FCP vs Symphony Nitris for HD fininshing and color correction

[Walter Biscardi]

[mturfler] “Can anyone speak to the pros and cons of both systems? Is one better than the other ? Why?
thanks,”

Neither is better than the other. Output quality is exactly the same. Just depends on your workflow and budget. You can probably build, what, 5 FCP HD systems for one Nitris system.

Early last year a local post house put up a split screen of my Kona 2 HD system and their Avid D/S HD system and you couldn’t see the split. We post for national broadcast networks on three Kona HD systems and our low overhead means much more profit with zero compromise for the client and the finished product.

For Color Correction, we’ve been told that our Masters are some of the best HD work being received by one network and we’re just using Final Cut Pro’s 3 Way CC and the Levels Filter. I have been testing Final Touch HD for a while, but we’re going to sell it off as it has serious issues with the DVCPro HD codec which the company neglected to tell us before we purchased it. I suppose it will be a great product one day, but right now it’s hurting us more than helping.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Director, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

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

[Tom Matthies]

I like Final Cut for almost everything else, but I feel that Avid’s color corrector is superior to FCP’s.I especially like the curves feature on the Symphony’s color corrector. The secondary color correction is very handy as well. There are a couple of plug-ins for FCP that will get you pretty close to Avids CC, and worl well but they are fairly expensive.
WOW! I actually caught myself saying something nice about Avids. Mark it on your calendar everyone.
Tom

[Walter Biscardi]

[Tom Matthies] “WOW! I actually caught myself saying something nice about Avids. Mark it on your calendar everyone.”

For the price of the Nitris, it better come with a more advanced color corrector than FCP. 🙂

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Director, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

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

[Blub06]

Finishing or on lining calls on a different set of needs then off lining or actually cutting something. Of course we have all started and finished projects with online resolution material so there is a blur there because we are not separating the two disciplines.

One nice thing in Symphony Nitrus HD is real-time all the time. I would only call that feature nice because, at the point of finishing, your not testing several effects many times until you have a look you like, you have already done that in the offline. So realtime is just nice.

For Niturs the image is fantastic, I have done very little with FCP HD uncompressed so I cant speak to a comparison of the two systems image quality but, I do like the way the Symphony material looks.

I prefer FCP for everything but effects work, Avid makes effects work fun, FCP makes it tedious. If you are conforming from an Avid offline you have already done the effect work, if its from FCP you have some work to do but what fun it is.

Once you get your project into a Symphony system you have a much better color corrector, and if you should need to do any frame clean up and have a need for the 8 point tracker, you have the right system to work with. The FCP color correction options are fine and work well, this is an area that is more operator dependent then system dependent, though I do like the greater controls in the Avid system.

There was a time I hated the FCP sound mixing methodology, the rubber bands, now, its a grind to mix with Avid, I like the tracks in small mode and with Avid if you want to do the rubber band thing you must make the tracks bigger, so there

[Jeremy Newmark]

“There are a couple of plug-ins for FCP that will get you pretty close to Avids CC, and worl well but they are fairly expensive.”

When compared to the price of a Symphony, these plugins are not that expensive. You can get the plugin version of colorfinesse for under $600 and that will give you Symphony style CC and more inside of FCP. For the price point, colorfinesse is a fantastic CC tool. And if you need more advanced masking options, then pick up Boris FX or Red. Then you have some very powerful tools for CC right inside of FCP and all for a fraction of the price of a Symphony.

Jeremy Newmark

[Tom Bridges]

Hi Walter,

Would you mind clarifying your problems with Final Touch HD and DVCPRO HD? We’re using it quite happily here, rendering out to uncompressed. There are still a few bugs, but it doesn’t seem to be format-dependent. It’d be useful to get some feedback and see if there’s anything we should be avoiding.

Thanks,

Tom

Split Image
http://www.split-image.co.uk

[Mturfler]

Thanks for the input. We are currently an Avid house but we are thinking of putting in a couple of FCP hooked up to terrablock for uncompressed HD. Symphony can’t ingest 4:4:4 and it is about 80,000 more than FCP studio w/ a Kona3