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Resolve for Mac feedback from former Apple Color users?
I’m definitely at the point of my workflow where I feel I’ve outgrown the capabilities of my Apple Color setup (I use a Tangent CP-200 BK and TS control panel with it), and am itching to jump to Resolve for Mac.
I was just curious to hear any real world feedback (either positive or negative) about Resolve for Mac from users who have made the switch from Apple Color. Is there anything about Resolve that you miss about the Apple Color/FCP workflow? What are the “gotcha’s” that I may experience in Resolve, coming from a FCP->Color->FCP roundtripping workflow? And what drives you nuts about Resolve, and what about Resolve makes you never want to go back to Apple Color?
I work mostly in TV commercials, so I tend to work with a client or agency person sitting in the room with me when I grade. And 95% of the time, I work with 1080p/23.98 Quicktime ProRes (HQ and 4444) footage and RED R3D files for broadcast delivery. I struggle with Color a lot, because our clients tend to like to make numerous last minute changes after picture lock, as well as multiple variations of a spot where there are subtle differences between them, and I dont want to have to re-grade/re-render redundant shots that are shared between multiple timelines, as I have to currently do in Color.
I’d love to hear your feedback on this!
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35 Replies
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For me, the biggest reason to move on to DaVinci was realtime playback. With sound. Sound help you understand what’s going on, whether it’s a dialogue or a V.O.. There’s been some discussion about this and if it’s a good thing or a bad thing to have sound while grading – either way – you can choose not to use sound, it’s no big deal!
Another thing is that I can render to digital files in realtime. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower – but it’s not taking me two hours to render a 25 minute short film which has a wide range of tracking, vignettes and masks. Color is nauseating slow that way.
Then there’s the fact that you can play the timeline and master to tape or hard drive.. I’ve done this a couple of times. I have my old Mac Pro (still going strong) and I’ve simply hooked them together with a single SDI cable. On the old mac I use BMD Media Express and hit RECORD. On my DaVinci Mac, I hit PLAY. Tadaaa! 🙂 Audio and video in one go. Realtime.
Then there’s the nodes. Oh.. the nodes.. I enjoy working this way instead of predefined “primary in/secondary/out” rooms. And don’t get me started on the efficiency of tracking… 😉
Why I wouldn’t go back to Color
- You grade in “rooms” instead of all in one workspace
- No nodes (except for the FX room)
- Lack of sound and realtime playback
- Render is slow
- Tracking is hard to get right – and even if you get it right, it takes a while to process
- No support for external mattes
- Just namedropping “I got DaVinci” has landed me more jobs the past few months than I could saying “I got Color” the past three years
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For me Resolve gives more natural and organic feel compared to color.
And yes there is speed!
This is just amazing. You can run red stuff realtime and have a lot of nodes
and make it all happen with client. I can not put it on words 😉It is like with cars, you have driven mazda for all of your life which gets you from a to b and it is all fine but after you can sit in Enzo and master it, then probably is now way you will go back to a and b.
Every time you step out of Enzo / your grading session there is real glow on your face.
It just feels so good 🙂Bit emotional but this is how i feel comparing color and Resolve.
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Margus
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I think the obvious ones that should be mentioned are that conforming, realtime playback, and 3d motion tracking are the most impressive features, and yes they’re amazing.
For me though the most pleasant change was timeline organization. Having a thumbnail string makes it so much easier to find clips, and having each thumbnail have lots of useful info is even better. Combine that with having corrections linked to master clips, and being able to arrange clips by timecode instead of by EDL order, and I’ve cut hours of work off coloring.
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I second most of what’s been said.
One caveat, though: if you tend to work with many video tracks in FCP, you’ll need to change your style. You’ll need to collapse everything into one track before going into Resolve.
Apart from that, only positive experiences:
Multiple version of the edit oder grades? No problem, easy to handle.
Scaling, cropping or even rotating: excellent quality!
Interlaced footage? No problem!
Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts
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What about getting in and out of Final Cut? Do you use XML?
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[Uli Plank] “One caveat, though: if you tend to work with many video tracks in FCP, you’ll need to change your style. You’ll need to collapse everything into one track before going into Resolve.”
I always did that when I worked with Color too. I want a clutterless timeline. Color is already filling the screen with big controls that easily could be downsized a dozen nothes.
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Yup, single-track decomposing is nothing new to us masochistic Color users 🙂
I like to use EditMule’s AutoCollapse tool to automatically flatten FCP sequences. Saves a ton of drudge work!
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Yes, very helpful little app.
Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts
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Yes.
If you have habit to have nice clean timeline in fcp then it is no brainer at all.
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Margus
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