CS5 Workflow and color correction

[Levan Bakhia]

Before going to question, let me tell you background

I am long time final cut user, even thou I am familiar with Adobe, and have experience with it, I have never thought of switching to it, but with CS5 and all improvements that are out there, I thought of switching.

Mostly what I like is that I use after effects a lot, and I like the dynamic link idea between the two, and it is great that I dont' have to render between final cut and adobe, but what happens with color corretion.

so imagine I have edited with r3d in premier, some parts needed some effects so I dynamically did some rotos, keys and etc, did some titles here and there and I am ready to finish. But I need to do color correction, and I dont' like to use tools that are in AE, I prefer to go with scratch or even with color. Now what happens here? does it mean that all this integrations, premier and after, the fact that I edit in r3d and etc, looses any sense? because now I have to expert my EDL and do grading somewhere else, than come back with dpx files to after effects? it is no better than editing in Final Cut with proxies, then color grading them and finishing in AE.

Or is there any better alternative?

thanks

 

[Mohammed El Sharqawy]

PPro CS5 uses after effects in the background as rendering server.. when you ask for a frame it renders it on the fly and send it to premiere.. use dynamiclink to work, when done render intermediate Tiff or dpx for the comps.. then go to send that either with edl or xml for color..

 

[Uli Plank]

Well, while Color Finesse in AE can deliver good quality, it's a bit clumsy to use (keyframing for example) and slower than Color.
If you feel better using Color for final grading, you can edit in PPro and send the result to Color either as DPXs (plus EDL) or with the help of Clipfinder (I'm currently testing the latter). I'll post my results ASAP.
If you go this route, I'd recommend separate systems, though, since Color likes ATI and PPro needs NVidia.

 

[shashbugu]

.

Mostly what I like is that I use after effects a lot, and I like the dynamic link idea between the two, and it is great that I dont' have to render between final cut and adobe, but what happens with color corretion.

so
Or is there any better alternative?

thanks

Join the crew. Cs5 is indeed very stable and powerful, but we just have to wait for davinci resolve or to solve this problem. Speedgrade
and Scratch are too expensive for the desktop post crowd. Unless Adobe buys another company it will take them a while to come out with a color grading solution.

 

[Mohammed El Sharqawy]

Join the crew. Cs5 is indeed very stable and powerful, but we just have to wait for davinci resolve or to solve this problem. Speedgrade
and Scratch are too expensive for the desktop post crowd. Unless Adobe buys another company it will take them a while to come out with a color grading solution.

and which company do you think adobe will buy next? :emote_popcorn:

 

[Uli Plank]

Hopefully the right one…

 

[shashbugu]

Its a lost course. Davinci resolve will take the market by storm, it will only benefit, Adobe to strengthen their media management and EDL, XML, AAf tools. Its no use to wait for a new grading suite. I strongly suggest Adobe concentrate on building more features for Cinema-DNG. Exporting from R3D's to Cine-DNG will be good for everyone as more and more camera manufacturers are adopting the format. I think R3D's are a great acquisition and DI format, trans-coding to a solid format like Cine-DNG, will be the best for editing and conforming and archiving.

Having a Cuda card in your system guarantee's you a seamless experience with CS5 and Davinci Resolve as opposed to working with apple color, hypothetically speaking of course. I am not a colorist, so being able to make rudimentary onset type -color decisions before hiring a colorist, will save a lot of time and money.

 

[Paul Leeming]

Can someone clarify - I thought the new $1000 DaVinci Resolve was Mac-only? In which case it's not much good for the bulk of CS5 users like myself using it on PCs....

Cheers,

Paul

 

[shashbugu]

Can someone clarify - I thought the new $1000 DaVinci Resolve was Mac-only? In which case it's not much good for the bulk of CS5 users like myself using it on PCs....

Cheers,

Paul

AFAIK it is currently to be released as mac only. I have a strong feeling a windows version will be released as well. It is being released to complement a few other software tools they will release on the mac, which would be, Revival, and Splice, their restoration and conform tools.

 

[Stuart Smith]

Well, while Color Finesse in AE can deliver good quality, it's a bit clumsy to use (keyframing for example) and slower than Color.
If you feel better using Color for final grading, you can edit in PPro and send the result to Color either as DPXs (plus EDL) or with the help of Clipfinder (I'm currently testing the latter). I'll post my results ASAP.
If you go this route, I'd recommend separate systems, though, since Color likes ATI and PPro needs NVidia.

Hi Uli,
That last statement makes it sound like Color doesn't like Nvidia cards. Is that what you mean, and if so, what makes you say that? We have quite a few systems that are running NVidia cards and I've not noticed any problems using Color. Am I missing something? And Apple recommends Nvidia on their site.
Thanks in advance
Stuart

 

[Petri Teittinen]

AFAIK it is currently to be released as mac only. I have a strong feeling a windows version will be released as well.

Is that only a feeling, or have you actually heard something concrete to that effect? Here's another Windows user interested in Resolve.

 

[Santiago Marti]

I didn't heard anything, but decklink has a bigger pc user base, i think, with all the usb 3.0 solutions released and all. BTW they released some really cool gear at incredible prices. This year will be a year to remember, i hope. It's really fun to see people faces when they see Ppro cs5 running .r3d in realtime with tons of effects.
And in little time there are more things to come, adobe working the export to redcine-x and the rocket implementation. Give me magic bullet in redcine-x in realtime and i am done. Add masks and secondaries and we will be in heaven.
I dream of adobe buying assimilate. I know is crazy, and the possibilities are few, but i still dream!

 

[jake blackstone]

AFAIK it is currently to be released as mac only. I have a strong feeling a windows version will be released as well. It is being released to complement a few other software tools they will release on the mac, which would be, Revival, and Splice, their restoration and conform tools.

I don't claim any special inside knowledge on the subject, but the answer was given to me at NAB is no, there are no plans at this time to port Resolve to Windows. It is Mac and Linux only. So, if you're planning to hold out for the windows version, it may be a long wait.
BTW, to my knowledge, Splice was designed to work in tandem with DaVinci 2k in order to extend its useful life to non linear pipeline and I believe, that now it's discontinued and there is no need to port it to Mac, because 2k+Splice=Resolve. Resolve contains full compliment of standard conforming tools...

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

I don't claim any special inside knowledge on the subject, but the answer was given to me at NAB is no, there are no plans at this time to port Resolve to Windows. It is Mac and Linux only. So, if you're planning to hold out for the windows version, it may be a long wait.

Yes. OSX and Linux are close relatives while windows comes from another breed. That and marketing reasons are responsible that Autodesk Smoke is only available on Mac and Linux, same counts for Resolve.

Hans

 

[jake blackstone]

Yes. OSX and Linux are close relatives while windows comes from another breed. That and marketing reasons are responsible that Autodesk Smoke is only available on Mac and Linux, same counts for Resolve.

Hans

But sadly, not Lustre...

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

Join the crew. Cs5 is indeed very stable and powerful, but we just have to wait for davinci resolve or to solve this problem. Speedgrade and Scratch are too expensive for the desktop post crowd. Unless Adobe buys another company it will take them a while to come out with a color grading solution.

Actually most systems run on off-the-shelf boxes. In this regard even an Inferno is a desktop post system.

Cheap post production works very well these days and CS5 is a great step in this direction. BUT the software costs become relatively smaller when you add some hardware to your post system that is indispensable if you want to finish your work for broadcast release or have clients that are used to a common standard.

A meaningful monitor costs 2k (you need two), an AJA Kona3 SDI board 2.5k, the cheapest high performance SAS R6 raids are around 5k, you want a Wacom board and some want a Tangent WAVE. That additional hardware is around 12K, not to mention the box which adds another 4K or a decent 1080p projector (4k).

Editing/finishing Software is like the sensor and the lenses in a camera. I don't understand why people buy a 80k Red kit and then complain about their 1k editing/finishing software when it gamma shifts, shows banding and whatnot.

That said I rather invest in valuable software that I use every day than in a lens that I rarely use and I could easily rent every day around the corner. This beeing reduser I understand the camera centric POV but people should understand that filmmaker's software above 10K is not only for elitists, like the RedOne isn't which has been sold over 7000 times worldwide. If you compare that number to the oodles of sold Canon Video DSLRs the perspective shifts even more.

Software prices are coming down already (Smoke on Mac for example) and will drop even more. But one has to see that this development has an natural end: if the income of the vendors drop to the point that R&D is not possible anymore they will only nurse their software. That is no good for us all. Perhaps in this regard Black Magic did with Resolve on the Mac more harm than good to the community...

Software packets like CS5 are aimed at a mass market. If you compare Premier Pro to a Smoke you can immediately spot the difference: CS5 is made for everyone and his mother who can hold a video camera, Smoke is restricted to few codecs, has harsh rules concerning ingesting an archiving footage, has a steep and long learning curve and is all but intuitive to work with.

Which is the better system? For the very most Premier Pro, for a very few Smoke. They happily pay the extra charge.

Back to colour correction. The vast majority of FCS owners opened Color once out of curiosity and never used it again (this happened to me with Motion). They rather invest into Colorista and use it within FCP then use the free of charge Color. Is that to be blamed to Color's cumbersome interface? I don't think so. It's the fact that delicate colour correction is rarely needed, the market is relatively small and over-hyped.

I vote for decent colour corrections tools within the NLEs, here Premier Pro CS5 has a lot of room for improvement.

Hans

 

[shashbugu]

I don't claim any special inside knowledge on the subject, but the answer was given to me at NAB is no, there are no plans at this time to port Resolve to Windows. It is Mac and Linux only. So, if you're planning to hold out for the windows version, it may be a long wait.
BTW, to my knowledge, Splice was designed to work in tandem with DaVinci 2k in order to extend its useful life to non linear pipeline and I believe, that now it's discontinued and there is no need to port it to Mac, because 2k+Splice=Resolve. Resolve contains full compliment of standard conforming tools...

Actually on one of the NAB videos the rep did say they will be releasing Splice as a conform only tool for the Mac. I will search for the video and post the link here. I was not at NAB, all I watched were the online videos.

 

[shashbugu]

Actually most systems run on off-the-shelf boxes. In this regard even an Inferno is a desktop post system.

Cheap post production works very well these days and CS5 is a great step in this direction. BUT the software costs become relatively smaller when you add some hardware to your post system that is indispensable if you want to finish your work for broadcast release or have clients that are used to a common standard.

A meaningful monitor costs 2k (you need two), an AJA Kona3 SDI board 2.5k, the cheapest high performance SAS R6 raids are around 5k, you want a Wacom board and some want a Tangent WAVE. That additional hardware is around 12K, not to mention the box which adds another 4K or a decent 1080p projector (4k).

Editing/finishing Software is like the sensor and the lenses in a camera. I don't understand why people buy a 80k Red kit and then complain about their 1k editing/finishing software when it gamma shifts, shows banding and whatnot.

That said I rather invest in valuable software that I use every day than in a lens that I rarely use and I could easily rent every day around the corner. This beeing reduser I understand the camera centric POV but people should understand that filmmaker's software above 10K is not only for elitists, like the RedOne isn't which has been sold over 7000 times worldwide. If you compare that number to the oodles of sold Canon Video DSLRs the perspective shifts even more.

Software prices are coming down already (Smoke on Mac for example) and will drop even more. But one has to see that this development has an natural end: if the income of the vendors drop to the point that R&D is not possible anymore they will only nurse their software. That is no good for us all. Perhaps in this regard Black Magic did with Resolve on the Mac more harm than good to the community...

Software packets like CS5 are aimed at a mass market. If you compare Premier Pro to a Smoke you can immediately spot the difference: CS5 is made for everyone and his mother who can hold a video camera, Smoke is restricted to few codecs, has harsh rules concerning ingesting an archiving footage, has a steep and long learning curve and is all but intuitive to work with.

Which is the better system? For the very most Premier Pro, for a very few Smoke. They happily pay the extra charge.


I vote for decent colour corrections tools within the NLEs, here Premier Pro CS5 has a lot of room for improvement.

Hans

On desktop film making, I meant inexpensive tools everyone and their mama can buy. I agree 100% that the color grading tools should be integrated into the NLE. I also 100% agree that Adobe is heading in the right direction, with their current attitude towards their user base, for All PPro CS5's shortcomings there will be plugin manufacturers out there to fill the void, its a buy what you really need approach.
But I am in the camp of make the tools available to everyone and their mama and may the real talent emerge. Owning a hammer will not make you a professional carpenter. I am 99% behind Blackmagic they listen and understand, and unlike Autodesk that has powerful but unfriendly interface tools they will be greatly supported and will continue to thrive. Every tool they have made and dropped prices on continue to fail because they are simply too difficult to use. Its common sense economics, if you reduce the price of a product and expect to sell it in large Quantities, it should be very easy to use.

I am glad you understand that Hardware and software prices will continue to fall

 

[M Most]

Every tool they have made and dropped prices on continue to fail because they are simply too difficult to use. Its common sense economics, if you reduce the price of a product and expect to sell it in large Quantities, it should be very easy to use.

So you feel that in the future everybody should be able to do everything without investing any time, effort, or money into learning any of it. And, at the same time, all of these things should have the highest of high end capabilities and performance, and be constantly improved and updated. And the companies that provide these tools will somehow be successful and profitable enough to update and maintain them while they're giving them away for free. How exactly does all of that work?

 

[M Most]

Actually on one of the NAB videos the rep did say they will be releasing Splice as a conform only tool for the Mac. I will search for the video and post the link here. I was not at NAB, all I watched were the online videos.

If they did say that, my guess is that it was a clip that they made prior to NAB, or the speaker was using an incorrect program name. The Mac version of Resolve is basically Splice Conform with a lot of other stuff, and it's being sold for $1000. It also can act as a "render node" for a full fledged Linux version of Resolve. As someone else mentioned, Splice was an add on for the 2K to allow quasi-nonlinear operation and access to file based material without the need for something like a Clipster. Since Blackmagic has effectively EOL'd the 2K, there is no need for Splice as a product.