red is infrared. We cannot see that. Past violet is ultraviolet.
We cannot see that either. These wavelengths are
measured in nanometers. And remember these numbers because they're gonna
come in handy very soon. Now, let's move on and check out something
that we're familiar with. I'm talking about the CIE
chart. It was created in 1931. And look at the numbers on
the edges of this horseshoe. These are the same exact numbers that we saw in the previous slide. Now, if you're like me, and you wanna deep dive into this stuff, and just learn more for
yourself, geek out on this, I will highly recommend
checking out this book by Blain Brown, "Cinematography:
Theory and Practice." So now that you have some context, we're ready to talk about color gamut. Color gamut is range of colors inside of the visible
color spectrum, okay? So let's look at this horseshoe again, but this time with the
Rec.709 color gamut. And you can see that this
is the range of colors that are visible to the
Rec.709, or sRGB display. Anything outside of that
will be just tossed out. So basically, Rec.709, think
of it as a common language between your camera and your display. So, your camera captures the log footage, it looks really flat, it
comes in, gets stretched out, so you go from log to a
semi-linear conversion. And what you see is presentable, and it looks lifelike, what
you saw in real life, okay? So let's put it to practice. All right, so now we're in Resolve, and this footage was shot
on Arri Alexa in log. And the purpose behind shooting in log is to give yourself the most
amount of range in post, okay? Because, if you remember
old-school cameras that shot in standard picture profile, it would look something like this. So when the footage
would come in like that, the image, from the
gate, looks pretty good, but you don't have any range up top or at the bottom to bring back. That information is
just gone. It's clipped. You can't really do anything with it. Whereas, with log, you
have so much more room. But the caveat now is that
you have to do some legwork to get it to where it needs
to be to start grading. So remember when I said
Rec.709 is a common language between your camera and your display? So let's check it out. My
display is set to Rec.709, okay? This footage was shot in log. So, Rec.709 conversion is gonna get this footage
looking how it looked on set. And to do so, we're gonna take
our color space transform, drop it on, and manually
plug in that information. Now, if your content is shot in raw, with Red, or Arri Alexa, Sony Venice, Resolve is smart enough to
do the conversion for you. But if it's shot in log, ProRes, then you have to manually
plug in that information. ProRes or H264, whatever have you. So I'm gonna go in here under color space, and I'm gonna say that is Arri Alexa, and input gamma as Arri log-C. As soon as I do that, we're ready to go. This is what it looked like on
set. The conversion is done. We don't need to do anything with output color space and output gamma because if I take you
under my project settings, my timeline is already set
to Rec.709 and Gamma 2.4. So that's already taken care of, okay? So this is what you
guys see on my Instagram any time I say Rec.709 conversion. I am just doing a straight conversion, and then not messing with anything else. Now, if we go here, hit Shift + S, and move this back, and
start making some changes, that is not pure Rec.709
conversion anymore, okay? You manipulated the image. You already started making changes to it, because this is not what
it looked like on set. It looked like this on set, okay? And as a colorist, it's really important to have your Rec.709
conversion always available, so any time the DP goes,
or the director goes, "Can you show me how it looked on set?" You can go, "Yes, no problem." And you can just take 'em there, and show them what's going on. Sometimes they will be
using their own LUTs, which is pretty easy. You can bring those in, and
get it to that custom place that they created on set. Now, the bummer is that
Rec.709 is such an old standard that it really started to show its age in the world of HDR, right? HDR televisions are so cheap now, you can just go and pick one up for a couple of hundred bucks. Everybody is noticing
the difference, okay? Look at this slide from Sony. SDR is only capable of
showing you 5.2 stops of dynamic range. SDR is also Rec.709 color gamut, okay? You guys know that even a consumer or prosumer-level cameras nowadays are capturing around eight
to 10 stops of dynamic range. When you talk about cameras like Alexa, you're getting about 14.2
stops of dynamic range that is workable, okay? So, keeping that in mind, and then seeing that your final output is only limited to 5.2 stops,
it's heartbreaking, all right? Now, when you think about the
modern-day HDR televisions, they are capable of around
10 stops of dynamic range. Now, this jump might
seem like just only 2X, like 5.2 to 10 stops,
but no, it's exponential, 'cause think about the
brightness limitation on SDR. 100 nits compared to your HDR TVs that are putting out 1,000 to 1500 nits. Now let's just look at the CIE chart for both Rec.709 and Rec.2020. And the televisions out there today are not even taking full advantage of what Rec.2020 is capable of. It's gonna take a while
for technology to catch on. Now here's the dilemma. Unless you're working with
Netflix, Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus, or one of those
big streaming services, nobody's putting out HDR content, okay? So until broadcast accepts HDR, which is gonna be a while
because it's a standard, right? So it needs to be accepted
throughout the world. And that takes time. Unless that happens, it's
not gonna be possible for everybody to just start
grading tomorrow in HDR. But you know what, that's okay. That just gives us more time to save up and buy HDR equipment, and just be ready when
the technology is here. All right, so there you have it, guys. So, hopefully this video
untangles some concepts that you might've been struggling with. And if you enjoyed the
content, you know what to do. Smash the like button,
subscribe to my channel for more awesomeness. Do not forget to check
out the free training. I'm telling you, it's a crazy deep dive, tons and tons of value,
it's absolutely free. Link is down below. Check it out. And on that note, remember, work hard, get obsessed, get possessed. I will see you in the next video. (upbeat music)
