| So this is about DaVinci Resolve since it has the most flexibility for setup, many other systems are borderline turnkey. The recommended setup is a super micro chassis with dual xeons (12 core cpus min rec, 20 core preferred), min 32GB ram (usually at least 64,128+ common on high end systems), SSD for OS, thunderbolt (min)/pciE/10GbE/fibre (preferred) attached storage usually 8 bay raid6 or similar min, almost always NVIDIA GPUs with 8x 1080ti's or the latest Titans being the most common set up I see. This runs on CentOS or RHEL 6.8 or 7.3. Video signal is output over SDI from a PCIe to a LUT box (for color transforms) then to a color critical display (FSi, Sony, or Dolby typically with the best suites using cinema projectors). A second SDI runs out to a box showing video scopes. Everything is usually calibrated by light Illusions software and using a Minolta colorimeter probe (typically a 3rd party service does this every few months). The GUI monitor(s) are usually just regular consumer whatever. The software is controlled by a large, $30K control panel that looks similar to an airplane cockpit. That's most of the important stuff, but I can fill in details where you're curious. |
At the risk of asking a silly question, what does the LUT-box do that couldn't be done in software (or, I guess, why isn't it done in software)?
This stuff is fascinating to me.
Do you know of any good YouTube videos on colorist hardware? I've seen a couple of videos on workflow, but neither went into the guts of the machines and LUT-boxes.