Resolve and Kona

[Gustavo Bermudas]

Wow, no one answered…

[Stuart Smith]

lol, no, thanks for the bump though.

However, I have heard from AJA privately and been told that this request will be bumped up to management level.

Obviously some politics have to be involved, since the biggest sellers for both companies are IO boxes and converters, making them direct competitors. And the largest suppliers of those devices in this market

However, Resolve is no threat to any AJA product, so just keeping my fingers crossed

[Jonathon Lee]

I agree Stuart. I have a Resolve with no I/O living in a box with Smoke + kona 3. I’d switch to a Decklink, but I don’t think Autodesk will ever switch to use the BM. Resolve is amazing and nothing can touch it at it’s current price — and at higher price points is just as good as any other. I use Scratch & Linux Resolve and Mac Resolve holds it’s own for sure.

At one point Grant said he would support the K3. In fact he posted an open letter on the cow and he made an analogy about i/o boards and computer printers that made sense… “Why would you restrict what printer you would use…” or something like that.

I’m also eagerly awaiting support for my CP200 series panels too!! But, I will settle for Kona support so I can get my Smoke/Resolve rig firing on all cylinders.

– J

[Gustavo Bermudas]

This one right? Found it on the Smoke forum

Hi,

This is a message from Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design in response to this thread:

**********

Hi,

We usually keep postings to our own CreativeCow forums but there are some erroneous statements made here about our products being cheap knock offs and made in China that we need to correct.

Over the years, Blackmagic Design has introduced technologies and products well before anyone else. DeckLink HD Extreme 3D cards have 3 Gb/s SDI, internal and external keying, hardware up, down and cross version, 12 bit support, HDMI, analog video and 16 channel SDI embedded audio support. It comes with our own Media Express software with DPX, batch capturing, mastering to tape support and more. As you can see, this is a feature rich product and can hardly be called a cheap knock off.

Back in 2007, we introduced 3 Gb/s SDI into our products, including a new real time, full 24 fps capture and playback of full aperture 2K (2048 x 1556). This made film workflows as simple as video workflow so now full aperture 2K can be routed via routers and also sent to HDLinks for monitoring. We also published the specification of this format in our user manuals so that anyone can implement and adopt this technology.

Sony has just introduced this 2K format in their latest SRW-5800/2 HDCAM SR decks, so we can hardly be considered making cheap products if we are developing and introduction technologies that Sony ends up adopting.

We just introduced the worlds first USB 3.0 video products, and the UltraStudio Pro is a design like nothing else the broadcast industry has ever seen and I think its innovative and a practical solution that looks good while hiding all the cables. These are totally unique products that we spent years developing.

We also have a long track record in the US, and it’s our biggest market. We have multiple engineering facilities here, and the center of our support network is based in the US, plus most of our component suppliers are US based as well. We have always had a strong US presence, and we are hiring more people in the US than we are in any other country right now. We also just purchased EchoLab, which we will announce in a few days time, and that gives us an even bigger US presence and track record.

As to which card is the best? I think that’s difficult to answer. Different products have different features, and the whole point of being open is so that customers can buy the products that best suit their requirements. If you like something else, then you’re free to buy it but there’s no reason to be so vindictive towards us. We love competition because it helps everyone improve and ultimately, the customer benefits. Without our products, do you think you would be paying so little for cards from other brands that you like?

Now, to address Rory’s original question about Smoke compatibility.

We have been asking AutoDesk for almost a year now about that. Until they did the Mac version, we did not have much interest in Smoke because it was a closed system that customers could not assemble themselves. However, the introduction of the Mac version changed that.

We are so keen on supporting Smoke on the Mac that we have almost completed the video component for DeckLink cards without their help. There’s only some small remaining bits left that we need from AutoDesk to finish it. Hopefully, AutoDesk will get back to us quickly and we should see some results soon.

We originally started Blackmagic Design not to make low cost products, although that’s fun to do because it’s so hard to do. The reality us we are from the post production industry and we started doing this back in 1995 because we just wanted to be able to use computer software such as Adobe Photoshop for high end broadcast graphics. This was in the days before Final Cut Pro, when you had to use an Abacus A66 disk recorder with ethernet to get video between the SDI and computer worlds.

It’s funny to think back, but my first product was an SD still store card with Photoshop plugins back in 1997 which cost $4,000!

We wanted to use software such as Adobe Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere for post production because they were great tools then, and are still great today. We did not want to be locked into a particular turnkey system and adding an SDI card into a computer and using these open software tools was the way to do it. We thought this could be an amazing future, and even thought I asked everyone I could talk to at SIGGRAPH 1994, everyone said there was no market for it. So we started making video products to do it ourselves.

This is why we have fought for over 15 years to ensure that things are open and remain open. That’s what Blackmagic Design is about.

This is also the reason why we even visited the NAB booths of other capture card and control surface manufacturers on the very day DaVinci Resolve on the Mac was announced at NAB 2010. We wanted them to know we were going to open up DaVinci if they wanted to support it on their producers. So far, some have responded very positively to that, so that’s exciting.

Smoke is the only software I have ever seen that runs on the Mac that supports capture and playback of video, but does not let you use any video hardware to capture and or playback video.

I think this is really bad, as it cripples what people can do in their workflow. We are talking with them, and it’s looking good, but please help us by letting Autodesk know if your using other brand video cards and want them to work.

Could you imagine buying some software and then finding it only prints on a single model from a single brand of printer? It would be weird.

I hope this updates everyone.

Regards,

Grant
Blackmagic Design

****************

regards

Kristian Lam
Blackmagic Design

[Jonathon Lee]

Yep that is the one!

This was the quote I was talking about… anyhow, I’d really like to get my smoke and resolve running with one set of HW. I’m grateful about the upcoming AVID/Euphonix Color panel support. One thing at a time. I’d actually rather have AD support the Decklink line, then Resolve support the Kona, but at this point I’ll take either.

Just really looking forward to R8. All of the beta guys have been raving like mad about it.

—
—

Smoke is the only software I have ever seen that runs on the Mac that supports capture and playback of video, but does not let you use any video hardware to capture and or playback video.

I think this is really bad, as it cripples what people can do in their workflow. We are talking with them, and it’s looking good, but please help us by letting Autodesk know if your using other brand video cards and want them to work.

Could you imagine buying some software and then finding it only prints on a single model from a single brand of printer? It would be weird.

—
—

[David Jahns]

Hi – wanting to chime in on this thread to get news/replies…. I’m looking for:

The Ultimate Medium Cost Finish Suite for Mac

I’ve been an editor for 11 years – started on Avid, learned FCP when HD was coming on. Most of our work has been broadcast advertising, and over the last few years I have been doing more and more finishing in house, using mainly FC Studio – Color, Motion, Cinema Tools, with AJA KONA 3 hardware, CalDigit RAID, HDCAM-SR, etc…

As my finish skills have grown, I quickly saw FC Studio’s limitations, and have been looking into Smoke on Mac – envisioning installing it on the same Mac/Kona system I use for FCP/Color. I really love Apple Color, and saw a workflow of FCP offline, send to COlor for grading, send back to FCP, send to Smoke for Finishing.

Now, with the demise of Apple Color, I am keen to migrate to DaVinci Resolve – but of course, I’m running into the situation where Smoke needs an AJA K3, and Resolve, of course needs a Blackmagic card.

That’s my dream system – take an offline edit done elsewhere in whatever (FCP7/Avid/Premiere?), send XML to Resolve for grading, send XML to Smoke for finishing.

Until Resolve supports the K3, though… obviously won’t happen – unless… With Resolve Lite, I’m considering testing the workflow of using Resolve in “Desktop” mode only for the initial grading pass, then making further modifications in Smoke if necessary, once we can output SDI to a grading monitor.

But maybe Resolve isn’t even necessary? Question – how robust is the Color Grading in Smoke? From my brief experience with demos, it seems decent, but that’s not really what it was designed to do – which is why Autodesk has Lustre, right? So, I’m pretty sure I still want a dedicated grading app in my workflow. Adding the Avid Color Panel seems like it would help quite a bit, but I’m still not sure it will be an all-in-one grading / finishing system without a Resolve. Thoughts from experienced Smoke-Mac users?

Thanks for any input!

David Jahns
Joint Editorial
Portland, OR

[Jonathon Lee]

Hey David,

I basically wanted the same thing you mentioned in your post. I have set up a Smoke + Resolve system. It’s great, except for the Kona 3 card thing. I have a BMD card in my system so Smoke will not output via SDI in this set up. The great thing now is that Resolve 8 supports the Avid MC Color panel. So, you can use the same panel in Resolve and Smoke.

My work around for the monitor situtation is this. I have a BMD HD-Link that I feed HD-SDI RGB 10-bit from the Decklink. I’m using an HP Dreamcolor. The Decklink feeds the Dreamcolor via the HD Link via sdi.. this is how I get proper 10-bit into the display.

Now for smoke. I feed the Dreamcolor DVI from an Nvidia Card… In smoke you can use a second desktop monitor as the “broadcast” monitor. If you have a Quadro 4000 and use a displayport connection to a dreamcolor you can get 30-bit 10bpc color form the desktop. You can then set the HP to do rec709 or P3.

Until BMD supports the K3 or Smoke supports the Decklink you’ll need to do this. Otherwise you will have to try and install a Decklink and a K3 in the same system.. .which I would not recommend and it may also just not work.

Anyhow, Smoke + Resolve + Adobe CS 5.5 + Mocha Pro + MC + FCP 7 is the best/cheapest way to “do it all”… I also have maya and pro tools… best one-man-band in a box for the money.

I’m a tool whore though… this could obviously be scaled way back… Smoke + Resolve is all you really need.

The thing that is so amazing about Resolve is the CUDA support. It’s amazing for rendering. Just try rendering out a DPX sequence in After Effects to Pro Res HQ with a matte and a scale… you’ll see.

I use Resolve for many things other then just color… although it is such a great color tool.

As far as color in Smoke… it’s good, even powerful. But doing an entire feature… it is possible. However, for grading a feature you are better off in Resolve. Try it… It’s the UI in Resolve. It’s hard to explain why Resolve would be “faster”. Color grading in Smoke is sort of like doing a color job in Avid DS… you can do it, but it’s not ideal.

There’s no loosing with Resolve. It’s too good a deal to not just have it.

– Jonathon

[David Jahns]

Thanks, Jonathon.

This is quite helpful. I have done color & finish on 3 features, but the bulk of my work is short form – mostly TV spots, but also some web films, non-broadcast corporate vidoes, etc… I could probably live with Smoke’s Color for most of that work, even if it’s a little less efficient, as long as it’s powerful enough, which it sounds like it is.

But I’m still interested in the Resolve option!

Our finish process & broadcast protocols usually involves mastering to HD-SR at 1080psf23.98 in 4:2:2, so whatever configuration I use needs to have HD-SDI out to tape (with embedded audio), and to our Color Grading monitor.

In your setup using the BM card, how would you master to tape? I suppose you could render everything out from Smoke filebased & import it back to FCP 7 (or Resolve?) for output through the card. Seems a bit clunky, but it would probably work, eh?

Thanks for your help!

Dave

David Jahns
Joint Editorial
Portland, OR

[Jonathon Lee]

With Resolve, if you have a BMD Decklink card installed in the system you will have full hd-sdi i/o with sound. The 9-pin control has worked great. I use it with HDCam SR 5000 & 5800 decks all the time.

Honestly, I’ve not tried out the audio part of it, but that should work fine. I’ll test it out later.

I’m sure there’s lots of folks here who use it. I know somke with a Kona 3 can do that too, but I’ve never tried that.

– Jonathon

[David Jahns]

Thanks.

Yeah, I’m sure Resolve can do the output to tape just fine – but if you’re Coloring in Resolve, then finishing in Smoke (without the K3 card), would you re-import the rendered finished pieces back to Resolve for output to tape?

David Jahns
Joint Editorial
Portland, OR