Final Cut Studio: Color

[Dan Goulder]

Is anyone here familiar with the Final Touch color program? Do you know if that program, or the new Apple release of Color, has any sort of settings that give you a "neutral" point of reference. In other words, is there any way of knowing when you're "in the ballpark" in terms of "proper" color balance? Is it simply a matter of finding some white surface in a scene, and thus using it for balance, or what?

Thanks.

[timHealy]

I am getting really sick of hearing this same thing over and over again.

 

Honestly, should students and other nonprofessionals just not bother to even attempt anything unless we hire a professional? i.e. edit, shoot, sound...

 

I am really excited about the new edition of Final Cut Studio especially for Color. I hope I can afford it.

 

(Ok, and understand how to use it)

 

Patrick,

 

People say this because it is simply true. I am fortunate that I have four friends from college who are colorists in LA that I try and sit down with them at work everytime I am in town and can see what they can and cannot do. It is also a craft that they practice on a daily basis typically 12 hours a day. Anyone who does anything for 12 hours a day is going to be good at whatever it is that they do.

 

But their work is also better because they are using technology your average at home desktop NLE cannot match.

 

Having said all that I agree with Phil that people in the post world do put colorists up there on a pedestal that I cannot comprehend. It is almost like they are higher in the film food chain than DP's.

 

And having said all that I will probably get FCS 6 becasue of Color and do what I can with it and you should to. And if you ever get the chance to sit in with a colorist do so. Maybe you can call or write to a post house and explain you are a student and would love a tour. Someone will have a sympathetic ear. If you can, try NY or LA at a place where they do a lot of music videos or commericals.

 

Best

 

Tim

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

I'd be lost in a typical color-correction suite if left alone in there, and I don't feel its worth my time as a DP to master a DaVinci console if I'm only going to be visiting one four times a year as a feature DP.

 

I know I got a little lost in a recent telecine session. The colorist's interaction with his interface and lightning speed with the keys...I was in awe sometimes.

 

What took him 45 minutes to achieve, would have easily taken me about 3 hours or so. And I doubt I would have done it as well.

[Alexander Joyce]

I am getting really sick of hearing this same thing over and over again.

 

Honestly, should students and other nonprofessionals just not bother to even attempt anything unless we hire a professional? i.e. edit, shoot, sound...

 

I think one really should try and get to learn these tools so one knows what the colourist is doing and can give more valuable feedback to that person, but one should accept the fact that somone who practices a craft day in and day out ought to be very good at what they do.

It's kind of like having directors constantly go for the camera. They might like to have that control over the visual aspect also, but they do have to accept that it's not their craft.

[Keith Mottram]

Is anyone here familiar with the Final Touch color program? Do you know if that program, or the new Apple release of Color, has any sort of settings that give you a "neutral" point of reference. In other words, is there any way of knowing when you're "in the ballpark" in terms of "proper" color balance? Is it simply a matter of finding some white surface in a scene, and thus using it for balance, or what?

Thanks.

 

 

Hi,

 

Final Touch was one of the best colour correction programmes available at any price- and when i say this i include lustre etc. there were just a couple of issues. unfortunately these 'issues' were rather large problems in a proffesional production. the biggest was real time functunality- the product was supposed to be completely real time, but even without multiple grades and with the best recommended hardware i never saw it get past an uneven 18fps. the second was colour accuracy, this was and still is a problem with all non propriety apple software- you set one colour to render and it renders something else, this was even more of a nightmare with saved 'guide' grades which could shift. finally there was many other little bugs particularly over in and out from fcp. i never used the 2k version but it had a similar list of problems. i witnessed the full gamut of pleasure and pain of final touch hd and it was used to grade all twelve episodes of live from abbey road. all i can say is that if apple can iron out these bugs (and there is no reason that they shouldn't as so many of them related to fcp and quicktime compatability) then color will become the di/ digital colour correction market leader in a very short amount of time and hit quantel, discreet etc very hard. you will of course need to be as good a colourist to get the results from one to another and rententing decent monitors are expensive, plus a decent control surface runs into the thousands. but the potential of this product is enough to make me...well you get the idea.

 

keith

[Tenolian Bell]

Actually, the original version was developed for both the Mac and SGI. The SGI version was designed to process up to 4K, if you were willing to invest in multiple Onyx 4's.

 

Ah, I didn't know that. But it makes sense as the Onyx was used for super computing. I first learned of Final Touch at the 2005 NAB. It was hailed for providing real time color grading in HD for Final Cut Pro.

 

From what I understand SGI has had serious problems over the past 10 years because desktop workstations have not been far behind in performance with significantly lower price than what SGI was providing. With Intel providing 8 - 3Ghz processors I'm sure adds a lot of pressure on SGI's business model and its ability to survive.

 

This is one reason the program looks like something designed for Irix/XWindows (because it was developed on Irix)

 

Silicon Color made the right decision to go with OS X development. There are now over 800,000 Final Cut users and Irix has been discontinued.

 

Trying to take a LUT defined for someone else's camera, someone else's production design and lighting, someone else's post and recording systems, etc, and apply it to your material is extremely difficult, even if you know what you're doing somewhat.

 

I agree, but common sense won't stop people from doing it.

 

I think one really should try and get to learn these tools so one knows what the colourist is doing and can give more valuable feedback to that person

 

Its definitely important to go into a grading session knowing what you want the final look to be. Its the colorists job to help achieve that look and not figure it out for you.

[Patrick McGowan]

What I was trying to say is obviously my color correcting is not going to be nearly as accurate or skilled as a colorist, I can't even fathom half of the information they know about! But the same can be said for my cinematography compared to a professional, I am not nearly as skilled, but that doesn't mean I am going to give up trying!

 

I just think it is really amazing that this kind of tool which was originally only reserved for well... the people who know how to use it... is available to us "common people." Really, I mean I've been trying to learn as much as possible about the digital Intermediate process (and I don't really know anything about it of course.) It is really just fascinating to me. And no I am not some random kid that wants to "direct little movies and play with the colors" it is something that I've had a genuine interest in for a few years now. I wish it could be my job... but that's probably not gonna happen.

[Robert Houllahan]

Hi,

 

Final Touch was one of the best colour correction programmes available at any price- and when i say this i include lustre etc. there were just a couple of issues. unfortunately these 'issues' were rather large problems in a proffesional production. the biggest was real time functunality- the product was supposed to be completely real time, but even without multiple grades and with the best recommended hardware i never saw it get past an uneven 18fps. the second was colour accuracy

keith

 

 

I grade film on a regular basis at Cine on a Real time CC ( a Copernicus) and I have run a DaVinci 2K and a Pogle Platinum to grade work I have shot, and worked with a Baselight 4 for an extended time period, I think my experience is a little weird industry wise. I personally cannot stress how important a tactile surface and real time feedback is to this work, I think any Colorist will tell you the same thing it is very reactive work and having to wait for the machine is a real downer. Furthermore I think that any skilled colorist will just ignore a system that is workflow disfunctional and client based work will not flow on a system without performance. I also have heard that Final Touch is certainly a clunky interface compared to Baselight, Lustre, Nucoda, etc.

 

That said i think the addition of a JL-Cooper panel and a decent monitor to a 8core mac can make a fine secondary CC system and aid editors in finishing their work with a better touch but you have to spend the funds to properly equip the editor, it will still not be a finishing system though.

 

Secondarily I have camera gear and shoot on a regular basis and I think I compartmentalize my mind a bit for where I am and what I am doing. I am, and have been, shooting a feature in a mix Super16 and 35mm around 300 rolls of film, blah, blah. My point is that while I could shoot/grade the film either at my facility or at another in NYC I feel it's not really a good idea for the DP of a show to grade it even if said person has the experience and technical knowledge to do both. The picture in NY I am shooting is being graded at Moving Images post in NYC and we have a great colorist, Eric, who does allot of MV and Spot work and he is really psyched to work on a feature. I think the interaction between the Colorist, Director and DP is a valuable collaboration and increases the value of the work being done and at the best what you get out of this is so much more than a one man band approach.

 

-Rob-

[Tenolian Bell]

I just think it is really amazing that this kind of tool which was originally only reserved for well... the people who know how to use it... is available to us "common people."

 

To do this most effectively it helps to understand the science of color: luminance, chrominance, and hue. An understanding of the theory of color and how color is represented by different visual mediums. To then use color as an effective storytelling tool.

 

 

Greyscale, the ability of a medium to reproduce white to black. In the digital world this is determined by bit depth.

 

 

8 bit color

 

 

16 bit color

 

 

White light comes from additive color of RGB. The middle colors Yellow, Cyan, Magenta are secondary colors that come from the mixture of RGB.

 

Film print works under the subtractive color model. When film print is being timed, the color grades use Yellow, Cyan, Magenta. Black is represented by K. CMYK color model.

 

 

The foundation of color science is the CIE 1931 Chromatcity Diagram.

 

 

Color gamut of Film, Wide Gamut RGB, and HDTV (Rec 709) on the CIE diagram.

 

 

3D color space which incorprates RGB color with white to black luminance.

[Robert Houllahan]

Check this out for another opinion about Color.

 

 

http://prolost.blogspot.com/2007/04/color-my-impression.html

 

 

-Rob-

[Keith Mottram]

I grade film on a regular basis at Cine on a Real time CC ( a Copernicus) and I have run a DaVinci 2K and a Pogle Platinum to grade work I have shot, and worked with a Baselight 4 for an extended time period, I think my experience is a little weird industry wise. I personally cannot stress how important a tactile surface and real time feedback is to this work, I think any Colorist will tell you the same thing it is very reactive work and having to wait for the machine is a real downer. Furthermore I think that any skilled colorist will just ignore a system that is workflow disfunctional and client based work will not flow on a system without performance. I also have heard that Final Touch is certainly a clunky interface compared to Baselight, Lustre, Nucoda, etc.

 

That said i think the addition of a JL-Cooper panel and a decent monitor to a 8core mac can make a fine secondary CC system and aid editors in finishing their work with a better touch but you have to spend the funds to properly equip the editor, it will still not be a finishing system though.

 

Secondarily I have camera gear and shoot on a regular basis and I think I compartmentalize my mind a bit for where I am and what I am doing. I am, and have been, shooting a feature in a mix Super16 and 35mm around 300 rolls of film, blah, blah. My point is that while I could shoot/grade the film either at my facility or at another in NYC I feel it's not really a good idea for the DP of a show to grade it even if said person has the experience and technical knowledge to do both. The picture in NY I am shooting is being graded at Moving Images post in NYC and we have a great colorist, Eric, who does allot of MV and Spot work and he is really psyched to work on a feature. I think the interaction between the Colorist, Director and DP is a valuable collaboration and increases the value of the work being done and at the best what you get out of this is so much more than a one man band approach.

 

-Rob-

 

Hi Rob,

 

I stand by my original post, which if quoted in full (you unfortunately quoted only a section and left my name at the bottom implying this was my entire post) mentioned the need for decent monitoring and control surface (and in my opinion a tangent is better than a jl-cooper- why do you prefer the latter?). I didn't think i implyed that this would make all editors colourist and as anything else the tool is only worth as much as the colourist's skill. i also pointed out that real time was one of final touch's major flaws. i think you will be surprised at how good this system is when it runs realtime and compared to other systems, bugs aside, it is in my opinion no more clunky than some of the 'majors' (which also from my limited experience are frequently flawed programmes- i once waited half a day for a baselight to restart!). as for using it as a finishing system why not exactly? technically it performs as high as any of the systems you mentioned in terms of colour space why is a $250000 non destructive color system more accurate than a $1200 non destructive colour system? if it can perform in real time and all the bugs are sorted out i see no reason why it shouldn't be compared to the other systems you mention- and some functions are available on color that are not on others (and vice versa). i understand your hesitation though as i was burned when i first sampled fcp and it wasn't until version four that i switched from avid. now fcp is my editor of choice for both short and longform no matter what the project. multicam was the only function i missed from avid and now fcp does that i will argue till i'm blue in the face that fcp is a superior editing choice. as color is effectively final touch v3 it should be on its way to being a 'giant' killer. i am not saying that every editor is colourist, but i am saying there will be a time soon where some of the best colourists will be regularly choosing color possibly over other systems and there will also be a lot of post houses very depressed about there expensive investments (as there are already over those who splashed out $25000 on final touch 2k license). afterall if apple had bought baselight and bundled that in would this still be a discussion?

 

keith

[Keith Mottram]

real time

 

noticed this on the apple site, will have to play with it myself to see how well this works, but it appears that realtime is not too far away... me thinks a nice 8 core would help though!

 

keith

[Phil Rhodes]

> i once waited half a day for a baselight to restart!

 

Then there was something horrendously wrong with it!

 

> as for using it as a finishing system why not exactly?

 

No reason I'm aware of.

 

> why is a $250000 non destructive color system more accurate than a $1200 non destructive colour system?

 

It isn't, or at least not necessarily. 1+1 is still 1+1 (or 1^1, or 1*1, to cover the basic primary grading operations!)

 

The situation - and I say this without implication of prejudice or politics - with the very high end gear is that the gap between it and the desktop gear is narrowing enormously.

 

Frankly I think this should improve things, because a larger userbase justifies greater development effort. You can put something like Baselight up on a pedestal, but when you look at the functinality (and again no offence to the guys at Filmlight many of whom I know personally and who are very great), compared to After Effects or Shake it's just nothing at all.

 

You're paying an awful lot of money for that small performance increase. And an 8-core Mac has exactly as many processors as many Baselight 4 clusters!

 

Phil

[jan von krogh]

none of the existing systems, including da vinci, lustre, poogle, baselight, color, whatever really is up to the task.

 

the requirements for a -really- universal DI coloring tool are

- good human interface (more than mouse)

- open architecture for i/o

- 4k and up

- XYZ, YUV, RGB colorspaces. lin and log.

- Sound

- realtime

- excellent secondaries

- multilayer

- compatibility with plugins

- 3D Tracking

- 2D tracking

- selection of chromakeying & cromablenders

- Motion Estimation

- Topend Rotoscoping

- background processing

- lots more.

 

as one can easily recognize, several of the points aren´t possible in the same time.

realtime is important. having atmosperic 3D light simulation as well.

both together aren´t possible as we don´t have enough computing power yet to do such in realtime.

however we have plugins which can do excellent light simulation.

 

take clouds in a sky - you can vignette them away or roto them out.

 

if you choose vignetting, you will loose detail in the sky.

you are fine with a RT system without roto

you will wait on the non-RT system with roto and setting the vignette will be less "jazzy".

if you choose roto, you´ll keep detail in the sky.

you have to interrupt the session on the RT system and send the shot to the VFX dept.

you are fine with a non-rt system with plugins. you will keep working without the VFX dept.

 

another example. clients wants "old film look"

- you can fullfill almost anything he wants with a plugin on the desktop system, cinelook as one example

- you stack up tons of dirt, dust, scratches, grainlayers, keyframe flicker and jumps in the rt system and it takes muuuch longer.

next shot clients now want to have the following 4 shots (which are pretty different) look integrated, strechted black contrast etc.

- now you´re in slowmo on the desktop system

- you are fast with the rt system

 

the different toolsets in the different systems all fullfill certain task better or worse.

different formats (longform fullfeature, commercial, documentary, clip, restauration/integration) require different toolkits.

 

so there is, sad enough, no "one fits it all" approach yet. a lustre can be as frustrating as as a combustion, its all in the shot at hands.

 

however, color will certainly allow many features who did grading in hurry a much more concentrated session as the $/h factor doesn´t need to be so high.

i think we might add it to our repertoire.

 

for me, as we have 2 red cameras on order, main setback in color is that it doesn´t do 4k.

[Robert Houllahan]

Hi Rob,

 

I stand by my original post, which if quoted in full (you unfortunately quoted only a section and left my name at the bottom implying this was my entire post) mentioned the need for decent monitoring and control surface (and in my opinion a tangent is better than a jl-cooper- why do you prefer the latter?). I didn't think i implyed that this would make all editors colourist and as anything else the tool is only worth as much as the colourist's skill. i also pointed out that real time was one of final touch's major flaws. i think you will be surprised at how good this system is when it runs realtime and compared to other systems, bugs aside, it is in my opinion no more clunky than some of the 'majors' (which also from my limited experience are frequently flawed programmes- i once waited half a day for a baselight to restart!). as for using it as a finishing system why not exactly? technically it performs as high as any of the systems you mentioned in terms of colour space why is a $250000 non destructive color system more accurate than a $1200 non destructive colour system? if it can perform in real time and all the bugs are sorted out i see no reason why it shouldn't be compared to the other systems you mention- and some functions are available on color that are not on others (and vice versa). i understand your hesitation though as i was burned when i first sampled fcp and it wasn't until version four that i switched from avid. now fcp is my editor of choice for both short and longform no matter what the project. multicam was the only function i missed from avid and now fcp does that i will argue till i'm blue in the face that fcp is a superior editing choice. as color is effectively final touch v3 it should be on its way to being a 'giant' killer. i am not saying that every editor is colourist, but i am saying there will be a time soon where some of the best colourists will be regularly choosing color possibly over other systems and there will also be a lot of post houses very depressed about there expensive investments (as there are already over those who splashed out $25000 on final touch 2k license). afterall if apple had bought baselight and bundled that in would this still be a discussion?

 

keith

 

 

I have no preference for the JL Cooper. It has a cheesey fake stone look which is almost laughable, the Tangent panels are much better but more expensive. I was suggesting that someone who has a Hi-End FCP system could add a simple panel and a OK grading monitor such as the $5k JVC LCD and for less than $10k have a system which has some capability to do color finish work for the "one man band" style edit, this may lead to better looking work.

 

The problem with the Tangent and certainly the JLCooper panels is that they are generic, I have spoken with people at both Assimilate and Iridas and both companies really would like custom panels like the bigger players. The reaction may be So What? who needs custom panels? however the reality is that if you cannot get to the tools quickly it makes this work much harder UI rules in grading.

 

Furthermore yes if Apple had bought FilmLight and made a free Baselight we might not be having a conversation here, but they did not. I have had experience with 2 of the 3 major systems that are a good alternative to a DaVinci 2K+ or Pogle Platinum, these are Baselight, Lustre and Nucoda of the three I have not seen Nucoda yet. These 3 systems do work in real time (Yes when they work they are complex) and when they run out of Juice they gracefully render and cache to maintain playback.

 

Both SpeedGrade and Scratch also do realtime work in a simpler kind of configuration (GPU single seat CPU) and i have had a Scratch system here and it works in real time for most things and also has good rendering when it runs out of steam. Both Scratch and Speedgrade and all of the other "Big Iron" high dollar software grading systems do work and allot of it in real time and with real time output to your grading monitor. It is very unclear if Color will produce any real time output to the grading monitor, you may be able to apply real time work but is it just to a little preview window on the control monitor? I do not know.

 

Believe me as a smaller facility looking at software grading systems Apple's Color seems very attractive at a distance, I am sure we will get a FC Studio 2 package this year and I will find out more. It also took Apple a decade to bring FCP to a spot where it is competitive as a editor so who knows where and on what timetable Color may get the same treatment.

 

-Rob-

[Robert Houllahan]

You're paying an awful lot of money for that small performance increase. And an 8-core Mac has exactly as many processors as many Baselight 4 clusters!

 

Phil

 

 

This is true and if they cannot get real time 2k performance out of this super powerhouse desktop machine there really is something wrong in the code of this software.

 

 

 

-Rob-

[Tenolian Bell]

The guy who wrote this ProLost blog needs to check out the Color website their is a lot of discrepancy between the ProLost blog and what Apple shows on its Color webpage.

 

"Color, when doing the kind of stuff that makes it worth using, is not real-time. Which, of course, is totally OK but what's not OK is that Color doesn't render any sort of interactive preview that you can view in the context of a session. To see your work play back smoothly, you must batch render and view the results in Final Cut! There's no concept of rendering an interactive preview to Color's own timeline."

 

The realtime video on Color's website shows a pre-rendered realtime preview. It shows the preview frame rate can be chaged for smoother playback and it shows rendering in Color before sending the video back to Final Cut Pro.

 

"Color should work just like Final Cut itself, with a bar above the timeline that shows what parts are rendered and available for real-time playback, and which parts have been edited and are therefore in need of a render."

 

The realtime video also shows this. A render bar above the clips, red for unrendered, green for rendered.

[Andres Pardo aka Gral Treegan]

Hi!

 

ok we have colour now! we have color finesse too (i like it a lot). the problem is that nobody tell the guys out there that in a laptop or a mac monitor youre not gonna see real colors unless you have a video card (like cinewave, aja kona etc) connected to a real monitor (not a tv)

bye!

Treegan

[Rolfe Klement]

I will be interested to see how the realtime works when working in 4:4:4 1080p. My mac grinds to halt as soon as I move to 4:2:2 (but my mac is oldish)

 

FCP + Color + Control Surface and 10 bit monitor (4:4:4) even a down conversion to SD CRT in realtime will be great!

 

Oh - and never buy version ONE of anything

 

thanks

 

Rolfe

[Keith Mottram]

I will be interested to see how the realtime works when working in 4:4:4 1080p. My mac grinds to halt as soon as I move to 4:2:2 (but my mac is oldish)

 

FCP + Color + Control Surface and 10 bit monitor (4:4:4) even a down conversion to SD CRT in realtime will be great!

 

Oh - and never buy version ONE of anything

 

thanks

 

Rolfe

 

Rolfe,

Color's performance is not just a matter of cpu or ram or even drive speeds (though all these things are important) but primarily the graphics card as this is the decisive factor for unrendered real time playback. color is also technically version 3 (ish) as it is a reworking of final touch which was on 2.7b when it went to apple.

keith