FS7: Catlyst Prepare

P

Publimix

Veteran
Are there Catalyst Prepare users here?
( in NLE forum there were no users)

I like the interface but is it worth the money?

Catalyst Edit is too basic as an editor, Catalyst prepare has some nice features over Catalyst Browse but I am still in doubt. And now my trial-period has expired.
 
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I sometimes use Catalyst Browse for transcoding footage, but for color correcting you can't get into complex grading like you can with Davinci Resolve. I wrote about the key differences on that some time ago somewhere here on DVX but I can find that post now. Still I have found the Catalyst products useful for quick corrections where perhaps LC709A needs to be added and wasn't baked in in-camera.

Sure you know this, but Catalyst Prepare will let you set clip specific color corrections, whereas with the free version (Catalyst Browse) the color adjustment is applied to ALL clips. But the work around is to just save your color settings as you correct and that way you can easily have multiple color adjustments for your clips in Catalyst Browse.

One thing I like about Catalyst which will probably come to Davinci eventually is that Catalyst reads the metadata from the Sony files so you can see what exposure index was used, if any at all, not to mention the color temperature, gain and gamma that was used on the shot.

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+1 to above!!
I keep coming back to Browse for same reasons. It's quite surprising that XAVC is for a long time and that meta data is still not read by PP (that XML error each time you import, COME ON ADOBE!!!) neither by Resolve. Dennis, thanks for an info about clip specific correctikns in Prepare (didn't knew that).

One more thing: Catalyst is miles ahead in speed vs PP or Resolve. Once footage is loaded everything is super responsive.
 
Thanks, the thing I like is the 'footage rate' "Keep", "OK", "Not good" and another one"

Besides that it is fast, I can use my laptop for previewing and rating.

But is it a good content manager? (I'll need one with my data growing fast on several HDD's and SSD's). It's all about finding the right clips.

I think I'll invest in it.
 
Dannis, how do you save the color settings in Catalyst browse?
Also doesn't it still require that you transfer each shot separately instead of just a batch transfer (maybe I should be saying transcode)?

Can you import User LUT's to Prepare?
 
I don't think it's a great content manager, but maybe they can add a rating similar to Adobe Lightroom. I will suggest it to them.

To save the color preset there is an option near the bottom of the window to export color in a few formats.

Catalyst Browse can do batch export now.

I don't think you can import a LUT but I have seen a LUT folder in the file system so it could be interesting to throw a LUT in there and see if it shows up in Browse / Prepare.
 
CB can do a batch export, but as I understand it only if the settings are exactly the same , so you can't go through a bunch of clips, do a simple grade and add LUT to each one then hit export for the whole Batch.

Do you know where is that LUT folder on a Mac ?
 
Yes you are correct. But if you only have a handful of different color adjustment settings, you can just do one batch of clips at a time. It's not bad as a work around.

No idea where the LUT folder is. I might even be making it up..
 
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