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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Premiere CS5, After Effects CS5, Colorista 2 and Quadro 4000 / 5000

David Kellermann

David Kellermann

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Hi,

I'm editing right now a feature film shot on two Canon T2i (550D) on Premiere CS5. Everythings works smoothly and Premiere is rock solid. I'm also hired to color grade the film (low budget indie). Since it's the first time I'm editing a feature film (only have experience with commercials) I'm wondering about the best workflow for grading the film. Since I'm working on a PC, I suppose Colorista 2 would be a good choice since it seems to work well with the newest update in Premiere CS5. I downloaded the trial and tested it in Premiere on the h264 files. The responsiveness wasn't great and it also was kind of slow (I'm working on an 2,5 years old 8 core Xeon with 2,3GHz and a ATI 4850). Responsiveness in After Effects is far better, but I can't get realtime playback there.

So I was wondering if I should convert the files prior to grading into dpx sequences. And would it speed up Colorista if I'm getting a Quadro 4000 or 5000? Would it speed up both Premiere and After Effects?

Or are there any other options for grading that doesn't cost more than 4000$? Realtime would be great, but I'm guessing that's not possible on a budget...

The workflow should also work for R3D files... I would even spend more than 4000$ if it would enable me the grade R3Ds in realtime (RedRocket will be bought anyway next year).

Thanks for any tips!:smile:
 
The problem with Colorista II in PPro is a GUI problem which is in the works by both parties AFAIK.

But why not get an approved nVidia card for Premiere which works with Resolve too? The biggest investment will be calibrated monitoring, but that's needed for any grading, eben with Colorista.
 
They fixed some of the GUI problems with the Premiere CS5 5.0.3 update. Still Colorista 2 is to unresponsive.

I would get Resolve any day if it was available for PC.

I will buy probably a HP Dreamcolor as a reference monitor and a Panasonic P50VT25 or a good projector as a client monitor. Any recomendations for a good sub 3000$ projector or a plasma?
 
Sub 3K I'd go for a Panny Plasma. No serious projector for that money.
 
The first thing you need to do is get and Nvidia card to make use of the Mercury engine, and it need not be a $4000 one, a GTX 385 will cost you $400, and even a Quadro FX 3800 about $800, that will make a difference. but Colorista still won't be real time. You could do all primary grading with Premiere's own tools, where you have a lot of very powerful grading tools that are real time and 32 bpc, and then add a final look on colorista. You could also use Color Finesse 3, which comes bundled with AE and is an AWESOME grading tool. It is not totally real time either but far more responsive than colorista. I graded a 45 min feature shot entirely on RED using PP own tools and Color Finesse and I saw projected on the big screen last night, it looks great.
 
As far as I know Colorista wont take any advantage on CUDA. Not sure how much the Mercury Engine is supporting Colorista. I used Color Finesse 2.5 but wasn't to happy about the speed and the keyer. I'll try CF3 in the next days.

I'm wondering if someone used Colorista 2 with a Quadro 5000? How was the speed?
 
The 5.0.3 patch did make Colorista2 more responsive inside Premiere but the power windows still can't be seen or tweaked inside Premiere, for that you have to go to AE. Like others, I find Colorista2 unbearable in Premiere although it does work just fine in AE...but then AE isn't really built to work on large projects and you loose real time playback while working on that platform.

As for the cards, I'm using a GTX480 card with the 'adobe hack' and it plays back h.264 files from my 1DmkIV just fine. You could get a GTX 470 for about $250 and it won't need the hack.

When applying basic grading with Colorista2 you'll get a red render bar on clips but my current system still plays them back in (mostly) real time without a render.

Personally I think that Colorista2 isn't ready for prime time on the CS5 platform. Premiere's built in color plugins are all real time MPE accelerated, why couldn't Magic Bullet design something similar? I also found the demo videos on their site totally misleading as they would say "Colorista2 works with both Premiere and After Effects, in this case I'm working in After Effects..." then show all the features working without any mention that the software is pretty crippled in Premiere and trying to grade a project in After Effects will make you want to hang yourself.
 
Last edited:
Paul Steinberg said:
As for the cards, I'm using a GTX480 card with the 'adobe hack' and it plays back h.264 files from my 1DmkIV just fine. You could get a GTX 470 for about $250 and it won't need the hack.

When applying basic grading with Colorista2 you'll get a red render bar on clips but my current system still plays them back in (mostly) real time without a render.
Click to expand...

Playback of h264 clips from DSLRs isn't a problem in PP CS5, even on my "old" 2008 8core Xeon. As far as I know CUDA isn't speeding up the playback in PP, but is being used for effects. And as soon as I use multiple instances of Colorista, I can't get even close to realtime playback.

So is my only option to switch over to Apple and get Resolve? Maybe an Hackintosh could be a solution (I think it's perfectly legal to install OSX on a regular PC in Germany, but I might be wrong), but I want a reliable machine for work.
 
I've never seen a Hackintosh 100% reliable for professional work, sorry.

What's wrong with a Mac, even if you boot it into being a PC most of the time ;-)
 
Uli Plank said:
I've never seen a Hackintosh 100% reliable for professional work, sorry.

What's wrong with a Mac, even if you boot it into being a PC most of the time ;-)
Click to expand...

As unreliable Hackitosh could possibly be (what system is ever 100%?), I still would take it with Resolve over Colorista any time. Convert everything to Prores and grade it in real time with no rendering, even with few hick ups here and there...
 
jake blackstone said:
As unreliable Hackitosh could possibly be (what system is ever 100%?), I still would take it with Resolve over Colorista any time. Convert everything to Prores and grade it in real time with no rendering, even with few hick ups here and there...
Click to expand...

I was looking for some informations about Hackintoshs. Seems that it's quite tricky to set up an octa-core Mac Pro. But even then or if I would build a more simple quad-core Hackintosh, I would have to get a new RAID-controller since my LSI 9260i is not supported under OSX.

If I'm grading ProRes (or R3D) files... how fast should the RAID be? And is Resolve supporting multiple cores or is a fast quad core with a GTX285 enough?
 
Color Finesse is good, but it has problems with real time. It does not have power
windows so you have to work with After Effects masks, which make the
realtime issue worse. I have used it in combination with magic bullet with success, but the real time issue gets even worse.

That's why I am building my Hackintosh for Resolve, but I'm aware that - as Uli
said: "I've never seen a Hackintosh 100% reliable for professional work", so this hackintosh
will be only for Resolve and the rest of my workflow will not be
effected. Even if I face problems with hackintosh, there will be a plan B: old good After Effects.

Why not buy a Mac..? Good question. I asked myself too. I may in the future. But right there are a lot of things
to buy.. So a Hackintosh is cheaper and relatively better for the money (at leas IMO).. But
also a little more headache.. But I think I can afford that..
 
I hope somebody from Adobe Marketing is reading this. The market potential for either a full blown color grading tool or adding a few more essential MPE grading tools in Adobe Premiere.
tools
1.Lift, Gamma, Gain
2. A basic tracker for the current built in masks
3. An Adjustment Layer
4. All the color grading tools from light room
5. LUT
6. Versioning tools in AME
7. Seperate shadow, mid-tones and highlight sliders
8. Color temperature sliders
9. Per color level sliders like in AE
 
I did some more research on Hackintoshs and found this list on compatible graphic cards:

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/11/fully-compatible-nvidia-graphics-cards.html

Since Resolve is using CUDA, I was wondering if I could use a GTX 470 instead of a GTX 285. Anyone tried it? And do I need an other GPU like a GT 120?

Does a system like that would enable a realtime workflow on ProRes Files and R3D files with a RED Rocket, even while using keyer and power masks?

ASUS P6T7 WS SuperComputer, X58
Intel Core i7-950, 4x 3.06GHz
24GB DDR3 RAM
GTX 285 / GTX 470
DeckLink HD Extreme 3D
SSD (system disc)
RAID (8x 1TB RAID0 ARC-1880-i) (all data is save on a NAS and backups)

Sorry for the many questions. I would be more than happy if someone could answer one or more of them.
 
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