I should clarify. Send to SpeedGrade does work, and is pretty foolproof. However, the way it works is not ideal for every project.
It renders your sequence out to DPX first, and sends that to SpeedGrade. So there's some waiting, and arguably a significant amount of disk space needlessly eaten up. Final Cut Send to Color outputs an XML, and then relinks your original footage in Color automagically. Using your original footage is the key here. Which is what using an EDL does and Dynamic Link would do.
And the EDL workflow in SG is pretty smooth after you get used to it. If your clips are not all in the same directory, the reel loading process will take you some time, but it's not too bad.
But getting your graded sequence from SpeedGrade back into Premiere is no picnic. Again, this was something FCP/Color handled for you. The only solutions I've been able to figure out so far:
A) Render, Reconstruct a timeline with your graded media in SG, Export EDL. But this is dependent on rendering with the "position in sequence" TC option, or adding the clip number to the head of the clip filenames. Rendering your clips with handles is out of the question here, too.
B) Render, Reconstruct your sequence in Premiere. Again dependent on sequence TC and/or clip order naming.
C) Render, Duplicate Premiere project, Relink to graded online media. This one is dependent on using the "source" TC option, and maintaining the original clip filenames. Seems like it could easily fall apart with duplicate timecodes, say from a DSLR, or if the clips lack unique filenames, like footage from Panasonic AVCHD cameras.
I am also stuck on the export options themselves. I'm using a 2 minute, 58 second long test sequence. Every clip is coming out as 2:58 long (the exact length of the sequence), where it will hold on the first frame of the clip until it gets to that clip's position in the timeline, then it will play through the clip, then it will hold on the last frame of the clip for the remainder of the 2:58.
I think I was able to solve this on the demo version, and get my renders to export at the proper clip length. Can't seem to remember the setting or whatever I used now that I've installed the full version.
Also can't figure out for the life of me how to add handles to the graded clips. That option is grayed out by default.
If anyone's curious, I've been making my way through the manual here on Adobe's site:
http://helpx.adobe.com/speedgrade/topics.html
But it is still kind of incomplete, and missing a lot of specifics.
I posted about SpeedGrade in another thread, and was also pointed to the old IRIDAS manual by the Adobe SG Engineering Manager / Founder of IRIDAS. Because this is Adobe, and if you have a technical problem, the friggin' project lead will track you down and answer you personally. :) You can find it here:
http://doc.iridas.com/index.php/Category:SpeedGrade
