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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/Final Touch - lots of heavy bugs and issues.

AppliedVisual said:
LOL... I just re-read my post.

And to think that just a few months ago, I was praying that 4K REDCODE would even be possible to edit within FCP in real-time, now I'm talking about being upset if I can't color grade in full 4K with a $1200 piece of software. Man, we've all become greedy. :)
Click to expand...

No, it's just because Apple markets things as perfectly working. They deliberately foster unrealistic expectations... Like those old "edit HD" ads with a picture of just a laptop doing DVCPROHD. They neglected to show the huge deck you'd need actually input or output (this was before the HDV days...).

I don't know about you but half the trick in our line of work is the management of client expectations... if I behaved the way Apple did, I think I'd have no clients left!

Of course this is unfair - everyone does this and it's sad. What I don't understand is why people eat up the marketing and actually cheerlead for the companies that do this. It makes things harder for the companies actually trying to do things right - Red, for example. Because of their marketing in the beginning, I initially thought Red was another Apple-style RDF shop. Now with their honesty they have shown that they have more class than that.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
I don't think that Apple is more bluffing customers than the other companies. It's only depend how you would receive the message. It's up to you not Apple. Advertising always has own language and that's a tricky PROPAGANDA language. But then you have to look always in the product's specs and take it or leave it. Very simple.
 
The Third Man said:
I don't think that Apple is more bluffing customers than the other companies.
Click to expand...

Apple has more nerve than most. And they have been taken to task many times for false advertising.

The Third Man said:
It's only depend how you would receive the message. It's up to you not Apple.
Click to expand...

No, it is up to Apple to stop crossing the line between marketing and lying.

The Third Man said:
Advertising always has own language and that's a tricky PROPAGANDA language. But then you have to look always in the product's specs and take it or leave it. Very simple.
Click to expand...

Well, what we're talking about is the product not quite working to spec.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Just a simple question:
but that heavy bugs and issues was already there in the Silicon Color era?
In that piece of software that cost over 20.000 bucks?
Really incredible. I'm confused.
 
Elcurado said:
Just a simple question:
but that heavy bugs and issues was already there in the Silicon Color era?
In that piece of software that cost over 20.000 bucks?
Really incredible. I'm confused.
Click to expand...

Yes, there were bugs. It had features of some more expensive programs, but more bugs than they did. There was a debate over whether it was a viable piece of software or not to build a business around. Probably depends on the type of jobs you were doing,

Now that Apple has bought it, there is hope that the bugs (especially those related to Final Cut Pro interoperability) will be sorted out, since the guys working on Final Touch will be able to talk to the guys working on Final Cut more easily.

I think by Color 1.1 - 1.5 they will hopefully have fixed the most pressing bugs. Color 2 might be usable in client sessions (monitoring issues fully worked out, etc).

Color 3 will probably rock and might even be workable professionally for realtime 4K grading and such stuff (by that time, graphics cards will almost certainly be there).

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
mmost said:
It already is version 3. The last version of Final Touch was, as I recall, version 2.5.
Click to expand...

LOL! Yeah, that's the version number they CALLED it - but I can tell you, their beta's were alpha's and Color is like Final Touch 1.5 at best.

Apple IS serious about developing the product, so, EVENTUALLY I am very sure it's going to be great. And yeah, graphics cards a year from now will be unbelievable, and that's gonna help in a major way.

Offhollywood used every build of Final Touch from the first release to the sale to Apple - and to be very POLITE - it was pretty damn painful. It drove us to Scratch and we'll never go back. (for the record, Scratch is the single most impressive piece of software I have ever seen, used or tested. (my #2 would be Endorphin from NaturalMotion - and my "software company to watch" is Luxology))

I am sincerely happy for Roland that Apple bought the product, because, IMHO, Silicon Color was most likely just underfunded and understaffed. I think Roland's concept and intent was fantastic, and in the end, he got what he wanted - Apple took it over and is committed to making it work correctly.

But IMHO Color is a year + away from kicking ass - we shall see -
 
Yes, the chance of Apple poster boys the Coen brothers actually using the current (non bug-fixed) version of Color as the primary coloring tool for their next feature is about the same as Peter Greenaway winning Cannes and thanking Michael Bay in an acceptance speech.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
I have no doubt it will be sorted out and rather quickly...less than a year. For now, for someone like me working in the 30 second world, it is quite usable.
Aloha
-A
 
Oh yeah... I forgot, modo is very cool. Especially for someone like me that is just learning 3d.
Aloha
-A
 
Final Touch did use to be a lot buggier (very very buggy, sort of alpha/beta). Though support was better back then, since you were in communication with the developers and there were a lot of new builds that would fix things. You had to be careful though about what did and didn't work, and carefully conform your project.
 
Let's see where the current FCP user is at if they want to use color:

Limited to 10 bit.
Limited to 2k.
Modifies luminance...
Potentially holds projects hostage...

Why on earth would I want to build a pipeline around that! If I'm going to even RISK losing a week's work I can ands hould budget in a real, production ready solution.

Interesting to see which is stronger in some users' reactions. Their loyalty to Apple or their loyalty to RED. Seems Apple wins.

I don't know, I'm also in the 30-90 second world myself so conforming in Combustion or AE is trivial. Automatic Duck can also get you 99% of the way there in no time flat from an offline EDL. But I think people really do need to remember they are still making compromises by editing online.
 
Whatever guy,,, has nothing to do with loyalty or pipelines. ???
-A
 
And in the end...
Please someone convince Luki to develop Scratch for OsX!

($.$$$ price point...)
 
Following on from my previous comment about odd scaling of DV material in Color, I have posted a couple of screengrabs:

http://homepage.mac.com/nickshawpost/digi.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/nickshawpost/dv.jpg

The Digi clip is 720x576 PAL ProRes, and is being displayed at exactly 50% size (ignoring pixel aspect ratio).

The DV clip is 720x576 PAL DV, and appears to be being scaled to about 60% size with no anti-aliasing (ignoring the field scaling artifacts – I'm aware what they are obviously).

Thoughts anybody?

EDIT:
I should point out that I am testing Color on my Powerbook, which has an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card. Frankly when I installed the software I didn't expect it to work at all, but since the manual implies it will only install on a supported system I thought I'd give it a go. It could well be that my issues are due to the graphics card not being up to spec.

Another oddity I'm seeing is that the ProRes clips are having a blend de-interlace applied when they are rendered, but the DV ones are not. Setting exactly the same for both, and both rendered to ProRes. You can see both fields while rendering, but they are not there in the rendered files from the ProRes clips, but are in those from DV. This may well be connected to the graphics card and the scaling issues.
 
Elcurado said:
And in the end...
Please someone convince Luki to develop Scratch for OsX!

($.$$$ price point...)
Click to expand...

LOL! I have been waving that flag for more than a year and half. I gave up last IBC when Jeff Edson told me I was "the ONLY person that requested that".

MAYBE things have changed .... I could be hallucinating, but the last few builds of Scratch really have some little GUI changes that are "de-Windowsed" and very "mac like" -

For the record, I have run Scratch on an Intel MacPro under BootCamp and it was rockin just fine - no Nvidia SDI card support obviously ...

As for Mac Nvidia SDI support - I am very sure you won't see that prior to Leopard. I do think that Apple is going to FINALLY embrace Nvidia for the MacPros - after all - there is an Nvidia chip driving the display on the iPhone - and if any of the "rumors" and "chatter" I have heard are true - NVIDIA will be trading at $60+ a share this time next year. They are going to own the GPU space.

As for price point ... yeah, I wish Scratch was cheaper - I am still paying our license off - but you have to ask yourself - after all that blood, sweat, tears and money ... do you want to finish your project on a Pinto ... or on a Ferrari.
 
Hey guys, I'm a lurker. A Color colorist who has been watching this forum in anticipation of actually having a chance to grade Redcode someday.

Let me just say, I find most of these posts regarding Color, and its performance and or capabilities (or lack thereof) to be frustrating. Frustrating because yes, Apple does marketing where users get the impression "you just send to Color and apply presets and send back to FCP....", so I understand the angst. But let me just say, I'm having great success using Color, like Off Hollywood, we had some awful experiences in FinalTouch. Yet, luckily for me, at our facility I've been dedicated to making Color grading work for two years. This has given us the opportunity to find workflow issues/gotchas and helped make using this tool a great new service, for our clients and us!

Look, I'm not going to apologize for workflow issues. (It was a LONG year and a half using FinalTouch!!) What I'm just trying to say is that making assumptions on what Color can or can't do, based on release notes or quoting user forums isn't productive IMHO. Like anything, to be successful, I feel you must dig in and find if Color will work for you. Find land mines, (all tools have them!) and then decide what you think of Color.

As far as 4k, Redcode etc etc etc go. Shouldn't we wait to see what happens when Red is finally released before jumping on Apple for Color not supporting RedCode and 4k? I didn't start using FCP until version 3. Even then, it had major issues. Color is version 1 which in all reality is like version 2.8-2.9 based on what we old FinalTouch colorists new what was planned for FinalTouch 3.0

Last point. As someone who watched my boss pay 5k for FinalTouch. As well as knowing many people who forked out for the 2k version at $25,000...let me remind everyone. You have a been given a color grading tool, that at this time last year retailed for $25k. Okay, to be fair, if you owned FCP Studio, you paid $499 bucks. Again, I'm only trying to point out that this tool is now in your hands, check it out, then decide. It has cost others alot more!

Respectfully.
 
Dice, I certainly appreciate that I have been given a potentially very useful tool for 'free'. I am well aware that all software has bugs, and the most important thing is to be aware of them and know how to make sure they don't affect your work. Passing on information on a forum like this helps share that knowledge.

Have you experienced the altering of timecode on the round-trip from FCP? I know it shouldn't matter if your cut is absolutely locked before you grade. After all, other apps like Shake and After FX don't preserve timecode at all. However I would kind of prefer an app that wiped the timecode completely, than one that kept it, but messed it up.
 
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