Convince me I NEED Magic Bullet

[Brandon Rice]

I've seen some great stuff from it, but is it that much more powerful than the Avid color corrector? thanks.

[Shaw]

I'm gonna say 'screw it' - buy a book on color theory instead :)

[Matt Grunau]

I'm gonna say 'screw it' - buy a book on color theory instead :)


Three I would recommend would be:

Digital Retouching and compositing: Photographer's Guide by David D. Bush
ISBN# 1-932094-19-9

Photoshop Color Correction by Michael Kieran
ISBN# 0-321-12401-4

Adobe Photohshop Master Class, Second Edition: The Essential Guide to Revisioning Photography by John Paul Caponigro
ISBN# 0-321-13010-3

They are all very good reads, and cover a hell of a lot of color theory. Some are older books, one covering Photoshop 6-7, 2003 and one dating back to 1999with PS7, but the theory hasn't changed.

But they are also mainly for Photoshop, which luckily translates well to video.

Brandon, do you use Photoshop, and if so, what kinds of adjustments does it share with Avid? Things like Levels and Curves are a given, but what about blending modes, and things like Color replacement, Hue and Saturation (RGBCMY) Adjustments and so on?

After Effects is pretty much the same tool set and identicle workflow as photoshop on the pixel by pixel layer (for the most part), so it's a very colse transition.


But to address your post directly, if you can replicate an look you want from Magic Bullet in Photoshop (usually easily done), you may very well be able to get the same thing from MB, if Avid has those functions. But there is a good degree of theory and understanding principles of how colors are achieved, the relationship they play with each other and why, color schemes, Luminance isolation techniques, and things like how blending modes do what they do (and WHY) which opens doors to doing it by hand.


Long post. Sorry :thumbsup:

[J.R. Hudson]

MB is not at all anything you need

It is all fluff

[Drew Ott]

Having both Magic Bullet and Sony Vegas, I can say that Magic Bullet's color corrector is much more powerful, but you could most-likely get a very similar look from Vegas in any situation.

Magic Bullet also has crazy rendering times, as I'm sure everybody knows.

[Matt Sconce]

You need Magic Bullet!.............hehe Maybe that wasn't very convincing....

[Ralph Oshiro]

I like Magic Bullet. It's fun! What's wrong with a little fun?

[Shaw]

What's wrong with a little fun?
Time is money as they say :D

EDIT: And it's just a whole lot more fun to do it yourself!

[Brandon Rice]

Well thanks for all the reply's. I will try to respond to everyone.

Matt Grunau - I do use Photoshop for correcting still photos. Basically what Avid has is curves and levels, I generally color grade using the curves mainly. It doesn't have blend modes (that I know of) as FCP and Vegas has.

bballplaya283 - Yeah, I heard the render times are horrible, which I do not want. Rendering takes long as it is. Also, putting out $200 for a program that will give me a look I can replicate in Avid, and not have the crazy render times is quite foolish, IMO.

All that having been said, I'm still unconvinced.

And I agree about the color theory thing. I've studied color and lighting a TON lately, and have made huge strides in that area of picture manipulation. I

I will try to pick up some of those books you mentioned Matt. Thanks.

[MalcolmOng]

Brandon: I find color finesse is a wonderful wonderful programme, and you should consider that too/instead

[Brandon Rice]

Hm. I have not ever heard of that. Thanks Malcolm. Does that program have long long render times as well?

[Jeremy Ordan]

Brandon,

Check this thread http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=50587

It is set up for Vegas but it is a color correction tutorial and workshop that was done to balance an image as well as apply some color grading.

MB is a powerful tool, but the problem is that the looks it creates have become completely overused and the rendering time on it is absolutely INSANE.

The best way to look at MB is that it is a preset mill where you can emulate several well known grades of color on your image and with a lot of tweeking, coupled with a powerful system you can create your own.

Personally I think that the Ultimate S package from Vasst (once again, for Sony Vegas) is a quicker preset package that does similar looks with less rendering time required.

MB is a good tool that when not overused can come up with some nice looks. Is it required? Nope, not in the least, but it can be a nice additional tool to complement a strong understand in color theory and additional hands on grading techniques using curves, color correctors, and levels.

Almost anything that you can do in Photoshop can be done in an editor albeit with lesser control.

What I would suggest would be to take a picture into photoshop with a plan of how you want it to look and play with levels, curves, hue, saturation, and color balance... Create the look you are looking for and then try to do the same in Avid, Vegas, FCP, or whatever you are using.

Once you can emulate in your editor what you do in Photoshop you will not need MB...

MB is like Lowery's Seasoned Salt... It's not required but sometimes on certain clips it is sort of nice.

[Brandon Rice]

Ok, I'm convinced I DON'T need it :) I have been very happy with the looks I've achieved using Avid so far, and I shall continue using it. Thanks for the Photoshop suggestion as well Jeremy.

[MalcolmOng]

Color finesse doesn't have the crazy render times - thats the primary reason why i prefer it over magic bullet. In fact its virtually lag free on my rig (amd 3200+ 64 bit with 6600gt graphics card from nvidia). You should check their site for a full feature list, but stuff i really like is the fact that you can split the source with the cc'd picture so you can tell whether you're going overboard, and you can import reference looks into your programme and split it with your cc'd picture.

What i find about magic bullet is that its pretty useless unless you tweak it, and then again it doesnt necessarily enhance the color - it just tints it and grades it. Oh i forgot to mention about color finesse - its got all the scopes and stuff built in so you can see where you're going. Hope this helps!

[Ogrus]

I'm gonna say 'screw it' - buy a book on color theory instead :)


I would be snoring after page 2 on color theory.... but that`s me!

[Shaw]

Ah, well, it's not the route for everyone but it sure is the most powerful IMO! Besides, cinematography is all about the interplay of color and light anyway right? It can only help!

[griffin]

This thread has also convinced me that I don't need magic bullet. I'm glad I didn't dish out the money.

[Shooter]

Magic Bullet is not a Color Corrector and does not pretend to be one.

It is a "look suite" and in such offers different ways to manipulate the "look" of an image. Its advantage is that many filters reside in the same effect and the artist can build the look from within the one interface.

ie it would take many effects to achieve what MBs can do from one point.

[brettdc]

I find the bullets usefull for some of the corporate work i do, I've got some favourite settings saved and I whack it on when i'm nearly done. I've very rarely used it for any of my own work but for clients who don't know anything about editing or color, they love it. I find that its a good shortcut sometimes.

[7CS]

Since the original subject was MB, I was curious if anyone ever used Digital Film Tools products? They look similar to MBE maybe with more presets?

[Matt Sconce]

What I would suggest would be to take a picture into photoshop with a plan of how you want it to look and play with levels, curves, hue, saturation, and color balance... Create the look you are looking for and then try to do the same in Avid, Vegas, FCP, or whatever you are using.


What a GREAT idea! Thanks!

[RyanT]

Color finesse doesn't have the crazy render times - thats the primary reason why i prefer it over magic bullet. In fact its virtually lag free on my rig (amd 3200+ 64 bit with 6600gt graphics card from nvidia). You should check their site for a full feature list, but stuff i really like is the fact that you can split the source with the cc'd picture so you can tell whether you're going overboard, and you can import reference looks into your programme and split it with your cc'd picture.

Yeah, I really love color finesse. I got a little while ago and find everything else that I use to just be very...eh. The scopes and all the pieces of reference that you can have are very nice and it just makes color correcting a much more enjoyable experience.

I really want to check out some of the books reccomended earlier though, I've only read one book "Color Correction for Digital Video" Which was great, but obviously not the only step to really getting an idea of what I'm doing when CC'ing.

[ProLost]

Guys, make up your own minds about whether MB is a tool you need or not (I'm a bit biased :)), but rendering times are quite a bit faster now, like near-real-time in some cases, since the Bullet renders on your GPU. So if you have a good video card, you can actually edit looks in realtime Vegas while your SD clip is playing live.

As someone who likes to "roll my own," I sympathise with those who suspect that MB is simply a bunch of candy-coated presets that people use instead of designing their own looks. But it doesn't have to be that way. It was desgned to give you extra control over your CC, beyond what your NLE offers. Diffusions, gradients, soft contrast curves, floating-point processing. Start with a preset then tweak to taste, I'm the king of DIY, and if I thought it was practical or effective to layer up all that stuff myself in my NLE then obviously I wouldn't have created the plug-in! Remember, I used it myself at The O as a proprietry service for years before releasing it as a product.

Clearly Red Giant needs to do a better job of getting the word out about the new hardware rendering feature. Sorry about that!

-Stu

[bilgami]

does the magic bullet give 30p a good looking 24p look or a cheap imatation?

[Ferdi Willemse]

I downloaded some before-after pictures of magic bullet. Then I tried to recreate a couple of filmic effects, and to be honest it can be done within a minute. It just need some tweaking, but it's also fun to do. And my render times were very fast.

[Nik Manning]

No you do not need Magic Bullet you need this Film Magic Pro. http://videocopilot.net/fmpfeatures.html
$50 gets you preset looks plus way faster render times.
Also you can make these yourself. It will take maybe 3 hours if you know anything about color correcting.

[Ogrus]

I'm gonna say 'screw it' - buy a book on color theory instead :)


hell no! you will fall asleep in .30seconds reading about color theory
Get MB and getting to work right away!!!

[omen]

My advice is to us MB just for specific things - not in general. For the cool looks and quick picture "feels". As you progress you will need more detailed color manipulation. You won't get all the Photoshop features in NLE's, because their primary purpose is editing. That's why there is post production.
As far as NLE's go,
i prefer FCP.

[Duffdaddy]

Give Nattress Film Effects a visit. Basically the same as MB, but a bus load less expensive and just as good. www.nattress.com

[Noel Evans]

Give Nattress Film Effects a visit. Basically the same as MB, but a bus load less expensive and just as good. www.nattress.com

Duff great call for mac users. $100 bucks gets you Natress film effects which just kicks ass. If your a mac user its a must have IMO.

If your grading examples in PS though, why not just create a droplet export your shot as an image sequence and drop on the droplet. Takes awhile to do them all especially if its a large file.

[Jim Duggins]

you need this Film Magic Pro. http://videocopilot.net/fmpfeatures.html
$50 gets you preset looks plus way faster render times.
Also you can make these yourself. It will take maybe 3 hours if you know anything about color correcting.

This software looks awesome!!!