Not sure if your monitor is up to spec? SpectraCal, the company behind CalMAN monitor calibration software, recently announced that their Colorchecker Software is now available as a free download. This software, once only available for purchase or as part of a larger CalMAN product suite, allows users to determine whether their monitor is true to industry standards such as Rec709, DCI or Adobe RGB.

DaVinci Resolve has become one of the most popular tools for color grading and creating dailies, and now Blackmagic Design has released a pretty major upgrade to the program: DaVinci Resolve 10.

One of the more interesting features of the Sony F55 is its ability to record in 4K XAVC video while simultaneously recording in HD. This gives you the option of editing right away in the Sony MPEG2 HD format as a proxy, and then linking back to the 4K XAVC compression for finishing. Sounds great right?

With every new camera, come many new questions about workflow. The term "workflow" can be fairly broad, but today I am looking at importing Sony F5/F55 footage into various non-linear editing systems (NLEs). Both the F5 & F55 can record in MPEG2 (XDCAM), XAVC and HDCAM SR formats internally. With the addition of the AXS-R5 recorder, they can also record in Sony Raw. This article is focused on MPEG2 and XAVC, but be sure to keep an eye out for future blogs on working with Sony Raw and HDCAM SR.

Canon recently announced their new 1.0.8.1.00 firmware for the C300.

Canon has released their very easy to use Cinema RAW Development software for Mac OS Lion and Mountain Lion, which allows you to ingest, play, and export Canon RAW files.

Blackmagic Design has done a great job making DaVinci Resolve 9 both full-featured color grading software and a dailies generation tool. Even more impressive is that they offer a free version called Resolve 9 Lite.

The new Canon C500 is just hitting the streets, offering both internal 50 Mbps 422 recording, as well even higher quality outputs. The camera can output HD & 2K in 4:2:2 up to 120p, or 4:4:4 up to 60p, and uncompressed 4K Raw data up to 60p and 120p at half vertical resolution.

Pomfort has put together a new tutorial on how to use their LiveGrade software in conjunction with DaVinci Resolve to create dailies. LiveGrade can be used with hardware like the BlackMagic HD Link Pro to create LUTs live. I outlined how to apply different LUTs in a previous blog, but Pomfort has put together a very simple way to work with ASC-CDL (Color Decision List) files in DaVinci Resolve.