Colo(u)r just not there yet
by Toby Angwin
on
May 26, 2007 at 10:53:51 am
Well I've just got FCS2 ad installed it on both my MacBook Pro (2.33GHz 2Gb) and my G5 (Dual 2.7 5GB RAM Nvidia 6800 Ultra) and while everything else is great. I wish they had left Colour for next years NAB or IBC as it has SO far to go to be usable.
Th UI is just messy and poorly thought through. I know Shake didn't have a UI overhaul when it moved to Apple but that's because it didn't need it. You should be able to run this app properly on one 23 inch display at least. Having the seperate tab for doing geometry instead of being able to do it all in the viewer is pretty ordinary too.
I understand that the FT team preferred ATI cards but I can do realtime CC in both FCP and Motion in float or at least 10 bit on the G5 and the MacBook. The lack of graphics card support should have been fixed before release.
Also, not having a software render engine kind of makes the render queue redundant doesn't it. I mean, if you have to stop working to render, what's the point. If you're going to lunch or home for the night, apart from chosing the shot order, what does it do for you over hitting a 'Render All' button. Also Colours rendering is too slow to be worth using professionally yet. You would be better offin using Motion.
So far the only thing Colour has over FCP is grading curves.
I'm just hoping that Colour 1.o is like DVDSP 1.0 and it will be a completely different and infinitely better app this time next year.
Re: Colo(u)r just not there yet by Floh on May 26, 2007 at 11:46:39 am
[Toby Angwin]"Th UI is just messy and poorly thought through. I know Shake didn't have a UI overhaul when it moved to Apple but that's because it didn't need it. You should be able to run this app properly on one 23 inch display at least."
Re: Colo(u)r just not there yet by walter biscardi on May 26, 2007 at 12:24:18 pm
[Floh]"[Toby Angwin] "Also Colours rendering is too slow to be worth using professionally yet. You would be better offin using Motion."
You cannot Colorcorrect in motion the same way you can do in Color."
Totally missed that comment. Absolutely correct Floh, Color is strictly a color grading tool. If you want to color in Motion because you're comfortable there, fine, but that's a toy compared to what Color does.
Obviously Toby has not really taken the time to use the app and is just going on first impressions. My first impressions were along the same line of Toby, but then Bob Sliga came in to do our training and in just 10 minutes, I knew that this was a huge deal on the Mac.
If daVinci artists are now using Color, that tells you the power of the tool.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.
All Things Apple Podcast! http://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Re: Colo(u)r just not there yet by walter biscardi on May 26, 2007 at 12:21:48 pm
[Toby Angwin]"Th UI is just messy and poorly thought through."
Actually it's one of the best thought out interfaces I've used. It's perfectly set up for grading. It's a completely different interface than all the other Pro Apps, but that's fine by me. I don't think they really need to touch it that much at all, especially the color of it.
[Toby Angwin]"You should be able to run this app properly on one 23 inch display at least."
No you shouldn't. Too much information for one screen. I much prefer operating this on two screens. There is a single screen option in there but it squashes some stuff down and is just there really to do a training session.
[Toby Angwin]"Also Colours rendering is too slow to be worth using professionally yet. You would be better offin using Motion."
In my previous experience, Final Touch HD rendered about 10-25% faster than Final Cut Pro when rendering out a 22 minute show. In addition, after I completed 2 shows, I could grade an entire episode in about 90 minutes or less thanks to all the saved grades which was a huge savings over the time in FCP.
[Toby Angwin]"So far the only thing Colour has over FCP is grading curves."
And the 8 secondaries, the ColorFX Room, the HSL sliders and quite a bit more.
Yes Color has faults, but nothing you've listed here is an issue.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.
All Things Apple Podcast! http://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Re: Colo(u)r just not there yet by Toby Angwin on May 26, 2007 at 1:44:35 pm
Hi All,
I should have mentioned that I am grateful for Colours inclusion in FCS, I was just hoping for some improvements over FT. I will also admit that I was never too wowed with FT, perhaps because of my prior experience with higher end systems that were a few years more mature development wise. But I was thrilled when Apple bought it and I DO have high hopes for the its future.
In regards to my comment about motion, I was just pointing out that you can do the same kind of operations in Motion at the same bit-depth and they render faster and more importantly, they work at all bit depths on the nvidia 6800 Ultra. Now all Colour is doing in terms of grading is pushing look-up tables around and doing it in open-GL in the gpu. This isn't really that intensive and should be easy to achieve on any graphics card with the requisite amount of speed and ram. I'm not talking about realtime secondaries or geometry, just simple primary grading.
In terms of the UI, you would hope that it was perfectly set up for grading given that is its purpose however both Nucoda Film Master and Autodesk Lustre can run on single screens without problems. I have worked with both of them in that configuration and neither of them sacrifices usability. In fact in some areas it enhances it. The separate room for geometry in Colour is a good case in point. You could do away with it altogether if you could use the main picture window to draw your shapes/vignettes etc. Drawing shapes and having to look over to your left to see the result is just poor design. I am an Apple fanatic through and through and given their price I'm not suggesting either Lustre or Film Master as an alternative to Colour but if you can, go get a demo to see what I'm on about. Ultimately though I am willing to admit that this is a personal preference and based solely on my own experiences with DI systems.
[walter biscardi]"And the 8 secondaries, the ColorFX Room, the HSL sliders and quite a bit more." Um fcp has secondaries, it's just called limit effect in the CC. Colour does have a more dedicated implementation but you kind of expect that in a Grading package. The ColorFX room is generally called Video Filters and HSL can sometimes be known as HSV and can be found in the Image Control section of Video Effects. The lack of any curves and the fact that FCP STILL doesn't have bezier masks is pretty criminal I'll grant you that.
Also Walter, I didn't mention the colour of it at all! lol
Re: Colo(u)r just not there yet by Michael Sandness on May 26, 2007 at 3:16:03 pm
I use Colo(U)r on a single 23" display. It's possible! You lose a couple scopes yet I dont care, I have external scopes. It gives a small display with two scopes. So I use the 3D scope and the parade.
Michael Sandness
Colorist-Finishing
Splice Here, Minneapolis MN
www.splicehere.tv
Re: Colo(u)r just not there yet by walter biscardi on May 26, 2007 at 3:52:27 pm
[Toby Angwin]"[walter biscardi] "And the 8 secondaries, the ColorFX Room, the HSL sliders and quite a bit more."
Um fcp has secondaries, it's just called limit effect in the CC."
Not even a close comparison. I do grading in FCP and you can't compare anything you do in FCP to what you do in Color.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.
All Things Apple Podcast! http://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
