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The look of film. What is it that makes it so desirable, yet difficult to attain on video? Although a lot of work has been done to treat video over the past few years, much of it still looks just like that - treated video. It's easy to spot, really.
I had high hopes for CineLook when it first came out. It was the first real product to provide video editors with a library of film types that could be easily selected and adjustment windows that treated each aspect (grain, hue, and saturation - all of the things that seem to make Kodak look like Kodak and Fuji look like Fuji.) Then, CineLook also had an interesting effects area, called Film Damage, that could make your video look like it had been stomped on and left on the garage floor for a few years. These effects were great for music videos and other projects where more of a gross film effect could be entertaining.
With all of these great effects already available, why do we need yet another product that makes another attempt at the film look? Simple. CineLook is a great product, but it does have weaknesses. Although it's great for adding grain and color treatments to video, it's not as good for creating motion effects - the one character that is the most difficult to duplicate on video. Just throwing grain or adding carefully designed color effects to video often isn't enough to get that slightly strobed look that film has naturally because of the 24-frame rate. There's also some shutter smearing of motion on film that factors into the equation. CineLook is notoriously slow to render, even on the fastest computer. Treating even a couple of minutes of full-frame video can take hours, depending on what settings are used to create the effects. The time it takes to render can cause CineLook to become unsuitable for longer projects, for example a complete, hour-long program.
When I read about...