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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Color grading software with secondary tools as good as Apple Color

Kaku Ito

Kaku Ito

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I've tested the Color Finesse, own Magic Bullet/Look, but is there any application or plug-in that offers as much secondary control as Apple Color?
Apple Color is fine but currently does not work with Cineform or other variety of QuickTime codecs (only works with uncompressed and prores).

Cineform looks very good, so I'm about to commit myself to work all of my projects to Cineform, but limited to color grading is only the draw back at this point.
 
Kaku Ito said:
I've tested the Color Finesse, own Magic Bullet/Look, but is there any application or plug-in that offers as much secondary control as Apple Color?
Apple Color is fine but currently does not work with Cineform or other variety of QuickTime codecs (only works with uncompressed and prores).
Click to expand...

Sure, there are lots of them. But none of them are free, and very few work on a Macintosh. In the desktop world, you have Iridas Speedgrade (cross platform), and Assimilate Scratch (PC only). You can concievably color correct using just about any compositing software (i.e., After Effects, Shake, Combustion, Digital Fusion, Nuke, etc.), but it's not particularly efficient or friendly. However, secondary color correction is nothing more than area and color isolations for specific corrections, so using a combination of keys and masks in a compositing program and using those to qualify the area of the color change, you accomplish the same thing. You don't do it particularly quickly, though.
 
Color is second to none- [qualify] in the Mac, affordable world. One other option is to do Color Correction in After Effects. Plenty of secondary control, though of course not as focused on color correction as Color. And you also really need the Automatic Duck plugin for a proper integration with FCP.

Noah
 
I already purchased Colorista/Look and almost bought Color Finesse, so I'm not talking about free software at all, why did you say that (lol)? But thank you for clarifying about using AE and other stuff for color grading is conceiving. I don't do much compositing (I'm real world kinda guy) but my clients often needs secondary color control with rotoscoping.

I'm going to look into Matrix for clients who can afford, also our ultimate recommendation to customers would be Quantel iQ with Pablo at Panasonic Studio (amazing how fast those companies are adopting R3D). However, many other clients can't afford the expense, so I need to have complete workflow for inexpensive ways, too. Recent Apple's move to provide decoder of ProRes would tell something that Apple would make a move to work on Color to support more codecs, we just cross our fingers I guess.

If we were to use FCP and Cineform, I guess we can use Color Finesse (this seems to have a lot of controls with secondaries with key) most of the time, then when we need to do secondary with rotoscoping, do it with 4:4:4 uncompressed in Color.
 
The best secondary in the desktop market is, IMHO, combustion.

It has the exact same -color warper- subsystem as discreet inferno or discreet flame.

It also shares the discreet keyer, the discreet diamond keyer which can output as well selections and mask, and the discreet color correction.

It can use OpenGL acceleration with Nvidia Quadros and easily colorcorrects 2K in realtime with HD-SDI out.

It can furthermore easily switch between 4k uncompressed DPX and 2K proxy QT (which it also can generate).
 
Agree with Laguun on Combustion's color warping awesomeness, good soft masks, etc...

But surely if you're going Cineform, Speedgrade is the logical choice? There is some kind of partnership between them.

Regarding other options, believe it or not the highend stuff like lustre, etc is VERY picky about file formats. They don't like compressed files at all, even lossless ones. EG you aren't allowed LZW tiffs, only pure compressed ones. This is understandable (they want to ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE playback when Mr Bigshot Director is in the room). But does make them massively inefficient.

So maybe try to talk your way into a good deal with Speedgrade, and then you will be able to take on the larger post companies while spending a heck of a lot less on your RAID because you have the benefit of Cineform compression?

But the big question is does Speedgrade have curves yet? I like my curves...

BTW, I'm likely in Tokyo from Sept 21 - Oct 1, shooting a short film on RED. Gonna be busy, but PM me if you're around! Also looking for a few crew / vendor recommendations. Paul Leeming has already helped me out a lot. You work with him, yes?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Ito-san,

We have several customers in Tokyo who are doing R3D work in realtime with SCRATCH. If you are looking for a facility to do RED work, contact me offlist and I can connect you.

Best,

Lucas Wilson
--------------
ASSIMILATE, inc.
LA, CA, USA
 
Lots more information from everybody, this is great.

Laguun, I'm in contact with the Japanese dealer of Autodesk (NGC) and talked about working together to incorporate RED workflow, so I will dig in more about Combustion with them.

Bruce,
I looked at the SpeedGrade, they look good but they don't have local support here in Japan. With that price I guess I can buy Scratch. It's good to know all of the options, though. Paul is in the same building, we work together daily. Let me know if you need help in crew/vender. My DP Takashi Chiba can help you with coordinating rentals and getting crews together. I can also offer you a space/facility during your shoot in Tokyo. Let me know.

Luki,

Thank you for your help. We handle Matrox, MOTU as distributor and also handle Blackmagic Design as a dealer, so sort of concentrating in offering system along with those hardware, but many has asked about Scratch. I found that Matrox MXO works great with Redcine, so I've been evangelizing that combination to people, so if Scratch works with any of the hardware I sell, then we'll be more interested in selling Scratch. It seems all of the facilities purchased Scratch are not open to outside jobs, though.
 
Hi,

MXO can output REDCINE screen to HDSDI and analog HD component, so connect them to something like BVM-D24 and be more confident with its first light color grading.

MXO can only output 4:2:2, so this information is good if you want to work (monitor) within REC709, I think.
 
Very interesting. I have purchased recently an MXO and I wanted to try it exactly as you said. Thanks for the confirmation.
 
Flameop,

It could output only the portion you want (it's called "region of interest") and enlarge it, but I mostly output the whole thing.

Bassam,

In the mode I'm describing, the Presentation mode, output whatever on the second desktop. So, anything that FCP natively works would be pretty much displayed the ways they are played on the desktop monitor. REDCINE needs GPU acceleration to be displayed, so for example, Blackmagic's video desktop feature won't display REDCINE's screen, but MXO does.
 
Kaku Ito said:
I already purchased Colorista/Look and almost bought Color Finesse, so I'm not talking about free software at all, why did you say that (lol)? ...
Click to expand...
I'm curious as to why you've balked so far on Color Finesse.

I realize it's not Speedgrade or SCRATCH, but it's also about one tenth the price.

I haven't used Color Finesse, but have been considering it b/c it can work with Avid FX/Boris Red.
 
Maybe my bad English, but I had a response that made it sound like I'm looking for a free software, then I responded that I don't mind buying additional software like Color Finesse. The reason why I didn't buy CF at this moment was because it doesn't seem to have path editing for the secondary. Since it does work with Cineform codec, I'm still considering to buy it :).

I already own Magic Bullet, Colorista and the Looks, but I find it not so intuitive as how you can color grade in Apple Color.
 
Kaku Ito said:
I already own Magic Bullet, Colorista and the Looks, but I find it not so intuitive as how you can color grade in Apple Color.
Click to expand...

Seems like you need to draw the line and say how much control you want (IMHO you are not going to struggle with Colorista/Synthetic Aperture vs Color) and using Apple Color with no CineForm...
 
I worked on few projects with both Apple Color and Colorista/Look and I was able to do more control with Apple Color for sure. Too bad it doesn't support Cineform.
 
How does Color Warper compare to Color? I heard someone say it was better than Color.. I'm interested to know user opinions on this.
 
Hi Andrae,

Anyone?
 
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