Colorista interface in Final Cut Pro

When you apply Colorista to a clip and open its controls in the Viewer you see that it has similar looking color wheels to that in the default FCP 3-way color corrector. But Red Giant Software, makers of the Magic Bullet Suite 2008, call these color wheels lift, gamma, gain which are terms that more resemble that in a high end color grading suite like a DaVinci. A name change is one thing but those things have to have functionality to really make a difference. I think one of the best ways to see how Colorista works it to compare some of the same corrections in both Colorist and the FCP 3-way. Stu Maschwitz of DV Rebels Guide fame is the inventor of Colorista and has done that on his website. Since there is a demo of Colorista available you can do the same and decide if Colorista is right for you. For me, I think color correction and color grading is something best left to a professional colorist. They can do a lot better color work than I can. I’ve seen a real colorist work wonders with the FCP 3-way that made my jaw drop. That said I often need to color correct footage myself so I want a tool that is easy to use and produces great results quickly. That’s what Colorista can do.

Another powerful aspect of Colorista is the Power Mask:

Similar to Power Windows in a DaVinci suite it allows you to mask and isolate only parts of the shot for color correction. You choose a rectangle or ellipse shape and then manipulate the size, positions and feathering. While something similar can be achieved with masking and FCP’s built-in 3-way, having this as part of the Colorista filter makes it much easier and faster to work on a specific part of an image. Positioning the mask is the most difficult thing in FCP since you have to click the position + sign in the filter tab before you can get the target to show in the Canvas to allow click and drag positioning of the mask. In Motion those targets are always visible when the filter is selected. It would be great to see a bezier drawing tool to create a custom shape for the mask as well.

Real power can be achieved with Colorista when you apply multiple Colorista filters to a single clip. A great example of this can be found in Red Giant’s own tutorials. They show examples of Colorista in both Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro and how you can use multiple versions on a single clip for a quickie secondary color correction.

One disadvantage when using Colorista in Final Cut Pro is the realtime playback performance. It isn’t nearly as good as that of the built-in 3-way. Colorista has what is called its DeepColor RT engine that offers better realtime performance by “efficiently using your system’s graphics processing power.” This is true in an app like Motion that utilizes the computer’s graphics card for realtime performance but not the case in FCP. Red Giant suggests using the Unlimited RT setting on an FCP timeline but you will get a lowered resolution during what might be a choppy frame rate. According to Red Giant’s engineers this is due mainly to the way FCP uses the FxPlug technology. It will be a great day when we get an FCP update that can use the graphics card as well as Motion can. Bottom line is you can get great color correction done with Colorist you just have to render it when you are done!

Colorist interface in Motion

And one final thing to like is that Colorista will run on a number of different hosts and they are included in one installer. Not may plug-ins do that:

As you can see Avid is included in that installer list. Currently Colorista won’t run on the newest Avid Media Composer 3.0. The engineers at Red Giant Software are working on updating Colorista to run on the newest version of Avid. If you use Avid you know that is has much more competent color correction that Final Cut Pro so the need for Colorista might be less on Avid. But Avid’s color correction toolset can sometimes be a bit overkill so a simple and good tool like Colorista can be good to have on Avid as well. Now if they can just get it updated to run on MC Soft 3.0.

What’s next for Colorista? danrubottom posted a couple of suggestions via Twitter a while back that would be nice:

That’s a great recommendation for the next version. If they would build a powerful secondary color correction tool into Colorista as well then it would more than double the power of the tool. Colorista might still be considered early in its life so there is a lot of room to grow. It’s also a good tip to know that when you are working on the overall settings for the lift/gamma/gain you may feel like you want to drag around the circle of the color wheel to move the slider. It’s designed to follow the left and right moves of your mouse. If you stick with left / right movement then it will work a lot better. There’s other 3rd party color correction tools available; Color Finesse and Apple’s own Color but for a great price / performance ratio it’s hard to beat Colorista. And since there is a demo available there’s really no reason not to the Colorista for you color correction needs.

The first thing you’ll notice about Avid Media Composer 3.0 is the … icons. That’s right, for all of the longtime Avid users out there the iconic icon of the little weightlifter there on the z key known as “lift” … is gone.

He and many others have been replaced by more generic icons across the board. This was reported on the web before the release hit the streets so it wasn’t entirely a shock. I kind of miss the little guy though as the weightlifter always meant Avid. But I can see why they changed the z key as well as a number of other icons. They have decided to color-code a number of basic editing functions across the application.

The red arrow now means to lift or overwrite an edit across the application. That means when you perform an edit with any one of the “red-arrowed” edit functions you won’t be causing yourself any real sync issues as the new media overwrites what is there.

When using a “yellow-arrowed” edit function like extract or splice-in, you will close that hole upon an extraction or insert new media thus moving all other elements down in the track, possibly causing sync issues. Of course that depends on how you have your sync-lock function working but that’s the idea. Lift/overwrite functions in red and extract/splice-in in yellow. It may be scandalous that the weightlifter is gone but the color-coding of those basic edit commands, with icons that more represent the actual function, was probably done to make it easier for new users to understand. And that it should.

With that out of the way the next thing you’ll notice about this new release is the speed. One generally thinks about having to buy a new computer with a faster processor to get more speed but with this Avid update you get it included in the software. It’s speed where it counts too. Faster moving around the timeline, both with audio scrubbing on and off. Faster reactions when moving things to and from bins as well as better responsiveness when navigating menus and settings. But most importantly is more speed with all things related to that timeline. Entering and then playing in trim mode is near instantaneous. Un-dos and re-dos happen about as quick as you can push the buttons. And the four-frame display while in segment mode is thankfully usable again. Avid has said that for this release they were concentrating on performance and stability. That means maybe we shouldn’t have expected a ton of new flashy features. It’s always interesting when software updates are more of an upgrade that is based on performance rather than new tools or features as it might not make for as an exciting a demo at a trade show … but the change will be obvious for users of previous versions of Media Composer once you start editing.

As I mentioned I’m happy to report that Trim mode is speedier with this upgrade. The Avid Trim mode is something that it is always worth mentioning when talking about Avid Media Composer. I’ve never met anyone who uses the Avid that doesn’t live in trim mode. It’s one of the most missed features when cutting on Final Cut Pro. I was once asked to provide a quote about Avid trim mode and here is what I said: “The Avid trim tool is by far the greatest non-linear editing tool to be coded by a human being. It is very functional and very intuitive. From the simplest double roller trim to the most complex asynchronous multi-track trim, it delivers. And the ability to play out a slip or slide edit makes it even more useful. Plus there is the great little progress line that plays along in the timeline as you trim. It’s perfect visual feedback. Yea, I know that FCP added jkl (dynamic) trimming but its implementation is still light years behind what Avid has perfected.”

That may sound like hyperbole but IMHO that’s how good trim mode is and with the new speed in version 3 it’s faster … and faster is better.

Roundtripping is a big buzzword in the Final Cut Studio suite as well as Dynamic Relinking in the Adobe Creative Suite. These terms describe a link between the editing application and supporting apps like After Effects or Motion. Create a motion graphics sequence in one of these apps and then without rendering out a piece of self-contained media drop them into the timeline of their sister editing app (Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro) and you can render the motion graphic in the timeline. Update the graphic later in the creating application and it will update in the editor. With this version of MC Soft 3.0 on the Macintosh, Avid has added its own graphics and effects application Avid FX.

Avid FX is based off of Boris RED. Boris RED is a titling, effects and compositing piece of software that has been around for years. While it doesn’t have the penetration of Adobe After Effects (and probably not Apple Motion either) it does have a devoted following. Anyone familiar with After Effects will be able to pick their way around Avid FX and really learn it well with some dedicated time.

Click for larger view of Avid FX interface

Unfortunately there isn’t a printed manual included for Avid FX (no one seems to include them anymore) so you’ll have to rely on the help files to learn more. And those help files aren’t great but they are better than nothing. The best thing about Avid FX is that when installed you get a new category in the effects palette called Avid FX. The Avid FX Filter and Avid FX Transition can be applied just like any effect or transition in the timeline. You can then open the Avid FX application via the effects editor and go to town doing any kind of effects or compositing work you see fit. The full effect build is then updated in the timeline. It’s really useful with the transition effect as you apply it as a transition between the two clips and then build a custom transition from within Avid FX. The Avid FX Title-Matte Effect seems like it would allow you to create a title or something similar and then just key through to the background just like any title. It doesn’t seem to work that way for me and to be quite honest I can’t figure out exactly what it does so if you’ve got that one figured out please comment below. Another nice thing about Avid FX? You don’t have to go to Marquee anymore!

If you are new to Avid from Final Cut Pro one thing that always seems confusing is segment mode.

When you click and drag around in the timeline you are only moving the playhead, not individual clips in the timeline. To move clips via click & drag you have to enter segment mode. It’s a totally different philosophy from how a number of other editing apps work but for many it allows the editor to perform basic edits very fast. For others it is baffling. To this day I can still do a basic cuts/dissolve type edit, say rebuilding from a printed EDL or a paper cut, much faster in Avid than in Final Cut Pro. One thing that would be a great improvement would be for the Avid to stay in the selected segment mode until the editor turns segment mode off. The app will stay in segment mode after you move a clip and then play or move the playhead via the keypad but if you click and drag down in the timecode track to move the playhead you leave segment mode. By staying in the selected mode it would allow for another way of working which would be very welcome. Avid also finally added the ability to select clips on different tracks and move them via segment mode. What they haven’t done is give the editor the ability to select multiple non-adjacent clips and move them together. This kind of makes it feel like they have just missed something with segment mode but the developers are aware that this would be a nice feature to have and it will probably come along in future updates.

A couple of great new features that have been added are the Timecode Burn-In tool and the Subcap tool. Both are under the new Generators heading in the effects pallet.

The Timecode Burn-In tool goes a step beyond simple burn-in and allows customization of different types of displays and it does so in real time.

One fantastic thing that it does is display other types of information like clips names and a custom note.

The new Subcap tool is an easy way to add open captioning from a text file. According to Avid it “Provides quick and easy way to fulfill delivery requirements for foreign markets and integrates easily into existing subtitling workflows by supporting EBU-N19.” I haven’t used it for this particular purpose but I did slap it on an offline the other day and use it to provide on-screen notes on parts of the edit as it went by. As I mentioned these new effects are under a Generator heading so I hope they will provide other new additions to the Generators in the future.

They’ve also added improved performance for HD codecs that aren’t full raster like HDV and DVCPRO HD:

New codecs are supported like Sony XDCAM-EX (using the Sony Clip Browser software), Panasonic AVC-I & JVC 23.976p & 25p HDV. Plus, contrary to what you might have read in other reviews (and confusingly on Avid’s own site) Media Composer 3 software will run on PowerPC Macs. I’ve run it on a Mac Pro and a Dual 2.7 G5. Performance on the G5 is pretty good.

I also want to mention ScriptSync. People often wonder what the advantages of Media Composer over Final Cut Pro might be. Here’s one great example. Besides the fact that you can even do script based editing on Avid and can’t on FCP, allowing Script Sync technology to phonetically line the script with actual takes from captured media means you don’t have to do it by hand. One important thing to remember is that it doesn’t have to be a narrative script. If you have transcripts of footage then you can use ScriptSync to associate the transcript with the footage. It’s a great way to stay organized and find specific things at a moments notice. It can work in languages other than English and is surprisingly accurate as well.

What’s not to like? One thing that I hate, hate, hate about Media Composer is that you can’t do any kind of scrolling or zooming around the timeline while it is playing back. Try to zoom out and playback stops. Hell, try to clear an IN point and playback stops!! This seems very antiquated in a modern NLE. I also really wish Avid had some kind of “check for updates” menu (or even a stand alone application) that would look at your currently installed version, and also the OS and QuickTime versions, and be able to download the updates. It has always been difficult to even learn about updates to the Avid software much less download and install them. Even if a new version requires you to uninstall an old version they should build some kind of tool that makes this process easier. In an age where all computers are connected to the Internet, software updating should be a simple affair. I don’t mean it should be automated as you don’t want to update your editor right in the middle of a big project but it should be one click to at least see what the new version is and where to get it. Even better if it can tell you things like the fact that you might need to start at version 3.0.1 for Mac OS 10.4 because of a bug related to the Avid Mojo SDI box and Mac OS 10.5. And it may be just me but the Export dialog box has always been confusing. There is only one Export under the file menu and from there you choose what you want from a pop-up. You can then Save As that setting and it ends up in the Settings tab. I have tons of them there and I wish there was a better way to store them. It also seems like I often make a change to a setting and don’t save it properly so the next time I go to output a Quicktime Movie with a particular export setting it’ll be set to something else. Maybe I’m just not paying enough attention but usually you are exporting near the end of the day so it really should be idiot proof. And don’t even get me started on the Send To menu. Like the Avid FX Title-Matte Effect, maybe i am just dumb but there is something about the Send To operations that has always stumped me. And Media Composer 3 is certified to work with Leopard but damn if it doesn’t make my dock do some crazy disappearing/becoming invisible act sometimes after tabbing through Spaces or hiding and showing. I know that it’s still there as I can show/hide the dock but I see some funky mirror image of the dock which isn’t really there anymore:

Seems like a bug so I guess they aren’t all gone.

This release is much more stable than the last. Crashes were few and far between and I only have seen one instance of the dreaded “bus error” that has plagued some earlier Media Composer releases. While I’m still not sure I like the cryptic error messages you get when Avid crashes there has to be some reasoning behind the long, crazy string of characters that pop-up. It might be less scary if you just got a generic “this application has unexpectedly quit” message but that would not mean as much to someone in the know.

To sum up … Avid Media Composer 3 is a must update for Avid users. The speed alone makes it worth the price of admission. There are a number of upgrade options from early versions of Media Composer as well as Avid Xpress Pro and Avid Xpress DV. If you choose the download option there is also a download-able bundle of the 3rd party applications that come in the boxed version for $195. That’s worth it as you get Sorenson Squeeze and Avid FX, two applications that make the suite much more worthwhile. So if you are an Avid user grab your checkbook and get version 3.

Organization! That single word is one of the most important, yet under used and misunderstood, words in non-linear editing. You often take hours and hours and hours of footage that turn into gigs and gigs and gigs of media and combine that with many graphics files, hundreds of sounds effects and disc after disc of music to make one final edit. In the process you might have multiple Final Cut Pro projects, different sequence versions and bins galore. You may not be as organized as you want to be but on a large project, the organized editor has a leg up over one that isn’t ogranized. How do you get organized? Years of experience cutting different types of projects is one way … or you can get a copy of Shane Ross’ Getting Organized in Final Cut Pro. This DVD-ROM is part of the Creative Cow Master Series and is worth every penny for a new or aspiring editor who is strugging with how to keep things … well, organized.

Shane touches on and/or explains a lot of basic technical hurdles that are very often asked by newbies to Final Cut Pro or non-linear editing in general. Some of the first things one needs to learn like drive formatting, the autosave vault, why not to use USB 2.0 drives and how to avoid many different Capture Scratch folders on a volume are all addressed early on. Shane also goes into detail explaining 3 of the different types of capture techniques: log and capture, capture and subclip as well as capturing on the fly. It is important to note that all these techniques are addressed as you will see a lot of discussion on the Internet as to which of these techniques are best and why you should use one and never use the other. By addressing all three Shane gives the viewer the opportunity to learn them all and decide on their own. Which of these are really the best? Here’s the secret … all of them. It depends on your own workflow and which you are comfortable with. I use all three techniques at different times and on different projects. One purpose of a teaching tool is to allow the student to learn enough where they can and what they can and then learn even further on their own. That is exactly what this does.

More topics discussed include archiving, monitoring and bin usage. Do you ever have to string together a finished program from a lot of smaller edits? There are a lot of ways to accomplish this and Shane addresses many of them including copy/paste techniques and nesting. Nesting is an often misunderstood topic so seeing an example of using nesting can help understand the concept. There’s even a nod to the old CMX3600 tape-based linear editing world and why small tape names can be important when naming your reels. While a new editor might rarely ever be faced with this particular need it is good information to have in your head for that day when you hear someone ask for a “CMX3600 list.”

There is a point made in the disc that you can’t mix different formats in a Final Cut Pro timeline without having to render the odd format. This isn’t the case anymore so this disc was obviously made with an older version of FCP. Such is one of the perils of making teaching tools for software since software is always evolving. But with a disc like this which teaches general concepts and not all specific software features most all of the information will remain correct many versions into the future. Even when small things like software button placement or menu design changes you can usually adapt what is being taught to the software update as it usually doesn’t change that much.

One great thing that I learned was how Shane uses multiple Final Cut Pro project files for different elements of a long-form edit. By generating new projects for different elements of your project like b-roll, interviews, music, sound fx and things like that you can keep your media drive very organized. I haven’t always done this and often the FCP project file gets very large and sluggish weeks into a long-form edit. Not to mention you have a project folder inside the Capture Scratch folder of your media drive that is full of what can be thousands of files. By far not the most organized way to work.

Which brings us back full circle. Organization! That single word is one of the most important, yet under used and misunderstood, words in non-linear editing. Grab your own copy of Shane Ross’ Getting Organized in Final Cut Pro and you too can become more organized. I know I did.