[Sam Kuper]

When shooting RAW, I’ve found that grey balancing tends to give better results than white balancing, even when using reference cards from X-Rite for both. I’d love to find out why grey works so much better!

[Sam Kuper]

Ian, this was extremely helpful; thank you.

PS. If adopting Shake, I’d probably freeze my system at Snow Leopard, which I was thinking of doing anyway, so Shake’s (potential) incompatibility with later versions of OS X shouldn’t be a problem.

[Sam Kuper]

Thank you for all the helpful replies and opinions so far.

I should have mentioned at the beginning that the fact that Shake is no longer supported by a manufacturer doesn’t bother me particularly, because Shake is:
– by all accounts very capable and reliable
– well documented, with plenty of tutorials available.

The learning curve for Shake doesn’t bother me particularly, either. Its node-based editing system looks quite comprehensible, judging by the video tutorials I’ve seen.

As far as video is concerned, I don’t think I’m willing to manage more than a pair of programs for editing and compositing/rotoscoping/FX, so I’m ignoring plug-ins at the moment.

It does sound as though Motion 5 + FCPX will offer a smoother workflow than Shake 4.1 + FCPX, but how much smoother? I’d be grateful if someone could detail the steps necessary to round-trip from FCPX to Motion 5 versus the steps necessary to do the same from FCPX to Shake 4.1. Are there any particular concerns I should be aware of (is this still a problem, for instance)? I’d also be grateful to know of any specific capabilities (other than the ability to edit with a nodal interface, obviously) that I would lose by using Motion 5 instead of Shake 4.1; and vice versa.

Thanks again.

PS. Nuke is an order of magnitude more expensive than the price I would have to pay for Shake. It is well beyond my budget.
PPS. I do not own FCP7, so I was puzzled by the suggestion that Xto7 might be useful for me. Have I misunderstood that suggestion?