The Symphony is an old ramshackle car that drives, but what a pleasure it is.

Zb.

Philip Kapadia:

Mercer:

it is still far from 'sub-par'.

Look at the pic in my signature; I use it too!

Let's start with the fact that Symphony is not compatible with virtually any colour grading control surface on earth. I don't know any colourist that works in film and uses Symphony as a fully-fledged grading system. 

Symphony is fine for quick corrections (or quick grades for low budget TV) - and actually, it performs quite well at that, providing a simple to use, easy interface for primary correction. 3 program monitors so you can see what you're doing and almost all of the scopes you need (although I find the Avid scopes not as detailed as resolves, baselights, or any external rasterizer). The secondary vector colour tool is a bit complicated when you first use it, but you kind of get the hang of it after a while.

My point is - we need more than that for the long-form theatrical film, or creative music video, which are the kinds of projects I work on. 

Any UK based TV post house I've ever worked at uses a full Baselight system to grade their shows. Only the low budget, fast turnaround shows are graded in symphony by the online editor.

 

I choose to grade in the Baselight for Avid plugin as that does everything that resolve can do, without the need to AAF anywhere :)  

 

Please Philip just how many post houses have you worked at? Just how many programmes have you onlined with Symphony or Baselight? Sorry I don't mean to sound patronising but it my understanding you are young and just starting out on a promising career so I should urge you to try and not sound that way either. Please don't tell me what Symphony is only good for nor infer that I must only work on 'low budget TV'. I have probably, I dare say, worked at a good deal more post houses than you and I have yet to see Baselight used. Resolve is very common though but I can assure you Symphony is still used on a good deal of primetime TV.

I should add Baselight (as a plugin) would be a very small investment for any posthouse but normally where online and grading are seperate, as in the case of dedicated colourist, a facility would more likely to set up a room with large control surfaces, favoured by them, and this is why Resolve is very popular but there are other such as Nuke and Mistika, I believe. Where online and grading are combined, the lack of a control surface in Symphony is not the end of the world, since so much of online as opposed to pure grading necessitates the use of a mouse and keyboard

Mercer:

Philip Kapadia:

Mercer:

it is still far from 'sub-par'.

Look at the pic in my signature; I use it too!

Let's start with the fact that Symphony is not compatible with virtually any colour grading control surface on earth. I don't know any colourist that works in film and uses Symphony as a fully-fledged grading system. 

Symphony is fine for quick corrections (or quick grades for low budget TV) - and actually, it performs quite well at that, providing a simple to use, easy interface for primary correction. 3 program monitors so you can see what you're doing and almost all of the scopes you need (although I find the Avid scopes not as detailed as resolves, baselights, or any external rasterizer). The secondary vector colour tool is a bit complicated when you first use it, but you kind of get the hang of it after a while.

My point is - we need more than that for the long-form theatrical film, or creative music video, which are the kinds of projects I work on. 

Any UK based TV post house I've ever worked at uses a full Baselight system to grade their shows. Only the low budget, fast turnaround shows are graded in symphony by the online editor.

 

I choose to grade in the Baselight for Avid plugin as that does everything that resolve can do, without the need to AAF anywhere :)  

 

Please Philip just how many post houses have you worked at? Just how many programmes have you onlined with Symphony or Baselight? Sorry I don't mean to sound patronising but it my understanding you are young and just starting out on a promising career so I should urge you to try and not sound that way either. Please don't tell me what Symphony is only good for nor infer that I must only work on 'low budget TV'. I have probably, I dare say, worked at a good deal more post houses than you and I have yet to see Baselight used. Resolve is very common though but I can assure you Symphony is still used on a good deal of primetime TV.

I should add Baselight would be a very small investment for any posthouse but normally where online and grading a seperate, as in the case of dedicated colourist, a facility would more likely to set up a room with large control surfaces and this is why Resolve is very popular but there are other such as Nuke and Mistika, I believe. Where online and grading are combined, the lack of a control surface in Symphony is not the end of the world, since so much of online as opposed to pure grading necessitates the use of a mouse and keyboard

I've just shot you a private DM via the forum, let's discuss there. 

The discussion goes on and on, but Symphony is by far the worst color correction among the leading video editors.

Zb.

The worst? Quite possibly, but the relationship grading in Symphony is really great.

I have graded network shows (scripted drama,) using Symphony and though of it's day it is still useable.

The thing that I find totally unacceptable is that it does not use the expanded float media engine that MC now has, and clips at full swing, and is only 12 bit, so stacked grades are fraught with clipping and banding.

(You can put multiple LUTs on a clip and this does not happen.)

Yes the LUTS/color adaptors at source work much better. The older internal GFX processes are still limited.

ZFigas:

The discussion goes on and on, but Symphony is by far the worst color correction among the leading video editors.

Zb.

The question is not whether it is the worst but whether you can do professional work on it still and I do, as I said day in day out on network TV. I am not defending it's woeful lack of development though.

Yes, I agree Symphony could use improvement.  However for simple color correction or tweaking it does the job, I have used it for plenty of fast turn around projects for TV/Broadcast.  When my footage is shot in Slog3, I use resolve and do not expect symphony to be on the same level as RESOLVE COLOR PAGE.  I would love not have to roundtrip and have even considered BASE LIGHT, which I really know nothing about.

Media Compser is still viable NLE which does a great job - can it be a jack of all trades with faboulous color grading I do not know.

LDV20:

However for simple color correction or tweaking it does the job

Couldn't agree more