Re: Lament that Color is a "destructive" process

I just finished grading a short documentary series for Discovery in Europe. It was my first work on Color and at first I had real problems to get started. It took me almost 3 days to finish a 25 minute program. After that I got mad and returned to FC and used the MB filters. Sure, it was easier and quicker to apply those filters than grade in Color but after a while I noticed that the filter didnt allow me to do everything that I wanted.

I worked with a newbie production house and unfortunately the edit I was coloring wasnt always locked. It was a big pain but it was Color that actually helped me out. Sure it doesnt have scene detection but all I got from the editor was a single self contained mov file. No edl's and like that. I sliced it up in FC and sent the whole thing to Color (easier than slicing in Color ;)). When a shot was changed I imported the shot into Color, graded it and exported. Then I put it back on the FC timeline and voila.

Sure, you could do all the things Color does in FC... but you would need many tracks, many filters and it wouldnt be pleasant. I even tried to scroll trough the timeline in FC using the third mouse button ;) Plus Color has way better scopes.

All in all Color is a great app but you have to know when to use it. If its simple color correction or very simple grades and it has to be fast and cheap then stick to 3-way in FC. But if you have more time and you want to have some fun and experiment with the shot then move to Color.



Wojtek Jezowski