Cinema
The Cinema is the part of PFClean that actually displays the clips, and has controls to affect how you see them. All transport controls, controls such as pan/zoom and colour channel selection, as well as many more complicated tools for colour space management and A/B split comparisons are housed within this one area of the GUI.
There are numerous ways in which a clip can be loaded into the Cinema. These all involve actions outside of the Cinema itself in other parts of the application, i.e. the Cinema itself has no direct controls for loading a clip. For example, double-clicking on a clip in the File Browser will load that clip into the Cinema for viewing. (Double-clicking in the Cinema unloads that clips and returns back to the File Browser).
Another way to load a clip into the Cinema, which additionally allows cleanup work to be performed on it, is to double click on a node in the Workflow Manager. All the various methods of loading a clip into the Cinema are described elsewhere in this manual in their own relevant section. This section of the manual details the Cinema controls that are available once a clip has been loaded into it by whatever means.
Full screen display
To expand the PFClean window to fill your display, press Option+F or click the button at the top-right of the toolbar.
To revert back to windowed mode, press Option+F or click the button again. Note: You can change these, and all other, shortcuts in the Keyboard/Mouse section of the Preferences as described elsewhere in this manual.
Image zooming and panning
By default, PFClean will display an image such that it fits in the Cinema window. The first set of controls on the toolbar under the display window, shown below:
controls how the image is zoomed and panned.
The first control allows you to enter a percentage zoom value. Clicking the + and - buttons changes this value in 10% increments (or 100% increments above 100%). You can also zoom in and out using the keyboard shortcuts, Option+Z and Option+X, or by clicking in the Cinema and dragging the mouse with the middle mouse button held.
The next 3 buttons in this toolbar allow quick access to standard zoom settings:
This button will display the clip at its natural size, i.e. a zoom of 100%. You could also hit Option+N.
This button will zoom the clip so that it fills the width of the Cinema window, or hit Option+W.
This button will zoom the clip so that it fills the height of the Cinema window, or hit Option+W.
The image can be panned in the Cinema by dragging with the right mouse button held.
Stored views
The buttons labeled 1 to 4 are used for storing and recalling user-defined zoom and pan settings. Pressing and holding one of the buttons will store the current zoom/pan settings. The button will turn purple to indicate it has stored settings. Quickly pressing and releasing the button will recall the stored settings.
The default keyboard shortcut keys for these controls are: Shift+Control+Fn to store view n. Control+Fn to recall view n.
RGB channel views
The Cinema allows you to quickly view the R, G, B and A channels either individually or in combination with each other. By default the R, G and B channels are active, and the alpha channel is inactive.
To switch a colour channel on or off, simply click the appropriate channel button with the left mouse button in the control shown below:
The default keyboard shortcut keys for these controls are: Option+R: Toggle Red channel. Option+G: Toggle Green channel. Option+B: Toggle Blue channel. Option+A: Toggle Alpha channel.
Alternatively, to view just the channel that you want, press R, G, B, or A on the keyboard. This will make just the individual channel active. Pressing it again will revert to a full RGB image. When just a single colour channel is active the image in the Cinema is shown as a greyscale for clarity.
Pixel aspect ratio
Clips are displayed with the pixel aspect ratio defined my their standard, or using a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio by toggling the pixel aspect ratio button in the Cinema:
Note though that this only changes the pixel aspect ratio used for display, to change it not only for display but also for use throughout the application, then you need to change the pixel aspect ratio for the clip in the Media Admin.
Defect display booster
The Defect Display Booster can be used to help assist with locating visual defects that require cleaning. This tool is toggled on and off by clicking the button shown below:
Clicking the P
button will display the defect booster parameters in a popup window:
These parameters can be used to control the brightness, contrast, and gamma of the image in the Cinema window to make feint marks on the footage more clearly visible.
Presets for the display booster can be created be clicking the Store button, and imported or exported from the project as XML files using the Import and Export buttons. After importing a preset, select it by clicking with the left mouse button and then click the Use button to apply the preset.
The display booster can be quickly toggled on and off using a keyboard shortcut (F12 by default). Further information about keyboard shortcuts is available on the Keyboard Shortcut page.
Please note: the display booster is only used to assist with the visual display of footage in the Cinema window to make it easier to manually locate defects. It does not affect the cleanup operations performed by tools such as the Digital Wet Gate or Workbench.
Playblast
Playblast caches the output of the current node in memory for a real-time preview.
By default, playblast ignores an in or out points and starts cacheing from the
first frame of the current clip. This can be changed by right-clicking the playblast
button and selecting Frame markers from the context menu.
If the clip is too large to fit in the playblast cache, playblast will cache as many
frames as will fit and play through the cached frames only. The size of the playblast cache
can be set in the Caching section of the PFClean preferences.
Clicking the playblast button again or pressing the Escape key will exit playblast mode.
Display/hide tools
During clip playback it can be advantageous to hide the tool area of the GUI to maximize the amount of space available to the Cinema.
Click at the top-right of the toolbar to hide the tool area. Any tools that have been switched on via the GUI will remain active. Click the button again to display the tool area.
The \ keyboard shortcut can be used to toggle the display of the tool area.
Pixel probe
PFClean has a pixel probe that displays the position (X, Y) and colour (R, G, B, A) information at a particular user-selected point in the image.
To activate the pixel probe hold down the Shift key and drag the mouse while pressing the left mouse button over the area of the image for which you require information. The pixel probe information is displayed in the bottom left-hand corner of the Cinema. The format (RGB or RGBA) and bit depth (8, 10, 16, float) of the image is also displayed by the pixel probe, and so using it can act as a quick way of verifying this information.