I am a long time AVID user and recently bought the current version, and that made the old Boris continuum suite obsolete. I now need better color management than what AVID-MC basic includes.I need to enhance about 30 interviews with select area blur, lights, skin-smoother, refined select-area color enhancement, make details-pop etc. Original footage is flat and shot on mis-matched cameras so step-one is to match cameras, step-two is to color grade.I experimented with Magic Bullet Looks and found that was effective and the 400$ US price tag is manageable but want to stick with AVID tried and true if there is a comparable AVID effects tool.https://www.avid.com/media-composer-ultimate/recommended-plug-ins I’m looking at this but finding is difficult to compare.Any recommendations that would steer me to a Magic Bullet Looks / Colorista Comparable plugin would be appreciated
Matthew Clulow
I use Magic Bullet Looks. It works great on just about any file I ingest, but I usually ingest AVCHD files because I shoot with 3 Panasonic AG-HMC80 cams.
Well it seems most people just export an AAF out to Resolve and color grade there then send it back to MC. Resolve is free or you could get the paid version. It would be nice to just stay in MC to do all the CC work. Baselight for MC is about 995.
Any Baselight users out there?
Is no one recommending Symphony? I've found it pretty useful, and the new shape tools kick it up a notch.
I only had an opportunity to use Symphony when I worked at a university. It was OK. I was drawn to Looks because the presets straightened out the learning curve for me in very short period. I've been looking for tutorials that help me better understand the grading process but haven't seen any as of yet. I know what I want to see and Looks gives to me without all of the technical issues. It gave me the opportunity to learn as I went.
One of the guys at one of the big places I worked used a Symphony in one corner and a DS (I think that's what it was called) in the other and he still also used Looks as well.
New Blue Filters Ultimate reads well and is a bit cheaper than looks. Anyone use that?
MB Looks is ok once you've done your primary and secondary grades but I have never found it useful for matching mis-matched cameras or providing primary grading, etc...
I'm not saying it can't be used, but it is certainly not optimized for this purpose the way Resolve or Baselight is.
I haven't used Resolve round-tripping to MC for a while - it used to be a very capable mechanism for doing advanced grading. Baselight is also very capable but I honestly haven't used it for matching shots from different cameras (I'd actually like to see tutorial demonstrating that workflow with Baselight for MC).
Symphony has its strengths as well. I haven't tried Symphony in concert with Baselight - that might also be a powerful combination (although very expensive compared to the free Resolve option).
Sorry - no 100% conclusion from me on this - more questions than answers.
Steve
______________________
www.nelliedogstudios.com
Matthew Clulow: Any Baselight users out there?
Certainly, you can do all these things in baselight. Also you can try demo version for 30 days
In my opinion - BL - is better than all BFX and similar plugins - because BL is full featured grading suite - in small plug-in.
Color managemet inside BL plug-in make it almost unreachable by any other plug-in.
Only thing which can beat BL-plugin - is Davinci Resolve - it's simply a standalone big app targeted to color science.
But full baselight system is much more preferable for me than davinci :)
Also note that inside avid you can combine powers of Symphony and Baselight together!
DJFio[DB]
I'm using Avid CC tool to match cams and then do basic levels correction and then MB Looks to grade. Looks has good tools, but I'm occastionall not so hot on the render quality. Don't know if anyone else has seen this, but even when working with 10bit footage, applying gradients like Grad Exposure in MB Looks will sometimes give me noticable aliasing in the gradient, and if I attempt the same exact look using Animate & a color effect, I get perfect, artifact free results. Almost like its processing in 8-bit, even though everything is set higher. I still like the toolset though.
Walter LoweBlackburst Entertainmentwlowe@blackburst.nethttp://blackburstentertainment.com
One way to reduce the banding effect in gradients is to apply subtle noise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLNtiDVEZNo&t=1s
Avid does have some tutorials for baselight.
+1 for baselight.
As a long time avid CC user I’m now using resolve.
i thought of the baselight plug in but couldn’t see how you could simultaneously refer to an adjacent shot while grading,
(I didn’t try it).
resolve has been fantastic, you can’t imagine how good it is working in 32bit per pixel is until you try it, (I would be pretty certain baselight has a similar engine)
i think the combo of symphony (to do the base grade and shot match) and the baselight plug in for a “look” would be pretty powerful.
The round trip to resolve has been nearly bulletproof, I render out clips from resolve straight into an Avid MediaFiles folder and relink to the now graded shots. Highly recommended.
dew: Matthew Clulow: Any Baselight users out there? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLNtiDVEZNo&t=1s Avid does have some tutorials for baselight.
Thanks dew - those are brief but very useful tutorials - they certainly illustrate the incredible, fluid integration of baselight into MC - probably the best integration of a plugin I've ever seen.
© Copyright 2011 Avid Technology, Inc. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Site Map | Find a Reseller