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FCPX and color correction tools
It’s a Friday…
A number of recent threads have touched on various aspects of color correction, including Resolve, Speedgrade, Chromatic, etc. There are correctly several good third party color correction tools for FCPX, but of course, they are hampered by the kludgy way in which developers must integrate their plug-in into the FCPX UI. It would be nice to have an integrated Apple solution with at least the horsepower they used to have in Color.
So, with that in mind, how do you think Apple should implement advanced color tools within FCPX? Let’s be realistic, though. Odds are this would be a variation of the color board. So how could this work? Or should it be something like Adobe had working between Premiere and Speedgrade, where the whole timeline could flip modally between apps? Thoughts?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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128 Replies
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Personally, I think most editors may have about 5 years of truly widespread “bespoke grading” left before AI transforms the landscape. Not by removing the need to grade at the top end of the market – that will remain forever. As will the desire to employ educated colorists who can put an artistic imprint on a work. But by constantly elevating the quality of what comes out of our basic cameras and capture systems.
Even in a “mixed light” shot – AI will be auto-analyzing each pixel and imbuing it with functioning color transforms as metadata – so that you can work with the raw capture if you prefer – or a pleasingly balanced version if you prefer. And I think that type of automation is coming toward us fast.
I also think that most people who do content generation will welcome systems that eliminate time consuming visual issues as early in the production chain as possible.
My 2 cents. We’ll see what happens.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “Personally, I think most editors may have about 5 years of truly widespread “bespoke grading” left before AI transforms the landscape.”
So do any of these AI tools work for you now in photography?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Bill Davis] “AI will be auto-analyzing each pixel and imbuing it with functioning color transforms as metadata”
Or did you mean like this?
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90138210/this-ai-makes-up-new-my-little-ponies
Sorry, couldn’t resist ☺
Happy Friday!
OliverOliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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[Brian Seegmiller] “Speed Grade is going away”
Already mentioned in the thread just below this one. But, what are your thoughts about advancing color correction in FCPX?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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I think there are third party plugins that work just fine. The price for FCP X would possibly go up if they added for fully featured color correction. Even with the purchase of third party plugins FCP X is still cheaper than the alternative.
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[Brian Seegmiller] “I think there are third party plugins that work just fine.”
The trouble with third party plug-ins is poor UI integration. Plus, if you move Libraries around among machines or editors, everyone has to have the same software build.
[Brian Seegmiller] “The price for FCP X would possibly go up if they added for fully featured color correction.”
That’s contrary to how apps have worked so far, but Apple could certainly change direction. It’s their ball. Maybe an in-app purchase, in theory, but I doubt they’d do that.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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My quick 2 cents:
I think Apple’s happy with how 1st party color grading is inside FCP X sp they aren’t going to drastically improve it. They’ll leave it up to third parties. Also, AFAIK the use of the Color Board prevents any control panels from working with FCP X’s native tools so that obviously creates a workflow ceiling. Even if Apple dumps the power of Color into X, the usability will be drastically hindered by not being able to use panels.
[Bill Davis] “Not by removing the need to grade at the top end of the market – that will remain forever. As will the desire to employ educated colorists who can put an artistic imprint on a work. “
I think the need for a colorist depends more on the project than on the budget. For example, creating the look the director wants on a scripted film is generally going to be more work than making footage look natural on a documentary even if the film is micro-budget and the doc is big budget. Like with most changes, the lower hanging fruit will disappear first.
With regards to AI taking over grading duties for the majority of projects five years from now… I think we’ll see AI taking over many aspects of editing before we see it taking over many aspects of grading because so grading is so subjective where as a lot of editing can be very objective. For example, say we are doing a local car commercial for Bob’s Auto Barn. The low hanging fruit is for AI + metadata to enable an NLE to find the broll of the Fords, Chevy’s and Hondas and cut them in when Bob talks about the Fords, Chevy’s and Hondas he has on the lot. When we get to the last shot, which is a wide exterior of the lot including the “Bob’s Auto Barn” sign Bob says the sign is the wrong shade of red. I think that subjective subtly will be much harder for computers to effectively do autonomously. If it was in a documentary the exact shade of red of the sign probably wouldn’t make a difference, but for a commercial (even a low budget one) the color is important because it’s part of the branding.
[Bill Davis] “I also think that most people who do content generation will welcome systems that eliminate time consuming visual issues as early in the production chain as possible.
“You mean like properly white balancing and exposing an image during production (or even *gasp* shooting a chip chart)? Nah, they’re way too busy for that… ????
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[Andrew Kimery] “I think the need for a colorist depends more on the project than on the budget. For example, creating the look the director wants on a scripted film is generally going to be more work than making footage look natural on a documentary even if the film is micro-budget and the doc is big budget. Like with most changes, the lower hanging fruit will disappear first.”
I don’t know if I agree. Sometimes documentary and reality TV (or similar styles of production) are harder, because there’s less control of the image in production and a wider range of [often mismatched] cameras are used. For these types of jobs, especially non-broadcast, it’s pretty hard to beat what Adobe has done with the Lumetri Color panel.
I’m working on a team right now producing a fair amount of branded entertainment content and absolutely everything gets color corrected and all with the Lumetri tools. The editors are definitely expected to know how to do this, even if their work is only for approval of rough cuts by the client.
When you look at the work being done, the Color Board doesn’t cut it. If we went third party plug-ins, then that would mean purchasing at least 7 or 8 licenses. Turnarounds don’t permit enough time to use Resolve. So, having better color tools integrated into X would help push X into this arena.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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It is rare that anything that comes out of a camera can’t be improved with some color correction. I have used the FCPX color bar, Color Finale and lately Chromatic. Like Chromatic best, Color Finale next and Apple’s thingy least. It is just not intuitive. So why not get CoreMelt to write a version of Chromatic that lives inside FCPX.
Note, I am hardly a Colorist, but it is quite easy to do color correction with the right tools.
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