Colorista or Speed Grade?

[Alexander Mejia]

I've used Colorista II, Speedgrade, and Davinci for a project. Each have pros and cons.

Colorista II Pros:

*Keeps you inside Premiere Pro
*Can help for a fast turn around, as you can still modify the edit of the base files while you do color.

Cons:

*Not real time. Good luck with editing afterwords.
*Controlling this with a mouse sucks. Its so touchy.
*No color management in Premiere Pro. You need to have a calibrated sRGB monitor or an external monitor through an output card.

Speedgrade cs6 Pros:

*1 click Send to speedgrade is good for a quick workflow.
*High level of control in your image. Also you can save looks and apply them later to save time. No copying and pasting effects in a certain chain order.
*real time performance if you have the right hardware
*If you have a monitor .icm, you can convert that to a LUT and have accurate colors without the need for an external monitor.

Cons:

*Workflow issues if you don't want DPX, and your video isn't in a QT container
*Need high Disk IO to do DPX sequence
*lack of support right now because the application is so new to Adobe. look at all the unanswered questions in their forums.
*Only Quadro SDI is supported for external monitoring
*Output is limited, and Quicktime almost always has gamma shift. Don't forget to check the color calibration checkbox when exporting to a QuickTime container.

Davinci Pros:

*FREE!
*very powerful color correction (Different from Speedgrade, but both achieve awesome looks)
*Better support since a lot of people have been using this application for a while now.
*New version streamlined for new people to jump in.
*Supports AAF export, which will retain most of your editing and transitions when you bring it into Davinci.
*If you have a monitor .icm, you can convert that to a LUT and have accurate colors without the need for an external monitor.

Cons:

*Probably the toughest workflow in your situation because there is no easy round trip for Premiere Pro.
*DPX is what you'll be passing around most likely, and you'll need a fast RAID/SSD for RT playback.
*Archaic Database system is still in place. It's not designed for a single user system.

[jake blackstone]

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.

Output on Resolve is 10 bit, if recommended hardware is used, lIke Decklink, regardless of platform used.

[Johnny Friday]

Output on Resolve is 10 bit, if something, lIke Decklink is used, regardless of platform used.

That would be a big reason for me to switch from Matrox I/O to BM and their I/O then....this is actually a FACT from BM? I ask because Matrox says 10bit output for years, and it's capable of 10bit output, but can't get a signal from MAC. How does BM do this then?

[Nick Pasquariello]

I'll also plug the Flanders Scientific monitors; the cost/performance ratio is astounding.

As I'm just getting into color grading, I'm finding that the basics of each program are, really, the same. It's more important to learn the essentials/principles of grading itself, than to learn the software involved.

I haven't had a chance to try Speedgrade yet, but Resolve is really slick. Comparing it to Apple Color feels like comparing a Ferrari to a Model T. From what I hear, Speedgrade is on the same plane as Resolve.

So, I recommend getting as far as you can using the basic filters in Premiere (3-way, levels, etc.). If you find yourself wishing you had more/finer/deeper control, then try both Speedgrade and Resolve. You'll probably quickly find that you prefer one over the other.

And, since Resolve Lite is free, and Speedgrade comes with CS6, you really have nothing to lose.

[jake blackstone]

That would be a big reason for me to switch from Matrox I/O to BM and their I/O then....this is actually a FACT from BM? I ask because Matrox says 10bit output for years, and it's capable of 10bit output, but can't get a signal from MAC. How does BM do this then?

Resolve doesn't use system graphics card for video display, which indeed is only capable of 8 bit on a Mac. Matrox uses video from system graphics display, hence, even if device is capable to work in 10 bit, it doesn't matter- the result is still 8 bit. BM uses it's own graphics display card- Decklink, which is capable of 10 bit. System GPUs are only used for the nodes processing.
Speedgrade doesn't use Decklink or AJA card for output, it only uses system GPU for display. And because of this, it is only capable of 8 bit monitoring.

[Will Keir]

So how do you get 10 bit monitoring on a Mac Pro tower?

8 bit vs 10 bit, what's the real difference and is it worth the extra hardware? Is 10 bit color 10x better than 8 bit or are the differences negligible?

Resolve doesn't use system graphics card for video display, which indeed is only capable of 8 bit on a Mac. Matrox uses video from system graphics display, hence, even if device is capable to work in 10 bit, it doesn't matter- the result is still 8 bit. BM uses it's own graphics display card- Decklink, which is capable of 10 bit. System GPUs are only used for the nodes processing.
Speedgrade doesn't use Decklink or AJA card for output, it only uses system GPU for display. And because of this, it is only capable of 8 bit monitoring.

[Will Keir]

8 bits (256 colors)





24 bits (16,777,216 colors, "truecolor")

[Manuel López Pérez]

[QUOTE/
8 bits (256 colors)
/QUOTE]

This is not correct: 8 bits here are 8 bits per color channel= millions, and 10 bits are 10 bits per color= trillions

[Mike Smith]

Yes, that's right. 8 bits per channel works out as the 16,777,216 colors you mention in the lower photo (256*256*256). 10 bits per channel is an extra 6 bits total. or 64 times the number of possible colors (to answer your previous question - although that's just over a billion colors, not trillions ;-)). Of course you won't see a difference between a 24-bit photo and a 30-bit version of that photo on a regular 8-bit per channel computer monitor.

[jake blackstone]

So how do you get 10 bit monitoring on a Mac Pro tower?

Blackmagic or Aja card.