ADOBE Stepped up....who's next?

[ericyoung]

...At the risk of sounding redundant, though: Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. It applies here just as it's applied to numerous other things in the past.

That's true, and if I had the budget I would absolutely love to go high end or pay a talented grader to do it while I could concentrate on directing/shooting. But it's good to hear that in theory it is possible (as I suspected, having done the same with stills and print design in desktop publishing).

 

[Chris Parker]

for those who grade 'on their own' as they have no budget for the big boys, i would suspect that color 2.0 that Apple releases at NAB in the spring will bring a world of joy to the colorizing possibilities with RED on a low budget.

Granted, it would then come down to the talent of the colorist, which is what it really is all about to get it to look good. And that to me is the key point. All these tools will soon have the same 'knobs' (OF COURSE the high end ones will be faster/better), but it is ALL about the talent of the person tweaking the knobs. Colorizing is an art man. I know, because I tried doing some color work and I suck at it (for the record, I think Omen's work on Ian's subway footage when he posted some grading examples was very very nice work - shout out Omen). Gave me a whole new level of appreciation for that art.

But I do think that just as RED has allowed lower end things to shoot at high quality, and just as Final Cut Pro allowed people who couldn't afford an AVID the ability to cut high end things, there will be a few new tools that will allow you the option to colorize your RED footage at a high end level of quality for next to no additional cost of gear. This is a good thing.

It won't kill off the other systems, AVID ain't going anywhere by the look of it since Final Cut Pro first came out...neither will Scratch, Baselight, Pablo, etc. etc. due to the new Color programs coming. It's just that the lower end stuff is becoming a BOOMING business, what with viral videos and youtube probably getting more of the young folks' eyeball time than the big screens these days....so someone with the skill set to do it 'all themselves' and have it look 'prety fuckin' good' has a big opportunity....

what was this thread about again???

 

[Nick Wolf]

?Monitors?...Can someone point me in the right direction...Please.
Is there a difinitive list of the be all and end all for Color Grading?


DogDay.

 

[Chris Parker]

Can't go wrong with CineTal for grading I would think.

 

[Mike Harrington]

The terms are interchangeable. Color Correction is a term that has been used in the US for years to describe electronic color manipulation, just as the term timing has been used for years to describe the photochemical version of the same thing, achieved by varying the printing lights. Grading has long been the European term for the same thing, and has been adapted by forums like this one, most likely because the original posts referring to it were probably put here by European (or possibly Canadian) members. "Grading" is not a term that has been used by the American film and video industry, the terminology has always been color correction (electronic) or timing (film). The only exception to this has been in live video, where the process of matching cameras is usually called "painting."

Confused yet?

color correction used to mean just that ...correcting the color....they are interchangable
color grading is about mostly look development...
but it is not strictly a canadian and european term...every grading software out there defines themselves by it, hence why the term is used in these forums...not because a european used it first
all of these refer to themselves as color graders


edit: you can tell there all US orientated advertising, because in europe and canada color is spellled colour...now there's a real debate...which one is right:biggrin:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=7668806&siteID=123112
http://davsys.com/
http://www.quantel.com/list.php?a=Products&as=Color Grading
http://www.iridas.com/products/
http://www.assimilateinc.com/scratch.html
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/color/

 

[M Most]

color grading is about mostly look development...
but it is not strictly a canadian and european term...every grading software out there defines themselves by it, hence why the term is used in these forums...not because a european used it first..

I would point out that of all the companies you listed, Quantel, Iridas, and to some degree Assimilate are all products that originated in Europe, with Autodesk's products (at least the systems products, of which Lustre is a part) originated in Canada. The only American companies in your list are Apple and DaVinci - and DaVinci has used the term color correction since it started in the mid to late 1980's. Having worked in the US film and television industry essentially my entire adult life, I can assure you that what I said about the origins of the terminology is absolutely true, whether you want to believe me or not. Even the term "colorist" is a rather recent (well, OK, since the early 1990's) term. "Colorists" used to simply be "telecine operators," at least until they started getting paid better. And as a "telecine operator" who became a "colorist," I can tell you that I benefited from that change. It has little to do with any distinctions between enhancing an image and what you would call "look development." Creative color correction, particularly for commercials, has been done by talented colorists since the mid 1980's, when secondary color correction and area isolations first appeared. It has gotten more sophisticated, but the use of color correction tools to achieve more than could be achieved in camera has been going on for a long time. And it was always called color correction in the US, and grading in the UK.

 

[Mike Harrington]

well,

i could agree with you on the origins, as i wasn't in the industry around them.
and as you were (or are) a pro colorist you should know better then me

but i would just submit that color grading is now the effective term worldwide,and not limited to these forums, as you can see in the marketing....probably because it sounds cooler and more high end then color correction...:sarcasm:

not to nitpick but autodesk is american.... discreet was canadian, as was alias(maya), softimage and others...i'm not sure where lustre came out of whether discreet or 5D either way I guess you would be right

as long as I've been in it I've known it as color grading, and lo and behold I live in canada.....

so I guess if I could admit I was wrong...without actually saying it....this is what it would look like

 

[M Most]

but i would just submit that color grading is now the effective term worldwide,and not limited to these forums, as you can see in the marketing....probably because it sounds cooler and more high end then color correction...:sarcasm:

Yes, just as "colorist" sounds somehow more sophisticated, talented, and worthy of a higher salary and more respect than "telecine operator" (which, BTW, was always called "TK Operator" in the UK....).

When I was referring to Autodesk's Systems products, I was referring to the Flame, Flint, Inferno line - developed and still R&D'd in Canada. Lustre was a product that Discreet (before it was Autodesk) bought from 5D and acquired the intellectual property beneath it when they acquired Colorfront, a European company. The 5D Colossus product was re-worked and "Discreet-ified," and released as Lustre. As with all 5D products, Colossus ran on Windows, hence why there is still a Windows version of Lustre in addition to the Linux version that Autodesk created.

History lessons can be fun!!

 

[Mike Harrington]

just out of curiosity....

what was the first real DI system available....not telecine but used for a DI

as far as I remember, I think "o brother where art thou" was the first film entirely digitally graded but I could be wrong

 

[Martin Tlaskal]

The Computer Film Company in London graded "Chicken Run" using an early DI process around 2000. It was done as a DI simply because neg cutters were pretty nervous at the sheer complexity of the edit, due to the number of corrections in the stop motion. CFC R&D had a self-built film scanner, wrote a simple colour corrector to do the grading and shot it out using an in-house tube recorder. The scanner was an ancestor of the Northlight, the software was an ancestor of Baselight and the CFC R&D team became Filmlight. Just goes to show how long these things take to build..

No idea of how this relates to "O Brother" - that could well have been earlier. How time flys..

 

[M Most]

just out of curiosity....

what was the first real DI system available....not telecine but used for a DI

as far as I remember, I think "o brother where art thou" was the first film entirely digitally graded but I could be wrong

"O Brother" was arguably the first application of electronic timing (there's that terminology again...) to an entire picture. It was done at Cinesite in Los Angeles (now gone, although Cinesite London remains) using, as I recall, a modified version of what would become the Spirit Datacine, a Pandora Pogle color correction system, and recorded to film using an early Kodak Lightning laser recorder. Many people are unaware of the involvement of Kodak in development of the Spirit. The entire imaging head, including the CCD's, is basically a Kodak design, and the machine was originally going to marketed both by Philips and Kodak, under both names. That was later changed and Philips was the sole marketer of the final machine. The picture "Pleasantville" was another early DI project done at Cinesite as well, using much of the same equipment, but with a lot more work on the part of a visual effects/rotoscope team to achieve its very unique look. Most early DI's were done with hardware color correctors - primarily DaVinci 2K and Pogle Megadef systems - because they were the only devices available that could handle HD or better resolution in real time. Software based color correctors, while common today, didn't come along for some time because the raw computing power required to move these amounts of data in real time just didn't exist at an affordable level. Since then, CPU speeds, storage density, and the availability of multi core processors have changed that situation. Perhaps even more significantly, the development of GPU driven video cards has allowed much of the heavy lifting required for real time operation to be off loaded from the CPU. Most of today's systems make very heavy use of GPU processing to allow them to perform the way they do.

One should keep in mind, of course, that almost everything that we now call "Digital Intermediate" has been possible - and in fact used heavily - in video post production for over 20 years. Things like area isolations, multiple secondary corrections - these things have been used in telecine bays since the mid 1980's. The only thing that was new was the ability to apply these things to a higher resolution image. Software based systems have, of course, extended those capabilities, but even there, most of what those systems do has been possible in compositing devices for years.

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

Software based color correctors, while common today, didn't come along for some time because the raw computing power required to move these amounts of data in real time just didn't exist at an affordable level. Since then, CPU speeds, storage density, and the availability of multi core processors have changed that situation.

exactly this is happening today again...
the hardware to handle this type of footage...in combination with the raw workflow will let the prices of cc software drop...when the software developer keep their prices high...what i can understand in a way..someone else will close the gap with affordable solutions tomorrow.

just look back to history....3 d programs....nle...etc....time is moving faster then we guess

never underestimate what the masses want---if they should use it is a different story...

and its not like cc kits are as complicated as a mercedes benz...which you can buy for less then a 4 MB software and some hardware.

 

[Deanan]

The Computer Film Company in London graded "Chicken Run" using an early DI process around 2000. It was done as a DI simply because neg cutters were pretty nervous at the sheer complexity of the edit, due to the number of corrections in the stop motion. CFC R&D had a self-built film scanner, wrote a simple colour corrector to do the grading and shot it out using an in-house tube recorder. The scanner was an ancestor of the Northlight, the software was an ancestor of Baselight and the CFC R&D team became Filmlight. Just goes to show how long these things take to build..

No idea of how this relates to "O Brother" - that could well have been earlier. How time flys..

Pleasantville could be considered the first DI although technically it was more one big long vfx shot.

EDIT: Mike beat me to it. I did a DI in 1994 on wavefront composer but it was a 30min show so it doesn't count .

 

[Kyle Mallory]

Wait, I missed something... Laguun? Where did he go? (I mean, now that I think about it, I haven't seen a post in a while, but...)

 

[Thomas Mathai]

big news dylan. big news. i suspect 2009 will be the year of the 'We are now native with RED files' announcements from almost ALL post software companies. I have harped on this for a while now, as I believe it is the final nail in the coffin of most other formats, for a while at least. It will be the determining factor in what sets RED on a wild ride as the LEADING camera manufacturer in the world, from the prosumer and up market....save for maybe the SUPER high end, who will undoubtedly use whatever magic the new ARRI/Dalsa combo will deliver....

And Luki, I totally see your point about anything under 10K being likened to 'free' apps like Color. That is saying something though, as there will be more and more jobs being graded on cheaper systems, like Color. Just as more and more high end jobs are now cut on Final Cut, a cheaper alternative to AVID.

Final nail? We'll see. I see it as more options. Like William Goldman says "Nobody knows anything"

We know the stakes are higher now. We'll see how the competition responds, which they have to if they want to keep playing.

I'd like to see what Canon does for their first tapeless camera.

 

[Thomas Mathai]

Not to sidetrack this thread too much...but further to Luki's points...lets remember that when you circumvent the "high end" color grading system you are missing out on one very important thing.

Not R3D support, not "realtime 4K" or any other technical reason you can muster.

It is the creative PERSON who is turning the knobs.

I'd love to see a "high end" colorist on a Scratch system. They would likely do things that would blow people away...not because of the capabilities of the gear, but because of their TALENT.

Everyone thinks they are a colorist these days!

It's more than one person. It's a team. The client mostly deals with the colorist and their accounts rep. There are assistants, engineers, data management, editorial, QC, etc that work behind the scenes.

 

[Nigel Hadley]

And what about the color software companies? Is Scratch going to remain the only native game in town, or are the Baselights, Pablos, etc. etc. going to offer native .r3d colorizing in the near future?

Hello,

Well here at Digital Vision we have had R3D support in our Nucoda range of products since mid October see;
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=20295&highlight=Nucoda

It's released, it's out there and people are using it, see the Press release on our web site about "The Mill's" usage of it;
http://www.digitalvision.se/solutions_case_studies/TheMill.htm

Matt "Wispy" Clarke, Head of Editorial at The Mill comments; “We evaluated all the latest RED support and the Film Cutter really impressed us in longform".

Regards

Nigel

 

[Chris Parker]

thanks for posting nigel. i love that this thread is becoming a place for more post software companies to post about their ability to work native with .r3d files. the more the merrier, and great on you for your team's work. the mill is a world renowned post facility, and their work speaks volumes about your product, and RED.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

It fascinates me sometimes how people like to guess what other people think and then accuse those people of their own guesswork.....really funny...it seems that while wanting 12 bit and 16 bit color space some people's cognitive space is set at 2 bit...I may be mistaken, though...

........................

Thank you Chris, it means a lot. ;-)


.........................

It is the creative PERSON who is turning the knobs.

It's more than one person. It's a team.

The whole team is turning the knobs ? Strange...

 

[Thomas Mathai]

I


The whole team is turning the knobs ? Strange...

How many DIs have you worked on??