What are you using to color grade your R3D Raw files?

[Joe Taylor]

Have just moved up to a new Mac Pro tower and re-thinking my entire R3D workflow. I have since gotten totally spoiled by the simplicity and power of LightRoom 4 and hope to find a color grading solution that comes as close. What are you using to color grade your R3D files?

 

[Neil W. Smith]

Have just moved up to a new Mac Pro tower and re-thinking my entire R3D workflow. I have since gotten totally spoiled by the simplicity and power of LightRoom 4 and hope to find a color grading solution that comes as close. What are you using to color grade your R3D files?

FCP X ... ducks quickly and runs for cover followed by shower of bricks and hurl of insults - see other calm and friendly Apple workflow thread on the go at the moment ;-)

But seriously, if you haven't tried DaVinci Resolve you should at least download the free Lite version and give it a whirl .... remarkable functionality for the price point and handles native .r3d RAW files with ease .... version 9 works very well as is and version 10 looks very promising ... key to success with Resolve is to have at least two GPUs, first one for the monitor and GUI and the second one with as many CUDA cores as you can afford ... GTX 680 or GTX 690 are good choices with current Mac Pro hardware.

If you can afford it, buy a PCIe expansion box and stick a couple more GPUs in there and you can grade anything at real time.

And PS ... FCP X does actually do a nice job with .r3d RAW files in the timeline if you want a quick fix for dailies or editorial purposes.

Neil

 

[Enrique Blein]

I use RedCine-X and Premiere Pro for basic CC

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

Redcine X Pro for initial Redlogfilm white balance RDM, then Resolve LT for graded 1Lite.

 

[Joe Taylor]

DaVinci Resolve is a little pricey for me at the moment-- been spending so much on everything else. Are there any other color grading systems out there that compare to Resolve minus the steep price tag? Resolve Light LT is not an option since it outputs only to 1080P.

 

[Chris McKechnie]

You can give speedgrade a whirl if you're using Adobe.

 

[Marc Wielage]

DaVinci Resolve is a little pricey for me at the moment-- been spending so much on everything else. Are there any other color grading systems out there that compare to Resolve minus the steep price tag? Resolve Light LT is not an option since it outputs only to 1080P.

Are you actually delivering 4K? How do you watch it?

There's nothing that says you can't do an initial grade in HD, then apply the same corrections to the original 4K clips later on at the very end, assuming you are delivering 4K files. Many (if not most) movies in the world do this now, just because the process is so much faster, since 1080 is a very light load for the processor. Full DaVinci Resolve is only $995; it's the monitoring and pipeline that cost most of the money. The $995 software is just a drop in the bucket.

 

[nigelsmith]

key to success with Resolve is to have at least two GPUs, first one for the monitor and GUI and the second one with as many CUDA cores as you can afford ... GTX 680 or GTX 690 are good choices with current Mac Pro hardware.

If you can afford it, buy a PCIe expansion box and stick a couple more GPUs in there and you can grade anything at real time.

Neil

Neil, excuse my uninformed question, but how does using a card like the GTX690 compare to using a BMD card like a Decklink, if all you want is HDMI out to a client monitor?
I would be using Resolve with 1080P material, and potentially looking to relink to R3Ds.
Thanks for any info.
Nigel

 

[Peter Proniewicz-Brooks]

DaVinci Resolve is a little pricey for me at the moment-- been spending so much on everything else. Are there any other color grading systems out there that compare to Resolve minus the steep price tag? Resolve Light LT is not an option since it outputs only to 1080P.

Price wise apart from speedgrade you're going to struggle if resolve is seen as pricey. Most competitors cost as much or more and you have to pay for upgrades, Resolve it's buy once and as long as you don't lose the dongle upgrades are free.

If you aren't delivering at anything other that 1080p or smaller Resolve Lite is great. Remember the 1080p restriction refers to timeline size and output, Resolve will always use the FULL file (debayer settings will effect this but aren't restricted) keeping the picture as good as it gets.

 

[John Tissavary]

Uh... Resolve Lite is free, and does everything the full version does up to 1920x1080, limited to a single GPU (still very fast if you have the right one).

The few things Lite does NOT do: realtime noise reduction, remote grading, remote database, and stereo. If you don't need those things then Resolve is 100% free with no limitations except as noted.

I recommend a single GTX 680 for the GPU. If you have a Mac, there's a Mac EFI version of the 680 out now so you can have a proper boot screen. On PC the possibilites are pretty much unlimited re. Nvidia hardware.

best,

JT

 

[jake blackstone]

With proliferation of BM cameras, that includes a free Resolve, huge number of Resolve licenses becoming available for much less, than official $995 price. Already you can find one for around $500. I feel, that very soon, price will plummet even lower, dare I say much lower.

 

[Joe Taylor]

I hope you're right Jake. $500 for Resolve sounds reasonable and I would gladly pay that. It's a powerful system but $995 is a bit much for some of us.

 

[Marc Wielage]

With proliferation of BM cameras, that includes a free Resolve, huge number of Resolve licenses becoming available for much less, than official $995 price. Already you can find one for around $500. I feel, that very soon, price will plummet even lower, dare I say much lower.

Doh. I was a lot happier when it was $700,000...

I hope you're right Jake. $500 for Resolve sounds reasonable and I would gladly pay that. It's a powerful system but $995 is a bit much for some of us.

You've got to be kidding! The storage and the monitoring are many times this price -- those are the real expenses with color-correction these days, beyond just the processor and basic hardware. I know of Resolves hooked up to million-dollar servers at several different places in LA. And I've seen (relatively) modest systems that cost maybe $10K for the whole Resolve, but then $250K for the storage! And don't forget you still need a control surface of some kind to do it right.

 

[Joe Taylor]

Right out of the box and onto a iMac Resolve works fine for small independents like me and many others. A fresh install on an iMac is how I was turned onto Resolve and I wanted to kick myself for what I had been missing. Sure, Resolve is certainly geared for much more expensive systems with all the hardware you mentioned but a guy like me will do fine with much less.

Why would I need a quarter of a million dollars for storage? Is Black Magic assuming that everybody who buys one of their cameras has a $10,000 system with $250,000 worth of storage and that's why Resolve comes with their 2.8K camera?

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

1. RedCine X
2. DaVince Resolve 9 Lite

Voilá!

 

[Neil W. Smith]

DaVinci Resolve and multiple GPUs

DaVinci Resolve and multiple GPUs

Neil, excuse my uninformed question, but how does using a card like the GTX690 compare to using a BMD card like a Decklink, if all you want is HDMI out to a client monitor?
I would be using Resolve with 1080P material, and potentially looking to relink to R3Ds.
Thanks for any info.
Nigel

Actually a great question, Nigel .... the answer is a little convoluted I'm afraid, so bear with me for a bit:

1) the DeckLink card allows you to monitor your graded image on a decent monitor that you can calibrate to an accurate color space ,eg, Rec. 709 for most people who work with digital footage bound for TV or the web or independent distribution... or P3 for those high-end projects typically going to be filmed out or turned into DCPs (though you can achieve very accurate film-outs and DCPs even with grading in Rec. 709) ... the point being, you don't use a PC monitor connected directly to your GUI card to do accurate color correction ... so when you say client monitor, what kind of monitor did you have in mind?

2) assuming you have an accurately calibrated color monitor (ideally with HD SDI inputs though HDMI or Display Port will also do) you use the DeckLink card to output the graded image from Resolve to that reference monitor.

3) you also need a normal PC or Mac monitor to display the User Interface of Resolve ... ie, a screen where you see the wheels and timeline, etc ... this GUI is driven by the main GPU of your Mac or PC and not the DeckLink card.

4) with only one GPU installed in your system you might achieve some level of real-time playback at 24 fps on your footage ... however, if want to apply many nodes to your grading and use effects like blurs and tracking you need to harness the power of another Graphics card that has plenty of CUDA cores ... e.g., the GTX 600 series cards from NVIDIA or EVGA or PNY ... this color processing card is typically not attached to any monitor .... in fact, you will get a warning from Resolve if you only have one GPU installed or if you have monitors attached to both GPUs.

So the point of having two graphic cards plus a DeckLink is that one of the GPUs drives the GUI monitor, the DeckLink card provides accurate HD SDI or HDMI monitoring and the other GPU (typically the most powerful and expensive card you can buy) gives you the horsepower to grade with many nodes in real-time .... realtime playback (ie, 24 fps) is usually required for discerning clients, though in fact you can successfully grade a whole feature at any frames per second if the client is OK with that.

The thing about the GTX 690 is that it is actually two 680s on one PCB, so Resolve "thinks" that it has two GPUs installed whereas there is in fact only one physical card ... however, the issue with a 690 in a Mac is the power requirements ... not an issue with high-end PCs.

Resolve will utilize up to three GPUs (plus the GUI card) in a Mac configuration and up to four GPUs (plus GUI card) in a PC configuration (and up to eight under Linux) ... of course you can't stick four GPUs inside a Mac or even most PCs ... so we sell systems with a PCIe expansion box attached which provides both the space and the power to run multiple GPUs outside the the main system box ... the more CUDA cores you can throw at Resolve the more responsive and faster it will run and the happier your clients will be.

When it comes to re-linking to .r3d files and playing them back in real-time you might also need to install a RedRocket card to speed up the de-bayering and un-encrypting of each single frame of RED RAW footage ... if you have a really fast dual CPU system you might get away with not having a RedRocket but we typically also stick a RedRocket inside the PCIe expansion box next to the CUDA GPUs .... GPUs btw require x 16 lane slots and a RR needs a x 8 slot ... de-bayering .r3d files is a CPU function not a GPU function so CUDA core won't help you there.

Hope that makes sense ... let me know if you need any points clarified.

Cheers,
Neil