DaVinci

[Andrew Ravani]

Isn't every grading system essentially doing the same thing using the same primary tools?

lift, gamma, gain adjustments.
curves
secondaries (16 to infinity)
tracking

one thing I see that daVinci could do for me that color couldn't is 3D tracking..

Davinci's qualifiers and are more varied and selective - and in a color correcting workflow (particularly commercials) precision is a valued commodity. While you CAN keyframe secondaries in Apple Color, the code is buggy and creates unpredictable results. I have not run into any unpredictable results with DaVinci - quite the contrary - it does everything I expect it to and more. The downside = the added cost, but it comes with a substantial upside in performance and resulting quality from the precision. So, no - not all color systems are created equal, and in particular DaVinci is a step above Color - a long step - even though they both have similar feature sets, its the execution in those feature sets that makes a big difference.

On another note- I have found the Stu's Magic Bullet Colorista 2 with AECS5 is just about the best thing to DI a low budget project with. The only complaints I have are lack of integration of a control surface, and playback frame rate (always a problem with AE).

 

[King Cheung]

Davinci's qualifiers and are more varied and selective - and in a color correcting workflow (particularly commercials) precision is a valued commodity. While you CAN keyframe secondaries in Apple Color, the code is buggy and creates unpredictable results. I have not run into any unpredictable results with DaVinci - quite the contrary - it does everything I expect it to and more. The downside = the added cost, but it comes with a substantial upside in performance and resulting quality from the precision. So, no - not all color systems are created equal, and in particular DaVinci is a step above Color - a long step - even though they both have similar feature sets, its the execution in those feature sets that makes a big difference.

On another note- I have found the Stu's Magic Bullet Colorista 2 with AECS5 is just about the best thing to DI a low budget project with. The only complaints I have are lack of integration of a control surface, and playback frame rate (always a problem with AE).

nice first-handed information. Thanks, Andrew.

 

[Jose Alvarez]

On another note- I have found the Stu's Magic Bullet Colorista 2 with AECS5 is just about the best thing to DI a low budget project with. The only complaints I have are lack of integration of a control surface, and playback frame rate (always a problem with AE).

I just finished editing and grading a project originated in super16mm (10 year old project only recently finished because Bradley Cooper is in it, don't ask long story) with a super horrible one-light transfer/scan to 1080p DPX files and ProRes done in Miami (I'll spare you the company name, since they are going under).

My original intention, because of the super low budget, was to edit in FCP, Grade in Color and finish to DPX. But the 10 year old negative transfer turned out to be so grainy, I was forced to stay inside of FCP and use the Neat Video plugin (wonderful btw) to do grain management and since I could not round trip to Color without everything becoming unrendered, I decided to use MB Colorista to grade the project.

I was (along with everyone around be) stunned at how good Colorista is as a plugin. You can use multiple instances (with masks) of the plugin to achieve awesome results. We also used MB Looks to give the director a palette of color choices per scene, and once he chose the looked he wanted, I finished tweaking with Colorista. Great combination of tools.

If I had the choice I would still use DaVinci (or Color), but Colorista 2 is definitely a worthy contender, specially inside FCP.

 

[Philipe Ratton]

Isn't every grading system essentially doing the same thing using the same primary tools?

lift, gamma, gain adjustments.
curves
secondaries (16 to infinity)
tracking

one thing I see that daVinci could do for me that color couldn't is 3D tracking..

Color balance without affecting luminance/contrast.
Among tons of other stuff