Good way to get used to Avid's CC tools?

DavidBeier

DavidBeier

Veteran
I learned to color correct largely in Discrete Combustion and while Avid Xpress Pro HD is similar in many respects other things are quite different (I'd kill for a histogram!!!). Are there any good tutorials on getting the most out of Avid's CC options?
 
Thanks. I'm working with 720p DVCProHD stuff from the HVX200. Exporting to Combustion though can eat up space fast however. It seems to have some issues with a QT reference of DVCProHD with the Avid DV100 codec. The result is that I have to work uncompressed into Combustion and then Uncompressed back out to Avid (where It'll have to recompress it back at DV100 since Avid Xpress Pro won't do pure uncompressed). My last DVX projected with about 20 compositing shots ended up runningabout 14 gigs for the effects stuff shot. A whole project with nothing but CC shots and in HD wold run FAR more.
 
Yeah, I can see where that would be an issue. That DVD is instructional, but since you sound so familiar with Combustion's CC I'm afraid that you'd get to the end and say "Yep, knew that."
 
What problem are you having with the QT Refs? I bring those into Combustion all the time with no problems.

geo.
 
^
I don't think Combustion likes the AvidDV100 codec. I tried doing it once (Combustion 4 Avid 5.23) and it, for some reason, looked REALLY blurry. It also chugs like a mafa when in Combustion when using a QT reference (they chug in QT as well). I guess I could deal with the slow speed but the loss in resolution (it looks like it suddenly got shrunk down to 1/8th the size then blown up) is unnacceptible. Also, since I'm using Xpress Pro which doesn't allow uncompressed, it means that I have to recompress the DVCProHD image as DVCProHD a second time. I know that in a perfectly world it should look just as good but I did numerous tests with my DVX100 and found that just wasn't the case. DVX footage, outputted as a QT reference, CC'd, exported uncompressed, and then re-compressed at DV25 lost a lot of detail from the origional. In fact, even when i tried bringing my DVX100 footage back in at DVCPro50 it didn't look as good as the origional.
 
tools

tools

Color correcting in avid is very powerful. You can use the waveform, v-scope, and histogram quite effectively in avid. Do you know how to open these graphs?

Biggest advice would be to always have an external monitor to refer to. The computer monitor is not accurate.

Also know the difference between "color correcting" and "color alterations".
 
From what I remember there was a sizable memory leak in the Avid DV100 codec, which I believe was fixed in one of the most recent patches. I wonder if that's your problem?
 
Avid doesn't mention it in the release notes, but the memory leak was fixed in 5.6 as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, that doesn't explain the blurry stuff that David is seeing.

David, what are your QT Reference settings? Make sure you select native dimensions Display Aspect Ratio (1280 x 720), Use Avid DV Codec, and 601/709 Color Levels.

Also, do you see the same problems if you export as Fast Export QuickTime? If so, maybe you could generate a very short Fast Export QuickTime file -- just a few frames -- and put it up on a server, I would be happy to look at it using Combustion 4.

geo.
 
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