Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Scratch vs After Effects

A

Alex De Vivo

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 19, 2009
Messages
59
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Hi! I usually use After Effects for the color correction. Recently I'm very interested to Scratch. Somebody can tell the difference between Scratch and After Effects in the matter of the color correction? Thanks! :)
 
Ehm... this is an extremely wide question.

But I'll give it a shot - since I started out grading in After Effects and now work in Scratch so I can give you an idea of my experience.

There are two things that come to mind: realtime playback and dedicated UI.

Grading in realtime and evaluating the flow of a scene in motion while grading is huge. In After Effects I'm always grading stills. Then after rendering there will always be things that looked great as stills but in the context of the moving edit don't work as well. After Effects won't be realtime even for simple things in the near future. Scratch is optimized for exactly this.

And the dedicated UI: shuttling through a scene, tweaking grades without having to select a layer from the hundreds of layers in the timeline is a huge timesaver. I work a lot faster in Scratch than in AE. Add a panel to it (even the Tangent Wave) and the difference in experience is just night and day. Having all your regular tools (lift, gamma, gain, s-curve, saturation, even defocus) available at the fingertips is great.

On the other hand: I come from a compositing background, and the image processing toolset in AE is a lot more elaborate than Scratch out of the box. You can run OpenFX plugins in Scratch to compensate.

I haven't even touched on the conform tools but that's not what the question is about. On the other hand Scratch costs way more than After Effects - but it's a lot more focussed for specific work.

Barend
 
Barend Onneweer said:
On the other hand Scratch costs way more than After Effects...

Barend
Click to expand...

You can say that again. At NAB I spoke with 3 Assimilate reps all bandied about 70k as the full suite price. However, I did get the impression that if I bought the 15k Scratch cine that we could work out a better price for the the rest...maybe it would fall in the 50k range.

From what I saw - scratch is a flat file (xml) architecture. It doesn't use a relational database structure. The demos we saw were bogged down with multiple crashes so it was hard to assess. How stable is it in the real world?
 
i dont know imho the cc tools of scratch arent sooo well, it is a conforming tool.
clipster, baselight are the real guns imho
 
Adil Lahoulou said:
The lustre demo was pretty awesome as well.
Click to expand...

yep.correct.

i see two ways.


1)indystyle: cs4-dpx-combustion
2)money doesnt matter: nle-xml-clipster,baselight,lustre etc etc.


+++the most important is still the colorist.
the best colorist i know uses speedgrade

and i guess bruce allen can do more magic with after effects and a 1000 usd pc than a lot of other guys
 
Apples to Oranges- SCRATCH is considerably more expensive and powerful than AFX. Moreover AFX is primarily a compositor with decent to powerful color correction capabilities, depending on how you use it. SCRATCH is a massively powerful color grading application with direct support for real-time grading directly from R3D files. Not to put too fine point on it but how are a Lamborghini and a Honda different? :)

Noah
 
Noah Kadner said:
Apples to Oranges- SCRATCH is considerably more expensive and powerful than AFX. Moreover AFX is primarily a compositor with decent to powerful color correction capabilities, depending on how you use it. SCRATCH is a massively powerful color grading application with direct support for real-time grading directly from R3D files. Not to put too fine point on it but how are a Lamborghini and a Honda different? :)

Noah
Click to expand...

imho scratch is the honda and clipster the lamborghini.

scratch is not realtime, its rt for half resolution wich is pretty useless in a grading session.

scratch is not designed for CC, its designed for conforming.
cc tools were added later, which are again imho not so strong.

AE is a cool bike.



scratch is as a CC Tool way overprized,
as a datahandler, conforming tool for big posthouses it is a good tool.
 
Cüneyt Kaya said:
scratch is not realtime, its rt for half resolution wich is pretty useless in a grading session.
Click to expand...

Resolution is irrelevant in color grading. Color does not change regardless of resolution. In fact, EFilm - one of the largest DI companies in the world, and one which has done a very large number of "A" titles - has always done color correction using 1K proxies, switching to full resolution for final rendering. It is real time playback that is the relevant factor for accurate, fluid color work. Scratch was the first to allow this from R3d files, and still does it very, very well.

scratch is not designed for CC, its designed for conforming.
cc tools were added later, which are again imho not so strong.
Click to expand...

In your opinion. Not in the opinion of many colorists - myself included - who have done many, many projects with it. The fact that the color tools were added to the base product has nothing to do with how they work. And they work well. The toolset has been constantly upgraded and improved, to the point that I would say the current version (4.x) is to a great extent the equal of a lot of higher priced systems. What is missing, if anything, is convenience items such as easily accessible stills, and multiple grading approaches like Baselight's "film grade" and "video grade." But the lack of these things does not prevent a competent colorist from doing pretty much anything they want to do, and pretty efficiently.

What I don't understand is why you so admire Clipster, which has a considerably weaker color toolset than Scratch, and which was developed as a high end DDR with VTR emulation and some conforming abilities. Products evolve, and as they evolve they take on additional functionality. If that functionality is integrated well, it really doesn't matter whether it was there at the beginning or not.

scratch is as a CC Tool way overprized,
as a datahandler, conforming tool for big posthouses it is a good tool.
Click to expand...

I really don't know what you have against Assimilate, but for what Scratch provides, it is far from overpriced. Its competition - things like Lustre, Baselight, even Speedgrade - are priced similarly or higher. On the conforming end, competitive products such as Smoke - while a great system, with many features that Scratch lacks - are also more expensive and don't provide a full featured color toolset.
 
I wasn't going to respond to this thread, but I just can't resist...

To me the biggest difference is that grading is best done in realtime. There's no comparison. I've graded hours of vfx plates for major motion pictures over the last 15 years using non-realtime software (Shake, Nuke mainly), and done some longform work with After Effects, but it's a real pain.

When working with Scratch (or any other realtime DI system), the biggest advantage is in the workflow itself. It's easy to handle large quantities of data, and the colorist can really see the effects of his/her work immediately, with no rendering required.

As a colorist using Scratch daily and Baselight on a frequent basis, I'd like to expand on and clear up a few points that may have been influenced more by opinion than fact.

Scratch's color tools are, technically, as good as every other DI system out there - they all use the same math for color operations, no magic fairy dust. In Scratch all images are processed internally in floating point precision.

Scratch is a realtime tool - the only restriction on resolution is the ability of one's disk system to handle bitrates. For 4k uncompressed it's 1.3 GB per second. With Redcode it has more to do with processor / debayer speed since the bitrate is maximum 36 MB per second with current versions.

I don't understand the statement Cuneyt made about 1/2 debayer being useless for DI. I've worked on a number of high and low profile Red projects since day one of the camera, and have yet so see:

1) A Red project finished for major distribution in 4k

2) A Red project finished entirely in a 4k production chain

3) A colorist in the greater LA area working from R3D files at full debayer in realtime. There could certainly be some happening as I don't know everyone here, but the excrutiatingly rare 4k finishes I've seen were accomplished after the R3D files have been transcoded to DPX.

Personally, I find the difference in grading between 1/2 debayer and full debayer rather trivial, except on underexposed shots, where a full debayer and subsequent .5 scaling can reduce the granularity of the noise, making seem like there's less of it.

In the end preference ususally comes down to experience - people who've taken the time to become intimately familiar with a particular system will prefer it, duh. But that doesn't mean other systems are better or worse.

Clipster, currently the only tool that can debayer Redcode at full in realtime, is a fantastic peice of hardware, but it's primary function is not as a dedicated grading tool, and its toolset is a bit more limited. For playing back streams of 4k like a deck it's second-to-none.

cheers,

JT
 
Never worked with scratch but: What about AE ability to quickly adjust and animate masks and keys for colour correction or simple sky replacement. Using the different blending modes. Sharpening and adding noise. Retouching. All the things that are normal in digital still photography. Is it possible to do such things in scratch?
Isn't AE still the cheapest all in one tool?
 
Kim Frank said:
Never worked with scratch but: What about AE ability to quickly adjust and animate masks and keys for colour correction or simple sky replacement. Using the different blending modes. Sharpening and adding noise. Retouching. All the things that are normal in digital still photography. Is it possible to do such things in scratch?
Isn't AE still the cheapest all in one tool?
Click to expand...

Masks and blending modes, yes. Much faster than AE or any compositing program. The masks can be tracked, too (try that without hacks in AE) as well as have user controlled variable softness. Sharpening and adding noise are available through plug ins. Retouching - well, that depends on what you mean. There is a rather rudimentary paint tool included in the basic toolset, but if you're expecting a real compositing program, Scratch isn't it. You can, of course, export shots that require special treatment to other programs (AE would be one of those), replacing them in the Construct is quick and easy.

One can call AE an "all in one tool," but I've never seen it that way. It's a compositing and motion graphics program. It has a timeline, but that was included as part of the design to allow for keyframing of motion graphics based on simple real time parameters. It has no facilities for real time playback of anything directly from disk, and was never designed as a color correction program - the color tools are there to allow for layer manipulation and matching during compositing. It has no facilities for 3D LUT's (although it does have some nicely done color management). Bottom line: just because people are using it for something it wasn't designed for doesn't make it appropriate for that use, particularly when compared to programs that were. Comparing After Effects to Scratch is comparing apples and chickens. The only thing they really have in common is that they're both software products.
 
Hi all

Reading this forum very often, i couldn't resit to jump in.

One good alternative to all these system for working on RED is the Nucoda Film Master.
if any of you is interested, check the web site.

http://digitalvision.se/products/film_master.htm

or else, you can see us at the Red Education Event in Los Angeles for the next couple of days.

http://digitalvision.se/news/REDucationLA.htm

BTW, i have to say that i am employed by Digital Vision.
I am Product Manager for this Product.

cheers
 
M Most said:
Resolution is irrelevant in color grading. Color does not change regardless of resolution. In fact, EFilm - one of the largest DI companies in the world, and one which has done a very large number of "A" titles - has always done color correction using 1K proxies, switching to full resolution for final rendering. It is real time playback that is the relevant factor for accurate, fluid color work. Scratch was the first to allow this from R3d files, and still does it very, very well.



In your opinion. Not in the opinion of many colorists - myself included - who have done many, many projects with it. The fact that the color tools were added to the base product has nothing to do with how they work. And they work well. The toolset has been constantly upgraded and improved, to the point that I would say the current version (4.x) is to a great extent the equal of a lot of higher priced systems. What is missing, if anything, is convenience items such as easily accessible stills, and multiple grading approaches like Baselight's "film grade" and "video grade." But the lack of these things does not prevent a competent colorist from doing pretty much anything they want to do, and pretty efficiently.

What I don't understand is why you so admire Clipster, which has a considerably weaker color toolset than Scratch, and which was developed as a high end DDR with VTR emulation and some conforming abilities. Products evolve, and as they evolve they take on additional functionality. If that functionality is integrated well, it really doesn't matter whether it was there at the beginning or not.



I really don't know what you have against Assimilate, but for what Scratch provides, it is far from overpriced. Its competition - things like Lustre, Baselight, even Speedgrade - are priced similarly or higher. On the conforming end, competitive products such as Smoke - while a great system, with many features that Scratch lacks - are also more expensive and don't provide a full featured color toolset.
Click to expand...

its just my opinion,
but i would like to see the real picture i am grading, sharpness and noise including and doesnt want to switch to fulldebyer everytime to check things.

i dont have nothing against assimilate, why should i?

people just should know about it pros....here are a lot of guys promoting it as the holy grail regarding red and they should also know about the cons...


and like i said, the most important thing on a cc session is the colorist.
if he likes scratch, well than, he should use it.


i dont like how scratch handles skintones...i am not the only one who thinks like this.


assimilate did get sued, before a reduser puts these times 50 k usd in scratch, he also should know the status on this, and what this can mean for his investment in the worst case...(i wish assimilate all the best)

--------

At the end, people can buy whatever they want, its not my money.

but for a lot of guys to make a roi on 50 k is a tough task,
i think its just fair to let people know all the aspects of a product.
 
Man I just read the brief. It doesn't look good. Granted the brief was authored by Autodesk but still this could put Assimilate in a tailspin and land Scratch in legal purgatory. It makes sense that Red developed RedCineX in house.
 
The legal fees will kill them alone. How many seats has Assimilate sold, worldwide? 200 maybe? What is that 10 to 20 million in revenue. Autodesk will eat them for lunch, they won't be able to finance litigation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top