Well, I’ve received my new maxed out 15″ MacBook Pro (2.6Ghz, 4Mb RAM, iPhone-esque trackpad). Will start to set it up tomorrow, with Final Cut Studio 2 & VMWare Fusion, and software helper apps from Red. Goal is to start playing with Red footage. I’m also anxious to check out Apple Color (which comes bundled with FCS2). I’ve done some basic color correction with Colorista in AfterEffects, and I’ve heard Apple Color has some problems. But it seems important to know how to use it (even if I find a way to graduate to a full correction suite like Assimilate’s Scratch someday).
And so, the trigger for this post: Paul Harrill on his Self-Reliant Film blog (whose Declaration of Principles I quite like and agree with) reviews and recommends an Apple DVD tutorial (Stop Staring and Start Grading with Apple Color, by Walter Biscardi, Jr. – Creative Cow MasterSeries, DVD-Rom – $49.95), which I may pick up.
I have to admit, however, I have a lot of unused training material lying around–seems that by the time I finally get some free time to do the self-training… the materials already somewhat obselete, because there’s a new version of the software out. So, I’m going to going to get a subscription to Lynda.com where, for US$25/month I can access 27,646 QuickTime videos, covering more than 404 topics, via streaming video. The video quality is quite good. And what I like is that I can do a little training here and there on all the topics I’m interested in (this month: Leopard, Keynote, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, LightRoom–and they also have what seems to be reasonable Apple Color tutorials). And then for those months when I’m too busy to do any self-training, I just turn off my subscription. With this “pay as I go”, I’ll get more training for a lot less money–and because it’s online, they I can get training on the latest release of a software package, rather than having to buy an expensive upgrade (as I’d been doing over at Total Training, with their Adobe Premiere & production pack training DVDs.)
FYI and on this topic, I also received a couple weeks ago what looks to me to be the best up-to-date book on color correction, The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction, by Steve Hullfish. It’s not simply a software manual–it really explains what color correction is and why and how you do it, with lots of examples. It discusses or references Colorista, Apple Color, da Vinci (whose whole web site down for “maintenance”–wow! how 20th century; they should hire me…), and Autodesk’s Smoke (whose lunch seems to be being eaten by Assimilate’s Scratch–which, oddly, is not mentioned in the book)
Thanks for the positive feedback on the book. I know Scratch is mentioned “somewhere” in the book, after all Lucas Wilson from Assimilate wrote a nice blurb for the back! I didn’t focus on the color correction tools like Scratch, da Vinci, Pablo, Baselight and some others because they were not really desktop tools in the same vein – and price range – as the others that get more play in the book. Da Vinci is mentioned, but that’s about all. I did that because it’s been the gold standard in color correction for decades. The other high end color correction systems, like Scratch are relative newcomers.
The main focus of the book is on the “desktop” color apps, especially Color. Also getting prominent play are Avid, FCP and Color Finesse. I went with apps that were accessible, widespread and fairly powerful.
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your comments and clarification! It’s a great book. (I’ve just added a link to it on Amazon, which I had forgotten to do. Readers: do check it out.) Wish I had time to finish reading the book cover-to-cover before my Red arrives next week–as this a good part of the underlying theoretical stuff I need to know.
Steve, please do alert me to any other of your articles/books or links you like, and I’ll post them here.
cheers,
Dan
Smoke is more of an editing/finishing system than a color correction/grading tool (check out the training videos on Autodesk’s website to get a taste for what it can do; I’d recommend checking them out anyways as there’s interesting techniques there).
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=8067478
Lustre is Autodesk’s color grading tool.
I don’t believe Scratch is “eating its lunch”… there are a number of players in high-end DI that compete with Lustre and for the most part they are all competitive systems.
2- Website backasswardness:
Sometimes companies in high-end markets have outdated websites when they get busy and they just don’t have time to deal with their website. Most of the time, they get their customers by talking to them directly… so that might explain any website backwards-ness. If you look at the websites of post houses, some will be 1-3 years out of date.
Hi Glenn,
Thanks for the clarification on Autodesk vs. Scratch functionality. Points well taken. I’m still a neophyte learning about all this stuff. Perhaps no lunch being eaten. : )
But there are lots of people like me–the next generation of film makers, with tech backgrounds, Reds and good projects–evaluating high-end finishing tools. Not having a good website puts these high-end systems at a distinct disadvantage with us.
I do believe there’s a big revolution going on in film-less/tape-less cinema production workflows–which will be accelerated by Red. But there will still be lots of room for agile tech-savvy finishing facilities, using high-end systems (like Autodesk’s). For example, check out PlasterCity Post’s Red workflow, using Quantel Pablo to finish in 4K:
http://www.plastercitypost.com/redfinish.php
Love your blog, Glenn. Just subscribed via RSS.
cheers,
Dan