Color Correction in 10bit ?

[Walter Biscardi]

[mlondon] “Anyone have any thoughts about built in 3-way vs. Color Finesse vs Final Touch? (My show is 10bit PAL uncompressed)”

Final Touch is far and away the best color corrector, but it has two problem right now. 1 – it’s not available, Apple has pulled it from all retail sales. The latest two beta versions do not work correctly with FCP 5.1.2.

I simply CC all my shows in FCP using the 3-way, Levels and Broadcast safe filters. I own Final Touch, but have it on the shelf right now waiting to see what Apple does with it at NAB 2007.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Matthew London]

Hi Walter,

My project is still in 5.0.4, will Final Touch work OK with that?

What about the 10bit vs 8bit question. Is FCP’s 3-way in 10bit or does it drop it down to 8-bit?

Thanks,
Matthew

[Walter Biscardi]

[mlondon] “My project is still in 5.0.4, will Final Touch work OK with that?”

I honestly have no idea at this point. I would not recommend it to anyone right now.

[mlondon] ”
What about the 10bit vs 8bit question. Is FCP’s 3-way in 10bit or does it drop it down to 8-bit?”

From what I understand, all rendering in FCP is 8bit, no matter what filter / effect is used and no matter the timeline. This may have finally changed in FCP 5.1.2 but I’m honestly not entirely sure. Havne’t looked that up yet. I’m sure someone here knows the answer to this one.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Shane Ross]

Yes, all rendering in FCP is done 8-bit. Which is one of the reasons that many people color correct and render in After Effects, because it can render 10-bit…and because it has a better render engine than FCP.

I myself have never worked with 10-bit codecs or footage, so I have always used FCP.

Shane

FCP Preferences set to UNCONTROLLED ADVICE
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Rafael Amador]

I do not want to make fre epublicity, but The Orphanage (Magic Bullet) has just released an aplication call COLORISTA. Its seems like ColorFiness (works in 8,16 or 32fp) but under 200 US$.
Salud,
Rafael
PS: I think the FC 3 bands CC do a very good job.

[Trevor Asquerthian]

Does the Color Finesse 2.1 SD plugin for FCP work in 10bit ? What about the CF 2.1HD ?

AFAIK – CF (and all plug-ins using AE architecture) pass bits through RGB matrixing that result in the head and toe room being chopped off. Thus any detail in your whites or blacks that exceed the 16-235 range (in 8 bit) will be rounded up to 16 or down to 235.

CF recommend using their standalone app, which works like FT via xml and deals with media files direct, to circumvent this issue. (See posts in their forum on the cow).

I’m working (in 10bit uncompressed Pal) at a house next week that has FT running with, I believe, FCP5.1.2. It did work, with caveats, with earlier versions of 5. I’ll let you know if it still works 😉

[Chris Poisson]

I went and looked at Colorista, nice suggestion, but aside from the speed advantage, can’t see a reason to use it over FCP native controls.

[Tony Manolikakis]

If you are working in a 10 bit codec and set your rendering to high precision YUV you should be rendering in 10 bit. Am I missing something here?

Tony

Tony Manolikakis
Rev13 Films

[Shane Ross]

[Chris Poisson] “I went and looked at Colorista, nice suggestion, but aside from the speed advantage, can’t see a reason to use it over FCP native controls.”

Two words: POWER WINDOWS

It has all the same controls of the 3-way (organized a little differently) but has the FANTASTIC addition of power windows, allowing you to change the lighting and color in specific areas. Look at this great demo:

https://prolost.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-colorista.html

Shane

FCP Preferences set to UNCONTROLLED ADVICE
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Marco Solorio]

[Shane Ross] “Yes, all rendering in FCP is done 8-bit. Which is one of the reasons that many people color correct and render in After Effects, because it can render 10-bit…and because it has a better render engine than FCP.”

Not completely true. Yes, AE does have a better rendering engine… in *RGB*. FCP does have an upperhand with video as it does work in native Y’CrCb. No matter how high the precision in RGB, Y’CrCb values can get cut in the transfer.

There’s always been rumors of the High Precision YUV rendering option still being 8-bit at the core no matter which setting you have, but I’ve never actually tested this to varify it. However, from other reliable information I received through the years (even in FCP 4) the 3-way CC is supposed to work in true 10-bit in real-time on cards that are 10-bit native themselves like AJA and DeckLink. It’s when you actually have FCP render it is where the rumors still exist. One of these days I swear I’ll break down and test it with all the “free time” I have. :-/

Marco Solorio  |  OneRiver Media