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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.

RobRoySyd said:
As for the One Box concept, I can't see why a production house would want this. Why tie up a grading suite doing edits?
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Why buy a grading suite and an editing suite if you can buy two of each (or one of each that can later be upgraded)?
 
luki said:
We have nothing against OSX, or Linux, or Solaris, or any other OS, for that matter. : ) It all boils down to what our customer base calls for, what our prospects want, and what is possible.

But to give a couple of examples:

One of the big big things that a lot of our customers do is video output from HD and 2K log data downrezzed to NTSC and PAL in realtime with linearization and burn-in. We are an almost completely GPU-centric app.

OSX does not support the SDI daughtercard from NVidia.

Another big thing that makes a difference is the ability to upgrade graphics drivers as NVidia spins new drivers. Because we are so heavily GPU-focused, new driver spins can make significant differences in performance in targeted aspects.

OSX does not easily allow for driver updates and rollbacks.

In a perfect world, we would love to support OSX and SUSE, Fedora, and Red Hat. But we are a relatively small company and have to choose carefully what we do and why. And porting complex software like SCRATCH is a big undertaking. Does that mean we will never port and support other OS? Of course not. Does it mean it's not a decision we can take lightly and there have to be really good technical and business justifications for it? Yep...

Also - SCRATCH is a fullscreen OpenGL application. Regardless of what OS it would be on, the GUI would be the same. So... at that point, why does it matter?

Discussion welcome...

Cheers,

Lucas Wilson
------------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA.
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Hey Lucas, sorry for my delay...

Just a quick question: are you planning to have a booth at he IBC in Amsterdam? You will be there?

Just to arrange a demo on a Scratch system with some Redcode clips...

Cheers,
Elcurado.
 
cailyoung said:
Color 1.0.1 has been released.
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Good news. It's getting there!

Converting 3-way colour correctors to primary in settings is a nice idea. I often do rough colour correction during an offline edit, and it will be nice to at least get that as a start point for the final grade.

I see there are -.0.1 updates for the rest of the Final Cut Studio 2 apps as well.
 
Baby steps, but in the right direction for sure.

Now all we need is full support for 4K, mixed mode clips to behave the same way in Color as in FCP and get Color to fully support all the FCP transitions beyond linear dissolves. We'd be rockin' then... Think that's too much to ask for by the end of this year?
 
It'd be good if the whole suite supports it eh?
 
Elcurado said:
Maybe someone from Apple are listening?
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That would be very nice.

I don't see how they could get better feedback than on forums like this one.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Now all we need is full support for 4K, mixed mode clips to behave the same way in Color as in FCP and get Color to fully support all the FCP transitions beyond linear dissolves. We'd be rockin' then... Think that's too much to ask for by the end of this year?
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The 4K I understand, and the transitions to a degree, but why is it necessary for Color to be able to display mixed codec clips identically? I'd rather it spent its CPU cycles getting the grade right rather than scaling for preview... Assuming I understand what you're asking for, that is.
 
The 4K I understand, and the transitions to a degree, but why is it necessary for Color to be able to display mixed codec clips identically? I'd rather it spent its CPU cycles getting the grade right rather than scaling for preview... Assuming I understand what you're asking for, that is.
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Transition support would be nice so we can properly grade through a transition, especially if there are FX in the transition that could effect coloring. Yes, it's best to put CPU cycles on getting the grade right first. But it would be nice so everything is scaled properly and displayed at the proper aspect ratio. Seeing something in the proper aspect can help immensely for all aspects of production, even color grading... Kinda goes along the lines of being able to see full pixel resolution too, which isn't going to happen with REDCODE footage until we get 4K support and some practical means of displaying 4K. ...All just pieces to the puzzle and entries on a wishlist, that's all.
 
We have Color send to the sdi output + component. the small window in color is FHA and the aspect ratio on the main ref monitor is correct. Can someone explain the aspect ratio issue? Are we talking about that little preview window in the app itself?

Also.. with the new update PAL no longer plays back stable at 25fps. It jumps and skips about unlike before. If I un-check maintain framerate it plays smoothe but it's playing back at 30fps.. not 25.. that the project is set to.

s
 
The broadcast monitor on the SDI output is surely what you should be looking at when grading anyway, not the preview. That said, I don't see why Color couldn't easily take account of aspect ratios when scaling the preview. Since you only have quarter or full screen as options, there is no way of forcing a pixel-for-pixel display on the computer monitor (unless you are looking at 1080 HD full screen on a 1920x1200 display) so it's always scaling anyway - so why not add aspect ratio correction to that scaling.

I find PAL plays back close enough to 25fps not to be a problem (8-core 3GHz Mac Pro with Decklink HD Pro card). The Apple guys at NAB said to me that they make no promises about realtime playback. I find it good enough to work with, then render it out and play in FCP to see it 'for real'.
 
Dice said:
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.
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The problem is that Apple promises this (or seems to), and then they don't deliver.

Adobe, on the other hand, comes very close to this workflow (if not actually achieving it) with Dynamic Link. I was part of the pre-release program (testing not developing), and let me tell you, it's impressive.

It remains to be seen if this can be done reliably in 4k, but it seems that Adobe is much closer to the holy grail.

-Thor
 
luki said:
If we had half of these problems in dealing with how we output material, we would be crucified by our customers and would have been out of business a long time ago.
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Having worked with Final Touch in on professional projects, let me tell you first hand, when it works it's great, however, I was in situations where you are in hot water with the client because you are troubleshooting XML's and EDL's, figuring out what the newest build of the software breaks, along with what it fixes, and long support calls that had no end.

It is a *very* powerful piece of software but it felt like it was developed for amiga rather than OSX. Color, despite a few small fixes, and no brainer updates has a lot of the same issues.

The Final Touch boards were a firing ground. However to be fair, it seemed like the 2k customers were having a far easier time of things that the HD people. The software seemed to like DPX sequences better. Still, ATI and nVidia cards were alternately more accurate, color shifts in between versions, and other issues arose.

I sense a large re-write of color under leopard, but the issue is also leopard itself...

I learned this software inside and out and it became completely unused because of those issues, and at this point it seems that scratch has come in and taken over as the inexpensive DI solution.

Possibly because it works.

Trust me, I can't count how many late nights I've spent trying to get a project out of color... Oh, and clients do need real-time and sound to properly color grade a film, and color can't do that.

However, on the totally self-made, DIY side of moviemaking, it can be a great product, as it simply comes with FCP, and you can have amazing amounts of power with it. But most of those people say fuckit, I'm using colorista. However the problem of the DIY, is that grading quality monitors are hard to come by, and the whole process takes a level of technical proficiency that is hard to attain at the DIY level.
 
I Have 2 macpro suites running Color, one with x1900 and a Blackmagic Hd card. And one with just a GeForce 7300 GT. I get around 30fps in HD on the geforce one. But only 15 fps on the x1900/BM one. If i remove the BM card its fast again. I think I had it running at 25fps at least in sd some time ago on the BM but now its the same speed, 15fps. But I read here that some of you are getting 25 fps with SDI. Anyone got any solutions? And is Kona better at this? I tried all the different updates and even tried Leopard in desperation! But no luck...
 
Have people tested the newest release of Color V 1.0.2?

Scratch would be my first choice but I will be contacting Assimilate to see if it's even remotely within budget.

Next in line would be:

1. Color - If bugs are really beginning to go away and the round trip between FCP and Color is becoming more stable, then this is an affordable workflow for me. Are people starting to feel better about this App?

2. After Effects with Colorista (which I own) and also Color Finesse. Export via Automatic Duck from FCP and do final render in After Effects.

3. Shake. Haven't looked into how to best do the round trip from FCP to Shake as I just started to get into Shake. Love the color tools it has but not versed in the workflow.

Most of the work I'd be doing is music video, 30 and 60 second spots, corporate, and the occasional independent film. I monitor via a Blackmagic HD Extreme > Sony CRT Broadcast monitor.

Steve
 
stevesherrick said:
Have people tested the newest release of Color V 1.0.2?
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I've done a micro amount of testing. So far I've heard pretty good things about 1.02. FYI colorista is a FCP plugin too, so you don't have to go to After Effects. I think it only is 8 bit in FCP whereas AE can do 32bit.

Here's another tidbit. Color will send a preview out of a BlackMagic Intensity card. That that HDMI back into DVI via a simple adapter or go to a plasma.
 
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