[Tig] color (was FT, that is)

[Patrick Inhofer]

On Apr 30, 2007, at 1:40 PM, Steve Hullfish wrote:

> I don't want to speak for Patrick, but I can go through each
> paragraph in his review and address whether anything changed or not.

I'll just add some comments to Steve's breakdown (he and I seem to be  
on the same page)...

> Dedicated Interface - The Tangent Devices control panels still work
> like they did with FT. They also work with JLCooper's "Eclipse"
> control panels which I believe are cheaper (and, I think, FEEL like  
> it.)

The Eclipse isn't shipping yet, but according to sales they're  
looking at pricing that panel at around $7k. Which seems about 40%  
cheaper than a similarly configured Tangent panel mix... though the  
Tangent mix would end up giving you more buttons (depending on the  
exact mix).

> Secondaries provide
> full RGB control, not just "adjustments" to the qualification. You
> can use the secondaries without qualifying anything just like a
> primary color correction, so you could use them as "levels" of
> primary correction if you wanted to.

That's kind'a how I use them now. It's nice to "build" up the look  
using the masks to isolate areas, though I thought the serious  
hardware-based systems were doing this as well.

>  Patrick's idea of being
> able to insert Color Effects between certain secondary corrections
> has merit. They can't do that now.

I'm eventually hoping for an additional nodal-like interface similar  
to Shake... allowing routing between Secondaries, mattes, ColorFX  
nodes, and tracking data.

> According to someone in the booth
> at NAB, the resize is no longer rendered out of Color, like it was in
> FinalTouch. Instead, the metadata for the resize effect is sent back
> to FCP and FCP now does the resize internally.

I hadn't heard this before... that's a very good thing. Especially  
for interlaced material. FT was designed for progressive and the  
Geometery Room destroys interlaced images. Moving it to FCP is a  
great idea. And if you turn on "best motion filtering" in your  
sequence settings in FCP you get the much improved algorithm that was  
introduced with (I think) FCP 4.5.

> Telecine mindset - actually a lot of Patrick's complaints here have
> been addressed.

I'm *very* pleased about this. Curves is important to FCP adoption  
rates among video finishers who butter their bread using curves on  
the Symphony. This breaks one of the last function-based barriers  
between FCP and Avid (though many Symphony folk won't like the FCP ->  
Color -> FCP workflow).

> Still Store Isolation - I agree with Patrick here too. <snip>I  
> don't know how much Patrick knew about the
> wiping and keystrokes, so I can't say it was pilot error.

I must admit... I'm driving FT with a mouse. After speaking with a  
few colorists driving with a panel, this seems much less a concern  
for them (and most of the folks on this list). Once the Eclipse is  
released I'll test drive that and finally purchase a panel within the  
next quarter.

> Long Saves - I haven't worked on long projects with FinalTouch.
> Patrick's probably right. I don't know if this has changed, but it
> may have since Apple has the kinds of resources to fix something like
> this. Basically, I don't know.

In FT 2.7rc2 (a version that would never successfully render my  
ColorFX nodes) Apple implemented a fix where FT does a long autosave  
the first time you open a session file. Subsequent auto-saves are  
difference-based and work lickety-split. I imagine they wouldn't have  
backslid on this when Color is released.

> The owners manual has been taken care of.

All current owners will be crying... sometimes I feel like I'm flying  
the Space Shuttle with half the light fuses blown out.

> The "version" of the application is highly subjective. Versioning  
> is all about
> marketing and legalities and has little to do with one person's
> vision of where a "2.0" product should be.

Yeah. I hear you, Steve. Maybe that analogy doesn't work as well as  
I'd like. While I've never worked with in-house custom software that  
the big VFX houses use; FT felt like I imagine that software must be  
- buggy and undocumented, thus daunting to an outsider and not ready  
for resale.

> Additional comments - Apple added a cool 3D vectorscope. Serious
> colorists may consider it a toy

I remember when this feature was released in Flame in the late 90's.  
The artists loved it. It was a major selling point. It'll be  
interesting to see how Color'ists will take to it.

Overall, I'm *very* pleased with where Color seems to be. Apple  
introduced some nice new features while seeming to fix the slew of  
issues that FT owners have been struggling with... and my maintenance  
contract became the price of the yearly Studio upgrades (which I'm  
doing anyway). Hopefully we'll no longer *need* direct access to  
their software coders...

I understand some of the emotions the 2K users are struggling with -  
it's tough to reconcile that a package you bought a year or two ago  
is being sold now at a 95% discount. But from a dispassionate  
business sense, if the software was worth $20k a year ago it's  
certainly worth $1200 today. Nor does the price today negate it's  
worth 9 months ago. But then, I'm running a small shop and may be  
unaware of some of the pressures DI houses must deal with.

Still, when I look at the displacement editors suffered moving from  
linear to non-linear and compare it to what colorists will be forced  
to go through as they go digital, I think the long-time pros on this  
list are far more prepared today than many of my colleagues were then.

- pi

- -
Patrick Inhofer
Finisher-in-Chief
Fini.tv

  "It is not the straining for great things that is most effective;  
it is the doing of the little things, the common duties, a little  
better and better."

            ~ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,
              1844-1911, Writer