Color correction in Premiere - what do I want?

[Jay A. Kelley]

A while ago I started screaming for color correction in adobe premiere. I wanted power windows and the like.

However, as I get more into premiere, and AE I realize it's not that simple. I'd like to start a VERY specific conversation as to our needs for color correction in Premiere. Here are some points I'd like to lead off with:

1st: I think its safe to say that our baseline is DaVinic. I am not saying we're going to ask Adobe for something that can better them (Not yet) but more to get the main features and work from there. Of course I'd love to use DaVinic, but I'm not moving to MAC (Especially not now) and they are not moving to windows.. So there that is. Time to move forward.

2nd: Many of the color correction features we need already exist. By way of Premiere's plug-ins, and Color Finesse, and Colorista. Colorista is interesting, but it's windows apply only to it's own corrections... That's pretty limiting.

3rd: A good arguement could be made to keep color correction OUT of Premiere and keep it in AE, and just make the integration between the two that much better. As for power windows and mask tracking in AE and most of your work is done right there.

4th: Of course one of the real problems here is the lack of real time playback with our changes. Since I have no power windows in Premiere at this time, I am speaking mainly of AE.

5th: Color Finesse is a nice piece of software, and does a lot of things pretty well, but it's damn slow on the playback unless you render.

Given Adobe's unique setup with Premiere and AE, I am not really sure what to ask for! Done correctly, they could end up with a setup as powerful as Resolve, but it would take a while.

I have to also insert this disclaimer: I do not know as much as I should about Premiere and AE.. So some things I say or ask for could be way off base.. So I am hopinig the Community will jump in here, and we can try to focus on what we have, and what we really need.

Also, let's not ask for things that people are not interested in doing. NO: "Just switch to MAC and use resolve, your problems are solved". or "Why does DaVinci not work on Windows?!"

I'd ask we deal with what's presented here, and not throw in outside junk sure to slow us down.

Thanks!

Jay

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

Hi Jay, Have you tried to run PPro and color grade in RedCine-X? RCX does not have secondary corrections (yet?), but one can do a lot with it --well, you must be aware of that. Thanks to RCX, practically never use PPro color correction effects. A vectorscope in RCX would be handy, but perhaps its already under development.

I tend to keep both PPro and RCX running the same time and jump back and forth between them. It used to be easier as the previous verions of RCX when had a minimize button in the RCX window. In the latest versions have had to hit ctrl-alt-del to open Windows Task Manager and then use the Switch To button to get to PPro from RCX. For this reason sometimes export a XML file from PPro, import that one in RCX and color grade all clips at once in RCX. If needed, for secondaries occasionally use AE and Color Finesse, but agree it's slow on the playback.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Lauri,
are you able to do any kind of key framing then with this workflow? since rcx does not do it.....I'd love that workflow if rcx was able to do keyframing.

 

[mikeburton]

I personally don't think Adobe needs to rebuild the wheel. Most color grading apps ie Scratch, Resolve, Baselight, Pablo etc can accept XML now however sending out an XML is not possible in Premiere. Personally I'd prefer to use one of these other apps as they are strictly focused on doing color grading well. Maybe asking for XML out of Premiere is the more reasonable request at least for the short term.

Jay, are you attempting to be a colorist? If you don't really know what to ask for then I would have to assume you wouldn't know what to do with the tools if you did have them. You need look no further than what any of the other apps offer if your looking for suggestions. If you are on a PC why don't you test drive Scratch and get familiar with what it does extremely well and then I think you'll realize there really is no "good enough" solution. Respectfully speaking.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

Jay, I think you will have to wait for PremierPro CS6.

With CS5 Adobe introduced the formidable Mecury engine, based on Nvidia's Cuda technonolgies and some new functionalities like TC based audio sync, etc... making the production bundle a viable alternative to Apple's and Avid's offerings the next natural step would be to extend and refine Premier Pro's functionalities.

With the success of PremierPro CS5 in the back I'm very confident that Adobe will fulfill all your wishes at NAB next year.

Hans

 

[D Fuller]

Jay, this is a pretty interesting discussion, and especially now with the uncertainty in the FCP world, there is a lot Adobe could do by developing a plan to address color grading.

A while ago I started screaming for color correction in adobe premiere. I wanted power windows and the like.

However, as I get more into premiere, and AE I realize it's not that simple. I'd like to start a VERY specific conversation as to our needs for color correction in Premiere. Here are some points I'd like to lead off with:

1st: I think its safe to say that our baseline is DaVinic. I am not saying we're going to ask Adobe for something that can better them (Not yet) but more to get the main features and work from there. Of course I'd love to use DaVinic, but I'm not moving to MAC (Especially not now) and they are not moving to windows.. So there that is. Time to move forward.

I'm not sure I agree with your conclusions here. FCPx may be a disaster, but Adobe's stuff works very well on a Mac Pro. So does Avid. So if Resolve is really what you want to use, I don't see why that should be a barrier unless you have so many systems that the whole infrastructure change is prohibitive.

2nd: Many of the color correction features we need already exist. By way of Premiere's plug-ins, and Color Finesse, and Colorista. Colorista is interesting, but it's windows apply only to it's own corrections... That's pretty limiting.

3rd: A good arguement could be made to keep color correction OUT of Premiere and keep it in AE, and just make the integration between the two that much better. As for power windows and mask tracking in AE and most of your work is done right there.

4th: Of course one of the real problems here is the lack of real time playback with our changes. Since I have no power windows in Premiere at this time, I am speaking mainly of AE.

5th: Color Finesse is a nice piece of software, and does a lot of things pretty well, but it's damn slow on the playback unless you render.

Color Finesse is a damn nice piece of software. It gets a lot less discussion in this forum than I think it deserves. That's probably because it doesn't solve the real-time viewing problem. To my mind, its tool set beats the crap out of Colorista. But to get power windows' function, you have to be in a multi-layered comp in AE. So to Adobe: How possible is it to foresee real-time preview of graded comps? Some sort of special RAM preview perhaps? One that only shows you Color Finesse? Maybe something that made CF work like an adjustment layer? That would start to look like a real grading function.

Given Adobe's unique setup with Premiere and AE, I am not really sure what to ask for! Done correctly, they could end up with a setup as powerful as Resolve, but it would take a while.

I have to also insert this disclaimer: I do not know as much as I should about Premiere and AE.. So some things I say or ask for could be way off base.. So I am hopinig the Community will jump in here, and we can try to focus on what we have, and what we really need.

Also, let's not ask for things that people are not interested in doing. NO: "Just switch to MAC and use resolve, your problems are solved". or "Why does DaVinci not work on Windows?!"

Resolve is on the Mac because OSx and Linux share a common Unix heritage. It's a lot easier to port a Linux program to OSx than to Windows. I have no idea what BMD's plans are, but I wouldn't bank on seeing Resolve come to Windows unless they make an announcement about it.

I think the next thing on Adobe's list for PPro and AE should be a bulletproof XML/EDL/OMF/AAF fix. (Especially important given the current state of FCPx.) I would rather have them enable me to use the best possible tools (or just the tools & vendors of my choice) than have everything live under their umbrella. I understand that some of these things have been patched in v5.5, and I have to say that I have not had the opportunity since upgrading to test all of those paths, so the situation there may be better than I think it is. But it would go a long way toward making color grading (and sound finishing) what it needs to be on Adobe's systems.

There was also a Baselight plugin for FCP that was in testing. That might be an interesting plugin for PPro grading.

I'd ask we deal with what's presented here, and not throw in outside junk sure to slow us down.

Thanks!

Jay

 

[Bruce Allen]

A while ago I started screaming for color correction in adobe premiere. I wanted power windows and the like.

However, as I get more into premiere, and AE I realize it's not that simple. I'd like to start a VERY specific conversation as to our needs for color correction in Premiere. Here are some points I'd like to lead off with:

1st: I think its safe to say that our baseline is DaVinic. I am not saying we're going to ask Adobe for something that can better them (Not yet) but more to get the main features and work from there. Of course I'd love to use DaVinic, but I'm not moving to MAC (Especially not now) and they are not moving to windows.. So there that is. Time to move forward.

Jay, my bet is it will take Adobe 2 years to match DaVinci as it stands TODAY.

Seriously, why limit yourself?

EDIT: OK, I admit. I stopped reading after you hit the 1st post and it turns out later on you ask me specifically not to do what I just did.

But let me bite. This is what Adobe would have to do:

1. Rewrite the tracker from scratch to be a brilliant best-of-breed piece of beauty
2. Add variable feathered masks (something folks have asked for in After Effects for 10 years that they haven't bothered to address)
3. Get masks an order of magnitude faster (again, something we've asked for in AE for 10 years)
4. Add a whole API for control surfaces, or write in support for a bunch of panels
5. Rewrite Mercury Engine - it's slower than Resolve and scaling is lower quality
6. Add comprehensive native stereo support (not through an add-on)
7. Add a whole versioning system, plus visual bins where you can store looks, etc
8. Design a brilliant noise-reduction system that runs in realtime on the GPU
9. Add a beautiful node-based system where you can drag looks and pieces of looks in to any point in the tree
10. Add a fantastic proxy system that works completely transparently to the user
11. Rewrite all of their effects so that they scale perfectly. For example, if you have a mask with a 50 pixel feather on a 2K clip and I decide to swap it for a 4K clip, I need that mask to scale the feather up to 100 px. Something we've wanted in After Effects for years
12. Make it more stable than any Adobe product I've ever used before
13. Actually write their own OpenEXR import. The current one is so damn slow it's unusable.
14. I can add many more.

Seriously, given Adobe's track record, WTF chance do you think they have of doing this in a timely manner?

And what on earth makes you think Blackmagic will keep still?

Resolve 8 is a bigger leap over Resolve 7 than *TWO* versions of CS suite IMHO. And it's a free upgrade!!!

Also, how about Adobe just fix many of the other pressing glaring issues in their current products?

Best thing is for them to add a "Send to Resolve for roundtrip" button in Premiere. Blackmagic are friendly and open and I'm sure they'd help facilitate that. I guess if they wanted to, they could convince / pay Blackmagic to port Resolve to Windows? Maybe bundle it with Premiere as "Premiere Pro Extreme Megashark" if they want?

Okay, I take deep breath now.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

Lauri,
are you able to do any kind of key framing then with this workflow? since rcx does not do it.....I'd love that workflow if rcx was able to do keyframing.

Right, guess this is not possible. Sometimes have employed a poor man's approach; split a clip into parts and apply different grading to each piece. Of course, this does not help if one wants to make continuous changes with key framing.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Jay, I would recommend two strategies.

If you are just looking to do one-man-band style work, then a combination of PP, After Effects/Colorista/Color Finesse could work in the short-term as long as you go in knowing the limitations. It would allow you to use what you currently have in terms of software/hardware.

The alternative would be a Resolve system. And I would make it a dedicated system. Yes, it would be a Mac, but the hardware would be entirely configured to get the most out of Resolve. You don't have to deal with any of Apple's apps if you don't want to. It becomes an appliance. I does the job you intend it to do and just happens to have the Apple branding on the box. To get nto a system like this, i would think you would want to be very serious about color grading as it's going to be an investment when you factor in the hardware, scopes, control surface, etc. But for the money, i have to think it's one of the better bargains out there given what it can do. Version 8 looks very promising.

 

[Paul Nordin]

>>i have to think it's one of the better bargains out there given what it can do. Version 8 looks very promising.

Steve you are being cautious with this statement. Unequivocally, for the money, in the next few days or weeks Resolve v8 will be the best bargain out there, period.

 

[Aaron McAdam]

..Most color grading apps ie Scratch, Resolve, Baselight, Pablo etc can accept XML now however sending out an XML is not possible in Premiere....

I have not used it, but does File > Export > Final Cut Pro XML accomplish this task? Can that "Final Cut Pro XML" be pulled into Resolve, or does it have to be opened in FCP first?

 

[mikeburton]

I have not used it, but does File > Export > Final Cut Pro XML accomplish this task? Can that "Final Cut Pro XML" be pulled into Resolve, or does it have to be opened in FCP first?

To answer your question, yes, but i don't see how that is relevant to this conversation as we are discussing options for Premiere Pro.

 

[JPSendall]

Jay, it seems you are after a 'cheap' grading option. Unfortunately this means the long way round to do things. for instance you can use multiple instances of Colorista to get kind of a power windows. Whether using multiple instances of Colorista degrades the image I'm not sure. I tested some grading and ended up with five Colorista's over one clip, some key framed and it seemed to be ok. As I said a long winded approach but it can work. Otherwise ( other than CF) Resolve is probably the next best answer.

 

[Rudi Herbert]

I'm gonna ruffle some feathers here, but the importance of real time is so relative, meaning;

Many years ago, when I started dabbling in color correction digitally, I looked at it the same way we used to time film with lights in the photo lab: once the timing was done, we would inspect several key (true key) frames in the whole spool and confirm the validity of the work done. For example, we would choose 8-10 frames where the light levels would be extreme in either end, too dark or near clipping, as well as several frames where sudden color gradations would appear, i.e; the leading lady bursts into scene wearing a bright red sweater, and make sure the timing job was holding under these extreme conditions. If it was, rather than projecting the whole reel, we would move to the next one and so on. And this is what I've always done digitally, I pick a few frames whose inherent characteristics could push the grade too far, scroll on my timeline to those frames, check them with scopes and the like, and move on. I don't need to check the whole clip, take or scene on real time, just those key moments that will tell me whether what I did works or not. In truth, I've never wanted to be able to play and replay a clip ad nauseum just because I can, because more often than not, I will start tweaking and making changes again. And that's just me, a client in the suite will start their usual: "great, but can we make the reds here a little more subtle and then increase the oranges there, and oh, can we soften the skin tones a tad more". And then a similar set of requests keeps coming your way just because everybody can check and recheck the changes all the time....Premiere Pro and AE will render slowly, true, but if you know what you are doing and what you want, then you can just scroll through your timeline frame after frame, which either app will show you at full resolution, and confirm your results. This is not real time capability, but it is as close as it gets for a 10th of the headache and the expense. Then again, that's just me, but let it be known I've graded hundreds of projects like this.

 

[Rudi Herbert]

And yes, Color Finesse is an awesome piece of software, there's nothing you can do in a Davinci that you can't do in CF, provided you have the time, the know how and the patience to get it done. Then again, CF ships for free with AE, anything else will cost several thousand dollars, in the tens of thousands if you're talking true real time, in the hundreds of thousands if you're talking complete functionality and real time on several formats...

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Jay, it seems you are after a 'cheap' grading option. Unfortunately this means the long way round to do things. for instance you can use multiple instances of Colorista to get kind of a power windows. Whether using multiple instances of Colorista degrades the image I'm not sure. I tested some grading and ended up with five Colorista's over one clip, some key framed and it seemed to be ok. As I said a long winded approach but it can work. Otherwise ( other than CF) Resolve is probably the next best answer.

Colorista when used to its full potential (explore the key and mask combinations) can be very powerful for a CC within an NLE. Check out the tutorials on RED Giant's site. But it's still a long way from a system dedicated to finishing.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

And yes, Color Finesse is an awesome piece of software, there's nothing you can do in a Davinci that you can't do in CF, provided you have the time, the know how and the patience to get it done. Then again, CF ships for free with AE, anything else will cost several thousand dollars, in the tens of thousands if you're talking true real time, in the hundreds of thousands if you're talking complete functionality and real time on several formats...

Not sure I would go that far. Tracking a power window is pretty darn good in Resolve. AE can do it, but Resolve is a more elegant solution for a colorist. But overall, I agree with you that you can get amazing results with AE/Color Finesse or AE/Colorista. But Resolve does offer a better experience I would say.

 

[Bruce Allen]

I'm gonna ruffle some feathers here, but the importance of real time is so relative, meaning;

Many years ago, when I started dabbling in color correction digitally, I looked at it the same way we used to time film with lights in the photo lab: once the timing was done, we would inspect several key (true key) frames in the whole spool and confirm the validity of the work done. For example, we would choose 8-10 frames where the light levels would be extreme in either end, too dark or near clipping, as well as several frames where sudden color gradations would appear, i.e; the leading lady bursts into scene wearing a bright red sweater, and make sure the timing job was holding under these extreme conditions. If it was, rather than projecting the whole reel, we would move to the next one and so on. And this is what I've always done digitally, I pick a few frames whose inherent characteristics could push the grade too far, scroll on my timeline to those frames, check them with scopes and the like, and move on. I don't need to check the whole clip, take or scene on real time, just those key moments that will tell me whether what I did works or not. In truth, I've never wanted to be able to play and replay a clip ad nauseum just because I can, because more often than not, I will start tweaking and making changes again. And that's just me, a client in the suite will start their usual: "great, but can we make the reds here a little more subtle and then increase the oranges there, and oh, can we soften the skin tones a tad more". And then a similar set of requests keeps coming your way just because everybody can check and recheck the changes all the time....Premiere Pro and AE will render slowly, true, but if you know what you are doing and what you want, then you can just scroll through your timeline frame after frame, which either app will show you at full resolution, and confirm your results. This is not real time capability, but it is as close as it gets for a 10th of the headache and the expense. Then again, that's just me, but let it be known I've graded hundreds of projects like this.

Rudi, I agree with you, right up until the "10th of the headache and the expense" part - because of DaVinci.

Heck, this is how I color-corrected stuff I shot on DV... on a Pentium II with Premiere 6.5 -> After Effects workflow.

Even recently, I actually onlined and colored an entire RED-shot feature in After Effects. Well, I used Premiere, Color and Scratch to do some of the coloring and online, but I did a lot of the initial renders and final assembling together, color tweaks, noise reduction, etc in After Effects. Heck, if you think about each reel as its own thing, it's just 6 short films in a row.

I never want to do it again.

And yes, Color Finesse is an awesome piece of software, there's nothing you can do in a Davinci that you can't do in CF, provided you have the time, the know how and the patience to get it done.

Why stop there? Theoretically, there's nothing you can in a Davinci that you can't do in Photoshop... provided you have the time, the know how and the patience to get it done.

Actually, there's lots of useful stuff you can't do with Color Finesse. Noise reduction and tracking is better, for example. Stereo 3D monitoring.

Then again, CF ships for free with AE, anything else will cost several thousand dollars

DaVinci = $999

in the tens of thousands if you're talking true real time

DaVinci is realtime. Doing 2 layers of Alexa ProRes, several nodes and composite modes.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Fabricio Morato]

To answer your question, yes, but i don't see how that is relevant to this conversation as we are discussing options for Premiere Pro.

Hi Mike,

I believe Aaron was actually talking about the ability that Premiere CS5 and CS5.5 have to export to XML (and you can import XML in PPro also).
If you go into Premiere CS5.5 and go to File-Export There's an option to export to "Final Cut XML".
And I believe that Resolve is able to read this XML file, since other programs can.

 

[paulherrin]

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-suite/

new magic bullet suite released today. best option for working within premiere/after effects right now.

as for the future from adobe, i'd like to see node-based architecture for a start.