Scratch Vs. Crimson

[d.andalman]

which tool do you finish on for what types of budgets??

Crimson for 189 dollars total (www.crimsonworkflow.com) - get all the power of RedCine or RedLine when color-correcting your finished feature in 4K, but also conforms your "neg" (source files in the case of RED) and even onlines your timeline. Total cost to conform and cc a feature in 4K 189 dollars plus labor (say 12min of pic a day for two wks is 2,000 for low budget colorist). Notice for all of you film producers - just cut out the line item for neg cutter.

Or Scratch at 375 an hr in the suite - total cost to cc a feature in 4K approximate 45,000. (also covering 12min of pic a day).

Scratch offers powerful power window tools that crimson doesn't. Crimson giving you basically what film has always dealt with until the new millennium (equivalent of RGB lights).

If I'm working with anything less than 2mil I'm using crimson and it's a no-brainer. I might take select scenes, only problematic ones, into scratch, but I'm keeping that line down - way down. Have film-out to look forward to after all.... obviously there are a lot of ins and out in here, but that's what I'm looking forward to hearing about....

For those who haven't heard of Crimson, check it out....just came out - very powerful application... online your 4K footage, color correct and conform your "neg" or in the case of RED the source files.

http://www.crimsonworkflow.com/videos/CrimsonDemo-H.264.mov




Looking forward to your thoughts,
D.Andalman
Producer & Director
TAKOMA PARK (35mm, premiering at the 08 Tribeca Film Festival)
THE BRAGGART(35mm, Austin, Nantucket, Cinequest, Atlanta, etc. etc.)

[Gunleik Groven]

You could also do one-light in RedCine and export 10-bit dpx's and CC in color.

Done a lot here in Norway... (Not the RedCine step, but the Color finishing)

[I Bloom]

I don't think Crimson is competition for Scratch, that is an extremely ill informed notion.

The purpose of Crimson is to find R3Ds, facilitate setting color parameters, translate sequences, and batch process footage.

Scratch is a fully featured finishing app and it's always the first word out of my mouth when people ask me how to finish Redcode. Regardless of the fact that I wrote an app to do workflow, in situations where a Scratch session is unobtainable.

If you try finishing a feature to film with Crimson and Redcine, you are in for a long haul, not so with Scratch. I'd love to sell you a copy of my stuff but that is straight honesty.

IBloom

[Lucas Wilson]

I've talked to Ian about this and several other people.

I don't think of it (and ASSIMILATE doesn't think of it) as SCRATCH vs. CRIMSON. They are complementary tools.

Lucas
------
ASSIMILATE, inc.
LA, CA, USA

[Seth Larney]

What Ian and Luki said..

Also, your argument about the math involved doesn't seem to make sense.

At $45,000 for $375/hr, you are talking about 120hours.

You are saying that a cheap colorist would cost $2000 for the same amount of work. That would make that colorist $16.67/hr.

So, the argument that you seem to be putting forward is "Would you rather pay somebody $16.67/hr to color your film, or pay a professional $375/hr to do it with advanced and efficient tools"

I would cringe at the thought of a junior colorist who only charges $16.67/hr coloring my $2mil budget feature. But that may just be me.

Also, as Ian mentioned, Scratch is an advanced finishing suite. It does much, much, MUCH more than Crimson (Although Crimson ROCKS !! Don't take me the wrong way !), which can easily equate into many man-hours LESS time in the suite when all is said and done, which would make those figures even less balanced.

Crimson really is awesome, and for many who absolutely cannot afford a Scratch suite to finish on, then it is an extremely valuable tool. Ian has really excelled here and I think there us a HUGE market for it. But I would say that as soon as your budget permits the use of a professional and powerful solution such as Scratch, well, this is when you will start to see the return make sense.

When all is said and done, they are not the same tool.

Just my 0.2c.
S.

[Seth Larney]

I just wanted to add as well, there are many things you have not factored into your figures.. a color calibrated viewing environment for example (which would come with that $375/hr Scratch price) etc..

Just food for thought..

Cheers,
S

[d.andalman]

This is what the numbers are based on...

Covering 12min of picture a day of a feature length film that is 120minutes. 10 days of work.

Scratch edit suite runs 375 an hr. with 12 hr days for two weeks = 45,000. This is now 1/20th of your ENTIRE budget of a 2mil feature. (covering one minute of picture, roughly, per hour - obviously this can varry with cuts per minute, how much difficult matching needs to be done, power windows, key framing the power windows, etc. etc..)

At 200 a day, a low budget colorist works on your home system, or you do it yourself, using Crimson. Of course you do not have the same tools available, BUT - you have the equivalent of RGB lights, which were good enough for THE GODFATHER, TAXI DRIVER, HAROLD AND MAUDE, etc. etc.


AND - you are still just working on your video master here... can always shoot an IN/IP - for the 43,000 you saved on Crimson this is not a bad option ... Will still save major. Especially at FotoKem where even before the first answer print you are looking at stips of film shot under different light setting on a light table (as opposed to printing the entire silent answer print).

Also, keep in mind that the major question I posed was "which tool was right for which budget??"

If 2 mil is not your breaking point to go with Crimson then what is?? Certainly with a 200,000 dollar budget you are not going to spend 1/4th of your budget on conforming and color correct when you can do it basically for free. At a certain level you are also banking on a distributor to pick up finishing funds - so you are not going to budget for SCRATCH but you will certainly make sure you do a conform and color-correct with CRIMSON.

This is the type of discussion I hope to open up...

(And of course there is the issue with calibrated moniter etc, but actually every batch of film has minor differences, so nothing is perfect.)

And yes - I have know great colorists to work for as little as 200 a day. Seatle or Boston are totally different markets than Ny and LA, Although Boston of late has blown totally out of control (new tax incentives).

Great to hear some discussion going,
D.Andalman
Producer & Director
TAKOMA PARK (35mm, premiering at the 08 Tribeca Film Festival)
THE BRAGGART(35mm, Austin, Nantucket, Cinequest, Atlanta, etc. etc.)

[I Bloom]

I just want to reiterate. Crimson is not a conform tool, even though we used that double entendre on our mock Soviet poster, saying you can conform with Crimson is like saying "Cocoa puffs are part of this complete breakfast". Breakfast sold separately.

Now FCP + Crimson + REDline + AfterEffects. NOW you are hitting all the food groups.

IBloom

[d.andalman]

yes - that goes without say in a forum like this.

But thank you for reiterating just in case (and for using such great humor!)

D. Andalman

[James T Mather]

Just watched the crimson demo - great stuff ibloom - PLEAAAASE release this for windows. baaawl.

[Seth Larney]

Hey d.andalman,

I hear what you are saying.

I have finished dozens of projects without high end software or equipment with stellar results. I guess my point (with I stated above) is that once you reach a point where you can 'afford' a system like Scratch, then you are reaching a budget anyway where it may very well make sense to do so.

I guess it would depend on a few factors .. how cheaply you can get the Scratch suite, How much you trust your $200/day colorist, whether you can live with an uncalibrated space, how much you value your or your post supervisors/producers/etc time, how many resources you have to put into testing and research, etc, etc, etc. These are all compromises which depending just HOW 'indie' the budget is, all need to be weighed in.

Everybody wants the cheapest route to the best product possible. My company's mantra over the years has been to be able to provide the highest possible results with the cheapest workflows, we have put alot of research and development into this approach and have been very successful at doing so, so I know exactly where you are coming from. It just so happens that we (my company) are entering into an era, where for many of our projects, that workflow is now moving towards Scratch.

Edit: Oh.. and did I forget to say, Crimson does rock, thanks Ian ! Now about that Avid support ;)

Cheers,
S.

[Mark L. Pederson]

Or Scratch at 375 an hr in the suite - total cost to cc a feature in 4K approximate 45,000. (also covering 12min of pic a day).

Anybody out there paying $45,000 to grade an independent feature film needs call Offhollywood yesterday!!

For the record, the average low budget indie feature grades for 6 days total at Offhollywood. Grading with Scratch, on the Tangent control surface, can be extremely fast.

[Seth Larney]

Anybody out there paying $45,000 to grade an independent feature film needs call Offhollywood yesterday!!

For the record, the average low budget indie feature grades for 6 days total at Offhollywood. Grading with Scratch, on the Tangent control surface, can be extremely fast.

This is pretty much my point.

Btw .. if you happen to be in Australia, call Chaotic Pictures instead ;)

Love your work Mark.
S.

[Mark L. Pederson]

This is pretty much my point.

Btw .. if you happen to be in Australia, call Chaotic Pictures instead ;)

Love your work Mark.
S.

Thanks Seth -

but you know - there is NO WAY you can come close to the quality and firepower and tools of Scratch with something like Crimson/Redcine. You REALLY can't logically even say "Scratch vs. Crimson".

I was Ian's leading "cheerleader" from day one of his coding a workflow "for the little guy" - and in ALL of our conversations - we talked about how CRIMSON could allow folks a way to get to a PRIMARY graded output from their XML (and eventually EDL) - to further grade in another application - FCP/AE/Colorista - OR use it to render out Redlog DPX files for another system like Clipster, etc. - VERY few folks have an interest in rendering a "flash-to-flash pull list" - and for the record, from DAY 1 - you could export a BATCH LIST from FCP for a pull list. That has ALWAYS been in FCP & CINEMA TOOLS.

What Ian has done with Crimson has allowed many "Scratch-less" folks a real RED workflow RIGHT NOW.

Ian knows, like I know, some VERY COOL solutions are coming - but foks are screaming for tools right now - and for the record, Ian now has DIRECT SUPPORT from APPLE and AVID.

And while I will be the first one to tell you that you can do great work with cheap tools - (we sent features to Sundance, Cannes and to distribution back in our painful Final Touch Days) - you can't really compare an application NOT MEANT to be a grading tool - with no monitor support - no control surface support - to Scratch.

We are also using Crimson for other tasks - almost daily now.

[Lucas Wilson]

At 200 a day, a low budget colorist works on your home system, or you do it yourself, using Crimson. Of course you do not have the same tools available, BUT - you have the equivalent of RGB lights, which were good enough for THE GODFATHER, TAXI DRIVER, HAROLD AND MAUDE, etc. etc.

Everybody has said this a few times, and I agree. Ian has done great work, and Crimson provides a great choice for a lot of people. That said...

$200/day for a colorist? In LA? Even when I interned, I worked for more than $10/hr. I get cutting costs and "making it work," but $200/day? Damn.

I get what you're saying with your analogy to The Godfather, etc. But I don't think it's very valid. In traditional film finishing, there is choice of neg stock, lab processing options, and yes, printer points. But an awful lot of work is done in DI to mimic lab options. There is much more control and creativity over an image in a film chain than just RGB lights. And though Ashby died too long ago to take advantage of DI, Scorsese certainly does a full DI for his movies. New tools, new rules.


AND - you are still just working on your video master here... can always shoot an IN/IP - for the 43,000 you saved on Crimson this is not a bad option ... Will still save major. Especially at FotoKem where even before the first answer print you are looking at stips of film shot under different light setting on a light table (as opposed to printing the entire silent answer print).

At Fotokem... right before they take it into either their DS Nitris, SCRATCH, or Pablo rooms? ;) To be fair, Fotokem is one of the few shops that still employs traditional film timers. And their eyes are astonishing.

Interesting story... a few years ago, I got together with the VP of Engineering at Fotokem on the film side. I showed him how the printer light interface worked in SCRATCH, and he said he had an idea. The guy is a born tinkerer, so I was curious to see what he would do. I came back in a couple of days, and he had wired a Hazeltine interface to a JL Cooper controller tied to the SCRATCH printer light controls. We adjusted the print light controls in SCRATCH so they matched Fotokem's points.

We set it up in a theatre and hid the JL Cooper and the SCRATCH machine and invited the film timers over to try it out. They came over, played with the Hazeltine, and said, "yeah, it's a Hazel. What's the big deal?"

Then we showed them how we had tied it to a DI system and how they could use the Hazel interface... and much much more. They went ape. We spent the next 3 hours or so just letting all of them have a play and figuring stuff out.

It was an incredible day - and such a cool way to bring the knowledge and skill of the film timers into the world of DI. I believe we created the world's only 2K Hazeltine. :)

Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

[Gunleik Groven]

Untill FCS or at least Color supports RedRAW, Scratch is the de-facto app all others will have to be measured by when it comes to convenient RED workflow.

But there's a funny thing happening here in Norway. Both the major TV-channels and the film-industry is ditching Pablos/Nitris for Color/FCS @ a high rate, finishing from 10 bit dpx.

From what I see on this and other boards, this sounds very improbable, but it is never the less happening.

Norwegian filmprints are done using cinevator (http://www.cinevation.net/cinevation.net/index.jsp;jsessionid=0334ADBA9D4D6BD8905E428F30D21 E81?company=cinevation.net&page=p_product.jsp&cat=Cinevator&id=8) for realtime filmprints from the graded DPX's, and somehow Color seems to fit well in that foodchain.

This is not to say that Crimson/RedCine replaces SCRATCH, rather the oposite... More like: Yes you are sorta right in your reasoning, given that you use RedCine for OneLight and CC in some other solution.

BUT when you put up your calculus, you need to add sufficiant RAID/Playback/Hardware/Knowledge to that infrastructure, and I am contemplating Scratch because of that exact equation...

As Laguun has stated numerous times: Disks/RAIDS and high throughput infrastructures are comparatively cheap these days, but compared to working directly with the RAW files in SCRATCH, you'll need a huge infrastructure to handle the DPX workflow.

If you look at the specs, it looks like you could replace the DVS backend with a SCRATCH station in the Cinevate workflow, and you woould sit with an (at the moment) unbeatable tool for film finishing (when you start with RED source).

It is at the moment like this: You'll have to swallow one bullet or another to get the most out of your RED files. This will unevitably change, though. Cineform will show RAW 4k workflow (not from RED, but from DALSA) in FCP @ NAB. Others will follow. Maybe it's time to keep your breath, shoot that film, do them cuts and see what your options are in half a year.

And this also depends a bit on where you're coming from.
2 years ago, some people were still happy with the offerings of the DVX100 + a 35mm adapter and the film guys wouldn't even touch the idea. RED has become a melting ground for these two cultures, for better or worse. But maybe (if you're in the step up league) it could be an idea to see what you can do with the tools at hand. For supercheap and then some the ProRes workflow is here as it is. It just isn't what Scratch/High-end offers. But it's still pretty darned amazingly cool compared to anything before september 2007...

Gunleik

[Jason Diamond]

Yes i agree, We here at MBS are hard at work supporting ian behind the scenes and integrating with AVID to help ian make crimson as fully featured as possible. just wait cause really good things are coming from all ends...
Crimson
AVID
Apple

its only gonna get better.

[Seth Larney]

Thanks Seth -

but you know - there is NO WAY you can come close to the quality and firepower and tools of Scratch with something like Crimson/Redcine. You REALLY can't logically even say "Scratch vs. Crimson".



That was the other half of my point ;)



I was Ian's leading "cheerleader" from day one of his coding a workflow "for the little guy" - and in ALL of our conversations - we talked about how CRIMSON could allow folks a way to get to a PRIMARY graded output from their XML (and eventually EDL) - to further grade in another application - FCP/AE/Colorista - OR use it to render out Redlog DPX files for another system like Clipster, etc. - VERY few folks have an interest in rendering a "flash-to-flash pull list" - and for the record, from DAY 1 - you could export a BATCH LIST from FCP for a pull list. That has ALWAYS been in FCP & CINEMA TOOLS.


What Mark said..



What Ian has done with Crimson has allowed many "Scratch-less" folks a real RED workflow RIGHT NOW.


What Mark said..



And while I will be the first one to tell you that you can do great work with cheap tools - (we sent features to Sundance, Cannes and to distribution back in our painful Final Touch Days) - you can't really compare an application NOT MEANT to be a grading tool - with no monitor support - no control surface support - to Scratch.

We are also using Crimson for other tasks - almost daily now.

What Mark said ..

;)

[I Bloom]

Just watched the crimson demo - great stuff ibloom - PLEAAAASE release this for windows. baaawl.

James, when you put it that way.... I did watch all the lighting demos on your site, so maybe we're kind of even.

By The Way.... windows users do you recognize this man?

http://www.ianbloom.com/BillGates.jpg

[Greg Ephraim]

HAHA!! that's golden man!

[Sanjin Jukic]

.

By The Way.... windows users do you recognize this man?

http://www.ianbloom.com/BillGates.jpg

Ibloom,


:) The best EVER joke on the forum. :)

[d.andalman]

Ian, Lucas, Seth, Mark, others,


As everyone in the biz knows, a big idea, and perhaps controversial title will put people in the seats...and once you have them there story and character need to take over. That's why I couldn't resist posting this thread under "Scratch vs. Crimson," and then letting you all do the talking...


We all know Crimson and Scratch are complimentary products. But hopefully, together, we have spread the word....


Ian is actually a long time friend and I just want to officially congradulate him on CRIMSON!!


For all of you who are in New York, I encourage you to come out and see my new film.... premiering in the East Village (3rd Ave and 11st theater), on April 25...entitled TAKOMA PARK

http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/filmguide/16735876.html




If the Red had been out last july when we shot, we mighty have shot on it - but with a budget like ours the choice between Scratch and Crimson would have been very difficult, which is why this thread still gets at a serious subject.

One scene was in a huge gym with tons of extras, in which our lighting package wasn't big enough to light from scratch, so we had to mix color temps - the windows and our own HMI package mixed with the built in high power lights the gym already had. In this case perhaps we would have done most work in Crimson, then in Scratch focus on this one scene, do some quick touch ups and still be out of the suite in 2hrs or less...


D.Andalman

[Steven Caesare]

Yeah.. Apple makes some great (if expenisive) hardware capable of running Windows!



James, when you put it that way.... I did watch all the lighting demos on your site, so maybe we're kind of even.

By The Way.... windows users do you recognize this man?

http://www.ianbloom.com/BillGates.jpg