Hawaiki Color for Final Cut Pro X

[Jeremy Garchow]

It looks like Simon has done a bang up job.

[Craig Seeman]

He’s done a very good color grading UI in a “single page” interface. Apple should look at his work.

[Carsten Orlt]

Please Apple do not look at his work 🙂

I actually tried it and though the quality of the correction looks good I do not think the UI is that good.

If you want the power of more controls might as well get the FREE Davinci.

Apple actually did an amazing job by getting rid of the clutter in the app 🙂

Happy editing

[Marcus Moore]

I agree. The execution of CC in FCPX is very good, with its own version of Resolves “power windows” and “qualifiers” making some fine work pretty simple. What’s lacking is depth to the controls (keyframes, curves, alternate 3-way interface, tracking or at least key framing for masks). But just like with audio- there is very likely a ceiling to the complexity to the controls Apple is interested in integrating. Knowing that anyone in certain workflows will always end up punting that part of the process to another person working with specialized software.

[Jeremy Garchow]

For the people who need color wheels, this software provides the necessary interface.

It also provides really nice white balance controls, something that the color board does not focus on specifically.

This plug combined with SliceX and natress curves is a decently powerful in app solution.

Sure, a dedicated grading system is dedicated, but as someone who is looking to have more power in one place, this is pretty cool, and it shows proof of concept in custom UI design within fcpx.

They said it couldn’t be done! 😉

[Oliver Peters]

Personally, I’m happy with Simon and Lawn Road developing this on their own path and Apple going the way they want to with the color board. Hawaiki adds way more sophistication than Apple wants in a single effect, which is fine. Plus it is placed into the effects stack, so you can rearrange the filter order. Color board is always downstream of the effects. I’m sure Simon is working on more power in the next update release, which may fill in the gaps. Unfortunately, all sophisticated plug-ins are limited by the Motion template architecture if they don’t want to take a performance hit.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Mitch Ives]

[Marcus Moore] “What’s lacking is depth to the controls (keyframes, curves, alternate 3-way interface, tracking or at least key framing for masks). But just like with audio- there is very likely a ceiling to the complexity to the controls Apple is interested in integrating. Knowing that anyone in certain workflows will always end up punting that part of the process to another person working with specialized software.”

As unpopular as this may be, I do not like Apple’s Color Board, and yes, I’ve worked with it. I don’t hate it, I just don’t find it an improvement. Perhaps grandma and grandpa like it better than that scary color wheel thing, but Apple’s re-design was at the very minimum, unnecessary.

Fix things that are broke, don’t re-design things that aren’t. For those that feel like arguing with me, I have one single question… why can’t we keyframe color correction in the color board! It’s damned embarrassing and undermines the notion that this is a serious editing tool…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Craig Seeman]

The problems I have with the Color Board are:

Saturation and Exposure are really just sliders and they take up more screen real estate than necessary. They could be sliders placed closer together although I’m not sure what would fill the void in the current configuration.

The order of the tabs seem to be reverse of common use. Exposure should be first.

That one has to tab back and forth between Color, Saturation, Exposure hampers the interactive nature of grading which is what Hawaiki addresses by making it all one screen.

The nature of the Color portion of the Color Board means that pucks can often end up in close proximity or overlapping at times, making selection and movement very finicky. Having separate wheels avoids that.

Color wheels seem more intuitive because the wheels make it more obvious what colors you are moving towards/away from. The Color Board completely obscures this which IMHO makes both learning and accomplishing grading more complex to understand, not easier.

While the Color Board is fairly deep for a grading feature built in to an NLE, the UI seems contrived and awkward. While it might seem “elegant” that Apple utilizes everything within a small portion of the interface, it’s ultimately more space efficient than grading UI efficient.

Hawaiki Color has everything on a single screen, easy to move back and forth, separate wheels. It means fewer clicks to do a basic grade with easier use of the mouse to do it all.

[Mark Dobson]

[Mitch Ives] “Fix things that are broke, don’t re-design things that aren’t.”

Well that’s FCPX for you.

I personally find the FCPX color board a pretty powerful tool short of using an external corrector / grading software such as Resolve. It’s taken a while and I still see myself looking at the little color wheel icon for opposites but the simplicity of the controls belies what a powerful and clean color corrector it is.

I’m hoping that the next update will see some improvements, maybe a return to the wheels as an option and a greater degree of control over the secondary masks such as is found in the brilliant Slice X.

But through using more than one correction it’s possible to fix most problems and to transform or correct dull shots. Using the FCPX corrector in tandem with the improved scopes adds up to a pretty powerful app. I use to process Canon Log files and am astonished at the degree of control I can achieve through combining secondary masks and multiple corrections. The trick for me is not to try and fix everything in one correction.

I’ve tried Hawaiki Color and find it a bit too fiddly for me and I also perversely don’t like the onscreen controls and have noticed that these are also reflected in the scopes which is off-putting, I know you can turn them off . . .

Thanks to Simon I have been a beta tester with the Hawaiki Auto Adjust plugin which has just been launched and this is brilliant for correcting white balance. But as others have said I think that the plugin developers have been both aided and shackled by the motion template architecture.

[Mitch Ives]

[Craig Seeman] “While the Color Board is fairly deep for a grading feature built in to an NLE, the UI seems contrived and awkward. While it might seem “elegant” that Apple utilizes everything within a small portion of the interface, it’s ultimately more space efficient than grading UI efficient.”

I agree with your entire post, but the above statement may be the most succinct comment I’ve read about the Color Board…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill