Typically I grade on a P3-DCI (Xenon bulb) projector and when it comes time to do frame.io postings for remote review (or the filmmaker’s screener for Vimeo), I toggle the ODT from P3-DCI (D60 Sim) to Rec 709 (D60 Sim). My assumption having been - if you’ve been grading with the warmer D60 white point in P3, when you go to 709, you also want that warmer white point.
But recently, after grading many jobs that way, I’ve sometimes found that if I pick plain old Rec 709 as my output, the result just looks better. Bluer, with more color separation.
Is that just a creative preference? I thought it was “correct” to “match” your Sims. In cases where our colorists have graded P3-DCI (D65 Sim), for instance, I take care to always pick “regular” 709 (which I assume is D65 despite the lack of label).
In other words, if I / my clients like D60 Sim on the P3 projector but straight-up 709 (not D60 Sim) on frame.io…is that technically speaking wrong?
The choice of D60 or D65 is the “creative white”. And where creativity is concerned there is no objective right or wrong.
In a dark cinema the viewer has nothing for their vision to adapt to other than the screen. But when viewing on a TV, computer or phone screen the surrounding environment is different (possibly daylight, with its D65ish white) and your content may be viewed alongside other content (or even just the UI on the device) which has a D65 white. This could make them perceive the image as being warmer than they would have perceived the projected version in its environment.
At the end of the day, what your clients prefer is what is right for that project.
As a footnote, because DCI white is not generally a pleasing looking white, on a P3-DCI projector you are always viewing a “sim” white, whether that is D60 or D65. Because the white adjustment is quite significant, the P3-DCI ODTs include some additional highlight compression to avoid the image being made noticeably darker by the white point simulation. This is unique to the P3-DCI ODTs, and so makes them slightly different to all the others. For this and other reasons, P3-DCI is being removed from the default Output Transform set in ACES 2.0. In anticipation of this, you may wish to consider calibrating your projector to D60 (or D65, project dependent) so you can grade with the calibrated white of the projector, rather than a simulation.
That’s a great explanation. Perhaps for now I’ll consider grading in our DI theater at D60 Sim and using the vanilla (D65) 709 ODT for our outputs for screen, for the reason you say about context and surround.
Interesting to hear about DCI P3 becoming deprecated as an ODT. I guess that stresses me out a bit because I’m comfortable with the current workflow and unsure how smooth the process will be to calibrate our old (but awesome) projector to have an actual D65 or D60 white point. I thought the Xenon projectors had a green white point because they kind of had to in order to maintain their full tonal range. I worry that calibrating the projector to D65 will mean reducing its output brightness and have ill effects on the overall luminosity and gamma curve. I’m currently pretty happy with how a movie looks when I grade in suite at P3-D60 Sim then make a DCP and watch it at a festival like Tribeca.
But if I grade on my Xenon bulb projector calibrated to D60…when that is shown in cinemas…surely they’re projector would be calibrated to normal greenish white point P3…wouldn’t that be a mismatch?
Or somehow the forthcoming ACES 2.0 ODT for P3-DCI will take this into account?
The projector in cinema is not calibrated to P3 with the greenish white point. You use X’Y’Z’ to encode your DCP (with a white point of CIE E). And XYZ is designed so that you can have a variety of creative white points.
Have a look here:
