Final Cut Summit Recap | Best Tips, What Happened at Apple and More

[rand thompson]

Steve Yeah! Plus other than a few limitations listed below


Filmlight's
Baselight Look Webpage

FilmLight | Training | Baselight LOOK

www.filmlight.ltd.uk

Restrictions​

• 6 month ‘auto-renewing’ licence (simply make sure your computer is connected to the internet and the licence will automatically renew after 6 months).
• Only available for the macOS operating system.
• Licence only available to registered users – the software is not freely distributable.
• Blackboard control panels are not supported.
• Rendering out is limited to h.264* and JPEG formats.
• Cannot access or import full Baselight scenes (and vice-versa).
• Baselight LOOK uses a different database structure for jobs and scenes, so you cannot share projects between Baselight LOOK and full Baselight.
• Exported BLG files only contain static ‘look’ data (ie. they have no time-based information and cannot be used to recreate a graded timeline).
• No consolidate functionality.

It's the same as the Baselight Turnkey systems. Plus Baselight Look gets the same updates( barring the restrictions listed above) as the Turnkey systems . And version 6.0, when it's finally released, will offer tools I haven't really seen in any other NLE .

​

If you had to watch only one of the videos below I would watch the CML video​

TSF x FILMLIGHT : Création de Look avec Chromoge​

By TSF

Daniele Siragusano, Colour Scientist at FilmLight, introduces CHROMOGEN, the newest tool available in FilmLight
apps. It explains the motivations that led to the creation of Chromogen, and demonstrates in pictures how this tool can optimally support the process of creating a look.

Chromogen will support the means of collaboration between the cinematographer and the calibrator.

​

​

2023-11-01-Chromogen​

By CML Cinematography Mailing List

FilmLight's Daniele Siragusano presents “The Digital Chromogen: a Novel Approach to Look Development”.

 

[Brian Timmons]

FCP has been my go to NLE for years now. Started on Avid, went to FCP 7 (while still using Avid) when I had my home edit suite, and then FCPX when I finally decided to get over my stubbornness of learning trackless workflow. To me, even despite some of the pro features it was lacking, it is just a very fast NLE to work with once you get the hang of it. And it has some amazing metadata tools. But, over the last 3-4 years I find I've had a lot more problems using it. I can't prove this but I feel that Apple has begun the push to eliminate spinning hard drives from their ecosystem. Which is a valid thing to want to eventually, but many of us still use those spinning hard drives, especially in RAID configurations. At some point, I feel like FCP just started to get laggy/buggy if using them in my workflow, while SSD drives seem to have much less issues and the program seems snappier. These days I'm having to use Adobe CC due to collaborative team I am working with that uses it. But I don't like Adobe's pay to play subscription model even though where it sits currently is very affordable for professionals. And Resolve I have used for years for color grading and dailies. But, here is my gripe with all of them...

If you use multiple tools to get your work done and they all reside on one machine, I fell like it's very easy to fall into the update/upgrade madness that has permeated the software industry. It's so easy to deliver software to your computer that companies are able to put out new versions as often as they want, packed with new features. While that sounds great in theory, what I have found is that it translates to buggy software that then gets updated (yes sometimes quickly) but may fix those problems and cause news ones. And at the same time, you are dealing with OS updates that also add shiny new features, but then break things as well. So what you end up with is version chasing. And I have found the only way to have any chance to combat this is to stay a version or two behind. That includes OS and software packages. It doesn't always work out perfectly that way (sometimes you have to have a new feature to actually get a job done) but that's been my strategy. I also utilize the ability to partition boot drive so that I can have a different OS/software versions that don't interfere with my main apps that are hopefully in a state of reliability at that moment. It can be challenging. Especially when it comes to collaborating with others on the same project. A lot of people see an update become available and immediately hit the update button, potentially screwing up the collaboration when the new version has problems. A key example of that would be something like Adobe Productions. I try to get everyone to stay on same version of Premiere while a project is ongoing. But sometimes people hit the button or they have automatic updates set to on.

Another thing to keep an eye on in the future is the health of these companies. As creatives, we build our toolset for getting projects done, often taking for granted that the companies making these tools might not be around forever or might shift their priorities at some point. For example, Avid being bought recently by a strategic investment firm, while on the surface nothing seems to have changed, behind the scenes a lot could be changing. Apple could decide at some point that further development of FCP doesn't make sense for them or completely change the product on a whim. Adobe, realizing that their internal costs have skyrocketed, could suddenly start charging triple the monthly subscription cost which could impact a lot of people and leave them with an inability to get access to their projects if they are not able to keep up with the subscription costs. Blackmagic seems like one of the more stable companies, but what if suddenly they started to see a major drop in their hardware sales? Does Resolve remain free, does Studio remain at $300? None of these companies are bulletproof. And the impact that a major change could have on your daily workflow could be very significant. For example, I have thousands of dollars invested in FCP 3rd party plugins/extensions, same with Pro Tools and Resolve. If Apple, Avid, or Blackmagic suddenly left the scene, eventually this would impact me.

We live in the best of times and the worst of times.

Hey Steve,
I think our NLE travels are quite similar.
I agree that Apple is designing FCP with the expectation of footage being edited off of SSDs.
My understanding is FCP needs media that has fast random access performance for handling parts of the interface like the browser and timeline thumbnails.
I noticed back around 10.4 or so that projects that previously worked relatively well on an average hard drive started to lag and beachball.
Larger projects would just get excruciatingly slow.
Once the project was transferred to an SSD all is well.

It's a valid point to consider the future of these tools and companies behind them.
As a tech contingency plan I have begun to wonder how to best manage a situation where I would have to leave a platform for another.
I do at least try to make XMLs of timelines if a future migration is needed.

I like Apple but there is a certain risk to have so much work if not life tied up in one platform.
Microsoft is out of the equation for me for reasons that go well beyond tech.

I do hope Linux could emerge into something a bit more approachable.
Perhaps something else might emerge.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Hey Steve,
I think our NLE travels are quite similar.
I agree that Apple is designing FCP with the expectation of footage being edited off of SSDs.
My understanding is FCP needs media that has fast random access performance for handling parts of the interface like the browser and timeline thumbnails.
I noticed back around 10.4 or so that projects that previously worked relatively well on an average hard drive started to lag and beachball.
Larger projects would just get excruciatingly slow.
Once the project was transferred to an SSD all is well.

It's a valid point to consider the future of these tools and companies behind them.
As a tech contingency plan I have begun to wonder how to best manage a situation where I would have to leave a platform for another.
I do at least try to make XMLs of timelines if a future migration is needed.

I like Apple but there is a certain risk to have so much work if not life tied up in one platform.
Microsoft is out of the equation for me for reasons that go well beyond tech.

I do hope Linux could emerge into something a bit more approachable.
Perhaps something else might emerge.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

I think we had a similar experience with the change happening around 10.4. Another friend did as well. And there were some issues with the RED QT plugin around that time as well. Things had been very smooth up to that point. But like you the beachball started around this time with larger projects residing on hard drives. I have one project that has some on SSD and some on hard drive and is a rather large project and that one has slowed down to almost unusable. I think a lot of FCPX users do short form and in some cases may even put their media on the internal SSD boot drive which are really fast and maybe they never run into these issues.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Steve Yeah! Plus other than a few limitations listed below

• Baselight LOOK uses a different database structure for jobs and scenes, so you cannot share projects between Baselight LOOK and full Baselight.

This is the only one that would worry me. If at some point I wanted to bring something I did while learning the software into a full Baselight project. But have to think of it as a learning version, not a light version I guess.

 

[rand thompson]

Yeah ,

Daniele Siragusano the Colour Scientist at FilmLight was actually using the version 6.0 Baselight Look program in both of the videos I posted above of the new Chromogen tool in Baselight version 6.0. Think of it as using a full fledged version Davinci Resolve program back when it was $100,000 for free but with similar limitations as with the Baselight Look program.