RED, REDCINE with low-end applications

K

Kjetil Haugen

Active member
Evening!!

I know people tend to frown when they here about After Effects in a professional workflow. It has that amateur connotation to it... But is there any room for AE 7 in the Red high quality workflow?? Would AE be equipt to handle let's say CC in 2k or higher for a feature film without the audience going: "What is this amateur crap!!?? I want my money back! DAMN YOU COLORIST!!!"

Or is shake, lustre and scratch sooo superior that professionals all over the world will take turns in spitting on me for even suggesting such a thing?

So my question: Red + AE 7 = something or nothing?

If "something"... What would that be?
If "nothing"... Where does it fall short?
 
Huh? After Effects not professional? I don't get that. Pretty high end program in my book. Maybe not great at some things, but other things it does very well and is used professionally all the time. I'll let others somment on Red factors.

Steve
 
stevesherrick said:
Huh? After Effects not professional? I don't get that. Pretty high end program in my book.

Steve
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High end in my book aswell. But it doesn't seem like the big league share our opinion... It's cheap and not prefered by the motion picture DI and compositing houses.. that's why I'm calling it a low-end application.
 
lot of ppl can do wonders with AE...just cuz the industry is stuck up..doesnt mean $hit..lol... I'm super fast with premiere so i can work quick and efficient, as long as u get the end product doesnt matter what u work with and on.... i movie..etc.
 
tee hee

tee hee

just to throw a spanner in the works, and not that anyone would do this, but just for fun. What about iMovie? :-Laugh(DBG)-1
 
You had me there untill you mentioned i movie, yeah I know Sundance ...but c'mon.

________
Red One 1073
Red One 1080p+++
 
Kjetil Haugen said:
High end in my book aswell. But it doesn't seem like the big league share our opinion... It's cheap and not prefered by the motion picture DI and compositing houses.. that's why I'm calling it a low-end application.
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I have something useful to say here, I just need to rant a bit first.

It's frankly hilarious to listen to certain pros talk about this stuff. Over on a certain other web forum, I was discussing color grading with RED footage. I got the predictable response -- "Do you think you can grade as well as a professional colorist?" etc. Not an entirely unreasonable question.

I noted that while I hadn't ever graded a feature before, I did have years of experience doing color correction in Photoshop and similar, and now I could use similar tools (RGB curves, etc.) with RED footage.

In the very next post, someone explained to me I couldn't possibly do pro-level color grading work without a $30K Tangent control surface. In one sentence these guys will tell you it's all about skill, so a cheap 4K camera won't do you any good... and then in the next sentence, they'll turn around and claim you can't get good results without a $30K set of knobs to twiddle. It's ludicrous.

On to the useful bit.

AE has the tools necessary to manipulate image color in pretty much any way you want, and it now supports float color depth. There's no technical reason why you shouldn't be able to get professional quality output from AE.

There are two caveats, however. One is that if you're serious about doing your own grading, you need to make sure you have a sufficiently accurate monitor. Hopefully workflow solutions will emerge that allow convenient previewing of fairly accurate color on properly calibrated desktop displays. AE does support ICC profiles, so if someone releases appropriate ones this should be possible.

You'd still want a pro-level studio monitor to check and tweak your final grade. These are expensive items that require a lot of care and feeding (re-calibration, etc.). You're probably better off renting than owning.

The other big issue with AE is the speed. I haven't done really extensive testing, but it seems pretty slow doing float calculations. Like, as in, it might take days to render your 4K conform. I'd be interested in knowing if anyone had done more extensive benchmarking. You're certainly not going to be sitting there watching your footage play back live as you play around with the color.

Looking ahead, keep on eye out for whatever Apple is doing with the technology they got from Silicon Color. Leveraging modern graphics cards, it should be possible to do real-time grading at 1080p or 2K. A system which could do that and then conveniently conform your original 4K footage would be pretty nice.
 
Well I maybe new to this moving image game - having been a stills photographer for 25years - but I now make my whole living producing high end 1080 24p movie clips using nothing but AE. I am doing very well thankyou.

I don't know much about editing packages as such but I remember reading somewhere on one of these threads that AE is better than a lot of them in terms of working with higher bit-depth files that the Red will produce. I work completely in 16bit in AE.

Cheers

Geoff
 
I could use two sticks to light a fire, but I would have to be pretty desperate.

After Effect's workflow and interface used to be something to only speak of in hushed voices in dark rooms. With 7, it's tolerable, but with professional tools, it always comes down to the workflow. I can create the next Rodin sculpture using a chip of wood and mashed potatoes, but I don't feel like it. Quite honestly, Photoshop also has a positively atrocious interface and workflow, but it's enjoyed a very healthy monopoly because everybody else is somehow even worse.

I wouldn't recommend Shake for grading a film either. At the very least, I would use Fusion's built in EDL support or Combustion with Automatic Duck.

Even then, you'll waste so much time fighting the application, that you'll be lusting for the super fast reponsiveness of a dedicated grading application and maybe even a nice fancy hardware interface. And when you find yourself spending hours doing something that would take a professional colorist a minute or two, you have to ask yourself the question: "Is it really worth it?"

- Gavin
 
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Well ask Jared about 4k and After Effects i think he could write a book on the subject. It is actually one of the few applications that is readily available and can handle 4k on a regular workstation.

As for the pro color grading - telecine "eye", I have been supervising telecines, film to tape for over (running through fingers several times) 20 years. I have to say that having been on the production side of the test footage at Red I am AMAZED at the eye for detail that Jim Jannard has.

As a experianced D.P. and attending transfer sessions (didn't used to call them grading back then, all tape based) I was at a chair on a deck behind the colorists. The look and feel were my call, but it wasn't my hand on the controls. The colorist knew what I wanted. He had earned my trust and respect. It let me relax and be a supervisor.

However you take someone like Jim, an accomplished digital photographer, who has perfected colorspace and matching moitors and printers etc. on photoshop, my gosh what an eye! It takes me back to my 4x5 still days when I used to have to match batches of emulsions with color gel packs to get the E-6 process right. A change in the processing temp took everything 5 magneta or whatever. It was eyes on a lightbox, a color corrected light box but there weren't any knobs. But the evaluation process was not overly expensive.

Some people say you need $30k of hardware now. 20 years ago that was $500-750k. Things change - technology has a way of doing that, there are always defensive barriers to overcome.

Frankly most of my telecine sessions have been so pressured by hourly money concerns previously, that I couldn't develop the eye that many still photographers/photoshop users have. Final Cut Pro with it's 3 Way Color Correction helped me regain some control of the tape to tape process as my clients went away from film. I am no colorist savant. But I can match up my scenes and even out the inconsistances. If I could I would still take my final to somebody that specialized in color correction, because I am a generalist. I make stories, I solve problems for clients, I get the job in the can. I can't do everything, I gave up trying. But hey before Final Cut I wasn't cutting my own shows either, another defensive hurdle crossed.

But this digital film is a brave new world from where I stand. If you have the eye for detail you can make RAW footage do whatever you could have done in film negative. There have been several digital media paradigm shifts in the last couple of decades, too many to list. I think we are on the brink of another. The people that have a great eye are going to love what is coming up. The people that make their living color grading are going to have more work than they know how to handle. They might be starting up their own firms with a core 2 duo workstation (core 4,8?) to take advantage of the shift in technology, who knows?

If you have talent, an eye for detail, a love for story telling, an overview of the big picture of what is happening right now. In the next couple of years you are just going to be grinning from ear to ear. We are living in the best time to be in this industry!

There used to be a computer slogan that was "computers for the rest of us".

I think Red is starting a new digital "... for the rest of us"
I challenge you to fill in that blank.
 
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Bro Anansi said:
You had me there untill you mentioned i movie, yeah I know Sundance ...but c'mon.
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Was just kiddin dude. Aaaanyway,

I had the great honour and pleasure of working with Cesar Charlone (DOP, City of God) on a feature. What I learned was invaluable. You don't need the highest end most expensive tools to get great images.

70% of CoG was shot on 16mm and up-ressed to 35mm. With clever use of make up and lighting on set, he got stunning results with simple colour correction. While I wont give the whole game away, lets just say a certain colour makeup was used. If you,ve seen the flick you'll know what I mean.

Of course if you've got the cash to spend, go for it. Lustre and others cost a lot for a reason.

Peace out.
 
briferg said:
Well ask Jared about 4k and After Effects i think he could write a book on the subject. It is actually one of the few applications that is readily available and can handle 4k on a regular workstation.
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That was an assertion Jared made earlier that I still take exception to. I can think of about 10 applications off the top of my head that can handle 4k footage.

Just about any compositing application available today is resolution independent. So I wouldn't really list it as a feature. It's much akin to saying "Windows Movie Maker is one of the few editing applications able to edit HD footage."
 
There's not much point drawing a line between After Effects and other "high-end" programs. Most houses use a combination (my exerience is with AE, Shake, Flame/Inferno, Avid DS. I haven't used Fusion or Nuke). Each is designed around a particular use and therefore has its own strengths and weaknesses. When you ask, "Can I use AE?", the first question is for what?

1. Animation / Title Sequences
2. Compositing (sky replacement, visual effects, etc)
3. Color correction / grading

AFTER EFFECTS
was designed to do multi-layer motion graphics by a single user. As a result, it was never designed with strong project management features and it has a workflow that is designed around multi-layer, timeline-based animations. AE used to be limited in its color handling, but since version 7, can run in 32-bit floating point mode. However, its color correction tools are sub-par.

1. Great for animation and title sequences. Its only rival for this would be Flame/Inferno (for a lot more money).
2. Top level compositing results, but it's workflow was not really set up to do that, so it doesn't feel quite as easy or elegant as working on Shake or Inferno. You can get the same results, but you have to work a little harder. Difficult to manage large projects with a large team of people.
3. Color correction is sub-par. AE was not designed to work in real-time. That makes grading harder. Plus, the built-in correction tools are sub-par. If you don't have the money for anything else, I would suggest investing in Synthetic Aperature's Color Finesse. It works with AE and Final Cut and provides much better color correction tools.

SHAKE
was designed to do single shot compositing with a large team of people. It has a node-based interface, which makes compositing much easier. And it is infinitely customizable if you learn to write your own scripts and macros. Very steep learning curve.

1. Not designed for motion graphics. You can do it, but why punish yourself.
2. One of the best compositors around. Handles 4k no problem. Higher learning curve than AE.
3. Again, because it is a single-shot compositor, it is not really designed for longer form projects. And it's not designed to work in real-time.

FLAME/AVID DS/INFERNO
high-end compositors designed to work as much as possible in real-time (anyone who's worked on them knows they are NOT realtime). Flame/DS can handle up to 2K, Inferno up to 4K. But these are dedicated systems with highly-skilled (creative, funny and witty operators). They are also highly paid (thank you very much).

SHORT ANSWER:
You get what you pay for. If you pony up for a professional grade you get tools designed for grading, facilities with accurate projection/monitoring systems and a colorist who is much better that you are. He or she lives for color. They care as much about the look of your film as you care about where you put the camera. They will think of things you never thought of. But they cost money. My list (ordered -- isn't this always the case -- from highest quality to lowest and from most expensive to cheapest) is:

1. Pro grade on dedicated 4K system (Lustre, DiVinci) -- very expensive, top-notch results.
2. Pro grade at 2K on Avid Nitris or Flame -- less expensive, but not cheap, lower resolution.
3. After Effects with Color Aperture -- $2000 for the programs and a lot of late nights, but good results with someone who knows color. (You still need a good monitoring set-up)
4. After Effects out of the box -- $1000 for the program, a lot of late nights and inferior results
5. Shake -- $500 -- lots of late nights just learning the damn thing. Then more late nights trying to get the damn thing to grade your film. Save it for your sky replacements and robot battle shots.
 
BTW, there's a "middle-ground" now between items 1,2 and 3 where applications such as Scratch, Speedgrade, Nucoda, stand-alone Color Finesse, and (formerly) Final Touch fit in the niche of dedicated color-correction/DI programs that don't cost as much as the Discreet FFI systems, but are more expensive than AE.
 
Great answers, guys! Nice to see some balanced discussion. I never liked AE because of it's lack of realtime support, and my small shake incursion (I was watching some tutorials and playing with it on a neighbour production house) didn't really got me in love with it. As you said, it's also a compositing tool, and not designed for realtime grading. The moment you start dealing with secondaries, selective color, animated masks, etc, you have to see what you're doing in motion, otherwise you'll never get it right.

The "medium" budget grading tools appearing, like Scratch, are a much better choice indeed. And things are still possible to do with Color Finesse and the likes, but not without struggle. And propper monitoring is a must, since we cannot forget that grading 2K/4K requires much more fine tuning than DV.

This is being pretty informative, so far, I'm pretty unfamiliar with the middle range tools, for instance and would love to hear more about them...

Cheers!
 
Nice thread

Nice thread

Briferg and finegrit in particular really helped me to understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of workflow options, software choices and the relationship between talent and tools. This is great stuff. All agree that having a great monitor is key but I didn't notice anyone talking about scopes. I have been tracking on building up a grading suite that uses the Sony VPL-VW50 SXRD based 1080p projector - it doesn't have a lot of lumens but in a dark room with a screen under 12' diagonal it seems like it ought to function as a smaller scale version of the SXRD based 4k projector used at the Nuart Red screening. At a seminar on HD grading at DV Expo the panel suggested that it would take a bad ass processor to actually get the projector to pass muster in a professional grading suite. They also felt that existing software type scopes were poor substitutes for the $14K plus dedicated hardware units which they all deemed indispensible.

It seems to me that the time is ripe for robust yet affordable tools to change the color grading space. I am in the chorus of those who believe that Apple will include a version of Final Touch in the next rendition of FCS or as a companion app for under $2K. I also find it hard to belive that someone can't sell a pretty decent control surface for under $5K that is almost as good as the $30K ones and if made in reasonable quantities allow them a decent profit. Heck, Motion can be driven by a MIDI surface, maybe there is a way to follow that same path to allow commodity priced components to run Apple's incarnation of Final Touch. It also seems like a modern laptop with the right interface should be able to make a decent scope and sell for under $5K.

For the record I do not underestimate the importance of talent in color grading.

I will now attempt a soft landing back on planet earth:Drogar-Dum(DBG):

Blair S. Paulsen
RedOne #19
 
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