Will it be possible to send a Color session to Compressor?

[Gunleik Groven]

With all the rendering +8 bit bugs in FCP still standing, would it be possible to send a graded Color project directly to compressor for rendering to say web/dcp/whatever?

Would be nice...

 

[Charles Angus]

Compressor has the same problems. It's a Quicktime issue, not a Final Cut issue.

That's my understanding...

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Not this particular one...

 

[James Press]

FWIW I posted a similar question (on another site) re whether you could use Qmaster to help speed up rendering in Color, and got these replies:

"Color does not work with QMaster the way that compressor does."

and

"Color renders almost everything (if not everything) via the GPU, not the CPU. If you use a menubar applet like MenuMeters or iStatMenus, you'll clearly see that even if you're rendering 1080p uncompressed 10-bit sequences out of Color, almost none of the CPU cores will show any usage during rendering.

Apple specifically warns that you will get different rendering results if you re-render your Color project on a system that has a different graphics card than the one you originally rendered it on. So I doubt that Qmaster support would be very useful (or even possible), given this limitation."

 

[Matthew Rogers]

Apple specifically warns that you will get different rendering results if you re-render your Color project on a system that has a different graphics card than the one you originally rendered it on. So I doubt that Qmaster support would be very useful (or even possible), given this limitation."

Where did you read that? That makes absolutely no sense. The only difference different cards should produce render speed. Look at it this way. A computer doing calculations and a human doing them should produce the same results in the end (if the human calculates it correctly!). The only difference would be the speed in which the calculations are done.

Matthew

 

[Mel Matsuoka]

Where did you read that? That makes absolutely no sense. The only difference different cards should produce render speed. Look at it this way. A computer doing calculations and a human doing them should produce the same results in the end (if the human calculates it correctly!). The only difference would be the speed in which the calculations are done.

Matthew

I was the person that James quoted (from that "other site") regarding Color.

As I mentioned, Apple specifically warns about this in the tech documentation for Color. The GPU doesn't just accelerate rendering of raw pixels, it also affects how certain filters are displayed and rendered. As any gamer knows, the visual quality of a videogame is directly affected by the type of GPU you're running. Some vendors use different blurring algorithms than others, for example.

If you're still not convinced, I direct you to page 322 of the Color User Manual:

The Graphics Card You’re Using Affects the Rendered Output

Color uses the GPU of the graphics card that’s installed in your computer to render
the color correction and geometry adjustments that you’ve applied to the shots in
your program. Different video cards have GPU processors with differing capabilities,
so it’s entirely possible for the same Color project to look slightly different when
rendered on computers with different graphics cards. To ensure color accuracy, it’s
best to render your project on a computer using the same graphics card that was
used when color correcting that program.

 

[Brian Langeman]

It does make perfect sense that different graphics cards will give you different renders. They have different features, different effects they can do, and different ways of doing them as the poster above said.

The explanation of a computer giving out the same result every time for calculations would be true if Color used the CPU only to render the images. But different cards will give you different results.

 

[Nook Kim]

So my big question would be.. which card will yield the best results for Color without affecting other programs' (FCP, Motion, AE, etc.) performance?

 

[Charles Angus]

Not this particular one...

Do you mean compressor can do 10 bit rgb properly??

 

[Gunleik Groven]

The 10-bit RGB thing seems to be more of a fcp issue than an apple/quicktime issue.

Try taking a 10 bit aja image with tons of smooth gradients, and render (with an overlay of sorts) in FCP: It breaks

Send the same image (from FCP) to compressor: It holds up.

My suggestion would be paricularily helpfull for DCP masters, as one could master from the full 12 bits.

Of course I see some other issues, if thisone was worked out (can anyone say "audio"), but still... One piece at the time...

 

[James Press]

Thanks for chiming in Mel. Informative thread.

 

[Mel Matsuoka]

So my big question would be.. which card will yield the best results for Color without affecting other programs' (FCP, Motion, AE, etc.) performance?

The ATI Radeon x1900 is pretty much the best card you can get for working with Color. It's not the best GPU on the market by a long shot, but if you're gonna be doing real, serious, professional work with Color, it's your only real choice.

NVIDIA cards have better overall performance, but they are definitely not ideal for Color, since you can't do Floating Point processing on them.

 

[Nook Kim]

I currently have a 8800 GT, and I am planning on upgrading to 3870 after my research. There has been another thread (and many more) talking about graphics card: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=20091&highlight=graphics+card

I'd like to see if anyone out there has tried this dual 3870 set-up.

Anyway, what do you all think?

 

[Uli Plank]

No dual set-up works with Color.