What are you thinking about CS6?

[Dennis Radeke]

We’ve certainly logged this feature request and are considering it. We take our customer requests VERY seriously. Unfortunately, I cannot be any more specific. In short, we get it. 😉

As Todd and I have mentioned previously, here’s the public feature request form: feature request
Dennis

[David Mcgavran]

Sample file somewhere?

Thanks

Dave

[Todd Kopriva]

I’ve checked with one of the SpeedGrade guys and gotten some additional information about the SpeedGrade questions raised here.

There were two topics raised above:

1. SDI monitoring
2. round-tripping between Premiere Pro and SpeedGrade

about #1, SDI monitoring:

SpeedGrade doesn’t use Mercury Transmit.

SpeedGrade does use the nVidia Quadro SDI solutions on Windows. As Premiere Pro can use the same hardware as well, it’s simple to create a built-to-purpose workstation that works great for both applications. While this may be a bit disappointing for many people who already own AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox, Bluefish cards, and others, it’s still a great value for everyone who wants to add a dedicated grading system with excellent performance.

Be sure to take into account the hardware that you’d need to buy and use for comparable performance with other color grading systems when making comparions. We think that total cost of ownership of a hardware system built for SpeedGrade is quite competitive with the total cost of ownership for other grading systems.

That said, we certainly acknowledge that many people won’t be able to go for wide deployment of SpeedGrade before they can use hardware that they own already. That’s why we’re working hard on making this better for future versions—specifically, we’re working on getting Mercury Transmit into SpeedGrade in the future. I can’t make promises on specifically when (or even whether) this will happen, but I can say that we’re working on it.

about #2, integration with Premiere Pro:

In CS6, we have a really solid workflow with Send To SpeedGrade that is ultimately easy to use, hard to break, and should be applicable to everything that’s short-form.

For long-form work, we have a very well established, proven (and also hard to break) workflow via EDL export. While this is not the most modern, it’s highly functional and doesn’t require the editor or the colorist to become an expert in XML tweaking.

But, again, we certainly acknowledge that tighter integration would be even better… and we’re working on it. Improving our color workflows is a very high priority for us.

Here’s that feature-request link again, for those who want to give specific requests:
https://www.adobe.com/go/wish

I don’t want to sound like we’re making excuses, but I do ask you to realize that we only just acquired the SpeedGrade technology very recently and didn’t have much time for integration work for CS6. Personally, I’m very impressed with what the SpeedGrade team was able to accomplish. Anyone who has used the previous versions of SpeedGrade should notice that the UI is much improved, as well as many other advances.

BTW, we have a bunch of video tutorials on the Adobe website about using SpeedGrade. Check ’em out.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
product manager, professional video software
After Effects team blog
Premiere Pro team blog
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[Robert Brown]

Do you mean do you want me to post on of my files? It’s a GH-200 file BTW 1080 24P. This is on OSX Lion.

Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist – FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro

https://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos

[Robert Brown]

Yeah I totally understand you guys haven’t had a huge amount of time to tweak SG but the SDI thing is big. One huge annoyance at the moment is having to reconfigure to accommodate software. Resolve, Smoke, and now SG all require specific hardware to get SDI out.

Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist – FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro

https://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos

[David Mcgavran]

Yep if you could post me a small file I can see if it works here and we can start from there.

Cheers

Dave

[David Jahns]

Thanks for the clarification, Todd.

I totally understand your situation of SG being a recent acquisition, not fully integrated yet, etc.

Just a couple of notes to add…

SDI monitoring through KONA/BM etc on MAC – this is VERY important for a facility currently using FC Studio and using Color for Grading with client sessions. If SpeedGrade worked with KONA, I’d be much more likely to stay in the CS 6 suite for finishing. As it is, I’m more likely to swap my KONA card for a Blackmagic card, simply to be able to use Resolve for grading & output to a broadcast monitor.

If I was already using a Windows system, I’d be stoked about the NVIDIA solution. As it is, I was stoked about Transmit. (Still am for PP and AE.)

As far as the round-trip workflow – again, I understand it’s a work in progress. But the “stable/hard to break” short form workflow – that could also be interpreted as “rigid and inflexible”.

One of the things that is nice about the Color & Resolve XML roundtrip is that you can grade each shot and render discreet clips with handles. This can be quite helpful when further changes come up. The concept of “locking picture” seems to be disappearing in my corner of the world (broadcast advertising). Changes happen right up until the last minute, so it’s helpful to grade the footage, and send it back to the NLE, and if slight tweaks need to be made to the edit, they can do it with graded footage, and you don’t have to go back in to grading to add a few frames to a shot.

In this case, maybe the EDL workflow would be better for me? But again, until I can output from my Mac to a monitor, I doubt SpeedGrade will fit into our finish pipeline.

Thanks for all of the info!

David Jahns
—
Joint Editorial
Portland, OR

[Robert Brown]

Just curious are you with Adobe? I can email a link I guess if you give me an address.

Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist – FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro

https://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos

[Robert Brown]

[David Jahns] “Thanks for the clarification, Todd.

I totally understand your situation of SG being a recent acquisition, not fully integrated yet, etc.

Just a couple of notes to add…

SDI monitoring through KONA/BM etc on MAC – this is VERY important for a facility currently using FC Studio and using Color for Grading with client sessions. If SpeedGrade worked with KONA, I’d be much more likely to stay in the CS 6 suite for finishing. As it is, I’m more likely to swap my KONA card for a Blackmagic card, simply to be able to use Resolve for grading & output to a broadcast monitor.

If I was already using a Windows system, I’d be stoked about the NVIDIA solution. As it is, I was stoked about Transmit. (Still am for PP and AE.)

As far as the round-trip workflow – again, I understand it’s a work in progress. But the “stable/hard to break” short form workflow – that could also be interpreted as “rigid and inflexible”.

One of the things that is nice about the Color & Resolve XML roundtrip is that you can grade each shot and render discreet clips with handles. This can be quite helpful when further changes come up. The concept of “locking picture” seems to be disappearing in my corner of the world (broadcast advertising). Changes happen right up until the last minute, so it’s helpful to grade the footage, and send it back to the NLE, and if slight tweaks need to be made to the edit, they can do it with graded footage, and you don’t have to go back in to grading to add a few frames to a shot.

In this case, maybe the EDL workflow would be better for me? But again, until I can output from my Mac to a monitor, I doubt SpeedGrade will fit into our finish pipeline.

Thanks for all of the info!

David Jahns
—
Joint Editorial
Portland, OR

“

What he said.

Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist – FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro

https://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos

[Todd Kopriva]

For those who don’t know David McGavran, who has posted a few times here: He’s the engineering manager for Premiere Pro (and a swell guy).

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
product manager, professional video software
After Effects team blog
Premiere Pro team blog
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