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Anyone like the color board?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “although I’m a bit gun shy as I feel like I’ll have to defend what I see is the good in something when it’s obvious everything needs work. And I’m OK with FCPX needing work. Systems aren’t built overnight. Anyway,”
nay – that has got to be totally cool, otherwise It’s just mad hammerblows on FCPX here. sure its a debate forum and whatnot.
Proffering up – I had a sizzle reel gig start yesterday with a ton of marathon footage for a sports client – clips were say 10-30 seconds to 2-3 minutes long, shot on bikes and stationary – they included critical reaction moments with female runners, sports branding, city surrounds and DJ in situ passerby shots -all part of varying long record 5D clips.
let no one for one second think that i did not see myself bounding sub sections of these clips in yellow, and transferring them to assigned keywords, because I did.
I – mind’s eye – saw how I was doing that in FCPX. All day.
Instead… with an aversion to instant sub-clipping and all it entails – i was constructing multi-keyword file descriptions after viewing with multiple marker sets to function as in and outs in preparation for laying down sequence selects for the major keywords.
(with no sort of vital VO audio, I prefer dumping a sequence selects lay down bar subclips? please anyone chime in there – no really)there is a lot of that ,said the idiot, in FCP7
also it was all off 5D MK2. I lost most of yesterday to mpeg streamclip.
I did bodge initial selects using file colour coding in the finder while mpeg streamclip was chugging away.
there is a necessary application here in FCPX, but there is just too much crazy wrong – screen real estate – my sort of biggie – extensibility, fears over apple’s true goals (valid) the operation of the timeline (in and out only on the primary? really?) and whathaveyou. anyway.
I. want. tracks. not metaphors, tracks.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
think the colour board is nice in concept but poor in practice
its been designed for a touch surface not a mouse, i even tried remapping keyboard to move between tabs and parameters but it got very very confusing
its not great at all as a way to correct colour balance, the wheels and curves are needed for this
its a nice interface for luma and saturation controls however
I really think it has potential with things like secondaries that are amazing, shame the shape can only be keyframed as no tracker
if they had bothered to implement a copy/paste and colour looks browser like Aperture it would have been good, shame they are waiting to release that in the future and probably charge for it
also the way broadcast safe is implemented is just dumb, putting on an adjustment layer to get it to work in the correct order for effects e.g. colour correction is applied after effects in render order so makes broadcast safe useless on graded shots
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Like everything else in life, whenever theres something new, its just a matter of learning it. Learn it enough and you could pretty much do everything you have to. These tuts surely puts the color board’s critics to shame. https://www.colorgradingcentral.com/final-cut-pro-x-color-grading-table-of-contents
I see a future, where an ipad companion app which will put FCPX’s color boards on the ipad, (ala Da Vinci Resolve control surface)and control it there while a bigger playback screen or scopes will take its place on the monitor.
Its as big and looks as it is, because as I’ve been saying, FCPX is made for touch.
Quobetah
New=Better -
[Gerald Baria] “I see a future, where an ipad companion app which will put FCPX’s color boards on the ipad,”
iPad control of Apple Color has been around for a while via the Tangent Wave app –
https://www.tangentdevices.co.uk/products_vwave.asp
– it was a fun idea for about five minutes until people started to realize that tactile feedback is really crucial in a grading interface, which is why dedicated hardware offers such big advantages.
The limitation of the iPad as a controller will always be that your fingers don’t know where they are (except in the most general sense) as there is no feedback from the slick flat surface of the screen. This means that you are stuck with having to look down at the interface to see what it is you are doing – and that’s no way to grade, or in fact do anything remotely precise in controller terms.
Clearly the Color Board has been laid out with the iPad in mind, hence the vertical rather than rotational movement of the controls – I frankly think this implementation won’t ever get beyond the novelty stage because of the limitations I’ve described.
Imagine trying to edit with FCPX if you had to look down at the keyboard and/or check the physical position of the mouse to make sure you were doing the right thing all the time – this would not enhance your editing pleasure one bit. Your hands and finger know where they are on the keyboard and the mouse which is why they work pretty well as interfaces. (A lot of people will also point out how much quicker they can type on a BlackBerry versus an iPhone, again on the basis that you’re getting tactile feedback from the keys.)
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Have to say agree with Simon, the lack of tactile feedback and the delay when trying to use the iPad Tangent control surface make it pretty useless. Was fun for 5 mins until you actually tried it.
Even the Wave, which is pretty good, doesnt feel anywhere near as nice as the CP series panels.
I have not fully investigated the colour board in FCPX but have had a good play around. As a basic Colour Corrector its not too bad. I dont really mind the “squareness” but find colour wheels more logical. It does seem to be primed for a touch interface though which as I said earlier is far from ideal.
Not sure how colour wheels on say a Tangent panel would even translate – representing colour as a circle relates to phase and vectors – Apple seem to have gone for the “Wendy Burger” school of grading with the square thing 🙂All that said to tout it as a replacement for Color seems, to me at least, to be a huge leap of marketing hype rather than anything else.
For my money Color was the one App that really had Avid beat in terms of ability and functionality. Guess they just threw in that particular towel to Resolve and Baselight ?
best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv -
[Neil Patience] “All that said to tout it as a replacement for Color seems, to me at least, to be a huge leap of marketing hype rather than anything else.
For my money Color was the one App that really had Avid beat in terms of ability and functionality. Guess they just threw in that particular towel to Resolve and Baselight ?”
Completely agree with all of that – though I think they managed to imply rather than state that it was a replacement. Certainly there appears to be no basis to the rumour that went the rounds that somehow Color had been “rolled into” FCPX.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “- it was a fun idea for about five minutes until people started to realize that tactile feedback is really crucial in a grading interface, which is why dedicated hardware offers such big advantages. “
Absolutely, but if not going to a dedicated controller, then the Wave App did allow you to control multiple points at once which is not possible with kb/mouse. Also, the Wave App was free and limited in it’s capabilities. it was very cool, I used it, but then I had to constantly switch back and forth as there was not enough control. It did make me want a Wave, which was probably the point of the App. 🙂
[Simon Ubsdell] “The limitation of the iPad as a controller will always be that your fingers don’t know where they are (except in the most general sense) as there is no feedback from the slick flat surface of the screen. This means that you are stuck with having to look down at the interface to see what it is you are doing – and that’s no way to grade, or in fact do anything remotely precise in controller terms.”
Mostly true. If the control pad and the GUI coincide, you could at least see what you are doing without having to look at the pad except to find the touch point, which isn’t ideal as you have mentioned. Nothing a little more programming couldn’t fix in my opinion.
[Simon Ubsdell] “(A lot of people will also point out how much quicker they can type on a BlackBerry versus an iPhone, again on the basis that you’re getting tactile feedback from the keys.)”
Digging in to this sidebar, if the iPhone had two or three letters per button, I guarantee people would be faster as the buttons wouldn’t be so small (Q and W as one button, or QWE as one button). I type much better on my iPad, just as fast as a keyboard with no tactile feedback, but the buttons fit my fingys. I also like the split keyboard that is going to be enabled in iOS5.
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[Simon Ubsdell] “Certainly there appears to be no basis to the rumour that went the rounds that somehow Color had been “rolled into” FCPX.”
Definitely not. Just the ideas of secondaries/masking/key, but that’s about it.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “the Wave App was free and limited in it’s capabilities. it was very cool, I used it, but then I had to constantly switch back and forth as there was not enough control. It did make me want a Wave, which was probably the point of the App. :)”
It was definitely a great piece of marketing – and genuinely a lot of fun. I think the whole point of the exercise was actually to convince you of the clear necessity for a hardware panel, which sort of underlines my point I think.
[Jeremy Garchow] ” If the control pad and the GUI coincide, you could at least see what you are doing without having to look at the pad except to find the touch point”
Not sure how you envisage this happening in this case? Everything on the iPad? I’m not sure there is a solution that isn’t going to be a compromise somewhere.
I think Minority Report has a huge lot to answer for here – we have seen the future and we know it’s going to be touch screens everywhere. Maybe, just maybe, they won’t work as well for us as they did for Tom Cruise 😉
[Jeremy Garchow] ” I type much better on my iPad, just as fast as a keyboard with no tactile feedback”
I have to confess I just can’t get used to the iPhone/iPad non-physical keyboard thing, but I know that I’m probably dysfunctional because I do see people flying with them (not literally “flying” but I’m sure that’s coming in the next iteration but one!). I do like your idea of the 2/3 letters per button thing though.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “Not sure how you envisage this happening in this case? Everything on the iPad? I’m not sure there is a solution that isn’t going to be a compromise somewhere.”
Totally. It would certainly be a compromise.
Hear me out and I know this isn’t perfect, but since there’s ideas flying around, why not keep going?
The big “difference” between a dedicated controller (panel with dials/buttons/balls/rings) and a virtual controller (slick glass) is being able to reach without looking and know what you are touching, right? The tactile feedback.
Now, imagine that the iPad or “tactileless” control surface could also be a “mouse” pad. By hitting a modifier (corner of the screen, edge of the screen, something really easy to hit) and dragging your finger, this now puts your iPad in mouse mode. You can then select a part of the interface to change (say, lift, gamma, gain, or chroma, or whatever) and divides your iPad in to the appropriate sections. In the case of lift gamma gain, there would be three “sections” virtually created on your iPad. This would take getting used to, but using roughly 33.33% of the screen, you wouldn’t have to look down at the iPad, you’d simply release the modifier key, and start scrubbing as if there were a track ball. The left side of the screen being lift, middle is gamma, right being gain. Two fingers close together could signify the luma values, three fingers could signify a total eclipse of the heart, or something more colorly. Then if you need to change to another tool, you could select that part of the interface, or use your keyboard to change your ipad to another “mode” (like hit k for Key, r for Red curve, o then r to take you to the primary out room and then red curve, m for mask, or c for curves and you get three RGB “zones” on your ipad). This would mean you would never have to look down at the ipad, as there’s nothing to look at. All you have to do is control the interface you’re looking at on your monitor, and know which zones relate to which room. kind of like memorizing all the buttons on a control surface. Hope that makes sense.
Of course, when our computer monitors become 40″ touch screens, this conversation is now moot. 🙂
[Simon Ubsdell] “I do like your idea of the 2/3 letters per button thing though.”
Not my idea! Pre-iPhone, my first smart phone was an old Blackberry that had this style of keyboard (more letters per button). It was the fastest typing mobile device I have used, and it was more accurate as the programming had to be more accurate (or maybe less accurate, I don’t know. At any rate, the auto correct was better). My next blackberry had a full tactile keyboard and the buttons were so small it was hard for me to use, and I have the same problem with my iPhone. I wish there was an App that allowed custom keyboards across the device, but it seems to be buried in the iOS, and the apps that are available aren’t allowed to be used across the whole device.
Jeremy
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