Just curious about Avid/Adobe switchers and color correction.

Clearly some folks have been talking about moving over to Avid or Adobe. Seems like allot of FCP editors are one stop shops in terms of color correction with FCS. I was just curious what would be the color correction tool of choice of those on Adobe or those on Media Composer that find the Symphony cost prohibitive. I work at a place that bumps it off to an online guy but I was wondering what will be the new "Apple Color" for the owner operators who usually take things from injest to delivery themselves?

There is Colorista II and the Magic Bullet Suite from Red Giant. There is also the Reaolve at (seriously reasonable) price.



www.strypesinpost.com

To be honest, I'm also looking at Lightworks. What's your take on it?



www.strypesinpost.com

I don't have much of a take on color correction because I just do the offline. But I was curious what will be going on out there. I am mostly curious because I think that people who switch to Avid will go with Media Composer and then use something else for color correction. I can't really see allot of owner operators buying a symphony so I think whatever becomes the standard color corrector to move to from Media Composer outside of post houses may creep into some post houses running symphony rooms. They may uprez on Media Composer and color correct on something else. But that's just a guess.

The only thing I know about Lightworks is that my favorite editor of all time cuts on it. Thelma Schoonmaker. I have dabbled with it but only for a short time. It's kind of mysterious. It has like rooms and I even think in the older versions there were animal icons involved. It would be interesting to know more about. I used to assist on features when allot of editors switched from Lightworks to Avid and they all hated Avid and allot of big film editors still use it.

Lightworks:

[www.editshare.com]


Specs wise, effects are done via the GPU and apparently real time. There's a paid version which includes ProRes and DNxHD (they can't give out free codecs). It's currently windows only, but I'm hoping for a Mac build. The editing interface looks mature. According to one of the features, Multicam editing hooks up to 2 monitors via sdi- one for the split view another for the record monitor.



www.strypesinpost.com

For us Apple Color still works so we can continue to use that. We also have Resolve in the shop so we can XML back and forth between than, though there are a few issues with that at the moment.

Internal to the system, we installed the Magic Bullet 11 Suite which has both Colorista and Looks along with the new Cosmo which is really nice for skin tone.

Adobe told me straight up they had a weak color correction tool but to expect it to get much better moving forward. I know they are putting a lot of effort into CS 6 already. I told them to buy Apple Color and roll it in.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

The "Color Killer" app would definitely be DaVinci Resolve.
at $995 for the software it's incredible value for a such respected name.
and if you preferred the price of Color (pretty much free), there is a "Lite" version of Resolve that is also free.

lightworks:

i cut a multicam show on "Heavyworks" back in 1999.
in many ways it was very good.
i think there was a separate video card for each of the four channels.
makes sense given the speed of computers back then.

the control surface was modelled on film flatbed machines, and had a "35mm feel"
most editing was done with the control surface (which had a bunch of buttons as well) and the mouse.
keyboard entry was for more under the hood stuff, and media/asset/database management, (which by the way seemed to be very good)

this may well have changed in the last 12 years
i sort of hope so, as i'm a big shortcut user, and i suspect i can cut faster in FCP with it's keyboard control.
but it's not all about speed.

another great thing about light/heavyworks was it had the best trimming controls of any NLE ever,
with ability to do very complex asymmetrical trims.


nick

DaVinci Resolve 8, hands down, and seriously way farther advanced than any of the plugins out there. No comparison to Mac apps however, as it is node-based and the file structuring is completey different. There's a rather steep learning curve, and you'll need training to get into the finer points of how the pros really work with it, as well as appropriate gear for it to perform at it's best. I've been through the ICA Resolve 101 and 201 courses on Resolve 7 and 8, well worth the time and investment.

It's a crime about Color. I spent a lot of time and money learning that one, getting the certification, gearing up. Blackmagic seems far more seriously committed to Resolve than Apple ever was with Color, so if you're in the need for a high-end grading solution, Resolve is a good bet.

[I just do the offline.]

I call that the STORYLINE. I'm a storyline editor. Those positions are largely future-proof! Sometimes the material is online, sometimes it isn't. Some of us are led into colorist work, some aren't.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Temporarily mix down audio tracks with Command-Option - R !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack
with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

"I call that the STORYLINE. I'm a storyline editor."

nice!


nick

I want to move into Resolve also. I have not heard anything but good about it.

I was using color but i have abstained from it because i want to learn the Adobe way. I used Premier to CC & Grade for a music video i am just finishing.
Though Premier is still primitive for color, I have found it better than FCP alone for CC and Grading. They have very nice curves that can get you on the way to a nice look.

If you were using Production Premium you could nicely CC in premier and then Grade in AE for very nice looks.

Before Color a lot of people used Automatic Duck to get their fcp line to AE and did many looks right there in AE. Ae is not the best interface for grades but it will do the trick until you get Resolve.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

There is no "Adobe way" for color correction. The color correction tools in Adobe suck. Color Finesse is clunky as hell. The saving grace is actually Colorista II and the Magic Bullet Suite. Awesome tools. Not exactly a color correction environment like Color or the Resolve, but it's MUCH better than the default tools in Adobe. I won't even color correct with the default Adobe tools on an iPhone.



www.strypesinpost.com

Yep, Adobe has heard this one "loud and clear" as they told me recently. And actually they said the color corrector was not bad, but the UI was terrible. I'll agree there.

Colorista II works very nicely alongside Magic Bullet Suite inside Adobe Premiere Pro and of course, there is always the XML roundtrip to Color if we are working in something Color understands like ProRes.

And we also do have Resolve which we're going to test but I have heard there might be a few issues there at the moment.

So yeah, right now Color Correction / Grading is the weak link in Color, but I'm encouraged to hear that Adobe has heard us and I'm looking for good things from them moving forward here. Think Apple would sell Color to...... nah.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

I'm frankly not sure if Adobe can build a good color correction environment in such a short time. It would be a good step forward if they started building a separate app (or buy Color from Apple), and build from there. Color is good, but it really needs some serious upgrading you intend to compete with the other tools out there.

That said, it would be nice if they started making Premiere more stable, especially with regards to handling large projects. FCP isn't particularly adept at it, probably due to design and the limitation of the 32 bit architecture (project files are like Avid's bins, but you end up with lots of projects, and on a multicam project, the file size can really bloat easily). I wonder if Premiere will fare better, since they are on a 64 bit architecture with more access to RAM.



www.strypesinpost.com

>And actually they said the color corrector was not bad, but the UI was terrible.

Meh. Lift, gamma, gain, if that's what they mean about a good color corrector. I mean, the tools aren't bad if they mean using Keylight as your keyer and Mocha for a tracker. What I want to see is a good color correction environment, like Color or the Resolve. FCP had a decent 3 way color corrector if you're talking about doing a quick first light on your footage. I'm not sure if Premiere has a 3 way color corrector, but they need to start with that.

The Resolve beats Color on many fronts, not just in the tracker, or having a fully nodal interface or being able to optimize the GPU for real time rendering of effects. Next to that, the Resolve has some conforming tools, while Color has none. Come to think of it, Color is a bit of a mess when you talk about conforming tools. I don't even think you can export one dpx file (never really tried the "gather dpx media" function, but I'm not sure how well Color works with DPX). So I'm not sure what Adobe means by improving the CC tools. For effective color correction, you need a good color correction environment, plus a good keyer, a tracker and some masking tools in one effective UI. And that would take time and a bunch of good brains, and you can't have the tools scattered around like in After Effects, which is really the last place I would grade in.



www.strypesinpost.com

We're working hard on Premiere Pro's color correction tools. We're also working on a smooth workflow with Resolve coming up, as well.

BTW, Premiere Pro CS5.5 is really stable, all our veteran customers are saying so. Walter said earlier that he has a large project going, so it is possible, whereas in CS4 and earlier - not so much.

Premiere Pro CS5.5 is a beast compared with anything before CS5 - FYI.

Actually now that I've figured out the color correction UI, it's much MUCH better than I originally thought. It's essentially a 9 way color corrector that's extremely clean and very useable.

The UI sucks right now, and Adobe even told me straight up it's weak, but they were right when they said the engine behind it is very very good. Took me two days of really poking around in it to really figure out how to make it work the way I want it to.

Once they get the UI more user friendly, I think folks will be very surprised at how good and clean the basic color correction tool in Premiere actually is.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

Walter, have you done anything involving bring AAFs into Premiere, perchance?

I agree about the IU. Everything is so fiddly.

We're working hard to address concerns about a "busy interface" in upcoming releases. I think we'll be addressing your concern soon Jude.