Color: How Do You Deal With The Painful Workflow?

I clean up a lot of timelines. Color correct 'em, make 'em look pretty. I also color correct lots of rock and roll shows.

Client A: The Doc

I keep trying to bring projects into Color but every time I try, I run out of time in the conforming process and I just give up about half way through.

By conforming, I mean a) trim the sequence. b) smooth cam all the crappy shots c) send all slow mo's to Motion d) removing all filters and transitions (and leaving markers behind to remind me what was there) e) etc., etc., etc.

Client gets peeved as the time it takes for just getting to the color correction process is long and also costly. End up doing it with the 3 way.

Client B: The Live Rock and Roll Concert

Not much conforming here, but SURPRISE, "rock and roll" client wants, yes, ROCK AND ROLL along with color correction playback. Color does not do this. Game Over.

Are you guys running up against these issues? I'm fast and good with the 3 way, and the clients are OK with Color workflow being a little slower, but not 3 days slower. The frowns on the faces of the rock and roll client wanting actual rock and roll in their color correction seems unreasonable to us. But that's what they want.

Wondering what you guys are doing when running up against issues like this?

Kevin Monahan
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Hey Kev,

I tried Color for a day after it was released in the FCS package. That was it...one day. Too clunky / non-intuitive. Got in the way of the creative process so c-ya.

For fast CC'ing / client sit-ins, I have gotten good at the 3-Way and I use Magic Bullet Looks for treatments. MBL renders FAST and you don't have to leave the timeline.

Hey...if I was the client paying for CC'ing on a Rock & Roll video, I would want to hear the Rock & Roll playback as well.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Cheap Trick? Live at Budokan? Are you kidding me? You want that louder than a jet plane. A shame I had to do it with the 3 way. I got the job done in a little more than a day.

I agree Joe. It's not ready for prime time. It's not that bad regarding the interface. A Ken Stone Article got me pretty far and I was able to figure out much of it on my own and by RTM.

Kevin Monahan
Social Support Lead, DV Products
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I use Color on almost every job,
We do a pull up on just the shots that need it.
Then paste that into a new sequence and send to color.

Ex:
Boost green grass on a golf course,
Change green water to blue,
Make wardrobe more saturated
White sky to blue Ect.
Advertising sometime calls for arresting images.

I use the MB Looks & Suite for quickie stuff, like making 5 set ups that were shot in one day,
look like multiple days or times of day (morning, evening, winter, summer)

I enjoy the interface, and find it very intuitive, hey it's a free DaVinci.

Generally the Color workflow is faster and cheaper than the DaVinci workflow....and also more flexible. Functionality and environment for color grading is generally comparable to DaVinci - so compare it to that. If they want quick and dirty do FCP 3way then do it.....if they want something that would normally cost them 2500 or more......but you can probably do for half that price....give them that.

As for audio.....its just not available......also I would like better realtime playback in Color.....but you are still getting an amazing app for the price.

EW

It would be more amazing if it didn't take 3 days to conform a 30 minute timeline to even use it. I don't want to pull up individual clips, I want the whole enchilada.

Are my requests too over the top?
Audio, it would seem to me would not be too difficult to add would it?
Even if it were scratch audio or a decent proxy, it would work.

True it's a great program?for colorists. It's just not that great for editors quite yet.

Kevin Monahan
Social Support Lead, DV Products
Adobe
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro Community Blog
Follow Me on Twitter!

Kevin, you are not alone

1. I don't like to show my clients half-finished product. They have troubles coping with murky colors and/or audio problems. Even if I promise it will be taken care of later it throws them back big time.

2. They often request some radical (and stooooppppiiidd) changes. If I have stuff made in Motion, Color, AE etc it will become a nightmare to re-edit. Keeping things simple and inside one program (as long as possible) helps me work faster and makes media management a lot easier.

Well, it generally takes us a shift to prep the timeline for color (we have the assistants do this), then media manage the footage, two days to color correct (45 min sequence), then they get it back to us. Smooth as silk. the trick is in PREPPING the footage right. If you don't have time to do that, then use the 3-way...or what I prefer, COLORISTA (part of the magic bullet suite). Colorista is MUCH better than the 3-way. Not RT, so you will have to render to play back, but how it treats colors makes it very worth it. And renders are quick...an you would have to do a final render with the 3-way anyway.

Color wasn't designed for SPEED, it was designed for QUALITY.


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