Analog & Digital color correction hardware?

[Rick Turners]

You can get a 2009 lustre for around 30k, a 2010 nucoda for around 40k.
Anything older/cheaper would be worse than building a macpro based davinci.

[Sascha Haber]

I know what you are doing here as I am also in the boat owning a Jupiter 8 and some tubes.
But you wont get the same results..
Printing to film and digitising again would do the trick, same as pressing vinyl and re-recording.
But its not really worth it, you can get very close with Sapphires, film stock overlays and custom algorythms today.
You dont need a Neve anymore, or a Fairlight 😉

A slice of color…

Resolve 10.1.0.021
Colorist / VFX / Aerial footage nerd
https://vimeo.com/saschahaber

[Marc Wielage]

[Jared Gardner] “I’m an audio engineer and a lot of times we go for older, used hardware units for FX processing. Sometimes a software plugin is OK, but hardware (even if it’s not analog) is usually a bit better for various reasons. This makes me wonder if there are any older hardware color correction units out there that people have forgotten about, just like they have with FX processor rack units.”
No.

This is kind of like asking, “should I use an Ampex AG-300 or Pro Tools in 2014?” And the answer is, use Pro Tools. It’s infinitely faster, cheaper, and it’s what clients ask for.

About the only two or three things I can think of where you still really need hardware:

1) legalizer (not unlike a hard-limiter/compressor)

2) HD videotape machines (for companies that require HD-Cam SR tape delivery)

3) standard-def DigiBeta videotape machines (for companies that require standard-def tape delivery)

Beyond that, it’s all pretty files. Well, except for the last bastions who require a film-out.

[Jared Gardner]

I was just curious since I got into video in the digital age. Some of those cheap hardware FX processors are great and cheap, so I was wondering if there was an equivalent with video. I’m guessing not though. From what I’m seeing, anything that works with HD is going to be 10s of thousands of dollars.

[Marc Wielage]

It depends. From what I see, a lot of the $50,000 HD processors that came out 10 years ago are now $49.95 on eBay. The exception would be HDCam-SR decks, which still have a value since they’re still needed for deliverables by some clients. We’re not completely file-based yet.

[Jared Gardner]

Can you name some of those brands/models?

[Marc Wielage]

Oh, there’s all kinds of old crap up on eBay: proc amps, image enhancers, noise reducers, telecines, color correctors, you name it. I don’t know what’s sadder… the fact that this stuff is going for only a fraction of what it sold for in the 1990s, or how some morons believe it’s still worth many thousands of dollars today. There’s people trying to sell 9-year-old hardware Resolves for $50,000. :-0

[Joseph Owens]

[Marc Wielage] “This is kind of like asking, “should I use an Ampex AG-300 or Pro Tools in 2014?””

Not really the same as vinyl vs. CD and tubes vs. transistors… does anything beat a Marshall valve amp? No. Can you get sustained fuzz feedback though your iPad? Not sure I want to try that.

For uprez, transcode and so on, can you beat a Teranex? No, in terms of price, efficiency and quality.

But most hardware for video, these days is totally outclassed by software solutions. The threshold occurred about 15 years ago in major markets, and 7-8 years ago in secondary markets.

No one that I know would be remotely interested in correcting anything on an 8:8:8 anymore, unlikely even with a later model 2K+. And you wold be judged insane to suggest a Dubner. The other issue is that most hardware solutions started dying out with the advent of HD — some were built, but the die was already cast in favour of commodity PC-based processing.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.