CC in CS4 Adobe Workflow vs CC in FCP/Color workflow

[Scott Roberts]

Edit short segments in AE. Yes you can color correct, and grade to a certain degree . . . but you want a dedicated grader - a tool for what it's made for. And, yes, as mentioned above, tracking and all that very doable in AE.

Check these tutorials from a well respected AE user:

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/the_healer/

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/simple_bleach_bypass/

 

[Scott Roberts]

At the end of the day, I think a lot of it basically comes down to the operator. I have a friend who is an After Effects genius, and he can achieve the most amazing and beautiful things. After Effects is just so powerful and flexible - you can do so much more in it than you can ever do with any traditional grading solution. I have another friend who is slowly mastering the ways of Color. Again, he can achieve some truly stunning looks - but there are still many things you can do in After Effects that are simply impossible in Color, just because the tools don't exist. At the end of the day, I think a really good colourist can make beautiful images using any tool that's thrown at them - but at the same time, if you've got a lot of time to play, perfect and improvise, then you can really get into the nitty gritty using tools like After Effects.

Finally - animating a mask over time in AE is pretty much the same as "tweening".

Well said!

 

[shashbugu]

everything you can do in color you can do in after effects,
everything you need to do in color, you can do in color.
everything you can do in color, you can do four times as fast as you can do in after effects.
The stuff you can doin the color effects room in color, you cant even do in lustre, speedgrade or scratchcine (although they offer a more powerful accelerated grading and conform engines).

Color has realtime gpu accelerated preview. I have used it for Red, film and HD footage. You need multiple bridged graphics cards and raided drives to see anything in real time in the video world period!

After effects is $700.0
scratch is $17,500
speedgrade is $18,000
lustre starts @ $70,000
Apple color is free with final cut studio 2.
Currently 20% of the national commercials you see on tv are graded in color. none in After effects.
I was a die hard after effects user and still use it occasionally, but ever since I discovered apple color and nuke, i have been a convert.

 

[Ido Karilla]

Hi shashbugu,

your comment about the bridged graphic cards cought my attention...
I hear diffrent versions about the capability of the new mac pro (2008) to support bridged graphic cards, If you have a working machine I would love to have the details.

I have tried to launch color with two GT 8800 in the machine and it wont even launch.

Thanks.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

everything you can do in color you can do in after effects,
everything you need to do in color, you can do in color.
everything you can do in color, you can do four times as fast as you can do in after effects.
The stuff you can doin the color effects room in color, you cant even do in lustre, speedgrade or scratchcine (although they offer a more powerful accelerated grading and conform engines).

Color has realtime gpu accelerated preview. I have used it for Red, film and HD footage. You need multiple bridged graphics cards and raided drives to see anything in real time in the video world period!

After effects is $700.0
scratch is $17,500
speedgrade is $18,000
lustre starts @ $70,000
Apple color is free with final cut studio 2.
Currently 20% of the national commercials you see on tv are graded in color. none in After effects.
I was a die hard after effects user and still use it occasionally, but ever since I discovered apple color and nuke, i have been a convert.

Scratch and SpeedGrade use for RT grading only one graphic board - from the Nvidia quadro series, eg. 4600 fx, 5600 fx, 5800 fx.

ScratchCine maybe 17.000 USD, Scratch with all modules is more costly.
SpeedGrade XR is 15.000 EUR

Lustre, Baselight, Filmmaster are highend systems and not just as a software available, AFAIK

You cannot put all the above mentioned grading-tools in one pot.

While Scratch is widely used for its high conforming capabilties and, if all modules are added, also as a very capable grading tool is ScratchCine meant for Red RT debayer and RT tape lay-off with a basic one-light correction.

Speedgrade XR shines with its RAW debayer and over all colour manipulation power. It reads vitually all RAW cameras on the market, such as Arri D21, Phantom HD, SI2K, etc...). Priceswise it's less costls than Scratch. The bigger SpeedGrade DI can render out picture sequences.

Apple bought Color to a add a grading-tool for FCP. Yes, it does have nice possibilities in the color effect room but others (I can speak for SpeedGrade) can accomplish things you cannot with Colour, such as crossed grading, feeding in LUTs, etc..

Color is a bargain, a no-brainer. I used it when it was FinalTouch for 2 years and switched because tools like Scratch, SpeedGrade and of course the high-end systems can accomplish things better, faster and allow more delicate looks. If Color would be such a brilliant tool, there would be no market for all the other grading system vendors.

If you would ask experienced Colorist what they think is the most important asset of a grading tool, they will say: Unlimited RT. If you are in a grading session you dont't want to be interrupted by rendering and slow fps playback. Keeping the pace is very important. Here AE fails completely.

Hans

 

[Jason Osterday]

Interesting information regarding the Unlimited RT and GPU based color grading. I'm currently attempting to get 200 series Nvidia cards to work in OSX. The performance increase and cuda support in Adobe apps is astounding. Versus the 8800 cards, the newer GTX285 offers massive teraflops more data processing than what apple currently bundles. I believe even just the 260 card was a 50%+ increase in performance over the 8800gt.

Does FCP, AE, or Color operate under 64bit on OSX? Basically, is there any benefit from having more than 4gb of memory or does leopard not support it?

 

[J Davis]

No 64 bit in OSX, no word on FCS3 or Color2.

All eyes on apple.

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

I was messing around with REDCine X and was trying several color and gamma spaces to CC.

I tried several and Camera RGB / REDSpace seemed the most intuitive for my style of grading.

I CC in a not so pro way, Magic Bullet inside AE, but hey, it's get whatever I need to study (however Color was useful to me recently because of Saturation curve, it helped get almost completely a green tint of a wall, please don't skimp on the art direction budget no one!), curves, 3-ways, ranged sat, etc.

REDLog gave me weird colors, there was a bush out of focus behind the subject and the greens were all wrong, in a lighter more synthetic tone while the Camera RGB / REDSpace had a very natural tone.

So maybe this is a calibration issue? Since I don't have any type of calibrator should I just ignore this?

And what problems would this choice of Color Space and Gamma Space cause me, let's say for digital delivery... BluRay and web?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Thanks.