-
Resolve XII…
-
[Shawn Miller] “aren’t FCPX, PPro, AE, Motion and Photoshop more alike than not in this regard? I mean, compared to something like Blender or Smoke.”
Actually, Smoke has a vertical timeline compositing system in addition to its full 2D compositing environment (ConnectFX/Batch) and full 3D compositing environment (Action).
You can use timeline compositing for 2D or 3D compositing.
https://area.autodesk.com/blogs/kenl/smoke-2015-tutorial-3d-compositing-in-the-timeline
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “[Shawn Miller] “aren’t FCPX, PPro, AE, Motion and Photoshop more alike than not in this regard? I mean, compared to something like Blender or Smoke.”
Actually, Smoke has a vertical timeline compositing system in addition to its full 2D compositing environment (ConnectFX/Batch) and full 3D compositing environment (Action).
You can use timeline compositing for 2D or 3D compositing.
https://area.autodesk.com/blogs/kenl/smoke-2015-tutorial-3d-compositing-in-t...”
That is just slick.
Shawn
-
[Shawn Miller] “[Charlie Austin] “But things like clip skimming (huge timesaver with lots of layers),”
I guess I don’t see the advantage in the context of compositing. Truthfully, I don’t even do much timeline scrubbing when trying to match the elements in a composite. I’m usually concerned with color, luminance, edges, etc at that point. “
Well, for me, if I’ve got a dozen layers or something, it’s a real quick way to see a particular layer without enabling/disabling the clips above it. just shaves a little time off when working, but it adds up.
[Shawn Miller] “[Charlie Austin] “Compound clips vs nesting (similar, but different in implementation) etc.”
I confess that I don’t really understand compound clips… what makes them better (in your opinion) than nested sequences or comps for compositing?”
They’re not terribly different really, compound clips just seem easier to work with. less convoluted to decompose/recompose. Could just be me…
[Shawn Miller] “Are you saying that the FCPX timeline is more vertical than other timelines when compositing? 🙂 Kidding aside, I don’t understand what you mean here… aren’t FCPX, PPro, AE, Motion and Photoshop more alike than not in this regard? I mean, compared to something like Blender or Smoke. “
Oh, absolutely. I bounce back and forth between Pr and X a lot and when doing the same things in both, it’s a much more pleasant experience in X. In Pr, there are way less built in effects/looks etc snd I feel like I need AE often (which I don’t rent) when working. But In X I rarely feel I need to go to Motion or something. I’m not doing super complex stuff though, so YMMV…
————————————————————-
~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Walter Soyka] “I want to eliminate conform as we know it. Conform means “to make similar in form, nature, or character; to bring into agreement, correspondence, or harmony.”
This is necessary when two different applications have two different representations of the same edit.”
To me it’s not just when applications have two different representations of the same edit it’s when two people (even if they are using the same application) have two different representations of the same edit.
To keep the example simple, let’s just say an editor and a mixer are both working concurrently on the same edit. Having a truly shared timeline that updates in real time sounds horrible to me because the media in the timeline will be constantly changing. We will be constantly stepping on each other’s toes.
If the editor and the mixer have two versions of the same timeline then we won’t be stepping on each other’s toes, but at the end of the day someone will have to take the changes made in each timeline and conform them into a single timeline. A computer can track the changes but it won’t know which changes to apply when both the editor and the mixer have
Waiting until the end of an edit to start the finishing process isn’t just done because we have incompatible tools, it’s done so that time and money isn’t wasted polishing media that won’t make it into the final cut.
I agree that having more (or even seamless) compatibility between apps would be great, but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. Apple, Adobe, Avid, etc., all have ideas about how best to skin the cat and I doubt they’ll ever come together and agree on a ‘unified’ engine to power all their NLEs. Getting a single company to do it across all their apps is a more likely scenario, but you have to have a company that can make a suite of great apps. After you have a company that can make a suite of great apps that all seamlessly talk to each other you have to convince customers to use them all as opposed to using other apps. The cross compatibility is only a useful feature (and time/money well spent) if l if everyone uses the same family of apps (ex. the compositor uses AE, the editor use PPro and the colorist uses SpeedGrade).
[Walter Soyka] “Sidebar: Adobe is selectively picking up bits of their other apps and putting them into Pr. Look at masks and Lumetri. Which is better? Duplicating functionality across related apps, or connecting the apps more cohesively?”
I think doing both is better than just doing one or the other. Speaking in generalities, you expand the the functionality of the NLE for generalist use (editors that need to do some audio mixing, compositing, grading, etc.,) and you improve the connections between apps to make it smoother for specialists to collaborate. I started out as an editor I got along fine with the built-in grading tools. To make a long story short, after Apple released Color I spent a few years primarily as a colorist and I quickly realized how awesome a dedicated app like Color was, and how limited the built-in correction tools in NLEs were. Today if I have a quick and dirty grading job I’ll do it in the NLE using some Magic Bullet plugins but if I have a ‘real’ grading job I’ll do it in Resolve. After putting in the miles to learn apps like Color and Resolve the thought of doing intensive color work in an NLE makes my skin crawl.
At some point though I think you have to curb how much non-NLE functionality you put in the NLE and say to the user, “Look, if you want to do some really advanced stuff you are just going to have to cowboy up and learn a dedicated mixing/grading/compositing, etc., app”. If you try and too much other stuff in an NLE I think it can become bloated and too difficult to use by the majority of it’s target audience.
-
[Charlie Austin] “[Shawn Miller] “[Charlie Austin] “But things like clip skimming (huge timesaver with lots of layers),”
I guess I don’t see the advantage in the context of compositing. Truthfully, I don’t even do much timeline scrubbing when trying to match the elements in a composite. I’m usually concerned with color, luminance, edges, etc at that point. ”
Well, for me, if I’ve got a dozen layers or something, it’s a real quick way to see a particular layer without enabling/disabling the clips above it. just shaves a little time off when working, but it adds up.
[Shawn Miller] “[Charlie Austin] “Compound clips vs nesting (similar, but different in implementation) etc.”
I confess that I don’t really understand compound clips… what makes them better (in your opinion) than nested sequences or comps for compositing?”
They’re not terribly different really, compound clips just seem easier to work with. less convoluted to decompose/recompose. Could just be me…
[Shawn Miller] “Are you saying that the FCPX timeline is more vertical than other timelines when compositing? 🙂 Kidding aside, I don’t understand what you mean here… aren’t FCPX, PPro, AE, Motion and Photoshop more alike than not in this regard? I mean, compared to something like Blender or Smoke. ”
Oh, absolutely. I bounce back and forth between Pr and X a lot and when doing the same things in both, it’s a much more pleasant experience in X. In Pr, there are way less built in effects/looks etc snd I feel like I need AE often (which I don’t rent) when working. But In X I rarely feel I need to go to Motion or something. I’m not doing super complex stuff though, so YMMV…”
So, it sounds like it’s more a matter of having tools that are more available and intuitive to you. Fair enough, it makes me wish I could jump into FCPX and try it for myself… just to know what you’re talking about. 🙂
Shawn
-
[Tim Wilson] “Anyway, I think that Smoke on Mac offered exactly the environment you’re talking about, but I only know what I saw in demos”
If I’m being honest – of anything out there, Premiere now has to be officially the closest – relative to X and Avid.
You have extremely robust keyframing with AE 5.5 level acceleration control, trackable fully feathered masks, adjustment layers, it’s completely resolution independent to a degree avid definitely isn’t, and X isn’t quite, and it’s a far smarter GUI to perform multiple CC/Edit/Audio scenarios than X or avid. I will go into the ring with anyone saying either X or avid can touch the kinds of CC/Edit/Audio setups including stacked timelines you can achieve in PPro.In terms of getting into a 3D camera setup ala smoke, I think it can be argued pretty well that the near instantaneous transfer to AE on a clip or multi-clip level amounts to nearly the same thing in practise for 99% of the editors accessing it. I worked Flint for a fair few years, and the trade offs having to live in the kind of meta environment applications like Flame and Smoke provide don’t outbid the clear PPro AE interplay. To my eye Smoke has real intelligibility issues with where you are at a given point, why you are there, and what is available to you in terms of nodes sparks etc when you are there. That might explain why the entire Smoke experiment is formally dying.
basically the idea of the super app kind of has to be – as Tim explained way way way better – a chimera. Outside of the super app – the only architecture that comes within a mile of touching it is the adobe suite. There’s nothing on the field that comes close. Neither Avid nor Apple can touch the venn diagram Adobe present.
If adobe would simply offer me the CC production premium I am actually dealing with as opposed to the other 45 apps they’re pumping me for I’d be happier.
As an annual cost relative to the updates I signed on for – buying into production premium CS – I’m still irritated by the 963 app icons that have nothing to do me. There is no intellectual argument forcing master suite prices where they have no natural home. Adobe are still wearing a bad cheap suit for doing that.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
-
What I find interesting is that people are so willing to be patient with Resolve. I mean, for 2 or 3 versions it pretty much has sucked as an editor (disclosure: I have not tried 12 but early reports are not encouraging), but the comments are “well it’s getting there..”. Seriously, there are plenty of products that are already “there”. Why wait?
Just an observation. Let the flaming begin….
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Scott Witthaus] “What I find interesting is that people are so willing to be patient with Resolve. I mean, for 2 or 3 versions it pretty much has sucked as an editor (disclosure: I have not tried 12 but early reports are not encouraging), but the comments are “well it’s getting there..”. Seriously, there are plenty of products that are already “there”. Why wait?”
It’s free.
Many people already use Resolve for ingest and grading so having it become a solid NLE means fewer apps to go into/out of.
It’s free.
Blackmagic has been very drama free compared to Apple, Adobe and Avid.
It’s free.
Everyone loves Grant because he buys solid IP and release the products for 1/100th of their previous price.
Did I mention It’s free. 😉 -
Free, as in not requiring monthly rental to open your own projects. That is near the top of my list. And not exactly free. I have $3K plus in Blackmagic hardware to take advantage of “free”. Rather pay for hardware, a hard asset, than rent software with minor improvements that goes “poof” if you quit paying the monthly credit card bills and also, unlike hardware or a perpetual software license, cannot be resold to recoup some of one’s investment when it makes economic or lifestyle change sense.
All of this only is valid if Resolve 12 actually fulfills its promises. If it really doesn’t function well as an editor with the added bonus of color grading, I will be using FCPX instead. If it does, probably a combination of the two plus Motion. My mo-graph needs are minor. And CS6 Premiere still works on all my systems if I get desperate.
Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD, Multiple OWC Thunderbay 4 TB2 and eSATA QX2 RAID 5 HD systems -
[Jim Wiseman] “And not exactly free. I have $3K plus in Blackmagic hardware to take advantage of “free”.”
Buying $3k in BM hardware isn’t a requirement to download the free version of Resolve though and I’d bet dollars to donuts that the vast majority of Resolve Lite installs don’t have a lick of BM I/O hardware. They just grade off their computer monitor(s). My I/O needs are modest compared to yours so the $150 Ultra Studio Mini Monitor (or whatever it’s called) is all that’s in my Mac Pro. Even with the $150 ‘dongle’ the free version of Resolve is a hell of a deal.
If there was only a $999 version I don’t think people would have the same patient attitude that they currently do.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up