Please Support Element Remapping.

[Jake Blackstone]

No!!! You will buy the $30K BM panel and you will like it:-)

[Chad Terpstra]

+1 (enthusiastically)

I miss the control I had in Color with a customized panel. I have the wave currently but was thinking of moving up to the Element.

[Marcus Smith]

+1.

[Sascha Haber]

I much rather have a solid factory mapping I can learn than a custom mapping that differs from place to place.
But in its actual state, its cumbersome.
What BMD do is offer different schemes people could switch to..
For example, I see myself jumping to the KEY menu all the time, not to work with the key, but to change the GAIN.
Its my favourite function , I need it on the front page, same goes for saturation.
And on the transport panel, next and prev keyframe are as essential as En/Dis All…no one need Unmix or Add Lay.
So a more clever, daily task oriented mapping would be much more useful than the logical grouping it has now.

A slice of color…

Resolve 10b3 , Smoke 2013 EXT
Colorist / VFX / Aerial footage nerd
https://vimeo.com/saschahaber

[Andi Winter]

i am faster on the wave than on the elements, which is sad but true.
therefore i invested in a used jlcooper, but there are also some things
missing mappingwise.

i totally agree that theoretically it would be good to have a standard-mapping
and a colorist who knows the board can chime in anytime and begin to work. but
in my reality that is a very rare situation, and missing some basic function,
again mappingwise, i use in my everyday grading-live is a bad trade-off…

so PLEASE blackmagic, make the effort soon, make the different panels customizable,
i guess the majority of us would love it!!!

ps: who is mapping the panels right now? the manufactor? a bmd-colorist? a bmd-technician?
a mix?

[Chad Terpstra]

If it’s a matter of money I know I would fork up close to the cost of the program again to be able to have full mapping control on any panel. As to whether is personally customized or just a better factory preset, I would think if you’re switching workstations you’d just take your preset on a thumb stick and load it up before you start working.

[Harris Charalambous]

I remember looking forward to the day I was going to upgrade to the Element panel. Thinking I was going to be more productive, efficient and get more out of this great piece of software. Only to be disappointed by how cumbersome the mapping was compared to the wave panel I had just sold. I hate to say it, but I sometimes I wonder if BMD is only focused on the hobbyist and big shops but don’t really think about the guys in between. Which I would think are the guys that with their support may eventually be able to afford the bigger panels and will be the next generation of colorists. Asking people to make the jump from a 3k panel to a 30k panel is a bit of a tall order. V10 sadly has not made the mapping better, actually for a moment it was even worse with the new node menu only, thankfully that was fixed, only put us back to essentially where we were with V9. I was truly hoping for a rethought mapping of the panel in V10, but at this point I’d happily pay a reasonable fee to have custom mapping via Tangent Hub. I’d actually even pay a smaller fee for the something similar to the below factory mapping, call it advanced mapping if you like. Also, if it’s too much of a threat to their panels then BMD needs to release a more affordable panel or come up with some other business strategy i.e make panel use only available on the full version or something else.

In the meantime I’ve taken a pass at the element mapping in hopes of starting a constructive discussion on how the factory mapping could be better and in hopes that BMD will listen.

– MF Panel (Transport panel) switch Menu B to Menu A and keep Menu A as default (So we don’t have to switch to B every time we start a session)
– Add LOG GRADING to B Button on TK Panel – Add High / Low Range to KB Panel which is activated when B button is pressed / Map Offset to 4th Trackball or Center Track ball while A Button is pressed
– Remove Offset Menu altogether and move its functions into Primary Page on KB Panel
– Add Node Sizing to Sizing window

Suggested Menu Layouts

MF PANEL – NEW MENU A
Add Ser. / Add Par. / Add Lay.
Byp Grd / En/Dis Node / Del Node
Grab Still / Play Still / Prev Node
Dynamic / Static / Next Node

MF PANEL – NEW MENU B
First FM / Last FM / Undo
Prev FM / Next FM / Redo
Prev KF / Next KF / Del KF
Dynamic / Static / Toggle Timeline Mode (All, Color, PTZR etc)

BT PANEL – MASTER MENU A
Primary / Window / HSL Q
Curves / H Clip / L Clip
B/S/Mist / Key / Sizing
Version / Memory / Gallery

B/S/Mist = (Blur, Sharpen, Mist) – See KB PANEL – BLUR / SHARPEN / MIST MENU

BT PANEL – MASTER MENU B
Node / Track / Stereo 3D

BT PANEL – PRIMARY MENU
Base Mem / A/C Mode
Base Mem All / Switch Timeline
Base Mem Reset / Auto Color
Toggle (RGB/YUV/HSL)

KB Panel – PRIMARY MENU A
Luma Lift / Luma Gamma / Luma Gain
Saturation / Hue / Luma Mix
Contrast / Pivot / Master Offset

KB Panel – PRIMARY MENU B
R Offset / G Offset / B Offset
Saturation / Hue / Luma Mix
Contrast / Pivot / Master Offset

BT PANEL – POWER WINDOW MENU
CPW / On/Off / Add Win
LPW / Invert / Outside
PPW / Trk Bck / Trk Fwd
PCW / GPW / Track> see BT PANEL TRACK MENU

NOTE: Hitting Track Bck / Track Fwd while tracker is tracking pauses track.

KB PANEL – POWER WINDOW – Move up 3rd column (i.e Rotate, Soft) and unify controls over all windows I.e no staggering of knobs
Size / Aspect / Rotate
Pan / Tilt / Soft

KB Panel – BLUR / SHARPEN / MIST MENU
Radius / H/V Ratio / Scaling
Coring / Level / Mix

BT PANEL – MEMORY MENU
SV Mem 1 / LD Mem 1 / 2Prior (Copy 2 Grades Prior)
SV Mem 2 / LD Mem 2 / 1Pior (Copy 1 Grades Prior)
SV Mem 3 / LD Mem 3
Copy Node / Paste Node

BT PANEL – NODE MENU
Add Ser. / Add Par. / Add Lay
Add Key / Add S/C / Add Outside
Add Bef / Append / Del Node
Bypass / En/Dis All / En/Dis Node

BT PANEL – TRACK MENU
Clip/Frame / Interactive / Window/Stabilizer)
Toggle Pan / Toggle Tilt / Copy Trk
Toggle Zoom / Toggle Rotate / Paste Trk
Add KF / Between / Window >

Curves / YSFX / H Clip L Clip Menu Layout (Move Lower Luma controll so it is in line with other Luma control (Same column)) Many not look as clean but could be more functional?
Red / Green / Blue
Master
Master YSFX
Red / Green / Blue

[Joseph Owens]

Even if the only thing was the use of the fourth ball as a mouse cursor, dot- and ring- left and right clicks. That would be a large stride forward.

What is restrictive about the current Element layout is that we still need to dig down through layers and swap A/B menus to get to most-commonly-used upper hierarchies — Primary corrections are A-side, while Window controls are B-side… and there are potentially destructive commands just one fumble-finger keystroke away from deep-sixing your project, Undo aside.

After using both my Wave and Elements panels going back and forth between my main and remote studio spaces, frankly the Wave is faster for simple tasks, admittedly not wildly efficient for poly-node, multiple window, qualifications up the ying-yang kind of work, but… unless you are asking for thousands of dollars an hour for that kind of detailed labour… its going to be kind of hard to justify the asset overhead.

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Harris Charalambous]

Agreed, the addition of the 4th track wheel would be great, but in my mind a bit of a luxury at this point when so many basic functions are still so poorly mapped! As you mentioned there really doesn’t seem to have been any thought put into the natural travel of the operators hand when using the dials or knobs per function etc.

Hopefully BMD will surprise us with a more productive mapping update in the near future. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

[Chad Terpstra]

I think the only thought put into it is how to make it just frustrating enough to encourage users towards the BMD panel. Not a very friendly or generous sales tactic but a tactic nonetheless.