Andrew,

AndrewAction:

Oliver, my comments are first hand POV.

Sorry. Never meant to imply yours or others' weren't.

AndrewAction:

but the FC interface was virtually unusable at time. It was simply a time consuming slog from one workaround to the next.

Agreed. FCP didn't really become sort-of functional beyond simple DV editing until after 2.2.

AndrewAction:

latch on to any IO card with a semi decent performance, hope like hell your software manages to talk to it in some shape or form

Yep. We didn't like the Digital Voodoo set-up, but that was another vendor's anyway. Even he found it to be very flakey. The reason we were even looking at CineWave at the time was to be able to conform HD jobs in any sort of cost-effective manner. The idea would have been to offline on Avid, then EDL over to FCP and do an online in HD. As I said DS was out of the ballpark.

FWIW - I remember a rather heated argument with the owner about color-grading. I did a lot of the Symphony work and was trying to point out that a customer who wanted color correction was assuming a certain workflow that didn't exist then in FCP. The retort I got was, "Can you color correct a shot?" I had to admit yes, sort of on the level of Photoshop. At that point his response was, "Then don't overthink it. FCP has color correction." His rationale being, that linear editors had color corrected with proc amps and simple For-A correctors for years and that wasn't a "color correction workflow" either. Go figure. But then he did sign the checks ;-)

AndrewAction:

We were editing and broacasting uncompressed analog off DPS Perception Cards long before FC raised its head.

Yes, our graphics department had Reality cards. I later did some cutting on Velocity. Really liked it, but they couldn't stay in the running marketing-wise. I guess they still exist as part of Harris' news server solutions.

- Oliver

Would love to know why there is not a clamouring to a raw footage colour management system similar to the options in free Red Cine. 

Simple example raw footage mistakenly captured at 3200, and simply type in 5600 gets you close.  Anyone having used this software knows that this example is less than a pin *** on the tip of the iceberg for the files colour management options.

I do understand the difference with working on RAW to working with a multitude of digital video formats. But that COULD be as easy as making each camera be supplied with standard LUT's to be used with this form of CC.

AndrewAction:

Would love to know why there is not a clamouring to a raw footage colour management system similar to the options in free Red Cine.

I presume you mean with RED files? Seeing as this is the only camera to actually work in RAW other than the SI2K, I don't see much interest until RED does the work itself. Since RED's raw workflow doesn't fit into any established film and TV workflows, I don't expect to see any other camera manufacturers readily adopt RAW. Nor do I see many NLE makers go past the SDK or what RED does for them.

My personal approach is generally to avoid RAW in the NLE. Instead I follow this approach:

1. Use the proxies to pull selects ("print" or "circle" takes)

2. Use Clipfinder and RedAlert to "pre-grade" all footage into a neutral and gradeable look.

3. Render full quality clips through Clipfinder.

4. Edit as normal. Grade in Avid, FCP, Color or other. Only go back to the RAW files if absolutely necessary.

Of course, since this is an Avid forum. It sure would be nice if Avid revamped the color correction module in Media Composer to be something better than what was available in 2000!

- Oliver

OliverPeters:

Seeing as this is the only camera to actually work in RAW

As suggested, realising that a video file process does not start from a standard(?) RAW file then possibly start from a "foundation" digitial video "standard" that gets modified by individual LUT's supplied by (with) all digital video cameras for the source standard position. Then use Red Cine type manipulation as if it were RAW files.

Sony have sort of done this with the 23 by allowing you to apply a reverse LUT (from something you have made yourself in post) so what you monitor whilst filming your standard capture (which is not affected) is modified to by the reverse LUT.  ie close to how you will expect the neutral footage being captured to look after some clever colourist has worked their magic on it.

AndrewAction:

start from a "foundation" digitial video "standard" that gets modified by individual LUT's supplied by (with) all digital video cameras for the source standard position.

Got you. Great idea. Doubt the camera manufacturers would ever see eye-to-eye on this.

- Oliver