color correction?

[JFUNK]

Ive mainly used color correction in final cut pro. With the Red camera, some people are suggesting using outside color correction programs.. is this necessary, or will FCP be fine?
what are the advantages to an outside color correction system, and what do you recommend??

Also, with the LUT's for the RED, how do these work, and do they work within FCP, or is this through Red Cine or another program?

[wlaroussi]

Hi ,

Before putting a complete "tutorial" on how to use color correction , i'll just give some basic things :
- If it's an Hd shot in good conditions for broadcast TV , Then FCP with AE will do the job (except if you have 90 min film) . I guess that you have always done before .

- Now with red one using 2K/4K , a preliminary test is the first step to do and many on that forum are waiting for the results . Grading will allow you to group similar shots and aplly them the same color correction (for the primaries ) then fine tune up with the secondaries . Many NLE and compositing softwares can do the job but they are slow and not specialized for these tasks . Here the ones i know :
- Iridas speedgrade (about 10 K$) fast easy with no extra hardware and gives valuable results (is it used by Arri) .
- Autodesk Lustre (better to rent it) It's about 150 K and not so easy . However you may edit and grade an uncopmressed 4K so fast .
- A new version of Cinespace 2.5 (price ???) but it's can be interfaced with popular softwares like shake , nuke and digital fusion . It's also calibrates luts and monitor colors for windows , linux and mac for the same shots .
- Premiere pro 2 with color finesse (if you have cineform prospect HD or 2K) .

Grading is not like conventionnal "color correction" it follows a logical and organized pipelined tasks .

That's all what i know . Hope somebody else will give you more .

Regards .

[Bruce Allen]

JFUNK, the problem is that FCP's color correction tools are basic. It is very frustrating to do power windows, for one thing.

The idea is that if you're spending $40,000 on a camera package, storage, etc, you might as well spend a bit of effort on making the footage look good. Also, RED is specifically designed to give footage that is nicely malleable with more advanced color correction tools.

If you don't do a good CC, there's a distinct chance your Red footage won't look as succulent to the average viewer as the footage from someone shooting on a $5000 HDV camera but doing a real CC session.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[wlaroussi]

Hi ,

What you get in that post is the software list . The hardware one may be more or less expensive . Now since color grading software are using sequence files (no AVI or quick time) , so is very important to know the size of the transcoded footages by redcine . some softwares like lustre use only uncompressed files . At the end no recomended configuration or techniques can be suggested at the moment (the upcoming configuration will depend on speed , wich it's self depends on the size of transcoded files ) . You may keep you FCP/AE configuration until the results are shown . Another point if you have a poor grahic card (an nvidia fx Quadro is the strict minimuml) , a slow firwire sata storge and a cheap HTDV monitor , so don't expect something good even with the most expensive softwares .

Regards

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Jumping back to RED and LUTs, I know that there will be some predefined LUTs for common color spaces that can be applied in REDCINE when processing REDCODE RAW to REDCODE RGB or other desired format. But since now (apparently) we'll be able to use REDCODE RAW from within any Quicktime application, what does that do to us? Can we now assign the desired LUT from within the REDCODE QT settings? I wonder what LUTs will be included with RED/REDCINE? Will we have some to emulate various film stock in addition to common electronic color spaces? Can we create our own tables? I guess this will all be spelled out at NAB, just one of those things that we're all eagerly awaiting details on.

[Sean]

Why do you have to have cineform prospect HD or 2K to use Color Finesse with Premiere pro 2? Does the same go for After Effects?

[wlaroussi]

Hi ,

A NLE is combination of software/hardware . adobe with it's Premiere Pro is not manifacturing hardaware (unlike Avid or Canopus) , so it's relay on Aja boards , unfortunatly you will not achieve realtime editing unlike you add a software codec (raylight or cineform) . When it's comes to 2K the resolution is too big to be handled by premiere Pro so a bundle of cineform ( prospect 2K) can take charge of that .

Color finesse is the only 32 bits plugin (now there is also cinespace but it's quite different and not for adobe suite) "color corrector" that handle primaries , secondaries and Lut . It' a lot faster on premiere . The same color finesse goes for AE except that AE is slow on 2K/4K.

Regards .

[Clayton Harper]

I am hoping and praying somebody tries to bring something back to the $5000 price point like we used to have before Apple kidnapped Final Touch HD. The XML support and the insanity associated with getting a project in the suite made me want to firebomb my computer but the features were rocking.

10k for speedgrade is too expensive for a small shop. Hopefully, Scratch or even Apple will give us a GPU-based application at NAB to fill that niche.

[wlaroussi]

Hi ,

For AppliedVisual . Yes you can create your own Lut on almost any professional video software like FCP , Avid , digtal fusion , shake , nuke , speedgrade , or lustre .... Among all the NLE and compositing softwares few are dedicated to the grading and 2D/3D luts tasks .

Regards

[wlaroussi]

Hi ,

For lordnumberzero . You can make your job on AE (even with import/export luts) for less than 5 K , if you can wait 7 to 10 days rendering a 2K cineon or 16 bits (even with nucleo) . Now if you have Fiber channel storage and nvidia 5500 SDI (on linux/PC don't know for mac) you can get it done by the weekend or less time . The problem is not the new or old soft/hard solutions , but how the redcode can be integrated in the softwares used for your files to be graded . I have seen somewhere in that forum that a user did not succeed tu use redcode with AE . Now Let's get to the fact , since there is no hardware capture cards involved in the passage of red movies to the computer and red cine can transcode to any codec , The only thing that remains is : Will these softwares accept this codec for import and export or not? . Try to use Avid DNxHD codec on combustion , is not even listed on the available codec list in combustion . The expensive solutions use uncompressed files effecienly so no more need for any codec , and they are fast for that . If redcodec can be used by only 2 or 3 apps that will be GREAT AND FINAL.

Regards

[Anders Holck]

The real show stopper (currently) with FCP is that it only supports 8 bit in RGB mode.
That means Redcode will be truncated to 8 bit, before rendering, all plug-ins will run in a 8 bit render pipeline, and he output will be 8 bit only.

The Fx-plug architecture supports floats in RGB mode, and a few new plugins look very promising at supplying powerful tools with custom interfaces right inside FCP.

But let's see with FCP 6 around the corner, there are pretty good chances that Apple has fixed the Rendering engine for >8 bit RGB support, and let's not forget that they bought Siliconcolor last year, although it's a bit too early for a product to be based on that acquisition.

[Geoff Bailey]

I think there are two routes to go here:

1. No-budget. Edit offline footage in FCP. Export final sequence to AfterEffects or ColorFinesse (or the rumored Final Touch replacement). Conform using 2K or 4K footage and do color work.

PROS: Do everything on your home computer. Inexpensive.

CONS: Not realtime. This is a big limitation for doing color correct work. If you are trying cut corners here, then I have to assume that you won't have calibrated monitors or projectors to work on. So everything you are doing is really guesswork.

2. Edit offline in FCP. Conform with 2k footage. Take to a posthouse to perform a color correct in dedicated suite. There are options here: 1080p 4:2:2 finish (Quantel, Discreet Lustre) to 2k, 4:4:4 (Avid Nitris, DiVinci).

PROS: Realtime. Work with a professional colorist (trust me they are better and faster at this than you are. It's their job). Work with a calibrated system. What you see is what you get.

CONS: Expensive. Anywhere from $500 to $1500 an hour.

However, I'll just say that personally, if you are thinking about dropping $40,000 - $75,000 on a camera package, I would find it poor planning to not budget for a proper post workflow. You can alway find deals and it is just part of the budget. You are not skimping on the camera, why skimp on the finishing work.

Finally, I've read that the ASC is trying to formalize the color correction information in a way similar to XML or EDL. This would open up a middle ground. Edit offline, perform a realtime, offline CC in FCP. Then bring that info to a CC session for final tweaking. This is what I'm hoping for in the near future.

[Manfred Lopez]

CONS: Expensive. Anywhere from $500 to $1500 an hour.


Does anyone know, ballpark, how many hours of CC it takes to finish of a 90 min feature if you´re paying $500 to $1,500 an hour?

[wlaroussi]

HI ,

What Finegrit says , is a big part of the video/cinema workflow :

- small budget : media composer/FCP/protools then export the EDL list , but don't mess around with the final project (what it's should be projected) . In other words avoid modifications past the postproduction step . Then just rent an autodesk smoke/lustre(4K) or an avid ds nitris , for a day or two .

- Big budget : The same as above . With more flexibility and diffrents tools . I have never met someone who's story boarder , scenarist , cameraman , EDL specialist , colorist compositor ....and a distributor . We will see for the next upcoming generations . However if your rich enough to by a red one and lustre , smoke or avid DS nitris and have scenarios ready for execution then you are almost a real big film maker .

Reagrds .

[Gbabymogul]

Does anyone know, ballpark, how many hours of CC it takes to finish of a 90 min feature if you´re paying $500 to $1,500 an hour?Depends on the deliverable, but I'd say a minimum (very simple transitions and effects) 10 hours. So, you'd be in the ballpark of $10-15K.

Usually, the bigger shows/media takes the prime hours and the best colorists etc...(at least in T.O)Maybe someone who works in one can chime in.

If you can farm out the work you can find better rates and comparably talented people. We've found some amazing people in the U/K, and there are some French effects houses that will do the work for 1/10th (with the same quality) of the price.

As always, shop around.





:beer:

[Lucas Wilson]

Yes you can create your own Lut on almost any professional video software like FCP , Avid , digtal fusion , shake , nuke , speedgrade , or lustre .... Among all the NLE and compositing softwares few are dedicated to the grading and 2D/3D luts tasks .

This is partially true. Non linear editing packages do not create or support LUTs. FCP, Avid, Vegas, etc. do not create LUTs and do not support LUTs.

The compositing packages you mention above - Digital Fusion, Shake, and Nuke - can create and import LUTs.

The color packages you mention - SpeedGrade and Lustre - can also create and import LUTs. Actually... I'm not sure that Lustre can create LUTs, but I know it can import them with no issues.

Lucas
------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Lucas Wilson]

... Then just rent an autodesk smoke/lustre(4K) or an avid ds nitris , for a day or two .

...However if your rich enough to by a red one and lustre , smoke or avid DS nitris ... .

DS Nitris is not a color grading package. You can do very successful color grading with DS, and it does have very good grading tools. But it is not a dedicated color grading tool. It has minimal realtime color layering capability, cannot import 3D LUTs, does not support any kind of panel, and cannot directly support 2K or 4K.

Most customers, when walking into a "color bay," expect a standard set of tools for realtime color correction which DS does not have.

Neither does Smoke, for that matter. Lustre is the only tool above that is a true color grading platform.

Lucas
------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Seriously consider something like AutomaticDuck for AE or Combustion. It'll let you drop your timeline from Avid or FCP etc straight into your timeline. Just change your drive letter to the uncompressed footage and change the composite settings to "4k" and away you go. Should take only about half an hour to set up and start grading.

Also Fusion has built in EDL support.

If you're grading on the cheap you can easily grade in almost real time on a single proxy frame. Then hit render and watch it flow.

p.s. Combustion should import anything your codecs can handle no? Although uncompressed would be more responsive.

[tj williams]

1. Why does no one mention the DaVinci CC which is ubiquitous around here. This is a wonderful fully featured color corrector which is hired with the operator.

2. The best colorist in our town has been doing the work over 10 years. The output I've seen there is noticeably superior to editors using edit system color correctors. Many of the producers I work for will pay more to have him do their work! Probably a combination of skills, native ability, and system.

3. Clearly better color correction can be obtained direct from the negative whether film or 4K raw. Thus it will be much better if we are using cheap cc in a desktop editor like fcp, if the 4K file can be imported.

4. Cineform's wavelet compression works with Premiere and I thinks soon FCP, I have not heard that it is compatible with RED Raw. Since this solution is selling well it would probably be to our advantage if they choose to address RED Raw as that would make more desktop systems able to edit our output.

[Billy Summers]

Does anyone know, ballpark, how many hours of CC it takes to finish of a 90 min feature if you´re paying $500 to $1,500 an hour?

Average amount of cuts in a 90 minute feature is about a thousand. The hours it takes to CC, if your working with a colorist on a formal CC system (Davinci,Polgo etc.) is 16-24 hours when there are no problems and the work is going relatively fast. You can usually work with the "night" colorist for a better price than the daytime commercial rate (less than 500).
And don't be afraid to try and negotiate either.:gun:

[donatello b]

the last 2 features that i went in to CC on a DaVinci ... 15-16 hrs and that was moving fast ... on one booked 2-8hr days ( IMO 8 hrs straight is too much) .. other booked 3 nights 6 hrs each session ... they store all the CC setting then do the actually CC transfer during the night or times they are not booked ...

[wlaroussi]

Hi ,


Originally Posted by luki : This is partially true. Non linear editing packages do not create or support LUTs. FCP, Avid, Vegas, etc. do not create LUTs and do not support LUTs

Sorry i have just used NLE for all editing and compositing softwares . Vegas is just an entry level for 8 bits editing while FCP can share luts with Final touch , but i don't know how far it can goes .


Originally Posted by luki : The color packages you mention - SpeedGrade and Lustre - can also create and import LUTs. Actually... I'm not sure that Lustre can create LUTs, but I know it can import them with no issues

I'm not sure you can import Luts with speedgrade but you can use the ones supplied with it (so you can get more from iridas) . However you can export Luts with speedgrade .

I'm sure you can create modify Luts in Lustre and with ease but not shure that you can import/export them , except for the autodesk suite (flame , smoke , toxik....) .


Originally Posted by luki :Neither does Smoke, for that matter. Lustre is the only tool above that is a true color grading platform.

There is difference between doing conventional color grading and having a real complete color grading tool . Now the two certified softwares for doing color grading even with limitations are speedgrade (10 K$) and lustre (150 K$) . I forget to mention IFX piranha on Linux . But if i have a 10 min 2K shot to do everyday with no special effects , indoor/outdoor or maybe 3 differents cameras . Then i will be happy with premiere/video finesse/magic bullet looksuite/ . I forget to say that the 2K/4K resolutions are linked to the used hardware (for smoke/flame must check the video board centaurus , aja , or tezro irix and the license delivered with the turnkey system) . It's so easy to get the right-wrong informations.

At last he best tools are the ones you master for the appropriate situation .

Wlaroussi ; Freelancer .
Regards

[Lucas Wilson]

FCP can share luts with Final touch , but i don't know how far it can goes .

FCP does not support LUTs. Final Touch does. FCP does not. I'm happy for someone to say "HERE is where LUTs are supported in FCP," but to my knowledge, they just aren't supported... yet.


I'm not sure you can import Luts with speedgrade but you can use the ones supplied with it (so you can get more from iridas) . However you can export Luts with speedgrade .

You can import LUTs with SpeedGrade. I'm pretty familiar with that package.


I'm sure you can create modify Luts in Lustre and with ease but not shure that you can import/export them , except for the autodesk suite (flame , smoke , toxik....) .

You can import LUTs in Lustre. Their LUTs are an open text format. Nothing proprietary about it. Make one and import it. Lustre also - like many other DI packages - supports LUTs from KDM, Cinespace, Arri, and Truelight.


... Now the two certified softwares for doing color grading even with limitations are speedgrade (10 K$) and lustre (150 K$) . I forget to mention IFX piranha on Linux .

Certified for what?? What about Baselight, SCRATCH, Resolve, FilmMaster, and iQ?


I forget to say that the 2K/4K resolutions are linked to the used hardware (for smoke/flame must check the video board centaurus , aja , or tezro irix and the license delivered with the turnkey system) .

I'm pretty confused with what you're saying. For SCRATCH, SpeedGrade, and any other software-based color corrector, the ability to work with 2K/4K resolutions is only minimally tied to hardware - the NVidia Quadro series of graphics cards. But that has nothing to do with video input and output - which is what Centaurus and AJA provide.


It's so easy to get the right-wrong informations.

Yes, it is.


At last he best tools are the ones you master for the appropriate situation .

Very very true...

[tj williams]

I believe the RED Camera can receive lut's from your computer over USB2 port. I have taken this to mean that the output in RGB 1080 720 can be set-up with a custom look, cine look etc. directly from the camera. RED team member stated these would be very easy to set up. Any thoughts on this?

[Blair S. Paulsen]

The RedTeam has stated that the RedOne will support the use of LUTs in camera to drive specific outputs for monitoring. These LUTs will travel with the metadata and can be referenced farther down the pipeline. What has not been stated is any details about the implementation. I am hoping that at NAB we will get the scoop.

My hope is that the RedOne and RedCine will support two key aspects of the workflow for color management:
1) Calibrated on set monitoring that gives the DoP a meaningful reference and assists in the evaluation of the "one-light" version that serves as the basis of establishing the look.
2) The ability to have the DoPs intentions follow the footage through post via the metadata. It is my contention that concerns about newer post workflows taking too much control out of the cinematographers hands is one of the primary reasons a data centric pipeline has been so coldly received in venues such as CML.

[wlaroussi]

Hi ,

Thanks luki for the infos , i have to do a deep search for Lut behavior . But now what matters for everybody "i guess so" is what Lut will Red one team put on their system if any is done "i hope" .

Regards

[Antoine Baumann]

The idea is that if you're spending $40,000 on a camera package, storage, etc, you might as well spend a bit of effort on making the footage look good. Also, RED is specifically designed to give footage that is nicely malleable with more advanced color correction tools.

Bruce Allen


However, I'll just say that personally, if you are thinking about dropping $40,000 - $75,000 on a camera package, I would find it poor planning to not budget for a proper post workflow. You can alway find deals and it is just part of the budget. You are not skimping on the camera, why skimp on the finishing work.

Totaly aggree on both


If you're grading on the cheap you can easily grade in almost real time on a single proxy frame. Then hit render and watch it flow.

From my experience, color grading on single frame is not convenient nor it is efficient. You need to see your grading moving.
You can work on proxy, but with real time moving frames.

If you do not have the budget and your colorist works for cheap and you have time (or it is a short movie, music clip or such lenght), it can be done with compositing package, or an AVID nitris, or other high end NLE, but it is not designed to do so.
Using FCP/Premiere is not good, as it does not have 32 bit color engine, unless you use it with color finesse.

When the project has a budget, tools that are really designed for it are:
Assimilate Scratch
Chrome Matrix
Filmlight Baselight
Da Vinci
Quantel Pablo
Iridas Speedgrade (which BTW is not 10k, but HD is 29950 EUR, 2K is 49500 EUR)
Discreet Lustre
Edifis f/stop
DVS Clipster
Pandora Base Grade
Apple Final Touch?
...

Most of these tools are expensive, and most colorist will work with grading panel (for exemple JL Cooper).

But more important than anything is the control monitor/projector. If you do not have a properly calibrated monitor/projector and a "digital to film conversion's LUT", if you are going to print on film, it is useless as you do not know what you will realy get once projected.

About time that takes to grade on high end tools, I heard that it can be pretty fast, like 3 days for a feature, but sometimes, it can be slower, even much slower, and the most important is the communication between director/DoP and colorist.

A little bit out of topic, I am not sure that 4k REDCODE Raw will be really a fast workflow. What I feel is that you will be able to edit straight with
REDCODE RAW as it has "play LUT" incorporated.
What I fear is the time REDCINE will take to demosaic, resize, encode all your dailys.
Of course you would need a RAID array that handle at least 30MBytes per second. Then you edit in 4k REDCODE Raw, and then process in REDCINE only your EDL.
Then you could grade on proxy of the 4k REDCODE raw, or any other format/codec.

One last thing, I am curious if you will be able to see what you are doing in REDCINE on a monitor other than the computer monitor, using a BMD card or AJA.

My long 2 cents,
antoine.

[donatello b]

i'm planning to let RED and everyone come up with 2/4k CC workflow ... then i'll PAY to go to those places to CC ...

[Joel Kaye]

i'm planning to let RED and everyone come up with 2/4k CC workflow ... then i'll PAY to go to those places to CC ...

Looking at the description of RedCine it might be a pretty good place to do color correction - it's designed to do it. If you could stack secondary corrections and add animated masks that would be pretty cool. Might scare the hell out of some of the color correction companies... but as long as we're having a revolution... might as well shoot with both barrels. Hardware and Software. :gun:

[Hans von Sonntag]

To "long cents" Antoine,

I agree with you absolutely concerning the (non)usage of NLEs for grading.

I used to do most of my gradings on a telecine with Pogle or Davinci with a professional colorist before we edited the film (mainly commercials). For longer project we did one-light rushes and graded from the batched negative. With the advent of HD, things changed a lot. Now I shoot a lot with HDCAM. I don't telecine anymore. In the beginning this was bad news for me. Now I am happy because I became my own colorist. I purchased Final Touch HD and learned a lot. Final Touch is an application which never really left the beta stage. But since Aplle acquired Final Touch things might change to the better. Currently I am testing SpeedGrade. And I must say it is a very nice and very capable tool, especially in conjunction with SpeedGrade On Set.
Then there is scratch on which I unfortunately never put my hands. Some time I hopefully will and all that I heard about it is very promising.
IQ, Lustre, Baselight and all the other highend sytems are very expensive and only usable for post-houses which do colour correction 10 hours a day, 6 days a week.
But as far as I can tell: SpeedGrade for instance is highend, I can do more in the same quality and in realtime (I have to render the projekt in the end, the preview is in realtime) than with a conventional hardware system like Pogel on a Spirit.

Since I am a filmmaker and not a posthouse I personally like the idea of doing it all on one machine. I use FCP as NLE, Shake for comps and SpeedGrade / Final Touch for grading. If you want to use a proper panel (I use a Wacom board all my stuff) you have to build a dedicated grading suite, which is nice to have but costly.
Off cause you need a calibrated monitor, but you should have that anyway since a Red Camera is a high end tool (although comparable cheap) and deserves well done grading and monitoring.

My two "also long) cents,

Hans

[wlaroussi]

Hi ,
To laboprod . I see that your are very well informed and thanks for sharing that . I just read the data sheet of cinespace 2.5 and it's supposed to calibrate monitor's Luts across plateforms (linux, mac and windows) but i could'nt get more informations than that . It also has plugins for shake , nuke , digital fusion ... The technologies used are equaleyes , cinecube , cinespace . Within the tools above it's possible to get the final LUT view on a "cinespace calibrated monitor" . Do you have any idea about this technique ? Is it the replacement method for film (if a 2K or 4K projector is used instead) ? . With redcode and some new calibration tools would'nt be the end of dinausore sytems?

Regards

[Lucas Wilson]

Hi ,
To laboprod . I see that your are very well informed and thanks for sharing that . I just read the data sheet of cinespace 2.5 and it's supposed to calibrate monitor's Luts across plateforms (linux, mac and windows) but i could'nt get more informations than that . It also has plugins for shake , nuke , digital fusion ... The technologies used are equaleyes , cinecube , cinespace . Within the tools above it's possible to get the final LUT view on a "cinespace calibrated monitor" . Do you have any idea about this technique ? Is it the replacement method for film (if a 2K or 4K projector is used instead) ? . With redcode and some new calibration tools would'nt be the end of dinausore sytems?

Regards

We have a lot of customers that use Cinespace. Using their entire suite of products - you can have a fully calibrated viewing environment that takes into full account the output chain. Whether that is 35mm film, Rec.709, or whatever else. Their products allow you to generate Input LUTs, View LUTs, and Output LUTs. It just depends on how you choose to build your color management and output management pipeline.

A good example is the animated feature that came out this past summer - The Ant Bully from WB. That feature was entirely color corrected in 2K on SCRATCH at DNA Productions in Dallas. From the individual artist workstations to the DI Theatre, Cinespace was the color management platform used to ensure consistent results for film-out.

Lucas
------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Antoine Baumann]

Currently I am testing SpeedGrade. And I must say it is a very nice and very capable tool, especially in conjunction with SpeedGrade On Set.

Hans,
Patrick Palmer from Iridas wrote to me that they have HD and 2k version, which one are you testing? Is HD version restict only to deliver HD resolution and same for 2k?


Off cause you need a calibrated monitor, but you should have that anyway since a Red Camera is a high end tool (although comparable cheap) and deserves well done grading and monitoring.

Sure you should have that, but it is not that cheap. And as you can shoot REDCODE Raw, you do not have to worry so much about color during the shooting, so if your budget does not let you to have one at home, you can still do grading in a post house.

I really think that viewing on a calibrated projector/monitor (not the computer one) when making first color decision in REDCINE has to be possible.

wlaroussi,
actually I do not have experience using these grading tools, just heard things about them by trying to garther information about digital grading, which is a nearly absolut needs on this time.

About cinespace, I think it is not grading software, but a thechnology to control your viewing environment during the whole workflow. What I have understand is that they provide you tools to "exactly" calibrate your LCD monitors and projector. In addition you have plugin for "3D colour transforms", which I am not sure what they refer to, and software for LUT creation. Of course it seems to be nice to have this product, but with experience, I think you can buildt some viewing LUT that with constant calibrated projector/monitoring should do it.

antoine.

[Antoine Baumann]

hi Lucas,

haven't see your post before posting mine, thanks for the confirmation on what is cinespace.

I wanted to ask you that at nab, but as you are here, is there different version of scratch (like 4k, 2k, ...) and what is the price.

thanks,
antoine.

[Lucas Wilson]

hi Lucas,

haven't see your post before posting mine, thanks for the confirmation on what is cinespace.

I wanted to ask you that at nab, but as you are here, is there different version of scratch (like 4k, 2k, ...) and what is the price.

thanks,
antoine.

Antoine - please contact me offlist at lucas@assimilateinc.com.

Crosses the line into a direct sales pitch. :)

[mezmo]

the last 2 features that i went in to CC on a DaVinci ... 15-16 hrs and that was moving fast ... on one booked 2-8hr days ( IMO 8 hrs straight is too much) .. other booked 3 nights 6 hrs each session ... they store all the CC setting then do the actually CC transfer during the night or times they are not booked ...

Same here,
Just finished a feature on DaVinci and Truelight, took about 20 Hours.
Booked 30.
This is a fast way to go and prices can be reasonable for what is
essentually HD Video gear using HDSR format Log Tape as Master.
Good for low budget work._____________________Mezmo

[Miguel "Macgregor" De Olaso]

From my experience i can tell this.

I have paid around 30 hours (well, lets say, producers have paid) to CC footage i have shoot either in film or in HDCAM.

The truth is that i usually requested a DV copy (yep) of the reels without CC so i can later "play" at home with the footage. And every single time i ended up with better grading (lets say, more pleasent to my taste, and since i am the DoP, i can say "better") that the one that was made in the post houses (and we are talking about 4:2:0 sampling and DV compression).
They use hundred thousands of euros in equippment. Of course i cannot do the job in real time at 2k, but the thing is that if get the chance some day, i would rather prefer to do the CC at home/office myself.

[Michael Schrengohst]

We have a lot of customers that use Cinespace. Using their entire suite of products - you can have a fully calibrated viewing environment that takes into full account the output chain. Whether that is 35mm film, Rec.709, or whatever else. Their products allow you to generate Input LUTs, View LUTs, and Output LUTs. It just depends on how you choose to build your color management and output management pipeline.

A good example is the animated feature that came out this past summer - The Ant Bully from WB. That feature was entirely color corrected in 2K on SCRATCH at DNA Productions in Dallas. From the individual artist workstations to the DI Theatre, Cinespace was the color management platform used to ensure consistent results for film-out.

Lucas
------
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
Los Angeles

Thanks, the folks at DNA are very talented

[tj williams]

Hi Macgregor

What software do you use to match the capabilities of the Davinci? I have supervised my work (both HD and film) in several Davinci rooms and also work with clients who do their own SD color correction. On desktop systems, Always the Davinci stuff looks tons better.
Perhaps you are a genius or the local colorist near you is not? Perhaps you are using software my clients are not?

[Joe Carney]

Has anyone tried Colorista with After Effects (which has 32bpc float support)?

[Hans von Sonntag]

From my experience i can tell this.

I have paid around 30 hours (well, lets say, producers have paid) to CC footage i have shoot either in film or in HDCAM.

The truth is that i usually requested a DV copy (yep) of the reels without CC so i can later "play" at home with the footage. And every single time i ended up with better grading (lets say, more pleasent to my taste, and since i am the DoP, i can say "better") that the one that was made in the post houses (and we are talking about 4:2:0 sampling and DV compression).
They use hundred thousands of euros in equippment. Of course i cannot do the job in real time at 2k, but the thing is that if get the chance some day, i would rather prefer to do the CC at home/office myself.

Hi Macgregor,

I had this experience very often as well. I think there are two facts that come together:

1. It is always good to take a long nap and review the things you (and the colorist) have done so far in a second session. You rarely can do that because of budget.

2. I often leave the colour correction sessions with a feel of compromise. He/she did not really understood what I wanted, an often enough I did not really knew what I wanted (see 1.).

There are two possibilities to solve this problem:

a. Get your own colour correction suite (talk to Luki or call Iridas for instance). Both systems fit into the budget of an "advanced" indie filmmaker with regulary paid jobs.

b. Try SpeedGrade On Set. You can do the grading before you do the colour correction session. If you use SpeedGrade DI later you can use the look. files you created in the online colour correction and only tweak things (see point 1.). Or, if you use some other tool you can use the JPGs SpeedGrade On Set created as reference.

I actually choosed possibility a. and purchased FinalTouch which did not really made me happy. Currently I am testing SpeedGrade and will have a look onto Scratch.

My 2 cents,

Hans

[Miguel "Macgregor" De Olaso]

Hans, your two facts are totally correct. I usually end up with a compromise.