CS5 Workflow and color correction

[jake blackstone]

http://forums.creativecow.net/davinci

http://www.macvideo.tv/editing/features/index.cfm?articleId=3222371
Cool little Resolve demo. At the end you'll see the Resolve on the Macbook Pro, not unlike the Baselight for on set use, but pay attention to the dongle hanging out of USB port of the Macbook pro. Yes, Resolve will come with the dongle, which may means, that it can be moved between different computers.

 

[shashbugu]

I am glad you see its a one Cuda GPU acceleration system and its interface and new feature are somewhat different from the version 6.2 manual you see on their site. Its a more powerful beast than its 6.2 predecessor. More video here. Plus the Linux version 7.0 is shipping as we speak. In about a month or two every editor will be a colorist Ha ha, there will be tons of tutorials on youtube and vimeo.
I totally misunderstood your post, Jake, the answer is yes! Resolve will use two graphics cards but only one allowed for GPU acceleration. Sorry about the mis-understanding.

http://www.digitalcinemasociety.org/content.php?page=NAB 2010
http://filmmakingcentral.com/fmc2/2010/04/19/blogs/davinci-for-under-1k-wow/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxUbQzo_nVs
http://vimeo.com/10890549

 

[Linda Nelson]

The color correction in CS5 is really great - why leave CS5 at all? We're just finishing up a feature - went right from the camera to the timeline where we use Dynamic Link to After Effects and do all the color correction. It's simple to use Dynamic Link to burn a Blu-ray with Encore straight from the PP timeline. We have the NVidia 4800 Cuda so we can can see all our color correction in real-time on our 42in Vizio LCD (Walmart $500). People keep telling us we should use Scratch, but I don't understand why (we're PC not mac). No proxies, no offline, superfast h264.

 

[michael zaletel]

The color correction in CS5 is really great - why leave CS5 at all? We're just finishing up a feature - went right from the camera to the timeline where we use Dynamic Link to After Effects and do all the color correction. It's simple to use Dynamic Link to burn a Blu-ray with Encore straight from the PP timeline. We have the NVidia 4800 Cuda so we can can see all our color correction in real-time on our 42in Vizio LCD (Walmart $500). People keep telling us we should use Scratch, but I don't understand why (we're PC not mac). No proxies, no offline, superfast h264.

Hi Linda:

What are the specs on your PC?

-michael zaletel

 

[Uli Plank]

… we can can see all our color correction in real-time on our 42in Vizio LCD (Walmart $500).

I just hope you don't get strange surprises when it looks different on other screens. That's not really what I'd call a grading monitor…

 

[jake blackstone]

I am glad you see its a one Cuda GPU acceleration system and its interface and new feature are somewhat different from the version 6.2 manual you see on their site. Its a more powerful beast than its 6.2 predecessor. More video here. Plus the Linux version 7.0 is shipping as we speak. In about a month or two every editor will be a colorist Ha ha, there will be tons of tutorials on youtube and vimeo.
I totally misunderstood your post, Jake, the answer is yes! Resolve will use two graphics cards but only one allowed for GPU acceleration. Sorry about the mis-understanding.

http://www.digitalcinemasociety.org/content.php?page=NAB 2010
http://filmmakingcentral.com/fmc2/2010/04/19/blogs/davinci-for-under-1k-wow/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxUbQzo_nVs
http://vimeo.com/10890549

Haha, that's funny, I can see myself behind the speaker on youtube video. I was so busy picking the brains of the Resolve colorist, that I didn't even see the interview being recorded.
I'm glad to see Resolve running on the laptop. This way people will be able to use it for on set grading and then just move the dongle and use the same copy on the tower. I wonder, if this will be allowed? The new Macbook Pros already have two GPUs, one discreet and one on the motherboard. Only discreet GPU is NVIDIA, 9600 I believe. Is it CUDA capable? I wonder, if it is possible to utilize them both at the same time, NVIDIA for the render and the one on the motherboard for driving the display? I wonder, if it's already done, as the speaker in the video had mentioned some insane specs for the laptop, something like 5 or 6 layers for real time HD grading? May be I misunderstood what he was saying?

 

[Jay Gannon]

The color correction in CS5 is really great - why leave CS5 at all? We're just finishing up a feature - went right from the camera to the timeline where we use Dynamic Link to After Effects and do all the color correction. It's simple to use Dynamic Link to burn a Blu-ray with Encore straight from the PP timeline. We have the NVidia 4800 Cuda so we can can see all our color correction in real-time on our 42in Vizio LCD (Walmart $500). People keep telling us we should use Scratch, but I don't understand why (we're PC not mac). No proxies, no offline, superfast h264.

Hold on your grading a feature on a Walmart TV?
Whats your intended market?

 

[Paul Bates]

Hold on your grading a feature on a Walmart TV?
Whats your intended market?

This just goes to show the huge disparity between professional users and others - also reflected in audio where new users think mp3 is good quality when played on their iphone! - and the average Joe who can't tell the difference between correct or incorrect aspect ratio set-ups on their 100" mega view LCD - I never want to be a "pro snob" but everyone's suffering from the same, market-forced delusions relating to "quality"

"If you can't see it, it's not there"

Paul

 

[shashbugu]

The color correction in CS5 is really great - why leave CS5 at all? We're just finishing up a feature - went right from the camera to the timeline where we use Dynamic Link to After Effects and do all the color correction. It's simple to use Dynamic Link to burn a Blu-ray with Encore straight from the PP timeline. We have the NVidia 4800 Cuda so we can can see all our color correction in real-time on our 42in Vizio LCD (Walmart $500). People keep telling us we should use Scratch, but I don't understand why (we're PC not mac). No proxies, no offline, superfast h264.

Linda I 'm not sure what state you live in, but here in California you can get a feature, especially an Indie Red feature, graded for as little as $10,000 by some of the best colorists on the planet, and sound cleaned, monitored and mixed for about $6000. I have the rebel indie filmmaker spirit you have, but distracting quality will greatly take away from your hard work. Distributors can spot the difference in a heart beat, and will take advantage of you if you come unprepared. Music videos and commercials and short films are one thing but a feature film is less forgiving. You should prep an uncompleted sizzle reel and approach a distributor for completion funds if you don't have any. Color grading is a CIA well kept secret. You can search online, you wont find and real comprehensive tuts on this art. Having an overall look on a feature is far far from real emotional grading. Don't listen to the folks that tell you to use Scratch or some other software, just get a colorist. They are aesthetically aware of how the mind and the eye read images. Thats why they get paid $800 per hour.

 

[Martin B.]

It doesn't work that way. The XML from PPro points to R3Ds, you'll need to pass it through Clipfinder to re-conform to the H proxies.

I'm waiting to see comments on how Clipfinder can really improve the CS5-FCP road, but as to this XML matter, I've tried something that worked: edit the xml, replace the ".R3D" for "_M.mov" and then FCP looked for every proxy without any problem. It wasn't a tough test, just fooling around, but It seemed to work ok.


Regards!

 

[Linda Nelson]

Hi Linda:

What are the specs on your PC?

-michael zaletel

- Dual LGA1366 Xeon/ 5520/ DDR3/ V&3GbE/ SSI EEB Server Motherboard
-Intel Xeon Quad-Core X5550 2.66GHz 6.4 GT/s 1366pin 8MB CPU DUAL CPU
-STT DDR3-1333 4GB/256x4 ECC/REG Hynix Chip Server Memory total of 6x4GB (24GB)
-CineRAID EditPro 8 bay Tower w/ 1221X Card and Cables 8x 1TB Raid 5 Drive
-Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB SATA 10k rpm 16MB Hard Drive OS Drive
-NVidia Quadro 4800.
-1000-watts with active pfc, 100% modular, powerful single + 12v rail with 90A

Custom built for us by a company down the street from us called NLE System. The Quatro card really did the trick - let us output to a big 42" flat panel, calibrated for color so we could really take advantage of all the detail of the RED files.

 

[Linda Nelson]

I just hope you don't get strange surprises when it looks different on other screens. That's not really what I'd call a grading monitor…

We had a few issues with this, but just did a few tests and with a few corrections were able to get the results we wanted.

 

[Martin B.]

Linda, how much can a machine like that cost in the usa?

 

[Antony M]

PPro CS5 uses after effects in the background as rendering server.. when you ask for a frame it renders it on the fly and send it to premiere.. use dynamiclink to work, when done render intermediate Tiff or dpx for the comps.. then go to send that either with edl or xml for color..

Hi, that is what I am currently doing.

But for a 25 minute project, exporting to a 1080p TIFF sequence, AME is saying it will take 60 hours to render!

Is this normal?

 

[Martin B.]

I wonder: is it OK to resize a 4k shot directly in Premiere? I mean, is it a good idea? (the final export will be a 2k tiff/dpx).

 

[Kim Frank]

I totally misunderstood your post, Jake, the answer is yes! Resolve will use two graphics cards but only one allowed for GPU acceleration.

http://vimeo.com/10890549

Does it have to use two graphics cards or can it.
I really need to know that.
Can you also run resolve for a mac from one powerful GPU
or do you have to have the second GUI
If yes, how does it run on a Macbook then?

 

[Peter Chamberlain]

On the MacPro we use the GT120 for UI and a number of other things, the FX4800 is used for all grade processing. Both use CUDA and the result is real time grading at HD and even some 2K. On the current 17" MacBookPro we use the CUDA GPU to do both task but real time is limited to SD resolutions.
Peter

 

[Kim Frank]

On the MacPro we use the GT120 for UI and a number of other things, the FX4800 is used for all grade processing. Both use CUDA and the result is real time grading at HD and even some 2K. On the current 17" MacBookPro we use the CUDA GPU to do both task but real time is limited to SD resolutions.
Peter

So you can run it off just one GPU card.
Thank you

 

[Russ Fill]

First of all I am just starting out on grading my own work on the RED. My work flow is not nearly as large as even a small 30 second spot. I have gone through the form and I haven't seen any mention of Magic Bullet Colorista 2. This is a product from Red Giant that seems to work very well in my AFX with my Rd3 files as well as the DPX files I have done a one light with in Redcine X and then bring in to AFX for my final color.

Like I said I am new to this so if this is way off the course of normal workflow let me know so I can get a more tried and true work flow.
Thank you.

 

[Uli Plank]

Colorista II is working very well in AE, but the GUI has minor problems in PPro. If it does what you need, you don't have to go the complicated XML to Color route.