Color grading software with secondary tools as good as Apple Color

[Kaku Ito]

I've tested the Color Finesse, own Magic Bullet/Look, but is there any application or plug-in that offers as much secondary control as Apple Color?
Apple Color is fine but currently does not work with Cineform or other variety of QuickTime codecs (only works with uncompressed and prores).

Cineform looks very good, so I'm about to commit myself to work all of my projects to Cineform, but limited to color grading is only the draw back at this point.

[M Most]

I've tested the Color Finesse, own Magic Bullet/Look, but is there any application or plug-in that offers as much secondary control as Apple Color?
Apple Color is fine but currently does not work with Cineform or other variety of QuickTime codecs (only works with uncompressed and prores).


Sure, there are lots of them. But none of them are free, and very few work on a Macintosh. In the desktop world, you have Iridas Speedgrade (cross platform), and Assimilate Scratch (PC only). You can concievably color correct using just about any compositing software (i.e., After Effects, Shake, Combustion, Digital Fusion, Nuke, etc.), but it's not particularly efficient or friendly. However, secondary color correction is nothing more than area and color isolations for specific corrections, so using a combination of keys and masks in a compositing program and using those to qualify the area of the color change, you accomplish the same thing. You don't do it particularly quickly, though.

[Noah Kadner]

Color is second to none- [qualify] in the Mac, affordable world. One other option is to do Color Correction in After Effects. Plenty of secondary control, though of course not as focused on color correction as Color. And you also really need the Automatic Duck plugin for a proper integration with FCP.

Noah

[Kaku Ito]

I already purchased Colorista/Look and almost bought Color Finesse, so I'm not talking about free software at all, why did you say that (lol)? But thank you for clarifying about using AE and other stuff for color grading is conceiving. I don't do much compositing (I'm real world kinda guy) but my clients often needs secondary color control with rotoscoping.

I'm going to look into Matrix for clients who can afford, also our ultimate recommendation to customers would be Quantel iQ with Pablo at Panasonic Studio (amazing how fast those companies are adopting R3D). However, many other clients can't afford the expense, so I need to have complete workflow for inexpensive ways, too. Recent Apple's move to provide decoder of ProRes would tell something that Apple would make a move to work on Color to support more codecs, we just cross our fingers I guess.

If we were to use FCP and Cineform, I guess we can use Color Finesse (this seems to have a lot of controls with secondaries with key) most of the time, then when we need to do secondary with rotoscoping, do it with 4:4:4 uncompressed in Color.

[laguun]

The best secondary in the desktop market is, IMHO, combustion.

It has the exact same -color warper- subsystem as discreet inferno or discreet flame.

It also shares the discreet keyer, the discreet diamond keyer which can output as well selections and mask, and the discreet color correction.

It can use OpenGL acceleration with Nvidia Quadros and easily colorcorrects 2K in realtime with HD-SDI out.

It can furthermore easily switch between 4k uncompressed DPX and 2K proxy QT (which it also can generate).

[Bruce Allen]

Agree with Laguun on Combustion's color warping awesomeness, good soft masks, etc...

But surely if you're going Cineform, Speedgrade is the logical choice? There is some kind of partnership between them.

Regarding other options, believe it or not the highend stuff like lustre, etc is VERY picky about file formats. They don't like compressed files at all, even lossless ones. EG you aren't allowed LZW tiffs, only pure compressed ones. This is understandable (they want to ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE playback when Mr Bigshot Director is in the room). But does make them massively inefficient.

So maybe try to talk your way into a good deal with Speedgrade, and then you will be able to take on the larger post companies while spending a heck of a lot less on your RAID because you have the benefit of Cineform compression?

But the big question is does Speedgrade have curves yet? I like my curves...

BTW, I'm likely in Tokyo from Sept 21 - Oct 1, shooting a short film on RED. Gonna be busy, but PM me if you're around! Also looking for a few crew / vendor recommendations. Paul Leeming has already helped me out a lot. You work with him, yes?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Lucas Wilson]

Ito-san,

We have several customers in Tokyo who are doing R3D work in realtime with SCRATCH. If you are looking for a facility to do RED work, contact me offlist and I can connect you.

Best,

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

[Kaku Ito]

Lots more information from everybody, this is great.

Laguun, I'm in contact with the Japanese dealer of Autodesk (NGC) and talked about working together to incorporate RED workflow, so I will dig in more about Combustion with them.

Bruce,
I looked at the SpeedGrade, they look good but they don't have local support here in Japan. With that price I guess I can buy Scratch. It's good to know all of the options, though. Paul is in the same building, we work together daily. Let me know if you need help in crew/vender. My DP Takashi Chiba can help you with coordinating rentals and getting crews together. I can also offer you a space/facility during your shoot in Tokyo. Let me know.

Luki,

Thank you for your help. We handle Matrox, MOTU as distributor and also handle Blackmagic Design as a dealer, so sort of concentrating in offering system along with those hardware, but many has asked about Scratch. I found that Matrox MXO works great with Redcine, so I've been evangelizing that combination to people, so if Scratch works with any of the hardware I sell, then we'll be more interested in selling Scratch. It seems all of the facilities purchased Scratch are not open to outside jobs, though.

[Luca Immesi]

I found that Matrox MXO works great with Redcine
Hi Kaku,
what do you mean?

[Kaku Ito]

Hi,

MXO can output REDCINE screen to HDSDI and analog HD component, so connect them to something like BVM-D24 and be more confident with its first light color grading.

MXO can only output 4:2:2, so this information is good if you want to work (monitor) within REC709, I think.

[Luca Immesi]

Very interesting. I have purchased recently an MXO and I wanted to try it exactly as you said. Thanks for the confirmation.

[Simon Blackledge]

Does the MXO output the whole screen or just the image area?

[BASSAM MSSALATIE]

Does it help in FCS editing effects process too ?

[Kaku Ito]

Flameop,

It could output only the portion you want (it's called "region of interest") and enlarge it, but I mostly output the whole thing.

Bassam,

In the mode I'm describing, the Presentation mode, output whatever on the second desktop. So, anything that FCP natively works would be pretty much displayed the ways they are played on the desktop monitor. REDCINE needs GPU acceleration to be displayed, so for example, Blackmagic's video desktop feature won't display REDCINE's screen, but MXO does.

[Peter Moretti]

I already purchased Colorista/Look and almost bought Color Finesse, so I'm not talking about free software at all, why did you say that (lol)? ...I'm curious as to why you've balked so far on Color Finesse.

I realize it's not Speedgrade or SCRATCH, but it's also about one tenth the price.

I haven't used Color Finesse, but have been considering it b/c it can work with Avid FX/Boris Red.

[Kaku Ito]

Maybe my bad English, but I had a response that made it sound like I'm looking for a free software, then I responded that I don't mind buying additional software like Color Finesse. The reason why I didn't buy CF at this moment was because it doesn't seem to have path editing for the secondary. Since it does work with Cineform codec, I'm still considering to buy it :).

I already own Magic Bullet, Colorista and the Looks, but I find it not so intuitive as how you can color grade in Apple Color.

[Christopher Grant Harvey]

I already own Magic Bullet, Colorista and the Looks, but I find it not so intuitive as how you can color grade in Apple Color.

Seems like you need to draw the line and say how much control you want (IMHO you are not going to struggle with Colorista/Synthetic Aperture vs Color) and using Apple Color with no CineForm...

[Kaku Ito]

I worked on few projects with both Apple Color and Colorista/Look and I was able to do more control with Apple Color for sure. Too bad it doesn't support Cineform.

[Andrae Palmer]

How does Color Warper compare to Color? I heard someone say it was better than Color.. I'm interested to know user opinions on this.

[Kaku Ito]

Hi Andrae,

Anyone?

[Andrae Palmer]

Colour Warper has only 3 secondaries and is not realtime. Apple Color has 8 secondaries and is fast for simple playbacks or realtime previews of grading due to its GPU acceleration architecture. The interface of Colour Warper is archaic when compared to Color. Combustion is also not well supported on the Mac platform... imho the app is unstable while working and it crashers on exit every time. The 3D vector scope in Color is a very nice innovation and more intuitive than the one in Colour Warper. Realtime monitoring on Colour Warper via broadcast video monitor is super slow... with Apple Pro Res footage i was getting 12fps (this is after waiting patiently for the footage to be cached into memory). A snails pace in comparison to the realtime playback of Color with two 30 inch displays going and the video monitor. The cache architecture of Colour Warper really hobbles it.

The realtime playback/preview alone of Color makes it a winner. The GUI is extra cream on the cake. Support for coloring control surfaces also gives it added advantage. Colour Warper is very good for what it does inside of Combustion but it was not meant to grade features in any professional capacity.

O' I forgot... the fact that Color now supports R3D clips makes it a no brainer.

* Update 1: Combustion 2008 is not supported officially by Autodesk for Mac OSX 10.5... hence the constant crashes when exiting and also after rendering. Judging by the fact that they took 3 years to update Combustion 4 to combustion 2008 (and when they finally did they only added Colour Warper)... don't hold your breath waiting for it.

System Requirements: Autodesk (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=5562408)

* Update 2: The Mac versions of Combustion 4 and 2008 cannot currently render 10-bit Quicktime movies.

[Kaku Ito]

Thanks Andrae for the update.

[shashbugu]

thats funny, 7 out of every ten high end 35MM music video, or commercial shot in Los Angeles uses the color warper from Autodesk discreet systems. they have never been and will never probably be suited for long form feature film work. Thats why Autodesk purchased lustre.
Also Combustion has advanced operator and nodal color channel manipulation that is very difficult to emulate in Apple Color (Natress has some color plugins for this). high fidelity grain and noise removal, a 12 bit RGB color system(64bit engine) that is far superior to many 32bit float systems. the only competive rival out there is probably Film master and Photoshop period.

Autodesk/discreet systems handle color channels in the cleanest non destructive manner, giving you instant sex every time

[Joe Carney]

thats funny, 7 out of every ten high end 35MM music video, or commercial shot in Los Angeles uses the color warper from Autodesk discreet systems. they have never been and will never probably be suited for long form feature film work. Thats why Autodesk purchased lustre.
Also Combustion has advanced operator and nodal color channel manipulation that is very difficult to emulate in Apple Color (Natress has some color plugins for this). high fidelity grain and noise removal, a 12 bit RGB color system(64bit engine) that is far superior to many 32bit float systems. the only competive rival out there is probably Film master and Photoshop period.

Autodesk/discreet systems handle color channels in the cleanest non destructive manner, giving you instant sex every time

Wow, I'll have to check that out. Last time I looked at combustion, it was strictly 8bit per channel. Thanks for posting.

[Camilo Ganado]

Besides Apple Color can handle the REDCODE, if im not wrong only SCRATCH and REDLine can do that too, Autodesk and some of the others work with DPX, even if u don loose quality with DPX u loose the nice qualities of the REDCODE. Another point for Color.

[M Forrest]

Avid DS, Quantel, Baselight, and da Vinci handle Redcode through the SDK. No need for .DPX files.

[lionel2p]

We use the color warper from our Smoke 2k station in a daily basis, and it's far
from what we can do in Color on our Final cut stations. We can simply add another warper module if we need 3 more secondaries with no problem. The communication beetween Combustion and Smoke is also possible, wich is the real force of autodesk workflow.

We're going to test the R3D SDK integration with the coming Smoke 2010 release.

We're seriously looking at a dedicated solution for color grading. Scratch is a good alternative but really R3D centric. Speedgrade looks like a very good product and the ability to work with all RAW formats is a real advantage compared to Scratch. Hype is good for marketing, but when the red 4K raw debayering will be solved (and it's coming soon), I think some companies will have some serious problems :crying:...

I recently tested SSD with 3 x 250 Go drives from OCZ, I was over 1 go sustained read and 850 mo/s write, with only 3 drives raid 0. Solutions are coming everywhere, just a matter of little time now. SSD tower + good GPU card with dual SDI on a mac or PC are the reality in 6 months from now. Just a tought...

[M Most]

We're seriously looking at a dedicated solution for color grading. Scratch is a good alternative but really R3D centric.

That's pretty funny to hear for those of us who have used Scratch for almost 4 years, at least 3 of which were before Red even arrived. The Scratch support for R3d files is terrific, to be sure, but Scratch was developed before Red existed, and is primarily used by what I would guess is the vast majority of its user base for things that don't involve Red footage at all. Scratch's "native" format is and always has been DPX, and it was designed around a playback engine that was specifically engineered to allow for real time playback of DPX sequences on commodity hardware. The only things that are "R3d centric" in Scratch are the things that were introduced specifically to allow real time playback of R3d files. Everything else - the Construct, the editing capabilities, the conforming and database engines, the color correction module, the rendering engine - was there long before there was a Red.

[lionel2p]

I understand your point of view, but when I mentionned "R3D centric", I was talking about RAW support. There's other RAW format around there, and I think others will come soon.

I'm managing a post-house, my responsability is to support a vast array of formats. I'm RED convinced so I have no problem with scratch. But the reality is simple for this software : DPX and R3D. When working RED, all the community is focused on working realtime RAW, scratch allow that.

The thing is the same for Phantom, Dalsa, Silicon origin users, they need to work in raw format, not in DPX converted. That was just my point of view concerning RAW and R3D centric.

And to talk about finishing, Autodesk is far away with Smoke sold about the same price as a scratch finishing system.

[M Most]

I understand your point of view, but when I mentionned "R3D centric", I was talking about RAW support. There's other RAW format around there, and I think others will come soon.
The thing is the same for Phantom, Dalsa, Silicon origin users, they need to work in raw format, not in DPX converted. That was just my point of view concerning RAW and R3D centric.

That makes more sense.

I agree that RAW support is useful. At this point, though, the only vendor who really provides that is Iridas, unless you count a combination of Final Cut Studio and the various GlueTools products as competitive in this area. The fact is, though, that most of us are currently seeing precious little RAW material being shot on anything other than Red. SI is interesting, but you can get support for that by simply installing Cineform (not on Linux based systems, obviously). Dalsa is essentially gone. And the vast majority of D21 projects seem to be recorded as dual link video. So while it sounds good to say one has RAW support across various formats, it's really only valuable if you are actually dealing with those formats. I do see your point, though.


And to talk about finishing, Autodesk is far away with Smoke sold about the same price as a scratch finishing system.

In many cases, lower, actually. I can't really argue with that as I have always liked Autodesk's products. What is also true, though, is that while Smoke is an excellent conforming and finishing system, it is certainly not a grading system. For that you not only need Lustre - itself considerably more expensive than Smoke - but also some Autodesk-blessed networking and storage solutions, although they are beginning to be a bit more open about that. Scratch gives you a lot in one box, one of its strengths. And, at the moment, it's Red support is considerably deeper. But I will absolutely agree that Smoke represents a stronger offering as a conforming and effects system, and Lustre represents a stronger offering as a grading system. The combination, however, is not competitive in terms of aggregate cost - and "stronger" doesn't imply that one can do the job and the other can't. It just implies more features, more convenience, and the ability to do a number of things more efficiently.

It all comes at a price, though.

[lionel2p]

You're right absolutely right on your analyse concerning other raw formats. And yes, there's solution for those raw workflows with other apps like glue tools and cineform as you mentionned.

Concerning Smoke 2k, I consider it as a color grading solution. Autodesk don't want to communicate on the smoke ability for color grading, but I conformed, FXed and color graded a complete HD movie project for TV with it recently, and it was a real pleasure.

Smoke is not a luster, that's a fact, and things are litlle more complicated to do. If autodesk add a tangeant device compatibility to smoke (it was asked by many smoke users for years), it will be a real killer. Anyway, the new generation of colorist have no problem with working with tablet. But a real colorist panel and 32 bits floating will be ideal.

Anyway, I'm looking for a standalone color grading solution, I've not the money for Luster, so it's Scratch, Speedgrade or Chrome. Final Cut Studio 3 is on the road, GPU oriented, it could also be a solution. Color running on a quadro 5800, let's dream :)

Thank mmost for your precious analyse.

[M Most]

If autodesk add a tangeant device compatibility to smoke (it was asked by many smoke users for years), it will be a real killer.

It's been asked for by Avid DS users for a long time as well. So far, the only vendor who's really clued into the "hero box" that can do full conforming, effects, and color grading work is Quantel. How many Pablos they've sold, or even iQ's with QColor for that matter, I don't know. But with the extensive capabilities and attractive price points of both Smoke and DS these days, I'd really like to see either Autodesk or Avid revisit that. It's unlikely in Autodesk's case (because they already have Lustre as a companion device), but Avid has no reason not to do this. Time will tell.

[lionel2p]

In the case of autodesk, sure they want to sell luster, so the panel for smoke would be something disturbing. Anyway, as I tell it, Luster is color grading oriented only and everything is simplier in it compared to smoke for grading.

In the case of Avid, ther's absolutely no reason. Perhaps they want to preserve relation with companies like quantel or digital vision. Really don't know.