I have been trying to convince a client to switch their colour grading projects from a Quantel Qcolour to Apple Colour. Besides mentioning about budget savings, what are the other sell points of Apple Colour that I can say? How does Qcolour compare to Apple Colour and will their output be similar? The client's job are mainly TV series shot on miniDV or HDV.
Re: Compare Colour to Qcolour by walter biscardi on Sep 9, 2008 at 11:13:32 am
[Lau Leck Gee]"sides mentioning about budget savings, what are the other sell points of Apple Colour that I can say? "
Well, first off you're talking about a $25,000 color grading tool that's now included free with Final Cut Pro. It's a very powerful tool that's on par with daVinci.
Second, the quality is every bit as good as the material put into it. Uncompressed HD, 2K, DVCPro HD and ProRes all come out looking as good as or better than how they went in.
Third, that tool is useless without the proper artist operating the controls. Just because you have Color doesn't make you a colorist. The bigger question is who is going to be operating the software, do they understand color grading and do they know how to properly operate Color to achieve the same results you're getting through Quantel?
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Compare Colour to Qcolour by Mike Most on Sep 9, 2008 at 4:55:26 pm
QColor is an option to the Quantel iQ. The iQ is a very comprehensive editing, conforming, reformatting, and visual effects compositing tool. If the conform is also being done on the iQ, then in qColor they have all of the video layers available for separate color correction, as well as in-context playback of all dissolves, overlays, and any effects they might also have built in the timeline - not to mention little if any rendering time, along with instant playout of multiple format versions. In short, it is a much more flexible and comprehensive situation than you could possibly have with Apple Color - provided they're also doing the conform on that system.
Re: Compare Colour to Qcolour by Arthur Puig on Sep 9, 2008 at 8:06:12 pm
I work on both a Pablo (QColor) and Color. In my experience, QColor offers real time grading, almost no render. But what you can offer in Color that Quantel cannot offer, is that in Color you have more tools to achieve looks, Qcolor is very poor when it comes to that, there are some curves (called fettle) which is very difficult and very disunctional, but you can't for example separate the RGB channels and treat them separately to achieve interesting effects, for example, there is no fx filter to achieve a simple bleach bypass in QColor. Also you have the portability to Final Cut that can help in achieving certain looks that with just color is harder. Another thing is that to me the bleeding angle between mids and blacks, and mids and highs is bigger than in Color, what that means is that when you adjust mids, it affects greatly your whites than if you do that in Color, in Color it seems they are a little more contained.
Hopes this helps!
Re: Compare Colour to Qcolour by Rafael Amador on Sep 10, 2008 at 1:50:02 pm
Hi lau,
I think like the most of the folks, probably the Quantel machine can do it faster, but no necessarily better. Similar software ran by different hardware. Off-course you need to see the results of those 25K.
Any way I think that DV and HDV for TV are not the kind of stuff the QColor have been done for.
I think that even working in big formats a machine like that is only justified in a "film factory".
Tell your client to invest in a better format and will, probably, have less need of high CC :-)
Cheers,
Rafael
Re: Compare Colour to Qcolour by Todd Jaspers on Oct 18, 2008 at 3:35:02 pm
Its funny I am a big big Mac supporter, but I would be trying to convince people to go the other way... Get people out of using Apple Color and Start Grading on the Quantel Pablo Machines.
They are so much better in so many ways I don't even know where to begin. Anyway, nothing against Color its great for what it does, but the Quantel does that and more, a lot better.
Also, so you have the problem that Apple will just start adding little things to COLOR to make it better, consider a re-design or major improvements to the core of COLOR far far away or not coming at all..
Re: Compare Colour to Qcolour by Stuart Ferreyra on Oct 18, 2008 at 4:21:35 pm
What we are missing here are costs. Costs of purchase, operations, maintnance, tech support and colorist of any other professional system that is not Color.
The yearly tech support fee which includes .0 upgrades could be as much as 50% of Color's true $25K value.
If you have the necessary budget, clients, and amount of work to pay for all that expense day-in and day-out, go ahead and get it, if you don't... then what's the point of even thinking about it?
Re: Compare Colour to Qcolour by Todd Jaspers on Oct 19, 2008 at 6:49:24 pm
Its funny because what you are saying is in support of buying a Quantel Pablo, If I'm not mistaken.. Watch someone grade a feature in Pablo and Grade a feature in Color. I have seen a feature graded in Pablo, 120min 2k feature, with complete rendering in 3 days. Then bumped out to HDCAM SR on the Forth. Long days of course, but Dude, do that in Color and you are eating your socks...
This also included.. Boom Removal, Rig Removal, some subtle editing fixes, doing some retiming on some shots, end titles, closed captioning for some other language etc..
Do that in COLOR. Seriously try it.. you can't do any of it...
So if you use Apple Color it takes you 3 weeks to grade, finish, fx on a feature. The Pablo did it in 4 days.. All in one box. Kinda no comparison at all, at any price.
Also the MME render boards are really fast. A 2k 4 room grade at full 16bit RGB is in near realtime..
Re: Compare Colour to Qcolour by walter biscardi on Oct 19, 2008 at 11:30:08 pm
[Todd Jaspers]"So if you use Apple Color it takes you 3 weeks to grade, finish, fx on a feature. The Pablo did it in 4 days.. All in one box. Kinda no comparison at all, at any price. "
Just a note. I graded a 96 minute feature in 5 days. That included some prep work in FCP the first day and then outputting on the last day. So probably completed the entire grade in just over 4 days. That includes all the rendering. It premiered in Hollywood last week.
[Todd Jaspers]"Do that in COLOR. Seriously try it.. you can't do any of it... "
You do all that extra work either in FCP, After Effects or Motion. Color is not an FX tool, it's a color grading tool. There are some things you could do in Color, but that's why it's Final Cut Studio. It's an entire suite of products that work together.
If Quantel works for you, great. I prefer not to spend the money required to purchase one system and instead have three full edit suites going that earn me more money per hour than a single high end suite.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Compare Colour to Qcolour by Todd Jaspers on Oct 20, 2008 at 2:27:55 am
Good for you biscotti, but this is going to be one of those non ending arguments, most people who run small studios get FCP Studio product loyalty etc.. But If you can go to a Pablo suite and see what it can do, its quite amazing. Don't get me wrong about FCP. I was on the original FCP beta team when I was in film school, and I have been along for the ride since FCP was 1.0.
But going back and forth between COLOR and FCP is quite maddening and frustrating..
Go sit in front of Quantel iQ Pablo 4k system, watch a movie be edited, conformed, finished, graded, cleaned-up, and exported to HDCAM SR in one swoop... Its pretty amazing..
