Poor Mans Conform

[Charles Angus]

A lot of people have been scoffing, and saying well, you have 4k, what are you going to do with it on a MacbookPro without a fibre channel RAID?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is it strictly *necessary* to support the uncompressed bandwith? Could you not CC and conform at less than realtime? The bulk of a CC is done one still frames anyway, in my experience...

I've been experimenting with using Shake to conform DPX files - it works just fine, despite the fact that I don't have hundreds of megs a second running off my drive...

Shake can take a bunch of DPXs (or anything...), then spit out a DVCPro HD version that matches back. This is edited in FCP, then you use the Send to Shake command and that puts the project back into Shake. It is then possible to text edit the Shake script to relink the FileIn's back to the DPX's, and spit out a new DPX sequence...

It seems to me that you could then CC and conform on your home computer, then take the folder with the EDL and DPX's to a post house, and have them just go over the project to make sure the grades are right and the conform worked (project against the offline). They then do the filmout or the HD masters, etc.

Is that crazy?
Yes, but it seems it would work, from my tests...

 

[Fergus Meiklejohn]

Good man Angus!

It's the future eh..

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Or you could just edit in Avid or FCP. Spit out an MXF and import it all straight into Combustion or AE using Automatic Duck. Or you could spit out an EDL or MXF from Avid and import it directly into Fusion.

 

[Charles Angus]

Sure. I'm just trying to point out that you don't *need* a thousand megabits of throughput to do 4k.

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is it strictly *necessary* to support the uncompressed bandwith? Could you not CC and conform at less than realtime? The bulk of a CC is done one still frames anyway, in my experience...

My US$.02...

Conform - yes, absolutely. Color - no way.

Color correction is a very fluid (and fleeting) process. Normal people have very very short visual color memory. They need immediate feedback and quick references between shots to make reasonable creative judgments. There are several Directors and DPs and Colorists that I know that have what I consider astonishing color recall. A good film timer can remember an exact hue in very subtle degrees over 24 to 48 hours. To me, that 's absolutely amazing. I sure as hell can't do that. But those kinds of "color memories" are very rare, very well trained, and only acquired after years of experience.

Once you have been in a color correction session with realtime tools, you never go back. I distinctly remember the first da vinci session I was in years ago. I had always thought that color correction as a click.. drag... click process was just fine. Then I sat in that session, and in the first 30 seconds, I said to myself, "Ah. I get it now." The fluidity and realtime movement is an incredible advantage in doing color - especially for a feature.

Can you do good color correction in non-realtime and single frames? Absolutely. But the process, workflow, and experience is always better in a realtime environment.

Cheers,

Lucas
-----
Drinker of Martinis.
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

 

[Charles Angus]

I agree 100%. Real-time kicks ass.

 

[sander kamp]

That's interesting. I think my color memory is quite okay but I have never tested it nor do I know what is normal. How could I test it?

 

[Cail Young]

That's interesting. I think my color memory is quite okay but I have never tested it nor do I know what is normal. How could I test it?

Generate a colour patch in Photoshop, and note down the numerics of it (or perhaps just generate a random patch somehow and save it as a file, so you don't risk memorising the numerics rather than the actual colour).

Come back in x hours and try to recreate it. Compare the two. My guess internally is that it's harder to recall lower saturations than more saturated hues. I also think we have a better memory for 'value' than for either of the colour dimensions.

 

[Alexander Black]

soooooooo lucas, when's that secret mac port of scratch coming out?

nudge nudge wink wink knowwhatahmean? knowwhatahmean?