June 17, 2024 19:58 S2:E3

The Color Timer: Discussing Nobe Omniscope Software Scopes with Developer Tom Huczek

Welcome to the Colour Timer Podcast. I am your host

Vincent Taylor. This is the

podcast where we speak to professionals who work

with colour and today I am

speaking to Tom Huczek. He is the founder of

Time In Pixels, the creator of

Nobe OmniScope. I am very much looking forward

to this conversation because I'm

a big fan of this product. I've been using

OmniScope for about six months

and I just adore it. It's amazing. But Timing

Pixels also has some other

products as well which I'm going to speak about. So

let's go.

Take your seats

because the hourglass is about to turn. We are

entering the world of the

micro podcast. Explore the craft,

creativity and science of professionals

who use colour to tell stories. Welcome to the

Colour Timer with Vincent Taylor.

Hey Tom, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having

me. How are you doing? Yeah, not too

bad. Not too bad. I'm dealing with

cold LA which of course is not cold

anywhere else in the world but it's cold for me. So

I've got a little remember to

start the sand timer note down

here because sometimes I'll start the

interview and then I forget to do it. So before we

go any further we can start

the game show and away we go. Perfect. You have

done a lot of interviews. I was doing

some research and you know you've done a fair few

number of interviews and it's

not surprising because Time In Pixels

has brought this incredible product

You know, Nobe OmniScope

but I kind of want to go way back first to find out

who you are and how on earth

you got into this world. Yeah, so the journey was

kind of long actually. I'm a

software developer by profession and I have been

doing it for many many years

now. I started a completely different field in

banking sector initially and

telecommunications but my programming hobby

projects always related one way or

the other to some visual things. So early on I

looked into game development, some

graphics programming. So I always liked something

visual that I could impact

myself that I could code some

interesting things into the visual

things on screen. So this was like my hobby early

on and then at some point I

picked up photography and I think this was a

turning point in my career because

I became really passionate about

photography. So I spent every minute

every hour that I could on

getting out with my camera or working in

Photoshop trying to post-process my pictures then

learning about gear, about

lenses, about the cameras, about all the gear. So

down the rabbit hole. Yeah, this

became like really really big passion of mine and I

spent probably a couple of

years really getting into all the details,

everything I could basically.

Some of this transitioned slowly into motion

picture. At some point I started

taking time lapses then I started using DaVinci

Resolve to color grade time

lapses and then I become interested how to

post-process motion picture not only

the still pictures but videos. So this turned into

us because I learned that you're doing

something a little different here.

It's not like applying 20 layers in

Photoshop to make the picture look

really good but you had to approach it

differently. So that's on its own became

interesting to me. Oh this is

different. So I need to learn why it's different

and how to achieve something

good-looking but another way. So I

learned DaVinci Resolve, I started

watching all those tutorials, how to use it, how

color is basically approach color

in videos and so on. And at some point my

profession somewhat merged with my

passion of photography and this video related

things and I found myself a

small project to start on and this

first small project was basically a

false color plugin. I heard somewhere, I think it

was a DP saying that he relies

on false color on set a lot and he

would like to have false color in post

production as well to see the false color overlay

in the grading suite with

his colorist because he speaks

false color language on set that the

contrast ratios, the exposure levels between the

frames and he was lacking

the false color on screen in grading suite and I

thought to myself okay that

sounds like fairly easy thing to

implement and this is the point when I

started actually using my software

development skills in the filmmaking

world and this is how basically the

first product of Time in Pixels got

creatived. That's amazing I love that you say it

seemed fairly easy I'm just

going yeah not to my brain. Yeah you said like

first product tell me tell me

about the products that Time in pixels makes. So on

our website you will see four

products basically at the current moment and the

main one is Nobe OmniScope and

which is probably yeah it's the only standalone

application and the rest false

color, nobe display and nobe color map are plugins.

Primarily for DaVinci Resolve

but most of them work also with Premiere Pro, Final

Cut Pro, also for Photoshop

and some other platforms that support OpenFX

plugins. So the false color

that I already mentioned was the first one which is

basically a tool known from

cameras that DP uses. I think

recently started appearing in software in

various tools now we already have built in false

color in DaVinci Resolve but

when I created false color plugin it was not there

it was probably the first

software version of the false color that you could

use on a computer but it's

yeah fairly simple it turns luminosity into some

predefined ranges of color

and so the idea at least was

pretty easy and pretty simple and then

there was little enhancement to the false color

that a lot of people asked

me to do to create like separate view

of the false color so you can work in

DevInch Resolve and without the

abstracted view in your viewer so you

could see the original image in the

viewer but you could also see the false

color as a scope on your separate screen so I

implemented that and then I got a

lot of questions can you can you make this preview

of just the image without

the false color so basically creating

external view external preview of your

image so that was basically removing the false

color from the application and

this is how Nobe Display got

created with some extra features and

enhancements down the line and after that I created

Nobe Color Remap which was

slightly more complicated and more

advanced plugin for DaVinci Resolve

where you have this hue circle and you can remap

various hues and saturation on

the grid. Right now you have this color warper in

DaVinci Resolve which which is

pretty much what it was back then when it wasn't

available in DaVinci Resolve

but yeah it was it was a really nice

project for me to to dive into color

models transitions between different hue

saturations in different color models so

it was a lot of color theory and an

experimentation that gave me some solid

base for for the future projects

after that which was that a was that a

coincidence then that the very similar thing now

appears in Resolve or or or you

know I don't know I don't really know I can only

say that's fair but it got

pretty popular and a lot of colorists were saying

that it's a great tool but

it's too slow for them because they use grading

panel and they don't want to use

mouse to track the points to open effects plugins

so so the native version will

will win always so yeah yeah it just

became reality unfortunately for me but

what to do. This is a kind of a you know basic 101

question but it's I think it's

really important because you know we

we use scopes in in our industry as

colorists or as editors so here's the question why

are scopes important?

Scopes are basically

measurement tool and they give you

completely objective technical view.

You might have very pricey

reference monitor and it's very accurate

but your brain can play a lot of tricks on you and

having scopes give you like

not color by perception you or your mood so it's

sort of like absolute values of

the image that you're working on so I would say

that's that's the main reason

for using scopes if you spend hours grading the

footage your eyes won't give

you objective view on the image so you can always

rely on your scopes to check

the levels to check and the saturation the

highlights in the shadows so yeah I

think it's indispensable tool in the colorist 100%

I remember oh my gosh years

ago I think I don't know I don't know be grading

maybe three or four years and I

went to a it was just little tiny post house and

they didn't have any scopes

and this was before resolve had scopes built into

it I think it must have been

and I remember going that's okay I'm not sure how

much I actually use my scopes

anyway and I didn't realize how much

you know I'm glancing at them all the

time you know subconsciously you're just kind of

glancing at them all the time

just check and it was really hard to grade without

them you know yeah to kind

of just trust your eyes I you know

speaking of the past you know so back in

the day I had my little Tektronics scopes in my

suite in my next my little pogol

and 20 years ago I guess it was and and now we've

got Nobe OmniScope and

here's a real nasty question

What makes Nobe OmniScope, like better

I would say that OmniScope shares some of the

benefits of the hardware scope one

would be to offload your main station so you're not

running software scopes on

the same machine that you're grading and scopes

usually take some of your GPU

processing power so it's good to have them

separately on a separate machine

yeah and also you're monitoring external signal

you're monitoring the same signal

that goes to your reference

monitor so there is no room for error for

misconfiguration within DaVinci Resolve or

differently like log color

space that you're monitoring or some I don't know

layer that is not visible on

your reference screen but somehow gets into into

the scope preview on in the

software so it's more like

independent from from your workstation and the

benefits that hardware scopes don't have is

basically constant improvement

constant updates the hardware scopes they are not

so that different from the

scopes five years ago 10 years ago 15

years ago the majority of the changes

are like new video standards high

resolution probably some of the HDR

features and and that's it and with Nobe OmniScope

we can implement any customer

feedback feature request and have new version

within a week or two weeks or

a couple of months if the feature is

really big so Nobe OmniScope reacts to

the environment to the changing situation to

basically any idea that's

interesting and it's worth looking and I would say

that's probably 80% of the

features in OmniScope are coming from from the

customers from the community

feels like you know every other week I check and

there's something new that's

come with with OmniScope which which is amazing

is there I don't know if you

can talk about this but is there anything kind of

in the pipeline that's coming up

well there's there's our To-Do list is huge so

it's a matter of what's the most

interesting and most most valuable we've got some

really interesting features

ready but we cannot release them due to some

licensing things not resolved yet so

hopefully we'll be able to announce

some some of that but I think a very

interesting feature that should be available very

soon is SDI out support so

you'll be able to to use your deck link monitor

card to output the signal out of

Omniscope so you can chain and

the signal out of Omniscope or you can

basically send out the scope preview

Right. That's cool.

other way to you know recently very recently

there's been the selection of

tutorial videos that Daria has done that have come

out which are really great

like they they just very really nicely paced and

just kind of really spelled

spell it out and I love that I love

that you guys have gone to the trouble

of just making these accessible for everyone so

everyone understands what's

going on it's really tremendous yeah I think it was

really necessary and what

Daria is doing is really great and I think she's

she's like ideal person for

for this task yeah she's really really good and she

and she just said today do

you work with her to do those or is that something

she's doing on it kind of

on her own? We work on it together yeah more of the

work is probably on her side

but but we talk about this and we shape each each

video together yeah I started

off once again my my time has run out the 15

minutes goes so quickly and I've

got a whole lot more questions but

two other things I just really quickly

wanted to squeeze in at the end I

started off the interview by saying you

know you've done a lot of interviews and I'm

curious are there any questions you

wish someone would ask you yeah for

example very interesting one would be

the future in our field what's what's coming to our

field and I would say that

that VR technology as well as AI in

every corner I think it will have a big

impact on post-production tools and as well as the

hardware that we're using

for basically working with video I think it will

even change all the things in

the post-production pipeline yeah I am and this is

this the last thing I want to

finish off with I'm really impressed with the

support that comes from your

company can you tell me what kind of you know

someone was going to jump into

OmniScope what kind of support they they can get?

I think the best place for that

person would be to go to our Discord

channel it's where everything

happens the bug reports the

idea request the feature requests or

basically you can ask any question there so if if

I'm not there there are many

many people involved in the project that might

answer the question or suggest a

solution so it's it's probably the best place to

start yeah that's great yeah

um thank you so much thanks for I know it's like

it's this tiny little amount

of time to talk about so much but it's a it's a

great to get an overview and and

I mean I'm a little bit biased because I think that

Omniscope is amazing and it's

just kind of I was I was off and on

wether I should get it and then a

couple of colorist friends of mine who I really

respect they said mate once you

get it you won't go back and there and it's

absolutely true I mean it's a

fantastic product so well done thank

you all right thanks mate thanks for

chatting thanks for having me.

Tom, thank you so much for taking time out to come

on the color time of podcast it was really really

great to speak with you if

folks want to know more about

Omniscope or any of the other products from

Time In Pixels, you can check out the

show notes thank you for listening or

watching and like and subscribe and all that kind

of stuff it does help thank

you to my executive producer MixingLight.com if

you're looking at this or

listening to this on their website you

already know what they do but if not

check out MixingLight.com they can help you with

all things color a really

wonderful asset thanks for listening and see you

next time. The color timer a

micro podcast experience

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