Is using Magic Bullet wack?

Richard J. Johnson

Richard J. Johnson

Joystick Member
I was having a debate with DP that says that using MB looks is weak and the pro's look down upon it. Well, I'm not a pro and I use it. I think it is a great tool for indie guys who can't spend a ton of money on pro graders.
 
Who cares what pros say, if you like it, use it. I've used magic bullet on my first feature and...it looked great for me! Actually I still use it from time to time for quick color grades, etc. Always did the job for me.

Now I use Crayons to color my footage. :beer:

I found an old thread here that has some examples:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=49916
 
I worked quite a while on DaVicis and Flames and I say I love MB.
If you know what you are doing and not only throw the presets at your footage it´s great.

Now what?

Also look at it from theyr side.
You can do things - for what they used to charge big time - at home for a handfull of $$$.
Would you like to see that or would you say that a DaVinci is a far better tool?
Everything changes. I remember what the "pros" with 2 million dollar drumm scanners and Iris Systems and expensive photomecanic typesetters said in the 80s. "Desktop puplishing is only for hobbyists, it will never replace traditional pro tools, letting alone scanning photos and making color seperation and all"

....well, most of those die hards went broke and history repeads.

Frank
 
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It can give you some really nice looks, but I stopped using it because the render times were so horrific. I do everything manually now.
 
Similar to what happened with Pro-Tools Engineers. I remember when I worked at The Hit Factory and Pro-tools started coming in, There were guys who charged out the ass for pro-tools work thinking the technology was not going to be available to the average user. Those guys arent pro-tools guys anymore. They're waiters.

If I knew more about grading and color correction I would rock it manually some of the time. I am so bad it I would rather have some one else do it. So MB it is.

Postmaster said:
I worked quite a while on DaVicis and Flames and I say I love MB.
If you know what you are doing and not only throw the presets at your footage it´s great.

Now what?

Also look at it from theyr side.
You can do things - for what they used to charge big time - at home for a handfull of $$$.
Would you like to see that or would you say that a DaVinci is a far better tool?
Everything changes. I remember what the "pros" with 2 million dollar drumm scanners and Iris Systems and expensive photomecanic typesetters said in the 80s. "Desktop puplishing is only for hobbyists, it will never replace traditional pro tools, letting alone scanning photos and making color seperation and all"

....well, most of those die hards went broke and history repeads.

Frank
Click to expand...
 
MB only looks "bad" when you just throw a preset on your footage and don't tweak it. And even then, only the so-called pros will notice. I used it on this piece (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5k7pwgOXPA) and it really helped give everything a consistent look. Which I needed considering I was using an unfamiliar camera and doing my own, poor lighting job.
 
You should use what works for you regardless of what pros say. Maybe some pros don't use MB because it's just a set of presets color settings that you can achieve in most any color correction plugin.

In the end, if you get that look you want then who cares...also how would they know unless you told them.

Best,
Andy
 
The last hurdle for me was the rendering times, but with Intel's quad cores and nVidia's 8 series it is no longer an issue. If it is color correction, I reach for my curves, but if it is color grading, it's MB almost every time.
 
A good thing to try is to put the MB pre set on it, then try and mimic that look yourself with various tools. You can usually find something you like better this way. And forget about what the "pros" say. MB serves a purpose for you right now and that's what's important. Unless you want to be a PRO color timer don't worry about it.
 
Yeah, I can usually spot when someone has used an MB preset a mile away, but those kind of things drive me crazy when I watch TV. I can't tell you how many times I'm watching something, and I hear a music cue and go "That's track so and so from the Opus Library!". Or I'll hear a sound effect from a certain library. Two in particular I hear over and over, a specific door creak, and a woman's shriek. Drives me nuts. But my biggest pet peeve are cheesy Live Type fonts. The other day, they had that new TNT Librarian movie on, and the opening credits were some cheesy Live Type font with one of their generic smoky backgrounds. Knowing that was a harbinger of what was to come, I changed the channel.
 
MB came free with my DVX. Free = good.

Seriously, I like MB and use it occasionally. It is nice to tweak the settings from the presets and get your own looks.
 
I have MB looks - I actually like it. It gives you full control over the image. I ignore the presets and just use the manual controls.
 
Batutta said:
Yeah, I can usually spot when someone has used an MB preset a mile away, but those kind of things drive me crazy when I watch TV. I can't tell you how many times I'm watching something, and I hear a music cue and go "That's track so and so from the Opus Library!". Or I'll hear a sound effect from a certain library. Two in particular I hear over and over, a specific door creak, and a woman's shriek. Drives me nuts. But my biggest pet peeve are cheesy Live Type fonts. The other day, they had that new TNT Librarian movie on, and the opening credits were some cheesy Live Type font with one of their generic smoky backgrounds. Knowing that was a harbinger of what was to come, I changed the channel.
Click to expand...

I know!

I see a Trapcode Particular effect used as a text wipe all the time!
 
Slimothy said:
A good thing to try is to put the MB pre set on it, then try and mimic that look yourself with various tools. You can usually find something you like better this way. And forget about what the "pros" say. MB serves a purpose for you right now and that's what's important. Unless you want to be a PRO color timer don't worry about it.
Click to expand...


Slimothy, I agree completely. Ther are many aspects of MB you can mimic, and will aloow you to cut down drastically on render times. I usually take this route:

Magic Bullet as a reference
Curves and other Adjustment layers to get as close as I can
Uncheck the portions of MB I can emulate
Render only the ones I cant.


I can still achieve only around 65% - 75% of the render time that way.
 
Matt Grunau said:
Slimothy, I agree completely. Ther are many aspects of MB you can mimic, and will aloow you to cut down drastically on render times. I usually take this route:

Magic Bullet as a reference
Curves and other Adjustment layers to get as close as I can
Uncheck the portions of MB I can emulate
Render only the ones I cant.


I can still achieve only around 65% - 75% of the render time that way.
Click to expand...
Same here.
 
I agree with using MB as a reference. Before I CC I will usually slap a few pre-sets on there just to see what they look like and then I'll go and CC with Final Cut's built in 3-way color corrector and play with that. I've used MB presets before, but the render times were super long and make re-editing little changes after CC a pain.
 
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