Will color work for my basic needs
by Johnny White
on
May 26, 2007 at 9:07:50 pm
Hi,
Still awaiting the arrival of my upgrade but it seems enough people have been using color to have an idea of its current limitations.
I'll need to grade 5 minute DV pal anamorphic pieces and possibly try grading a 1 hr 10bit uncompressed doc.( digibeta anamorphic) but mostly the DV pieces, if I avoid send to and export/import xml should this be ok?
no slow-mo.
running on a 2.5 G5 ppc with a 9800xt card.....
Re: Will color work for my basic needs by walter biscardi on May 26, 2007 at 9:23:10 pm
From the release notes:
Color does not support anamorphic display of standard definition media. Anamorphic media is displayed with a 4:3 aspect ratio regardless of the anamorphic settings in the originating Final Cut Pro sequence.
So no SD anamorphic at this time. What you really need to do is send a small timeline, say 5 minutes or less, to Color and experiment with the interface. Find out what it does and does not do. in some ways it can be faster than grading in FCP. In others, it's much slower to work with, especially when you're starting out.
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: Will color work for my basic needs by Stuart Ferreyra on May 26, 2007 at 9:25:23 pm
[Johnny White]"running on a 2.5 G5 ppc with a 9800xt card"
One of our systems was a 2.7DP G5 / 4 GB RAM / ATI 9800 running FT. The UI was really slow. SD DV renders took 3 times longer with that card. A pain.
Last week we upgraded to an X800 XT card. The UI is great and renders way faster. Now this is FT. I do not have my copy of Color yet, but for what I've been reading, probably you won't get floating point and maybe Color will barely run.
If I were you, I would try to upgrade to an X800 XT. I just read a post of someone running Color with the same configuration as ours saying it just like running FT.
I will our first copy of Color this weekend and start testing after the holiday.
Re: Will color work for my basic needs by Johnny White on May 26, 2007 at 9:34:43 pm
wow thanks for the quick responses. I reckon I'll play with it for a while when I get it and then upgrade to the x800 xt (hard to find in mac edition though....)
That anamorphic sd thing is some bug though, is that just a display thing? is it just that the display is squished 16:9 in a 4:3 frame and that the colour correction is still ok? (i'd also be monitoring via decklink to a switchable monitor...).. when i get it back to fcp could I unsquish it? or does it just plain not work? (surely this would rule out most users, at least here in Ireland anyway 95% of my work is sd 16:9 )
Re: Will color work for my basic needs by Stuart Ferreyra on May 26, 2007 at 9:54:13 pm
[Johnny White]"wow thanks for the quick responses. I reckon I'll play with it for a while when I get it and then upgrade to the x800 xt (hard to find in mac edition though....)"
I have hunt those cards down like you have no idea. I was lucky to acquired this week. I scored a third one but it was broken. It is in the trash now.
A lot of our work is also 16:9 SD-HD, you name it. We fix the issue with our monitors' 16:9 switch. Grading, Color Fx, Vignettes are not an issue for us; and to tell you the truth, I can't really understand the concern. Maybe I am missing somnething.
If you can upgrade to an ATI 800 XT, you will be good to do some awesome work. Specially when the previous post gives us hope....
Re: Will color work for my basic needs by Floh on May 27, 2007 at 8:13:22 am
[Johnny White]"That anamorphic sd thing is some bug though, is that just a display thing? is it just that the display is squished 16:9 in a 4:3 frame and that the colour correction is still ok? (i'd also be monitoring via decklink to a switchable monitor...).. when i get it back to fcp could I unsquish it?"
The out on the Computer screen is Square pixels, but of course the out on your Video monitor is in the correct aspect ratio if you can set your monitor to 16:9. So no reason not to use it.
From what I know FinalTouch (and probably Color also) works much better with the Aja cards than the Decklink.
Anyway, do yourself the favor to plan some time to get used to Color, its workflow and its limitations. Test the way in and out again with your material to avoid any unpleasant surprises. FinalTouch was not build as a tool for everyone, and from what I hear Color still has some of these limitations.
Re: Will color work for my basic needs by Johnny White on May 27, 2007 at 8:17:49 am
Thanks for all the responses, sounds like I might be in (some sort of) action. Who knows I might be persuaded to go for an octo....(Apples plan I'm sure...)
