Never a dull moment...
by Joseph Owens
on
Jun 26, 2009 at 6:20:15 pm
Its a bit like the old incorrect joke about hiring the "challenged" because they're so entertaining. Until it starts costing money, I suppose.
Would this application qualify as a particularly morbidly fascinating road accident? I think so.
Sometimes its fun to toss meat into the piranha tank, sometimes not. For example, unwanted, that is: disabled and not just challenged, secondaries that get rendered in anyway, but minus most of their components, grades randomly sprinkled throughout a recovered project, radial interpolation that goes off the map, constantly constantly constantly crashing surfaces (but only with one particular action, so it will not be fixed), gamma conflicts, massive preparation times, followed by massive render times, followed by massive reconforms, incompatible formats, codecs, frame rates, corrupted filters, geometry, noise, .... but this is tiresome. Or is it "HD"?
The truly sad thing about all this is that it can be said largely about any software solution, running on any platform for any price, whether its "free" with a $1200 "studio suite" or a $120,000 application-only site license (and after that, you need to buy the proprietary hardware that goes with it).
We're in a progress trap. Video is "off" the dedicated hardware platforms -- they were too expensive, too vulnerable to obsolescence. But now everyone expects the filet-in-a-vintage-port-reduction at taco prices. But funny how the cow at that price tastes a little bit odd. Not a problem?
Re: Never a dull moment... by Shane Ross on Jun 27, 2009 at 12:41:30 am
I tell you, given all the prep time I have to do...especially with mixed formats and speed changes and all that, I swear I will return to using Colorista. This way I can stay in FCP and do what I need in there. And I have a lot of control...not all the functionality of Color, but less maddening at times. But I chalk that up to my inexperience with Color. Has Color crashed on me with a deadline? No. But render times take a while....but they will if I use Colorista too.
I don't know...this was a pretty expensive piece of software when it was stand alone. What was the HD version? $8000? What gets me is that now it is cheap...ie FREE...total beginners tackle it and complain that it is too hard.
But, I haven't had any major complaints, other than all that prep I need to do. That is a pain.
Re: Never a dull moment... by Patrick Inhofer on Jun 27, 2009 at 3:07:08 pm
jPo,
I hear you brother!
OTOneH, Color completely reinvigorated my career. Color correction with the 3WCC or Colorista is fine. Color allows us to go so far beyond that. I love nothing more than having a wary DP turn into my best friend after 2 hours in a Color session.
OTOtherH, the workflow is a complete nightmare. If the next release of FCS doesn't significantly address these issues I'm going to start looking at alternate solutions. I've just spent 2 FULL DAYS prepping an admittingly complex timeline. I've got to hunt and peck for every format, frame rate, filter, motion effect. Sure there are tools to help us FIND these things but almost nothing to help us MANIPULATE and control these things en masse.
Then there are the XMLs that FCP can't even round-trip to itself (simple Export followed by import results in a dozen error messages but no way to find those clips in a painless manner), much less through Color or some other 3rd party app.
Where all these "Studio" solutions fail is in their cobbled togetherness. One of the the "A's" needs to step up and completely redefine their solutions into being a TIMELINE around which the interface changes. We should have a single app, with a single timeline, and depending on our mission the interface mutates around it.
Anyway - you found me at a good/bad time. I'm in here on a Saturday to make up for the 2 days I lost prepping a complex timeline that was really decently cleaned up by the client. It's not like they screwed up - it's just the Promised Land of a multiformat timeline has become a Fool's Gold because no one thought to give us the tools to manage that complexity. Well, at least with FCS3 they won't be able to say they didn't have 2 years to figure it out (and counting).
- pi, getting down to finally color correcting, but thinking long term
Re: Never a dull moment... by walter biscardi on Jun 27, 2009 at 3:22:59 pm
[Patrick Inhofer]"OTOtherH, the workflow is a complete nightmare. If the next release of FCS doesn't significantly address these issues I'm going to start looking at alternate solutions. I've just spent 2 FULL DAYS prepping an admittingly complex timeline. I've got to hunt and peck for every format, frame rate, filter, motion effect. Sure there are tools to help us FIND these things but almost nothing to help us MANIPULATE and control these things en masse. "
I take care of this with by simply applying color labels to clips that require attention before sending to Color. All the Green clips in my timeline are speed changed for example. So all I have to do is look at the timeline and I can see all the clips that are speed changed and need to exported and reimported before going to Color. If there are a whole series of speed changed clips, I can just select all of them, paste them into a new timeline and export them as one clip, and then just use the Replace Edit command in FCP to replace the individual clips pretty quickly.
This requires effort on the operator's part to actually label the stuff, but if you do it as you insert the clips, then most of the searching work is done for you.
Yep, the workflow can be daunting, but if I can work with Good Eats in Final Touch, now Color, then I can work with pretty much anything in there. There's not much of anything that Final Touch / Color doesn't like that's not used in that show.
At the moment I've learned to accept the "issues" in Color in exchange for the quality of the end product this software brings to our final projects. My other editor is now using Color exclusively on a series of environmental stories that we never took into Color before because he's found it so easy to do the round trip. Over 40 news stories through Color this year already and I've delivered over 100 broadcast HD masters using Final Touch / Color since we started using it.
The way I look at it, color enhancement is not something I would have really considered in my shop prior to Final Touch. It has added another revenue stream to my facility at very little cost to me. When Apple re-branded it, I went from one license for $5,000 to three licenses for the upgrade cost of all three suites. For me, the end result from Color far outweigh the amount of work required to get a show into the application.
I personally will not consider any other high end color grading tool because it's not something that fits our business model and it would take me considerable time to get a return on investment since we don't run one dedicated color enhancement suite.
I would like to see Color add the ability to read still images / graphics in the timeline, Animation codec files and a limited amount of mixed formats in the same timeline. I understand that because of the way FCP itself creates slo-mo, that may be a hard feature to incorporate into Color, but it would be nice if Color supported that on the round trip too. I'm fine with all the codecs currently supported and don't see the need to add too many more to that list.
I guess we must be lucky in our shop because we rarely see many of the issues mentioned in this forum, but then we only work with very limited formats in Color as they seem to work the best. Namely uncompressed and ProRes.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Never a dull moment... by Patrick Inhofer on Jun 27, 2009 at 3:47:26 pm
Walter,
Yup - thanks for adding to the list of more issues we all have to deal with, still frames and freeze frames.
Yup, again - I do the labeling with color thing in FCP. Is it helpful? Yes. How about doing a Find All based on frame size, then they all get automatically selected and the Cut and Paste becomes stupid simple? Or how about doing a Find on all clips with the 3WCC?
Unlike you Walter, I rarely see a project from start to finish. I'm always picking up at the tail end of other projects (which is 80% of my business - by design) and you'd be amazed at the ways people work. This week all I wanted to do was replace a Tint filter that the client used to go B&W (which Color *doesn't* recognize) and replace it with a 3WCC that does the same thing (which Color *does* see). No go. FCP mangled the XML roundtrip sufficiently that a trip into BBEdit to do a simple Find & Replace in the XML did more damage than good.
This type of stuff happens ALL the time...
And it doesn't have to be. Yet I cut Color tons 'o slack because I've built a business just on that app and it's fantastic. But I have to endure a serious amount of pain to make it work.
After 2 years (actually, 3 years if you include the Final Touch year) I expect the doctor will have found a prescription for this pain. If not... like I said, my head will start swiveling looking for a new team of physicians.
Re: Never a dull moment... by walter biscardi on Jun 27, 2009 at 8:37:05 pm
[Patrick Inhofer]"and you'd be amazed at the ways people work. "
It's hard to surprise me anymore. The more lazy or un-educated someone is about an NLE workflow, the worse it is.
That's why we only offer hourly rates for anything not started in our shop. Like you, most of the initial time is spent deciphering what they've actually done and fixing their errors before we can even get started with what we were hired to do.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Never a dull moment... by nick hasson on Jun 27, 2009 at 9:05:43 pm
I have yet to understand why we cant just export a qt movie in the codec of your choice. Import that into color and then use an edl to cut in up and give us the events. I have been doing some things on da vinci rersolve this way and it is great. I know that it is a VERY expensive system, but it seems this would be easy for color to do. Just apply the color on top of the qt.
I digress.....
Nick Hasson
Editor/coloirist
www.niceedits.com
Smoke/FCP/Apple Color.
Re: Never a dull moment... by Mike Most on Jun 28, 2009 at 1:53:15 am
That's being very generous. I would say that once acquired by Apple, it was restricted to Apple's proprietary codecs only (the version of DVCProHD on the Mac was written by Apple), with all third party codecs cut out of the equation.
Re: Never a dull moment... by walter biscardi on Jun 28, 2009 at 2:18:11 am
[Mike Most]"That's being very generous. I would say that once acquired by Apple, it was restricted to Apple's proprietary codecs only (the version of DVCProHD on the Mac was written by Apple), with all third party codecs cut out of the equation. "
And? How many of Apple's codecs does Avid, Quantel, and the other NLE's support?
I can play and even edit Avid DNxHD codec files in FCP, convert them to ProRes, send them to Color and even convert them back to Avid DNxHD if the client wants. There's workarounds to everything.
I'm hopeful that the next release of FCP / Color will accept the native P2 formats so we don't have to do the whole Log and Transfer deal and just import them directly from the drives.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Never a dull moment... by Mike Most on Jun 28, 2009 at 5:43:43 pm
>How many of Apple's codecs does Avid, Quantel, and the other NLE's support?
None, because Apple won't release them on any platform other than OS X. So Quantel (which is on Windows), Avid (which needs cross platform support), and, for that matter Sony Vegas (also on Windows) couldn't use Pro Res even if they wanted to. As for FCP understanding DNxHD QT's, that's because Avid - who you're unintentionally criticizing - wrote those codecs specifically to accommodate Apple's Quicktime format, not vice versa.
However, this is all getting a bit silly. I'm sorry I brought it up.
Re: Never a dull moment... by Andrew Kimery on Jun 27, 2009 at 9:29:19 pm
I have a love/hate relationship w/Color as well, but doesn't everyone? I liken it to taking a vacation to an exotic location halfway around the world. The traveling back and forth is a royal pain but while you are there it's pretty sweet.
I can't really say anything that hasn't already been said though.
I'm kinda halfway between Walter and Patrick in terms of being able to control my environment, if you will. The shooting, editing, and color correction all happens under one roof typically so I can provide input and lay out some 'best practices' guidelines which has really helped cut down on my prep time. On the other hand though there are still things beyond my control that limit my ability to provide a smooth path in to and out of Color.
As far as people expecting a nice steak for the price of a happy meal because the gear is dropping in price... Color correction is just the latest niche in the industry to undergo a desktop revolution. There are pro's and con's to it but it's happening so there's no use to curse the darkness, IMO. While there are people that are pissed when told they can't properly use Color on their 2 year old iMac, there are also people that genuinely do want to learn the art of grading and are willing to spend the effort, time and money to do it right.
Re: Never a dull moment... by Robbie Carman on Jun 28, 2009 at 10:30:38 pm
Thought I'd put in my two cents.
First, I try where ever possible NOT to do any prep to a FCP sequence. And if I have to do prep you better be sure I charge for it. We have produced a PDF and short video that we distribute to clients describing how to prep their sequences for FCP including rendering out self-contained QTs, media managing a project. Other things we discuss are how to handle things like composites, text, slow-mo etc. I put the onus on the client to prepare things, they're not coming to me for my prep skills their coming to me for my color/creative skills. This why my companies moto is Relate • Educate • Create. We help our clients figure out what the best workflow for their project is, we educate them to handle technical issues, and then we create what they want
Secondly, I think people forget a lot about a very simple workflow for preparing sequences that have a billion unsupported features, effects. We have suggested this workflow to several broadcast clients who don't want to prep.
Simply export a self contained QT of the show > import back in to FCP and place on the highest track in the sequence. Use the blade tool or add edit to add edit points, drag transitions on to cut points where appropriate so you'll have handles and overlap in Color. When you done delete the original footage and send this single track to color. You might have to do some minor keyframing between shots and the biggest bummer for sure is you can't use groups to group clips because everything is called the same thing but it works. Alternatively, you could invest in EDL Mirror to auto notch the project.
Five or 6 days a week I'm grading shows with clients with whom we've educated about prepping projects and rarely do I run into major issues. The only major issue is that of a re-conform but there are workarounds for that.
To be honest I'm really sick and tired of the price war/class of system talk that predominates this forum sometimes. If you don't like the tool, find a new one that best suites you. Because you can't afford the Pablo or Lustre doesn't mean that all you should do is bash Color, it just means you need to save up for those systems if you feel they best fit your needs. Truly, call a Quantel, or Discreet sales person and they'll arrange for you to get to know the system (they really need people to buy systems these days). In fact we just evaluated a Pablo for a few days without buying anything but paid for training on the system to see if it would fit us, it was money well spent even though we felt the features didn't justify the cost.
Finally, I think all of us have a thing or two to learn about valuing time. If a client brings a project to you that will require days of prep instead of just doing the prep and then having to suck it up on the back end talk them first. I've been amazed by being transparent with clients about overages that they usually have no problem paying or adjusting - maybe just weird luck. The point is all of us should be charging in some capacity for time we spend working on project including prep. Sure your client will push back, but that precisely why I invested in the time in producing documentation and training FOR our clients on how to do the things that are time consuming and ultimately cost them money if I did it for them.
Robbie
Robbie Carman
----------------
Colorist and Author
Re: Never a dull moment... by Arnie Schlissel on Jun 29, 2009 at 5:24:56 am
I have to say that Color has a lot of potential, but it's still pretty rough around the edges.
It may have the worst file dialogs I've ever seen. It doesn't use the Mac OS file dialog, it doesn't remember the last directory you've been in, It has no bookmarks.
Really? I need to completely retrace my navigation path every time I need to open, import, export a grade or direct where a still or render goes? You're kidding me, right?
No keyframes for curves? What's up with that? I mean, I know that we're encouraged to use a trackball control surface, but does this mean they should cripple the curves? Perhaps if I had a control surface, I wouldn't care, but I use the curves a lot, and if I need to ramp a change to anything in the primaries, then I'm forced into a different method.
Don't get me wrong, I love working with Color. And except for the file dialogs, I actually like the UI. It's tight and focused on what the program actually is designed to do.
In terms of speed changes, mixed codecs & frame sizes... where to start! FCP has been known to take issue with speed changes when trying to online a show. There are documented work arounds for this. I'm not surprised that Color should inherit the same issue.
It's clear to me that we're supposed to do our conform in FCP. Fine, it's a great tool for that. But as pointed out above, there could be workflow enhancements to make that easier.
BTW, I love Patrick's suggestion about unifying the suite around the timeline.
Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
http://www.arniepix.com/
