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Colorista or Speed Grade?

Stephen Pruitt

Stephen Pruitt

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Hi there. . .

We are currently editing in Premiere Pro CS5.5 and are wanting to add a better color grading program.

Magic Bullet's Colorista II was demonstrated to me today, and it seems quite powerful, but how does this compare with CS 6's Speedgrade application?

I'm looking for both power and ease of use.

Thanks much gentlemen.

Stephen
 
Speedgrade is a more powerful grading solution but Adobe's integration is in the early stages. Colorista gives you a nice in-app solution. For heavy duty color correction I'd still lean towards Resolve or better.
 
I doubt highly if I'd be doing anything too heavy-duty. Does Resolve exist as a plug-in for PP?

Thanks.

Stephen
 
Resolve Lite is a free app from Black Magic. The caveat is you'll need proper hardware specs to get the most out of it. You export XML or EDL to get into it. Not as easy as color correcting right in the timeline. You could also look into After Effects with Color Finesse which is a plugin that comes with AE. Just have to make sure you get your color management set up properly. That has some powerful features. No matter what you use make sure you have your monitoring set up correctly or it usually ends up being a frustrating process.

Also, never underestimate the power of simplicity. Some people are able to get great results with no more than 3-way color corrector, Levels, and RGB Curves.
 
Good advice from Steve above. I would also add the importance of getting a calibrated monitor, accurate scopes, and an experienced colorist. The latter will save you time in post and will give you options and solutions you might never have otherwise considered.

"Ease of use" is the last thing for which I'd buy finishing software. Power, features, speed, and reliability are all far more important. I would lean towards Resolve with a decent panel (at least the Tangent) as an affordable solution, assuming a very fast computer and drives as part of the package.
 
Agreed with Steve and Marc
Thanks
 
Kwan Khan said:
Agreed with Steve and Marc
Thanks
Click to expand...
Agreed too. Also... please correct me if I'm wrong... but I believe that Speedgrade still does not offer the possibility of monitoring out via capture cards (aja, blackmagic). As much as I like many things about Speedgrade, I also find it puzzling that a professional grading program would not offer a proper monitoring solution. I really hope this will be fixed in the near future.

Cheers
 
++ on the Flanders Montior...3g enabled, so if you run dual SDI out of the RR, you can go single channel into FSI, or use a converter for full 10bit AJA, Matrox and others have dual SDI to single 3g converters...., I run my FSI described as above, then also attached to my I/O box for color work and editing via Premier or FCP

Edit: but, if on a Mac (i'm on mac) you don't get 10bit out of your Mac....only 8 bit. This is a mac thing and a real bummer. From I/O box--you would have to confirm with the manufacturere--but i found i cannot get out of matrox either even when it does say 10 bit monitoring capable.
 
I've used Colorista II, Speedgrade, and Davinci for a project. Each have pros and cons.

Colorista II Pros:

*Keeps you inside Premiere Pro
*Can help for a fast turn around, as you can still modify the edit of the base files while you do color.

Cons:

*Not real time. Good luck with editing afterwords.
*Controlling this with a mouse sucks. Its so touchy.
*No color management in Premiere Pro. You need to have a calibrated sRGB monitor or an external monitor through an output card.

Speedgrade cs6 Pros:

*1 click Send to speedgrade is good for a quick workflow.
*High level of control in your image. Also you can save looks and apply them later to save time. No copying and pasting effects in a certain chain order.
*real time performance if you have the right hardware
*If you have a monitor .icm, you can convert that to a LUT and have accurate colors without the need for an external monitor.

Cons:

*Workflow issues if you don't want DPX, and your video isn't in a QT container
*Need high Disk IO to do DPX sequence
*lack of support right now because the application is so new to Adobe. look at all the unanswered questions in their forums.
*Only Quadro SDI is supported for external monitoring
*Output is limited, and Quicktime almost always has gamma shift. Don't forget to check the color calibration checkbox when exporting to a QuickTime container.

Davinci Pros:

*FREE!
*very powerful color correction (Different from Speedgrade, but both achieve awesome looks)
*Better support since a lot of people have been using this application for a while now.
*New version streamlined for new people to jump in.
*Supports AAF export, which will retain most of your editing and transitions when you bring it into Davinci.
*If you have a monitor .icm, you can convert that to a LUT and have accurate colors without the need for an external monitor.

Cons:

*Probably the toughest workflow in your situation because there is no easy round trip for Premiere Pro.
*DPX is what you'll be passing around most likely, and you'll need a fast RAID/SSD for RT playback.
*Archaic Database system is still in place. It's not designed for a single user system.
 
Johnny Friday said:
Edit: but, if on a Mac (i'm on mac) you don't get 10bit out of your Mac....only 8 bit. This is a mac thing and a real bummer. From I/O box--you would have to confirm with the manufacturere--but i found i cannot get out of matrox either even when it does say 10 bit monitoring capable.
Click to expand...
Output on Resolve is 10 bit, if recommended hardware is used, lIke Decklink, regardless of platform used.
 
jake blackstone said:
Output on Resolve is 10 bit, if something, lIke Decklink is used, regardless of platform used.
Click to expand...

That would be a big reason for me to switch from Matrox I/O to BM and their I/O then....this is actually a FACT from BM? I ask because Matrox says 10bit output for years, and it's capable of 10bit output, but can't get a signal from MAC. How does BM do this then?
 
I'll also plug the Flanders Scientific monitors; the cost/performance ratio is astounding.

As I'm just getting into color grading, I'm finding that the basics of each program are, really, the same. It's more important to learn the essentials/principles of grading itself, than to learn the software involved.

I haven't had a chance to try Speedgrade yet, but Resolve is really slick. Comparing it to Apple Color feels like comparing a Ferrari to a Model T. From what I hear, Speedgrade is on the same plane as Resolve.

So, I recommend getting as far as you can using the basic filters in Premiere (3-way, levels, etc.). If you find yourself wishing you had more/finer/deeper control, then try both Speedgrade and Resolve. You'll probably quickly find that you prefer one over the other.

And, since Resolve Lite is free, and Speedgrade comes with CS6, you really have nothing to lose.
 
Johnny Friday said:
That would be a big reason for me to switch from Matrox I/O to BM and their I/O then....this is actually a FACT from BM? I ask because Matrox says 10bit output for years, and it's capable of 10bit output, but can't get a signal from MAC. How does BM do this then?
Click to expand...

Resolve doesn't use system graphics card for video display, which indeed is only capable of 8 bit on a Mac. Matrox uses video from system graphics display, hence, even if device is capable to work in 10 bit, it doesn't matter- the result is still 8 bit. BM uses it's own graphics display card- Decklink, which is capable of 10 bit. System GPUs are only used for the nodes processing.
Speedgrade doesn't use Decklink or AJA card for output, it only uses system GPU for display. And because of this, it is only capable of 8 bit monitoring.
 
So how do you get 10 bit monitoring on a Mac Pro tower?

8 bit vs 10 bit, what's the real difference and is it worth the extra hardware? Is 10 bit color 10x better than 8 bit or are the differences negligible?


jake blackstone said:
Resolve doesn't use system graphics card for video display, which indeed is only capable of 8 bit on a Mac. Matrox uses video from system graphics display, hence, even if device is capable to work in 10 bit, it doesn't matter- the result is still 8 bit. BM uses it's own graphics display card- Decklink, which is capable of 10 bit. System GPUs are only used for the nodes processing.
Speedgrade doesn't use Decklink or AJA card for output, it only uses system GPU for display. And because of this, it is only capable of 8 bit monitoring.
Click to expand...
 
8 bits (256 colors)





24 bits (16,777,216 colors, "truecolor")
 
Yes, that's right. 8 bits per channel works out as the 16,777,216 colors you mention in the lower photo (256*256*256). 10 bits per channel is an extra 6 bits total. or 64 times the number of possible colors (to answer your previous question - although that's just over a billion colors, not trillions ;-)). Of course you won't see a difference between a 24-bit photo and a 30-bit version of that photo on a regular 8-bit per channel computer monitor.
 
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