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Baselight
Anyone in here have experience with Baselight? I have thought about it, just expensive at this point. Hoping they make an edition for Final Cut Pro X, not sure if that will happen. I do like Resolve but want to expand my tool box a bit. Look forward to hearing from you guys.
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25 Replies
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My Understanding is the old Baselight plugin was designed to work by transfering grade info from FCP7 into a Baselight. So it worked by being able to prep in an NLE but required a full Baselight system to complete and render the grades.
So if your workflow includes going to a post facility with Baselight then the plugin is useful.
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BLE views and renders now for free. The paid version can grade and interchange with Baselight proper.
The paid BLE toolset is significant: control surfaces, layer blending, tracking, keying, and Truelight are all in. The problem with BLE is it’s a plugin. You’re still trapped in your NLE, so workflow and grade management is a headache. It’s also only available for Avid, FCP7 and Nuke.
David, what is it about Resolve you want to expand beyond? Have you looked into SCRATCH or Nucoda?
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
The BLE plug-in has worked “standalone” since it was released – as a plug-in within the NLE. But it can also interchange grades with a full system.
The trouble with making it work with FCPX is that at $1000, it’s too pricey for a market that’s only paying $300 for the host NLE. I have friends who are using it in conjunction with Avid Symphony and really like it, but the workflow is clunky compared with Resolve or a built-in color correction system.
As far as the full system, good colorists get outstanding results and there seem to be advantages in grading over how Resolve operates. I haven’t run it so I can’t say for sure, but I’ve sent some projects off to colorists working with it and the results are great. However, those same colorists would also do great work with Resolve.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I have thought about Nucoda, not sure if it runs on OS X, have not tried Scratch. I do have Scratch Player, though.
The magnetic timeline, it’s magnetic-o-matic!
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Hi David,
I used to grade in Resolve quite a lot until a while back. Ever since I bought color finale for FCPX I finish most of the grading within FCP. Am not sure if this was helpful in anyway, but I thought I’ll put it out there for guys trying to color grade within FCPX. CF is awesome.Kannan Raghavan
The Big Toad Films Pte. Ltd. -
[Walter Soyka] ” You’re still trapped in your NLE, so workflow and grade management is a headache.”
Workflow and grade management isn’t sexy, but after grading nearly full time for a couple of year it’s possibly what I miss the most when I’m grading inside of an NLE.
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Baselight is awesome. We use it for some very high-end commercial work inside Media Composer. 99% of the time we can rival anything created in a standalone Davinci environment.
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[David Mathis] “I have thought about Nucoda, not sure if it runs on OS X, have not tried Scratch. I do have Scratch Player, though.”
Nucoda is Windows-only.
SCRATCH Player made very, very little sense to me until I learned a little more about SCRATCH.
What are you looking for? Dailies? Grading? What’s your use case?
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Andrew Kimery] “Workflow and grade management isn’t sexy, but after grading nearly full time for a couple of year it’s possibly what I miss the most when I’m grading inside of an NLE.”
And then, even worse, some people want to do their grading in After Effects!
Given the workflow hurdles, I’m surprised at the number of people using Baselight Editions in Avid. That says something really nice about BLE, and something not so nice about Symphony.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “Given the workflow hurdles, I’m surprised at the number of people using Baselight Editions in Avid”
There really aren’t any workflow hurdles, per se, since it works as a plug-in. I wouldn’t say it’s a lot of users, though. So not as nice as Symphony, but I believe BLE runs “alongside” the NLE, much like Avid + Fusion. So not as poor as a “normal” plug-in, either
[Walter Soyka] “and something not so nice about Symphony”
While the color toolset in Symphony is certainly long-in-the-tooth, it’s no slouch. You just can’t do elaborate, multi-layered grades like you can in other systems. No shapes or tracking unless you do that as a separate effect, which is possible. However, it’s perfect for TV series finishing. As a built-in tool, from a standpoint of workflow, there is simply no other current NLE with comparable capabilities, unless you are talking about Quantel (editor+grading) or if you cut in Resolve.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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