Colorista or Speed Grade?

[Stephen Pruitt]

Hi there. . .

We are currently editing in Premiere Pro CS5.5 and are wanting to add a better color grading program.

Magic Bullet's Colorista II was demonstrated to me today, and it seems quite powerful, but how does this compare with CS 6's Speedgrade application?

I'm looking for both power and ease of use.

Thanks much gentlemen.

Stephen

[Steve Sherrick]

Speedgrade is a more powerful grading solution but Adobe's integration is in the early stages. Colorista gives you a nice in-app solution. For heavy duty color correction I'd still lean towards Resolve or better.

[Stephen Pruitt]

I doubt highly if I'd be doing anything too heavy-duty. Does Resolve exist as a plug-in for PP?

Thanks.

Stephen

[Steve Sherrick]

Resolve Lite is a free app from Black Magic. The caveat is you'll need proper hardware specs to get the most out of it. You export XML or EDL to get into it. Not as easy as color correcting right in the timeline. You could also look into After Effects with Color Finesse which is a plugin that comes with AE. Just have to make sure you get your color management set up properly. That has some powerful features. No matter what you use make sure you have your monitoring set up correctly or it usually ends up being a frustrating process.

Also, never underestimate the power of simplicity. Some people are able to get great results with no more than 3-way color corrector, Levels, and RGB Curves.

[Marc Wielage]

Good advice from Steve above. I would also add the importance of getting a calibrated monitor, accurate scopes, and an experienced colorist. The latter will save you time in post and will give you options and solutions you might never have otherwise considered.

"Ease of use" is the last thing for which I'd buy finishing software. Power, features, speed, and reliability are all far more important. I would lean towards Resolve with a decent panel (at least the Tangent) as an affordable solution, assuming a very fast computer and drives as part of the package.

[Kwan Khan]

Agreed with Steve and Marc
Thanks

[TD Wood]

Agreed with Steve and Marc
Thanks

Agreed too. Also... please correct me if I'm wrong... but I believe that Speedgrade still does not offer the possibility of monitoring out via capture cards (aja, blackmagic). As much as I like many things about Speedgrade, I also find it puzzling that a professional grading program would not offer a proper monitoring solution. I really hope this will be fixed in the near future.

Cheers

[Will Keir]

I would also add the importance of getting a calibrated monitor

Any recommendations? Are there 4k monitors for CC work yet?

[Matt Gottshalk]

You don't need a 4k monitor for grading.

The 1080p 10 bit Flanders Scientific are excellent and are in use by many colorists right now.

[Johnny Friday]

++ on the Flanders Montior...3g enabled, so if you run dual SDI out of the RR, you can go single channel into FSI, or use a converter for full 10bit AJA, Matrox and others have dual SDI to single 3g converters...., I run my FSI described as above, then also attached to my I/O box for color work and editing via Premier or FCP

Edit: but, if on a Mac (i'm on mac) you don't get 10bit out of your Mac....only 8 bit. This is a mac thing and a real bummer. From I/O box--you would have to confirm with the manufacturere--but i found i cannot get out of matrox either even when it does say 10 bit monitoring capable.