Episode 113
FCG113 - Timeline Based Color Grading (feat. Denver Riddle)
Timeline based color grading has been a dream of mine for years. Recently I stumbled across Color Finale, a new $99 plug in by Color Grading Central and immediately contacted Denver Riddle to come talk about its use and development. We also spend a fair amount of time discussing Resolve and some workflow issues that I’ve been perplexed with. Denver is a very knowledgeable guy and I think you’ll enjoy this chat.
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Featuring
- Chris Fenwick
- Denver Riddle - @colorgrading
Transcription
00:00.160: Speaker 1: Hey, good morning and welcome to another episode of Final Cut Grill.
00:02.800: Speaker 1: Sorry I've been really busy, so I kind of missed an episode last week.
00:07.520: Speaker 1: Welcome to 2015.
00:09.280: Speaker 1: Hey, today is really exciting.
00:10.640: Speaker 1: So the other day I'm flipping through and I'm I can't remember what it was.
00:13.520: Speaker 1: I was trying to find something.
00:14.960: Speaker 1: And I came across this I think it was an advertisement.
00:18.400: Speaker 1: It was like kind of one of these paid review things for color finale from Color Grading Central.
00:24.439: Speaker 1: Looked at it, immediately watched the tutorial that was done by Denver Riddle.
00:30.760: Speaker 1: So Denver Riddle is the guy behind Color Grading Central.
00:35.160: Speaker 1: And a couple I guess it was about two years ago, he started he hooked up with a developer guy, an engineer, and they sort of formed another company, I think.
00:45.320: Speaker 1: He talks about this.
00:46.460: Speaker 1: But he started ma actually making software, not just talking about tools and color grading tools, but creating software.
00:52.620: Speaker 1: So now here we are, early twenty fifteen, and Color Finale, I think I didn't ask him, just I think recently released.
01:00.920: Speaker 1: I got to tell you, I don't normally get really excited about plugins, but this one really turned me on.
01:11.080: Speaker 1: And so
01:12.040: Speaker 1: I started looking at it and immediately went to Twitter.
01:15.240: Speaker 1: I got to find this guy, Denver Riddle.
01:17.960: Speaker 1: And, you know, Denver's got a jill because of Color Grading Central, Denver has.
01:24.080: Speaker 1: I don't know, tons of color grading tutorials.
01:28.479: Speaker 1: He's got a very clear, concise style.
01:32.159: Speaker 1: His
01:33.300: Speaker 1: His work looks great.
01:35.700: Speaker 1: And so, if you don't know Denver, you should go check him out, Color Grading Central.
01:40.100: Speaker 1: So, I wanted to talk about Color Finale.
01:44.020: Speaker 1: I roped him in very quickly.
01:46.500: Speaker 1: And so, this has just been a couple of days ago.
01:48.579: Speaker 1: And I was very excited to talk about that.
01:50.420: Speaker 1: So, that's what we're talking about today.
01:52.579: Speaker 1: A couple of things.
01:54.820: Speaker 1: We're very close to NAB.
01:56.820: Speaker 1: I think we're less than a month away.
01:59.220: Speaker 1: Get your tickets, get your rooms.
02:01.060: Speaker 1: I got to do some of that today, too.
02:02.979: Speaker 1: And
02:04.240: Speaker 1: I'm looking forward I'm very much looking forward to being a part of what we're doing at FCP Works at their suite at the Renaissance Hotel, which is immediately adjacent.
02:14.220: Speaker 1: To the L VCC.
02:15.900: Speaker 1: So if you're standing in the middle of the road looking at L VCC, off to your right, there's a little hotel.
02:20.700: Speaker 1: And we I think they announced on their website what the name of the suite is, we're in, whatever.
02:27.040: Speaker 1: come check it out.
02:28.400: Speaker 1: Go to the FCP Works webpage.
02:31.760: Speaker 1: I think Monday they are finalizing all of the sessions that we are doing, and I'm excited about it.
02:39.040: Speaker 1: It's going to be fun.
02:40.840: Speaker 1: Another thing, if you have not, please tell me you have.
02:44.680: Speaker 1: Go check out PremiumBeat.
02:46.120: Speaker 1: com.
02:46.440: Speaker 1: They have been extremely gracious to support what we're doing here.
02:50.760: Speaker 1: At the grill, and I love I love premium beat.
02:56.760: Speaker 1: Now, what I want to tell you about
02:59.220: Speaker 1: on their website, which is really cool.
03:01.780: Speaker 1: When you go to buy a song, as you step through the screens, there is a place where you there is an empty field, and you get to
03:14.160: Speaker 1: Tell them, or you get to label what it is you have, you are buying that particular
03:23.720: Speaker 1: Cut of music for.
03:24.760: Speaker 1: So if I go to, I believe it's orders and downloads, I get a summary of all of the work that I have done.
03:33.560: Speaker 1: Now, there is an order number ID, and then there's a project name.
03:37.560: Speaker 1: This is massive.
03:38.760: Speaker 1: If you ever want to go back and you're doing your billing, and you're like, oh, what cuts of music did I buy for that thing?
03:46.200: Speaker 1: That's all searchable.
03:47.880: Speaker 1: So I can search by song title, artist name.
03:51.400: Speaker 1: I think I can even
03:57.200: Speaker 1: No, I can't search for the project name, but there's no reason I shouldn't be able to.
04:02.720: Speaker 1: So I'm going to ask him about that.
04:04.560: Speaker 1: I can sort my project name.
04:07.220: Speaker 1: Yeah.
04:07.940: Speaker 1: So, anyway, tons of tools and abilities, you know, for you to be able to keep track of the business you're doing.
04:14.700: Speaker 1: Not, and not the least of which is, you're getting great music.
04:17.980: Speaker 1: It's very editable.
04:19.340: Speaker 1: It was interesting, just the other day, one of my clients said
04:22.560: Speaker 1: Their assistant was like, you know, we could get the loops for that.
04:25.280: Speaker 1: And I looked across the room and was like, yes, you can.
04:27.440: Speaker 1: So at any rate, go check out PremiumBeat.
04:29.520: Speaker 1: com.
04:30.080: Speaker 1: They never stop developing what they're doing.
04:33.680: Speaker 1: And
04:35.040: Speaker 1: Great friends of the show.
04:36.320: Speaker 1: So let's now go to the interview with Denver Riddle.
04:40.400: Speaker 1: I didn't ask him where he is.
04:41.759: Speaker 1: I know he's on the West Coast.
04:43.120: Speaker 1: And let's talk about color finale for Final Cut 10.
04:47.440: Speaker 1: Denver Riddle.
04:49.380: Speaker 1: Hey, Chris.
04:50.820: Speaker 1: Hey, how are you, man?
04:52.580: Speaker 1: Good.
04:52.900: Speaker 1: How are you doing?
04:53.699: Speaker 1: I am so sorry.
04:55.139: Speaker 1: I literally just overslept.
04:57.220: Speaker 1: Ah, don't worry about that.
04:58.500: Speaker 1: It happens.
04:59.940: Speaker 1: Cool.
05:00.660: Speaker 1: So, hey, your mic sounds good?
05:02.980: Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
05:03.700: Speaker 2: I'm just using the mic that I generally use for creating tutorials.
05:08.740: Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's always it's always weird when you sit down and talk to somebody who has a famous voice and they actually respond back to you.
05:16.940: Speaker 1: I've listened to a lot of your tutorials.
05:19.099: Speaker 1: I recognize your laugh.
05:20.780: Speaker 1: And it's like, hey, I say something.
05:22.620: Speaker 1: He responds back.
05:23.580: Speaker 1: How unusual is that?
05:25.780: Speaker 1: Oh, I wouldn't say that unusual.
05:28.259: Speaker 1: No, it's kind of weird.
05:30.259: Speaker 1: There's a guy who's a local Bay Area voiceover talent.
05:33.139: Speaker 1: His name is Gary Williams, and I've worked with Gary for 20 years.
05:36.580: Speaker 1: I've never met him.
05:38.320: Speaker 1: And every time I talk to him on the phone, he's got this, you know, this very distinct sort of radio announcer kind of VO voice.
05:48.199: Speaker 1: But he responds back to you, and it's quite interesting.
05:50.600: Speaker 2: Anyway, yeah, that would sound crazy.
05:52.759: Speaker 1: Yeah, so hey, we're going to just jump right into this.
05:54.759: Speaker 1: I hope that's okay.
05:56.280: Speaker 1: That's totally fine.
05:57.639: Speaker 1: I got to say, so
05:59.639: Speaker 1: The other day, I'm clicking around and following links, and I saw, I was trying to find, I was trying to solve a color correction problem, and I come across a link.
06:12.740: Speaker 1: To basically, it was basically an ad for color finale, blown away, and I tweeted you almost immediately saying, Hey, I want to talk to you.
06:22.340: Speaker 1: So that's what we're going to talk about.
06:23.860: Speaker 1: But before we get into all of that,
06:26.039: Speaker 1: I'd love to hear a little bit about your background, how you got into this business and what got you to here.
06:33.639: Speaker 1: So how did you get started in this business?
06:37.680: Speaker 2: Are we started then, or are you still just asking?
06:40.080: Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
06:40.480: Speaker 1: No, I just roll.
06:41.840: Speaker 1: I hit record and then.
06:43.120: Speaker 1: Oh, dang it.
06:43.680: Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
06:44.080: Speaker 2: I blew it.
06:44.800: Speaker 1: No, you didn't.
06:45.360: Speaker 1: Not at all.
06:46.720: Speaker 1: I bet you I have a bunch of interviews where people say, Are we going?
06:50.840: Speaker 1: Anyway, so no, no, not at all.
06:52.840: Speaker 1: So how did you how did you get started in this business?
06:57.240: Speaker 2: Well, specifically in the color correction business, I was originally a director of photography.
07:04.440: Speaker 2: And I was always amazed at how looking at different people's work, how it could look just so amazing, like the colors.
07:15.720: Speaker 2: And that's when I learned that they were applying color correction to it to sweeten and enhance the images.
07:23.000: Speaker 2: And so I thought, well, that's what I want to do.
07:25.080: Speaker 2: And so I just learned more about it.
07:28.340: Speaker 2: about color correction.
07:29.380: Speaker 2: At the time, there wasn't a lot of resources available.
07:33.860: Speaker 2: But I I read whatever whatever whatever books that I could read.
07:40.420: Speaker 2: I attended the
07:42.600: Speaker 2: International Colorist Academy in Los Angeles.
07:47.160: Speaker 2: And just yeah, from there, it's just color has always been something that's been an exciting to me.
07:53.400: Speaker 2: And so I just figured out how to do it.
07:55.880: Speaker 1: So um about what time frame are we talking about?
07:59.639: Speaker 1: Uh wi wi like for example, when did you go to the Colorist Academy?
08:08.900: Speaker 2: I think it was either 2009 or 2010.
08:14.380: Speaker 1: So and then when you one of the things I notice about when I listen to your tutorials, you have a really good way of
08:23.240: Speaker 1: of breaking things down into its elements.
08:26.920: Speaker 1: And I think a lot of color is that.
08:30.120: Speaker 1: Do you watch like everything you watch, are you completely analyzing it, taking it apart going, hmm, I'd do that a little different.
08:37.919: Speaker 2: Yeah, and more so as as time goes on, I'm paying a lot more attention.
08:41.919: Speaker 2: And if if a colorist is a good colorist, they're an unsung hero.
08:49.720: Speaker 2: And if they make a mistake, then it's really obvious, it's really apparent.
08:54.360: Speaker 2: So those are usually the things that I've done.
08:57.420: Speaker 2: Notice first, but if a colorist has done a great job, you don't even really notice it and you just enjoy the film.
09:04.459: Speaker 2: And color is a powerful way to
09:06.839: Speaker 2: enhance the emotions in the story with you know, subconsciously without really even realizing it.
09:13.319: Speaker 2: Of course, I can you know, I can I can pick up on those subtle cues.
09:16.680: Speaker 2: But yeah, if a colorist does a great job, you know, they're like the unsung hero.
09:21.140: Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of those jobs that it's a little bit like the audio mixer.
09:26.180: Speaker 1: Hopefully you don't know I'm there
09:30.220: Speaker 1: But if you do know I'm there, hopefully I'm doing a good enough job that you decide you want to remember my name.
09:36.940: Speaker 1: Right.
09:38.380: Speaker 1: You know?
09:39.260: Speaker 1: Exactly, yeah.
09:40.540: Speaker 1: So what are some of your
09:43.700: Speaker 1: When you try and explain to somebody outside of the business and you're trying to explain what you're doing, are there movies that you like immediately go to and reference?
09:54.740: Speaker 1: Like, well, don't you remember the way so and so looked or whatever?
10:00.000: Speaker 2: No, actually what I do is just in a general sense is try to explain what it is that I do.
10:08.480: Speaker 2: A lot quite a few people are familiar with like Photoshop.
10:12.880: Speaker 2: and enhancing images that way.
10:15.280: Speaker 2: And so I say, yeah, I basically do the same thing, but for video, it's for moving images.
10:21.040: Speaker 2: I fix the
10:22.700: Speaker 2: exposure and the contrast.
10:24.779: Speaker 2: And if maybe a person's face is a little too green or a little too red, that's something that I fix.
10:33.860: Speaker 2: So I try to explain it in a more general sense.
10:36.740: Speaker 2: And I also highlight the fact that just about everything that you see, whether it's on T V or if it's a movie,
10:45.220: Speaker 2: it has been color corrected.
10:46.900: Speaker 2: And so it's one of the last steps in the post-production process.
10:51.940: Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like the audio mastering.
10:56.380: Speaker 2: Right.
10:56.860: Speaker 2: Yep.
10:57.660: Speaker 1: Okay.
10:58.460: Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about when did you start color grading Central?
11:03.820: Speaker 2: I started color grading Central in 2011.
11:07.839: Speaker 2: It's about a year after the time that I had mentioned that I had gone to the International Colorist Academy.
11:16.620: Speaker 2: I found that there wasn't a lot of resources, and for me, that was especially frustrating.
11:25.760: Speaker 2: And it's it's relatively still a at the time, it was still relatively a new industry.
11:32.240: Speaker 2: And so I started color grading Central as a resource for other filmmakers and those wanting to be colorists to
11:40.760: Speaker 2: help them get started and learning about the color correction process and learning basically how it is to do it
11:53.880: Speaker 1: And it's more than just so it's more than just a website.
11:59.720: Speaker 1: I mean, yes, you have your tutorials.
12:01.080: Speaker 1: There's a membership component.
12:03.400: Speaker 1: What what's the membership component like?
12:06.480: Speaker 2: The membership component is it's six months access to tutorials using DaVinci Resolve.
12:16.240: Speaker 2: If you follow the development of DaVinci Resolve, it's actually been really
12:21.000: Speaker 2: exciting and it's been a game changer.
12:24.440: Speaker 2: Black Magic Design purchased DaVinci Resolve maybe about
12:30.500: Speaker 2: four or five years ago.
12:33.060: Speaker 2: And what they did with it is they ported it over from Linux, because at the time it was it was only running on Linux, but they ported it over to Mac the Mac operating system.
12:43.860: Speaker 2: and dropped the licensing price to $1,000.
12:47.060: Speaker 2: And what was it?
12:48.020: Speaker 1: What was it before?
12:51.780: Speaker 2: Well, DaVinci Resolve is color correction software.
12:54.180: Speaker 1: No, no, I understand.
12:54.980: Speaker 1: What was the cost before?
12:57.940: Speaker 2: You know, usually it was a quote.
13:00.100: Speaker 2: It was a cut, you know, they would actually build like a color suite.
13:04.920: Speaker 2: on a bunch of Linux boxes, and you're talking maybe around a quarter of a million dollars is usually the figure that's thrown out there.
13:13.240: Speaker 1: Okay.
13:14.360: Speaker 2: So I mean, yeah, from $250,000 down to $1,000, I mean, it was just this crazy change, you know, this shift in the post-production industry.
13:25.780: Speaker 2: Because now it was accessible, whereas before it was only found in posthouses, working on A-list films and so.
13:38.220: Speaker 2: So yeah, that was a really, really exciting development.
13:43.820: Speaker 2: And so, of course, you know, I naturally I learned Resolve and it was it was surprisingly, it was incredibly intuitive.
13:50.620: Speaker 2: I mean, the nice thing about
13:53.040: Speaker 2: knowing and understanding color correction is you can apply the same principles regardless of what system that you're in.
14:02.940: Speaker 2: And so I was able to easily translate the skills and the knowledge that I already had.
14:06.700: Speaker 2: At the time, I was using Apple Color.
14:09.500: Speaker 2: But I was able to translate those over to Resolve real easily.
14:14.660: Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Apple Color was the gateway drug, if you will, to the entire color grading world.
14:22.740: Speaker 1: I think in the same way
14:25.500: Speaker 1: you know, say like DSLRs brought, you know, cinematic filmmaking to the masses.
14:31.500: Speaker 1: When Apple Color got bundled with you know Final Cut Studio, it was like, oh, okay, here we go
14:37.800: Speaker 1: And frankly, I mean, I remember the first time I saw Joseph Lanaschke, who used to work at Apple, demoing Color, I was like, this is really amazing.
14:48.040: Speaker 1: And I remember thinking
14:49.720: Speaker 1: Wow, I love the way that you can like create these grades and load presets.
14:55.720: Speaker 1: And I could just see a whole world where people are selling their presets.
14:59.480: Speaker 1: And now here we are, you know, 10 years later.
15:02.320: Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what we're doing.
15:05.440: Speaker 1: So so is Resolve still your grading tool of choice?
15:11.040: Speaker 1: primarily?
15:12.880: Speaker 2: Yes.
15:13.200: Speaker 2: I mean, if a client is going to hand me a project that is edited on Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro seven,
15:23.620: Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to use DaVinci Resolve just because it's a great tool.
15:30.019: Speaker 2: It's proven, it's got a great track record.
15:33.020: Speaker 2: And Black Magic Design has followed a very aggressive development roadmap.
15:41.180: Speaker 2: I mean, every year they've come out with
15:43.520: Speaker 2: you know, a new version, a major release.
15:46.000: Speaker 2: And so it'll be exciting to see what they come out with this year.
15:49.440: Speaker 1: Yeah, we're here we are we're recording this on March thirteenth.
15:53.360: Speaker 1: We're like a month away from NAB.
15:56.339: Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
15:57.220: Speaker 1: I just realized how close it is.
15:59.139: Speaker 1: Ah um do you uh do you ha I don't know.
16:04.740: Speaker 1: I mean, I don't really do predictions, but are you excited about what you may we may see at NAB?
16:10.900: Speaker 1: Yeah.
16:11.460: Speaker 2: I mean, that's when I attend NAB, that's the news that I mostly go for and to see is what's happening within
16:20.820: Speaker 2: the color correction industry and what is Black Magic Design doing this year?
16:27.060: Speaker 1: Now over the last couple of years, this is kind of interesting because I have said multiple times on this show that
16:35.480: Speaker 1: When you look at the development of Resolve and you look at the development of Funnel Cut 10, it's pretty astonishing the similarity between some of the windows.
16:46.280: Speaker 1: You know, like.
16:47.440: Speaker 1: You know, the inspector there's so many things inside the inspector panel that look almost identical to things inside of Resolve.
16:56.400: Speaker 1: And
16:57.600: Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on there, whether programmers are leaving one company and going to the other, or if they're all getting together for pizza on Friday afternoons in Silicon Valley.
17:10.079: Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know.
17:12.019: Speaker 1: what's going on.
17:12.819: Speaker 1: But it is very interesting because you can't i if there is a collaboration between the two companies, and it just seems like there is, given the similarity between some of the windows,
17:26.480: Speaker 1: I don't know who who benefits more from it.
17:30.720: Speaker 1: I mean, it's obvious to me that Resolve has been.
17:35.540: Speaker 1: It's kind of the darling child in the color grading world.
17:39.220: Speaker 1: It seems like, like you say, so many people are using it and it's
17:46.180: Speaker 1: Its upgrade cycle, like you said, has been very ag aggressive.
17:49.620: Speaker 1: They're doing a great job.
17:51.620: Speaker 1: Do they does it help them to be associated
17:56.160: Speaker 1: With Final Cut 10, which has been so maligned?
18:01.840: Speaker 1: Or is does Final Cut Ten
18:04.880: Speaker 1: get more traction, if you will, saying, hey, look, we're very similar to the controls that you see in Resolve if you've used that.
18:15.860: Speaker 1: Have you ever thought about that?
18:19.700: Speaker 2: Well, certainly, I know there's got to be some sort of collaboration between Black Magic Design and
18:27.440: Speaker 2: Apple because as Resolve has rolled out new as Black Magic has rolled out new releases of
18:36.120: Speaker 2: of Resolve, they have kept up with Final Cut's flavor of XML, FCP XML.
18:44.840: Speaker 2: So that way projects can be exported
18:48.419: Speaker 2: from Final Cut 10, and they can be brought into DaVinci Resolve.
18:56.020: Speaker 1: I have a question for you in regards to that.
19:01.140: Speaker 1: Was talking with somebody, I can't remember.
19:05.380: Speaker 1: Oh, you know what?
19:06.020: Speaker 1: It was Alex McLean.
19:08.420: Speaker 1: Alex McLean is my co-host on Digital Cinema Cafe.
19:11.860: Speaker 1: He uses Scratch.
19:15.060: Speaker 1: And another I always forget which one.
19:18.740: Speaker 1: And he had come to me, he goes, Hey, because he's been playing with Final Hat 10 a lot more, and was asking about
19:26.080: Speaker 1: The um the round I'll call it the round trip conundrum.
19:30.559: Speaker 1: Final Cut 10 only reconnects to media that's identical to the original media.
19:37.360: Speaker 1: Would you mind going through sort of the step if you were in a Final Cut 10 timeline?
19:42.960: Speaker 1: And again, I'm going to say, I think the thing that's so exciting to me is color finale
19:49.780: Speaker 1: In all of the not all, but in much of the promotional stuff you do to about it, you're saying, you know, here we are right in the timeline, right in the timeline.
19:59.700: Speaker 1: And I've been saying for years
20:02.120: Speaker 1: I have shunned and avoided color grading tools, dedicated color grading tools, because
20:11.919: Speaker 1: it's the I still think that the workflow of taking it like even when you were in Final Cut 7 going to color and then back
20:20.320: Speaker 1: It's so it has been so cumbersome, I will say.
20:24.880: Speaker 1: It's always made me avoid wanting to go down that path.
20:29.080: Speaker 1: And so, for color finale, it's awesome because you have amazing power right in the timeline.
20:36.039: Speaker 1: That being said, I just want to ask you this one other question.
20:39.540: Speaker 1: Can you give any advice about how to take a project out of ten into Resolve and back into ten?
20:47.860: Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely.
20:49.300: Speaker 2: I think the workflow is actually quite simple.
20:53.139: Speaker 2: Assuming you've done some preparation strategy of preparing your edit before you send it off to Resolve, that'll make things run a lot smoother.
21:05.960: Speaker 1: And is that the typical, like, you know, get it onto one timeline?
21:10.120: Speaker 1: One track will say, I know there's no tracking.
21:12.200: Speaker 1: Right, exactly.
21:12.840: Speaker 2: I mean, that sort of thing, removing effects, baking.
21:17.740: Speaker 2: Variable speed changes, those sorts of things.
21:20.700: Speaker 2: You know, Resolve is getting better at handling a lot of those things.
21:24.860: Speaker 2: But usually I like to just dumb it down.
21:28.320: Speaker 2: to the lowest common denominator before I send it off to resolve.
21:32.240: Speaker 2: And then it's just quite simple.
21:33.440: Speaker 2: I mean, it's just going to file and then export XML.
21:39.160: Speaker 2: And then opening up your Resolve and importing that Final Cut Pro XML.
21:48.280: Speaker 2: And in the import prompt, if you set all the settings to import the media and to set the sizing of the project and you import it, everything
22:01.840: Speaker 2: can go rather quite well if, like I said, in the first step you've you've prepared your edit.
22:10.519: Speaker 2: And then you can just grade away using the powerful tools in Resolve.
22:15.639: Speaker 2: And then when you go to send it back, I mean, really, all you need to do is go to the deliver page.
22:23.320: Speaker 2: And there's actually a nice convenient preset where you can
22:31.820: Speaker 2: you can let Resolve know what you're planning on doing with the project.
22:35.100: Speaker 2: If you plan on sending it back or round tripping it back to Final Cut, you can just set it accordingly.
22:40.519: Speaker 2: And then what should happen when you render it out is what Resolve will do is it'll actually render out
22:49.560: Speaker 2: The project, it'll render out the individual source clips in a new directory.
22:56.120: Speaker 2: And generally, it automatically creates a new XML for you.
23:01.720: Speaker 2: That actually will link to those files that you've just rendered.
23:07.960: Speaker 2: So by the time you get back into Final Cut and you import that XML,
23:14.120: Speaker 2: The new XML that Resolve created.
23:16.200: Speaker 2: And generally, it adds resolve, the word resolve in parentheses in the file name, so you can find that easier and it makes more sense.
23:26.019: Speaker 2: you can import it into Final Cut and it'll link to the new rendered media.
23:32.340: Speaker 1: So the trick is to use the new XML that Resolve is creating to get the data back in, not
23:38.360: Speaker 1: to just go back to Final Cut 10 and try to relink because, as most people know, when you're trying to relink media in Final Cut 10, it has to be
23:48.440: Speaker 1: the exact same duration, frame rate, frame size, number of audio tracks.
23:55.080: Speaker 1: Right.
23:55.480: Speaker 2: I mean, it basically becomes a new project.
23:58.440: Speaker 2: And you have your project that you did your original source project.
24:05.160: Speaker 2: that you'd be considered your offline or your online if you're working with the media directly.
24:11.040: Speaker 2: And then once you export it from Resolve, you have your kind of your finished project and a brand new XML.
24:20.419: Speaker 1: Got it.
24:21.059: Speaker 1: Okay.
24:21.380: Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes total sense that I did not realize that Resolve would actually generate a Final Cloud 10 XML that you could just bring back in.
24:30.519: Speaker 2: Right.
24:30.760: Speaker 2: And you know what if it doesn't I mean after you render it out, you can actually go back to the edit page in Resolve.
24:37.240: Speaker 2: And what's really cool is you can actually exp
24:39.980: Speaker 2: A new XML, and you can export it in a variety of different formats.
24:43.900: Speaker 2: You could actually do it in AAF for working with Avid.
24:47.660: Speaker 2: You could do it in the older flavor of XML for working with Final Cut 7.
24:54.419: Speaker 2: And so Resolve can actually serve as a bridge for moving projects in and out of different NLEs.
25:01.860: Speaker 2: So that's another kind of interesting thing that you can do.
25:04.820: Speaker 1: Very interesting.
25:05.780: Speaker 1: Okay, so now the operative question.
25:07.940: Speaker 1: Denver, why in the world would you bother making a plugin for Final Cut 10?
25:12.820: Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, nobody uses it.
25:14.659: Speaker 1: It's obviously not a professional application.
25:16.980: Speaker 1: It's obviously a piece of trash.
25:18.740: Speaker 1: Why would you bother doing it?
25:19.700: Speaker 1: No, I'm telling you.
25:20.800: Speaker 1: Uh what what uh this has got to be a considerable amount of development time.
25:28.160: Speaker 1: Uh
25:30.680: Speaker 1: Tell me about your thought process for making color finale.
25:34.440: Speaker 2: Well, I think it's for the reasons that you have already stated.
25:39.080: Speaker 2: For some people, it's
25:42.240: Speaker 2: It's a real challenge to send a project off to a different application.
25:47.919: Speaker 2: Application, exactly.
25:50.700: Speaker 2: And so what we found is was that only about half of Final Cut Pro
25:59.220: Speaker 2: 10 users were sending their projects off to Resolve.
26:03.060: Speaker 2: So we found that there was half that were still
26:07.160: Speaker 2: remaining in Final Cut 10, either because they were intimidated by Resolve, which by the way, I think it's a great program.
26:15.880: Speaker 2: It works really intuitively.
26:18.220: Speaker 2: But nonetheless, they didn't feel comfortable leaving their application, and so they wanted to be able to perform color correction.
26:27.000: Speaker 2: Right within Final Cut 10.
26:29.160: Speaker 2: And so we felt that Color Finale was the answer to that because we felt like we could bring in tools that are typically associated
26:40.300: Speaker 2: with dedicated color correction applications.
26:44.380: Speaker 1: Yes.
26:44.780: Speaker 1: And I would agree.
26:45.900: Speaker 1: I'm definitely I don't know where you're getting the half.
26:49.260: Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting stat.
26:51.180: Speaker 1: But I would say I'm definitely
26:53.880: Speaker 1: in the half that is just saying, yeah, it's not it I don't have the time I think that's a lot of it too.
27:01.000: Speaker 1: We do in the workflow in the jobs that we do, we do not have the time to
27:08.380: Speaker 1: Do that whole cha, cha, cha in, out, back, and forth.
27:14.060: Speaker 1: It's just, it's not warranted in, you know, with the clientele and the timelines that we are typically given.
27:21.640: Speaker 1: So this is really cool.
27:23.080: Speaker 1: I'm very excited about this.
27:24.600: Speaker 1: Why don't you go through actually, first of all, I'm going to say I love the logo for Color Finale.
27:32.040: Speaker 1: Thank you.
27:34.120: Speaker 1: I don't often see logos where they go, wow, that's really great, but I really like it.
27:39.720: Speaker 1: Curious, did was it it's a simple logo.
27:42.840: Speaker 1: Great logos are simple.
27:45.720: Speaker 1: Was it a giant process to come up with it?
27:47.960: Speaker 1: Or were you just drawing some rectangles one day and say, Yeah, that'll do?
27:51.700: Speaker 2: No, it actually was a process.
27:54.180: Speaker 2: And we hired a graphics designer to help us with the graphics end and to help design some of the graphical
28:00.919: Speaker 2: Elements in the UI itself.
28:02.600: Speaker 2: And we tasked him with creating the logo.
28:05.000: Speaker 2: And it was a lot of back and forth.
28:09.320: Speaker 2: We had him sketch a lot of different concepts.
28:14.860: Speaker 2: Between my business partner and I, who is happens to be the engineer for Color Finale, we just
28:22.260: Speaker 2: We just weren't finding anything.
28:24.100: Speaker 2: And then, you know, finally, we distilled it down to the current incarnation that we have now.
28:29.220: Speaker 2: And we really wanted to, obviously, because it's a color.
28:32.960: Speaker 2: Application or that relates to color image processing.
28:37.280: Speaker 2: We wanted to have some colors in it.
28:39.600: Speaker 2: And so that's how we ended up with
28:43.880: Speaker 2: The colors in the logo.
28:46.440: Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean, we were really pleased with it, the way that it came out.
28:51.720: Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I do a fair amount of graphic work.
28:54.920: Speaker 1: I don't think anybody hires me as a graphic designer, but there is a there's a wonderful um how do I want to say it?
29:04.680: Speaker 1: Uh
29:07.139: Speaker 1: There's an imperfection to it, but there's also elements of it that are very
29:14.520: Speaker 1: Refined and it very much shows like a work in progress.
29:19.000: Speaker 1: You know, anyway, I'm kind of geeking out Design Boy over here.
29:23.240: Speaker 1: So
29:25.580: Speaker 1: So how did you how did it come about?
29:29.740: Speaker 1: And tell me a little bit about the app.
29:32.220: Speaker 2: Okay.
29:33.580: Speaker 2: Well, it's been more than a year ago now.
29:37.240: Speaker 2: that I released LUT Utility, which is a plug-in for Final Cut 10 that allows you to import and apply 3D lookup tables or LUTs.
29:49.980: Speaker 2: And it happened to be the same developer that I had worked on that with, that we decided that we had a good synergy.
29:58.060: Speaker 2: There were things that I wanted to do, things I wanted to accomplish.
30:02.220: Speaker 2: within Final Cut 10.
30:05.980: Speaker 2: And he was the person that could bring a lot of that vision to life.
30:10.700: Speaker 2: And so we formed a business
30:14.740: Speaker 2: And we've just been working on this thing for several months.
30:20.419: Speaker 2: I mean, going back to last year, the middle of last year.
30:23.380: Speaker 2: And so, yeah, I mean, we've
30:29.559: Speaker 2: had some ideas and we knew that there was needs in the marketplace and things that I'd like to have in Final Cut 10.
30:38.220: Speaker 2: And so we just we brought those w with our synergy, we brought those things to life.
30:43.980: Speaker 1: I I'm shocked you're saying w you're gonna go, Wow, you know, going back to, whoa, what was it?
30:48.540: Speaker 1: Like the middle of last year.
30:49.980: Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like really?
30:51.100: Speaker 1: You did this in like nine months?
30:53.659: Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we've we've talked about it.
30:55.500: Speaker 2: I mean, ever since we pursued our first project together, which was Lutt Utility.
31:01.659: Speaker 2: That was October of twenty thirteen when we released that.
31:07.540: Speaker 2: So I mean, I guess this October will be going on two years.
31:10.900: Speaker 2: And so we've kind of spitballed ideas back and forth ever since that time, but to where we could actually really sit down
31:20.420: Speaker 2: and collaborate and focus our efforts was about mid last year, middle of the year.
31:28.680: Speaker 1: And I got to say, as a user now, that I think one of the things that excites me the most is in the tutorials, you've been very open to say, hey, if you have ideas,
31:43.180: Speaker 1: You know, let us know.
31:44.940: Speaker 1: And I can't help but where the four icons are in the upper left-hand corner, there's a whole bunch of empty space next to them.
31:53.920: Speaker 1: I see growth potential.
31:56.640: Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
31:57.440: Speaker 2: I mean, we want to expand it.
32:00.660: Speaker 2: And we want to create an experience that will really compel people to love using it and to love doing color correction and color grading.
32:10.300: Speaker 2: right within Final Cut 10.
32:12.060: Speaker 2: I mean, we believe this it's all all these things are possible.
32:17.740: Speaker 2: Some have sought to discredit Final Cut 10.
32:22.220: Speaker 2: But I have to tell you
32:24.700: Speaker 2: It's actually a great tool.
32:27.260: Speaker 2: It's got great they've got some really good ideas in it.
32:30.620: Speaker 2: It works really well.
32:31.740: Speaker 2: I think
32:34.220: Speaker 2: You'll find as time goes on, there'll be more people that are flocking to use it.
32:39.020: Speaker 1: Well, I would definitely say that 2015 now is the year
32:45.360: Speaker 1: I believe we are going to see many more I don't know what the word is.
32:53.840: Speaker 1: Many more people are going to become public
32:57.560: Speaker 1: About their desire to find more Final Cut 10 editors.
33:02.920: Speaker 1: We're already starting to see it
33:05.300: Speaker 1: I was having this discussion the other day with Sam Mestman from FCP Works.
33:09.300: Speaker 1: He's been on the show this is almost Sam's podcast many times.
33:15.700: Speaker 1: And we're starting to see more and more people
33:19.960: Speaker 1: Actually, you know, comfortably saying, Hey, you know, I really need a Final Cut 10 editor.
33:27.560: Speaker 1: Whereas a lot of times they would kind of hide that.
33:29.960: Speaker 1: You know, they wouldn't want to talk about it.
33:32.519: Speaker 1: And I think that there's going to be by maybe the end of this year, more and more editors are going to s look at it and saying, wow, people are actually asking for this.
33:43.960: Speaker 1: I need to be
33:45.620: Speaker 1: I need to get off my high horse and get out there or lock myself in the room and learn this app because I'm missing out on potential work.
33:58.659: Speaker 2: I would agree with that.
34:00.419: Speaker 2: So it'll be I'm really excited for the future of Final Cut.
34:05.940: Speaker 2: I know that Apple is
34:08.280: Speaker 2: Some have tried to say that it was like iMovie or something, but Apple just I think that they
34:18.220: Speaker 2: Really rethought the way that editing was done.
34:21.020: Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
34:21.819: Speaker 2: And decided, you know, instead of improving this and improving this and just trying to improve the same set of tools.
34:29.040: Speaker 2: Let's reactually rethink the way it's done and let's think outside the box and let's find a new and a better way to do it.
34:35.760: Speaker 2: And I think that that's what they've done.
34:38.800: Speaker 1: I couldn't agree with you more.
34:42.379: Speaker 1: Do you do any editing yourself?
34:45.659: Speaker 2: You know, not ac you know, not a whole lot.
34:47.819: Speaker 2: I mean, most of the stuff I do is color correction.
34:51.179: Speaker 2: Clients hand me the project and
34:55.000: Speaker 2: And I color correct it and send it back to him.
34:59.800: Speaker 2: So let's walk through a
35:03.920: Speaker 1: Color finale workflow.
35:06.880: Speaker 1: If I'm sitting in my time line and I've been cutting, one of the advantages of working in the time line is I don't have to
35:17.840: Speaker 1: achieve any form of a picture lock.
35:20.400: Speaker 1: I can actually start dropping in color utility plugins
35:27.620: Speaker 1: As I go, even day one, that to me is the most huge advantage because we joke in our business that
35:41.780: Speaker 1: Picture lock only really happens when they are backstage at an event and hit play.
35:48.559: Speaker 1: For the audience.
35:49.839: Speaker 1: Right.
35:50.319: Speaker 1: You know, I mean, I cannot tell you how many times I get calls after.
35:56.079: Speaker 1: So most of my work goes to large corporate events.
36:00.240: Speaker 1: And
36:03.020: Speaker 1: Most of the quite often, I will not most of the time, that'd be sad, but quite often, we get calls after we've delivered files
36:11.820: Speaker 1: After they have been either downloaded or couriered or carried to an event where they say, Yep, we just played it for rehearsal and we have a few more changes.
36:23.640: Speaker 1: So there's always changes in this business, and being able to work at the clip level as opposed to the timeline level
36:32.620: Speaker 1: is astonishing.
36:33.980: Speaker 1: So I've dragged the clip over from my bin.
36:36.940: Speaker 1: How do I go about dealing with a shot with color finale?
36:42.339: Speaker 2: Okay.
36:42.980: Speaker 2: So I mean, yeah, you can color correct begin color correcting at any time, or you can wait till you you feel like you have more of a locked picture.
36:52.980: Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, you just you go into it's a plug-in.
36:57.140: Speaker 2: Built on FX plug.
36:59.220: Speaker 2: So under the FX section in Final Cut 10, you can click and drag it onto your clip and
37:06.360: Speaker 2: From there, you can begin color correcting.
37:08.520: Speaker 2: What we did, what is unique about color finale is we sought to get the controls out of
37:16.320: Speaker 2: the inspector window where the where all the parameters are.
37:20.000: Speaker 2: Generally, those are all slider-based parameters.
37:25.060: Speaker 2: Or the other alternative was to have those controls on the screen itself, like an on-screen control or a heads up display.
37:35.240: Speaker 2: And so we sought to break it out of having to work with those.
37:40.360: Speaker 2: I mean, those are all great and those can be advantageous, but we just sought for a different experience.
37:45.540: Speaker 2: And so after you've added it to a clip from the inspector, there's you can you click the open button, which launches the color finale UI.
37:54.320: Speaker 2: And the Color Finale UI is actually a free floating window that you can reposition anywhere on your screen, however you've set up your environment.
38:07.580: Speaker 2: And from there, we've given you three way color wheels that are the same as in the Telecine suite.
38:16.300: Speaker 2: We've given you really incredibly powerful
38:21.620: Speaker 2: RGB curves where you can plot points and you can freeform the shape of the curve.
38:29.940: Speaker 2: We've also incorporated LUT utility, and actually an improved version over our original LUT utility.
38:36.660: Speaker 2: So you can apply 3D lookup tables.
38:39.560: Speaker 2: And we have included a secondaries color correction tool that allows you to apply targeted corrections based on vectors.
38:51.099: Speaker 2: You have your vectors of red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta.
38:57.099: Speaker 2: And you can click any one of those points, kind of like a radio button or like a preset.
39:02.820: Speaker 2: And once you click on those, you can then make hue saturation and Luma adjustments to those.
39:10.740: Speaker 2: And all of this is, like I said, all this is contained in a free-floating window.
39:17.140: Speaker 2: And we also sought to take the best aspects of image editing applications.
39:23.200: Speaker 2: and incorporate the use of layers so that you can add an infinite number of these tools and you can rearrange them
39:37.680: Speaker 2: As layers, and you can also control the opacity of each layer or toglet on or off.
39:45.600: Speaker 1: Right.
39:46.480: Speaker 1: So
39:48.880: Speaker 1: First of all, the the c I think the color wheels are really exciting.
39:53.360: Speaker 1: And I think when you look at that
39:56.020: Speaker 1: As a somebody with a Final Cut 7 background, immediately you're like, oh, the three way color, you know?
40:03.700: Speaker 1: And that's a really exciting thing.
40:05.619: Speaker 1: I totally agree.
40:06.820: Speaker 1: Getting it off of the image is gigantic.
40:10.640: Speaker 1: Because that was just a distracting workflow.
40:14.320: Speaker 1: I realized a lot of people did that, but yeah, it was kind of a nightmare.
40:21.800: Speaker 1: And I love the layer the the layer nature of the fact that I can just keep adding multiple
40:30.720: Speaker 1: Color wheels, if I wanted.
40:32.640: Speaker 1: And also, I can rename them, right?
40:35.520: Speaker 2: Yeah, if you click and hold, you can actually rename it, and that can help you stay better organized.
40:42.560: Speaker 1: Very cool.
40:44.720: Speaker 1: Did it frustrate you that the pri I'll call it the stack priority
40:53.460: Speaker 1: In the Final Cut 10 Inspector, it is reversed.
41:01.299: Speaker 1: I don't know how you would say that.
41:02.420: Speaker 1: It's basically bottom up.
41:04.500: Speaker 1: So the most.
41:05.900: Speaker 1: recent plug in is the bottom one.
41:10.060: Speaker 1: As opposed I mean, you've done it, I think, the more logical way.
41:14.680: Speaker 1: But it always frustrates me when I'm trying to explain to people
41:21.940: Speaker 1: In Final Hit 10, that it's actually the inverse of that.
41:25.220: Speaker 1: As you add new ones, they go at the bottom of the list and have actually more priority over the ones
41:34.900: Speaker 1: Prior at the top of the list, which I guess is the way it was in Final Hit 7, also.
41:39.940: Speaker 1: Right.
41:40.660: Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's the way.
41:42.100: Speaker 2: I think in it, I suspect it would be the same way in like a program like Adobe Premiere.
41:48.020: Speaker 2: Yeah.
41:49.820: Speaker 1: Did you have a big discussion as you were doing this?
41:52.140: Speaker 1: Which way should we do this?
41:53.980: Speaker 2: You know, that is actually a topic of conversation that came up.
41:58.440: Speaker 2: I think actually looking back over the years, I mean, I think that both are logical.
42:03.480: Speaker 2: I think both it makes sense.
42:05.320: Speaker 2: But in our particular case, what I really wanted to do was
42:12.940: Speaker 2: Was due at the inverse where the bottom layer is the base layer or the first correction, and the top layer is the last correction.
42:22.940: Speaker 2: Because you want to think of
42:24.740: Speaker 2: of color correct, just color correction in and of itself as like a seven layer lasagna, right?
42:34.100: Speaker 2: Yeah.
42:34.640: Speaker 2: So, you know, you put your layers of lasagna and you put in like, you know, like the cheese and the meat or vegetables, and you kind of build it up.
42:43.420: Speaker 2: you know that way it's or like even like a painting you know I mean you you start with kind of like your your base paint and then you know you kind of build on top of it from there
42:53.720: Speaker 2: So to me, that makes a lot of sense for imaging processing.
42:57.799: Speaker 2: And it's kind of the same way if you look down in the time line
43:03.120: Speaker 2: Itself in the sequence.
43:04.800: Speaker 2: You have your multiple video track layers where you're going to see
43:11.540: Speaker 2: Whichever clip is on top is going to be the one that you see, unless there's some kind of blending or opacity change.
43:19.940: Speaker 2: But in any event, the top one is what you see.
43:22.260: Speaker 2: And so we sought to do the same thing.
43:23.900: Speaker 2: Now, whereas how it is currently, I mean, I think it's fine.
43:27.020: Speaker 2: I think it's great because you're kind of going from point A to point B, and so I think it makes sense the way that it is.
43:36.240: Speaker 2: I suspect it'll probably always be that way.
43:39.680: Speaker 2: But in our particular case, we just wanted to and if you look at After Effects and Photoshop, the same thing.
43:49.200: Speaker 2: You know, the layers, the top layer is given priority, and the bottom layer is more like the base layer.
43:56.480: Speaker 1: I totally agree.
43:57.840: Speaker 1: I think
43:59.360: Speaker 1: I would love to understand the logic at Apple, but you know, they don't usually get to talk to us.
44:04.720: Speaker 1: So and I just noticed, I realized
44:10.020: Speaker 1: because I was opening it up on a different system today, that the I was very pleased that the UI window
44:20.539: Speaker 1: appears to have a persistent landing space.
44:23.579: Speaker 1: So once I've set it on that system, when I close it and open it, it keeps opening wherever I had left it, as opposed to
44:32.299: Speaker 1: you know, the the default upper left corner or something like that.
44:36.140: Speaker 1: So it right it lands right there.
44:42.280: Speaker 1: Is there you don't have to say what you're doing, but I can't imagine you're not looking at this.
44:50.360: Speaker 1: Is there capability in the
44:53.580: Speaker 1: software or the APIs or whatever it is, you tell me, will we see the ability to use a control surface with this?
45:07.780: Speaker 2: That has been a request that we have had.
45:10.260: Speaker 2: I mean, all things are possible.
45:13.220: Speaker 2: So we may explore that in the future, but I would say that's lower down in terms of our priority list.
45:21.960: Speaker 1: Well, maybe there's a way that you guys can make it you know, maybe somebody else wants to do it and they could contact you and say
45:31.980: Speaker 1: you know, what do they need?
45:33.100: Speaker 1: Maybe you need an API or something of that nature.
45:36.060: Speaker 1: I'm I don't know what I I've heard somebody use that word once, so I just throw it out like it's 'cause it makes me sound like I know what I'm talking about.
45:43.900: Speaker 1: I'll be honest, I have no idea what I'm doing.
45:46.540: Speaker 1: Yeah.
45:47.900: Speaker 2: I think at some point that's something that we could get to.
45:50.780: Speaker 2: I mean yeah, I mean, if we if we developed some kind of SDK or software development kit, that could be a possibility.
45:58.140: Speaker 2: But
45:58.880: Speaker 2: We certainly don't want to just be putting our source code out there.
46:02.160: Speaker 2: Understood.
46:03.039: Speaker 1: Understood.
46:04.400: Speaker 1: Let me think.
46:04.880: Speaker 1: What are so there's the wheels.
46:07.039: Speaker 1: Oh, I want to t uh I think the curves are really exciting.
46:10.559: Speaker 1: Very exciting.
46:13.640: Speaker 1: Do the curves okay, here's here's a concern that I've had over the years.
46:21.840: Speaker 1: A lot of times when I'm training somebody new, they'll start grabbing controls and they'll go, oh, I want to make it bright.
46:30.320: Speaker 1: I have to keep reminding them, you need to open your scopes.
46:33.680: Speaker 1: You need to open your scopes.
46:37.720: Speaker 1: What is it called?
46:40.359: Speaker 1: I'm sounding like a total idiot here because I can't remember a real basic word.
46:44.760: Speaker 1: When I oh, a limiter, a broadcast limiter.
46:49.920: Speaker 1: What's the best workflow that you've seen in Final Cut 10?
46:54.400: Speaker 1: I realize you're typically using Resolve to apply a limiter.
46:59.520: Speaker 1: Actually, now this makes sense.
47:01.440: Speaker 1: So
47:02.960: Speaker 1: The color correction tools built into Final Cut 10 come after the plug-in chain.
47:12.480: Speaker 1: So I could put a limiter.
47:15.440: Speaker 1: This is actually really cool.
47:16.560: Speaker 1: I'm figuring this out while I talk to you.
47:18.400: Speaker 1: I could put a limiter on as a plug in, but my color panel, my color board, if you will, was post
47:26.180: Speaker 1: The plug-in chain.
47:28.900: Speaker 1: So it was a waste of time to use a limiter because I could still break it with the colorboard.
47:34.320: Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
47:34.960: Speaker 2: See what you're saying.
47:35.680: Speaker 1: Makes sense.
47:36.160: Speaker 1: See what I'm saying?
47:37.360: Speaker 2: Yeah.
47:38.160: Speaker 1: So and I realize, Denver, that having these discussions audio only is really difficult when you're talking about something like this.
47:46.340: Speaker 1: But welcome to the party.
47:47.540: Speaker 1: You're episode 113.
47:48.820: Speaker 1: We've been doing this a while.
47:51.140: Speaker 1: So, um, so if you're doing your color grading with color finale in 10.
47:58.220: Speaker 1: Now it is just one of the plugins.
48:01.980: Speaker 1: And as long as I don't futz around too much with the colorboard, I can trust my broadcast limiter.
48:11.740: Speaker 1: All I have to do is put it below again in the final cut inspector, my priority list is inverse of what I think most people would think is makes logical sense.
48:23.040: Speaker 1: As long as I put the limiter below color finale, I still have a way to limit my highlights and shadows, if need be.
48:31.840: Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, correct.
48:33.980: Speaker 1: Although I gotta say, I do love the inside-outside masks in the colorboard.
48:39.500: Speaker 2: Right.
48:40.540: Speaker 2: And they're a great feature.
48:41.900: Speaker 2: I mean, the tools that.
48:43.260: Speaker 2: Final Cut 10 already have built in are amazing.
48:47.740: Speaker 2: I just want to, I need to state that.
48:50.860: Speaker 2: And we just sought to, you know.
48:54.599: Speaker 2: Add some, introduce some new functionality and some different ways to enhance your images.
49:01.640: Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, everything that you've said does make sense.
49:05.480: Speaker 2: So.
49:06.119: Speaker 1: Okay, so.
49:07.140: Speaker 1: I would love to talk to you specifically about the six vectors because I think this is, and again, I'm not a colorist.
49:16.420: Speaker 1: I'm barely an editor, most people would say.
49:20.420: Speaker 1: But the six vectors is a completely different user interface approach than I've ever seen.
49:34.440: Speaker 1: Explain explain to the the Reddit expression ex E L I F explain like I'm five
49:45.960: Speaker 1: ELIF, how the six vectors work.
49:51.640: Speaker 1: Okay.
49:52.200: Speaker 1: And I'll say, is the six vectors a
49:59.220: Speaker 1: Is there I I'm assuming it's kind of uh similar to using like the um what does Final Cut call it?
50:09.300: Speaker 1: The uh
50:11.900: Speaker 1: The color mask.
50:14.060: Speaker 1: It's a little bit like the like a keir or some other type of isolation.
50:19.020: Speaker 2: Exactly, right?
50:20.780: Speaker 1: Am I right there?
50:21.840: Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to explain that.
50:23.840: Speaker 2: Okay.
50:24.400: Speaker 2: You know, and I have to say, working on this project
50:31.220: Speaker 2: The Vectors tool happened to be turned out to be one of my favorite tools, and I think a highlight to ColorFinale, because I think it's incredibly powerful
50:42.960: Speaker 2: How quickly you can make targeted adjustments, secondary color correction adjustments to things in the image.
50:50.480: Speaker 2: So, like, say for instance,
50:53.980: Speaker 2: The sky.
50:55.020: Speaker 2: The sky is like a memory color, and we all have this
51:02.360: Speaker 2: Really ingrained idea of what color a sky should be in various shape, you know, or various slight variances of us, but we have a pretty good idea of what it looks like.
51:15.820: Speaker 2: And so with the Vectors tool, you can quickly either target the blue swatch or the cyan swatch, and you can make a quick targeted adjustment to the sky.
51:25.980: Speaker 2: And the same with
51:27.520: Speaker 2: Grass or green foliage, you can adjust that as well.
51:31.839: Speaker 2: So this is how the vectors tool works from a very basic concept.
51:38.299: Speaker 2: Everything that we do and everything that we look at, and all the image processing that occurs and happens, and is displayed on your computer screen.
51:48.700: Speaker 2: Is a makeup of the mixture of red, green, and blue colors, the colors of the additive color system.
51:57.780: Speaker 2: And if you have zero red, zero green, zero blue, you have black.
52:02.260: Speaker 2: If you have 255 red, 255 green, 255 blue, you have white.
52:08.720: Speaker 2: And so I'm sure most people are familiar with these numerical numbers of red, green, and blue, and how they're mixture.
52:17.880: Speaker 2: create different colors.
52:21.400: Speaker 2: And so as you mix these red, green and blue colors around, I don't know the exact numerical values.
52:29.840: Speaker 2: to create the other tertiary or secondary colors of cyan, yellow, and magenta.
52:38.880: Speaker 2: But say for instance, if you do zero red, 255 green and 255 blue, that's going to give you a cyan yellow or magenta.
52:48.319: Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
52:49.340: Speaker 2: which it might be.
52:50.620: Speaker 2: I guess if green and blue are mixed together, that would give you cyan.
52:58.520: Speaker 2: for instance.
52:59.079: Speaker 2: So I guess zero red, zero green, zero blue or sorry, zero red, two fifty five green, two fifty five blue would give you a cyan col
53:08.599: Speaker 2: Right
53:09.580: Speaker 2: So that's the basic premise of the vectors tool.
53:14.140: Speaker 2: And so by choosing a vector
53:18.000: Speaker 2: You're saying for all the pixels that are blue or have some kind of blue value to them.
53:27.900: Speaker 2: As you pick the blue vector, you can then make adjustments to the hue to lean it towards either more cyan or more magenta.
53:37.980: Speaker 2: You can increase the saturation or how vivid it is.
53:41.440: Speaker 2: And then, of course, adjust the luminosity, which is how bright or dark the color is.
53:50.240: Speaker 2: So without trying to get too technical, keep in mind when you look when you looked at the vector scope
53:58.020: Speaker 2: It's called the vector scope because it's showing you the vectors.
54:01.540: Speaker 2: And if you trace, you know, the outward regions, you know.
54:06.200: Speaker 2: Generally, you know, you'll look if you look carefully at the vector scope, it has letters indicating those colors.
54:13.560: Speaker 2: So you're going around it, you'll have red.
54:18.280: Speaker 2: Red, magenta, green, cyan, blue, magenta, going all the way around.
54:24.200: Speaker 2: And so the vector tool is the same idea.
54:27.400: Speaker 2: Where you have different vectors or colors.
54:29.880: Speaker 2: And the best way to use the vectors tool is actually to bring up the vector scope.
54:35.260: Speaker 2: So then you can actually see what colors are in your image.
54:39.820: Speaker 2: If it's not showing any trace or anything near blue.
54:45.720: Speaker 2: The blue vector is not going to do anything for you because there is nothing in the image that is blue.
54:50.599: Speaker 1: Makes perfect sense, yeah.
54:51.960: Speaker 2: And so as you're looking at the vector scope, if you see a lot of trace really leaning towards green, a lot of trace out in that area,
55:00.660: Speaker 2: You know that there's green in the image, and that with the green vector button, you can then adjust it.
55:08.260: Speaker 2: You can change that vector either to change the hue to
55:13.320: Speaker 2: to rotate that green more towards red or to rotate it more towards cyan?
55:23.880: Speaker 2: Makes perfect sense.
55:26.920: Speaker 2: As opposed to other secondary isolation tools that base their targeted adjustments on
55:36.440: Speaker 2: Hue, saturation, and luma.
55:39.079: Speaker 2: And that that's that's just a different way of classifying colors.
55:45.800: Speaker 1: Which would be what my
55:47.359: Speaker 1: Color mask would be.
55:48.320: Speaker 1: When I swipe a color mask, I'm saying look for this color range.
55:52.880: Speaker 1: Right.
55:53.280: Speaker 2: And Akira you're saying, um
55:56.700: Speaker 2: When you use the Keir tool, you're saying gather everything that looks that has this these values.
56:06.140: Speaker 2: Right.
56:07.640: Speaker 2: So I imagine in the future we'll add a cure, but I personally feel that the vectors tool is
56:17.680: Speaker 2: I think it's a more elegant implementation of doing secondary correction.
56:22.240: Speaker 2: I think it's more of a pure form.
56:24.559: Speaker 2: I mean, you can of course, you can do more really very specific targeted adjustments
56:29.660: Speaker 2: With a cure, which is why we want to add one as part of our roadmap.
56:35.980: Speaker 2: But for really quick
56:37.620: Speaker 2: And easy secondary color corrections, you can do that all within the vectors tool.
56:42.820: Speaker 1: Yeah, and I want to be very vocal and very clear about this.
56:47.599: Speaker 1: You know, what you just said there, you know, road map version two.
56:53.200: Speaker 1: This is a fully functioning, fully powerful, fully
56:57.320: Speaker 1: implementable, awesome tool as is right now today.
57:02.840: Speaker 1: I think it is a for a Funnel Cut 10 enthusiast or professional, it is
57:10.300: Speaker 1: This is a done deal.
57:12.300: Speaker 1: But it is exciting to think about future development because what you've done here is you've created
57:21.240: Speaker 1: a platform that has it's got legs.
57:24.440: Speaker 1: I mean, there's I mean, I was joking about the room for the icons, but
57:29.320: Speaker 1: I mean, it's really powerful as is.
57:33.000: Speaker 1: So I'm going to, you know, I don't normally find a product
57:38.220: Speaker 1: Seek out the developer and say, hey, go buy this, but this is really cool.
57:42.380: Speaker 1: And I love the fact that it is it brings so much power right into my timeline.
57:49.300: Speaker 1: So I'm a huge fan, Denver.
57:52.660: Speaker 2: Well, I really appreciate you saying that, Chris.
57:55.780: Speaker 2: And we didn't want to release anything that was half baked.
57:58.980: Speaker 2: We wanted to make sure that we
58:01.299: Speaker 2: had sufficient tools that our goal was to introduce color wheels.
58:07.140: Speaker 2: Our goal was to introduce curves.
58:10.260: Speaker 2: Our goal was to incorporate LUT utility
58:14.000: Speaker 2: And then, you know, we thought, well, we need a secondaries tool.
58:17.280: Speaker 2: At the very least, let's put in the vectors tool.
58:21.240: Speaker 2: And there's more things that we have planned for the future.
58:24.840: Speaker 2: And those early adopters that currently are using Color Finale will be able to
58:33.700: Speaker 2: get those new features as free updates, provided we don't have to license any kind of third party code.
58:45.940: Speaker 2: If we have to
58:48.240: Speaker 2: license from somebody, obviously, that's going to be a cost and an expense that needs to be incurred and that we would have to pass on.
58:57.440: Speaker 2: But otherwise, everything that we can do
59:00.140: Speaker 2: in house to improve the functionality, we plan on making that free to our customers.
59:06.059: Speaker 1: I would you don't even need to apologize about money like that.
59:09.980: Speaker 1: I mean, this is something that I think that
59:13.520: Speaker 1: You know, let's face it, people, we are already using the least expensive editing tool you can get.
59:21.520: Speaker 1: If I look back at how much
59:24.020: Speaker 1: Adobe Premiere would have cost me since November excuse me, July of twenty eleven, now four years on with all of the monthly subscriptions for the last two years or whatever.
59:38.400: Speaker 1: Plus, you know, the upgrades from five to five.
59:40.960: Speaker 1: You know, we got a deal here, and it's important for us to
59:47.099: Speaker 1: support tools like this because this is the kind of development that furthers our work platform
59:56.380: Speaker 1: And does nothing but just make people go, Oh, yeah, there's a three-way color corrector now.
Speaker 1: Cool, I'm on board. 01:00:01.900 Speaker 1: You know? 01:00:03.420 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:00:04.299 Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. 01:00:05.339 Speaker 1: I am very excited about this. 01:00:06.940 Speaker 1: And I know if anybody follows me on Twitter, there was a tweet from Denver the other day saying that he was going to send me a license. 01:00:09.860 Speaker 1: I still have to buy a couple of more because we have a bunch of seats here. 01:00:18.039 Speaker 1: But it's easy money to spend. 01:00:22.279 Speaker 1: It's a powerful tool. 01:00:25.240 Speaker 1: And 01:00:27.160 Speaker 1: And hey, you get the LET utility built in. 01:00:28.440 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I really appreciate that, Chris. 01:00:30.920 Speaker 2: And as far as license activations 01:00:35.000 Speaker 2: go. 01:00:38.540 Speaker 2: For each license, you can actually activate it on two computers or two seats. 01:00:39.980 Speaker 1: Yeah, which is awesome because so many of us have our work computer. 01:00:45.980 Speaker 1: There's so many ways in Final Cut 10 that I can like take a little, you know, a proxy library home with me. 01:00:50.440 Speaker 1: I can be doing this stuff 01:00:58.359 Speaker 1: You know, working with looks and ideas at home on the laptop while I'm watching Dancing with the Stars kill me now. 01:01:00.420 Speaker 1: Or whatever. 01:01:10.820 Speaker 1: I do not watch that show. 01:01:12.260 Speaker 1: I do not condone that show. 01:01:13.700 Speaker 1: Please, people, turn off your television. 01:01:15.220 Speaker 1: But yeah, and that's a very powerful feature too, as well. 01:01:18.820 Speaker 1: And I also got to say, I appreciate 01:01:22.340 Speaker 1: I go both ways on the purchasing of software. 01:01:27.559 Speaker 1: I love the Apple App Store, but I totally understand from a developer standpoint why it's important 01:01:31.720 Speaker 1: and advantageous to have your own delivery system. 01:01:40.099 Speaker 1: And your delivery system works great. 01:01:44.180 Speaker 1: It's well, I appreciate that. 01:01:46.099 Speaker 2: And we love Apple. 01:01:48.500 Speaker 2: We love the Apple App Store. 01:01:49.300 Speaker 2: I think it's a great like you say, it's a great way of distributing 01:01:51.220 Speaker 2: software. 01:01:55.000 Speaker 2: Currently, there's really not quite a way to distribute through that channel. 01:01:56.920 Speaker 2: But I think that'll change in the in the future. 01:02:01.560 Speaker 2: I mean, I we've submitted requests, and I know a lot of other 01:02:05.320 Speaker 2: Plug-in developers have submitted requests to Apple to open up that functionality. 01:02:09.000 Speaker 2: And basically, it's a way that 01:02:13.400 Speaker 2: plugin developers can dist distribute FX plug plugins through the app store. 01:02:16.599 Speaker 2: So that'll be interesting to see in the future if they 01:02:21.800 Speaker 2: officially add that and support that. 01:02:26.140 Speaker 2: Because otherwise, like as of right now, we kind of have to distribute outside of the App Store. 01:02:28.060 Speaker 1: Yeah, which it's good and it works well. 01:02:32.060 Speaker 1: Denver, I can't imagine people don't know how to find your stuff, but how do they follow you on social media and whatnot? 01:02:35.560 Speaker 2: On Twitter, I am at color grading. 01:02:45.720 Speaker 2: And on Facebook, there's a dedicated 01:02:51.160 Speaker 2: Color Grading Central Facebook page. 01:02:55.940 Speaker 2: Of course, there's my website, colorgradingcentral. 01:02:58.020 Speaker 2: com. 01:03:01.300 Speaker 2: And of course, from there, you can drill down to learn more about color finale. 01:03:02.500 Speaker 2: It's featured on the home page. 01:03:06.420 Speaker 1: Very cool. 01:03:09.099 Speaker 1: Thank you so much for taking the time out this morning. 01:03:09.900 Speaker 1: Sorry I was late. 01:03:12.220 Speaker 1: I literally overslept. 01:03:13.099 Speaker 2: No worries. 01:03:15.500 Speaker 2: I really appreciate the opportunity, Chris. 01:03:16.220 Speaker 2: I was excited to be on your podcast. 01:03:18.460 Speaker 1: No, not a problem. 01:03:20.940 Speaker 1: Thanks again. 01:03:23.040 Speaker 1: And oh, hey, are you going to be at NAB? 01:03:23.840 Speaker 2: You said yes, I'm going to be there. 01:03:25.840 Speaker 2: Going to be at the Super Meet. 01:03:27.840 Speaker 1: So cool. 01:03:29.920 Speaker 2: Yeah, if anyone's interested in meeting, I'd look forward to meeting you. 01:03:31.160 Speaker 2: So I'll be there at NAB. 01:03:34.120 Speaker 1: All right. 01:03:35.560 Speaker 1: And I will be, just so you know, I will be at the SCP Works Suite at the Renaissance Hotel next to the thing. 01:03:35.880 Speaker 1: It's all final cut for three solid days, different classes and sessions. 01:03:44.860 Speaker 1: And we're going to be live streaming it out of the Renaissance also and recording those sessions. 01:03:51.100 Speaker 1: Tons of stuff going on there you may want to swing by. 01:03:58.440 Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. 01:04:01.400 Speaker 1: All right, Denver. 01:04:02.359 Speaker 1: Thanks for chatting. 01:04:03.160 Speaker 1: We'll be in touch. 01:04:04.280 Speaker 1: All right. 01:04:05.160 Speaker 1: All the best, Chris. 01:04:05.480 Speaker 1: So that's it for this episode. 01:04:07.640 Speaker 1: Thank you, Denver, for taking the time. 01:04:09.960 Speaker 1: We had a nice little chat after the show. 01:04:12.760 Speaker 1: And I'm excited about this 01:04:15.640 Speaker 1: Plugin, probably going to end up installing it on all the machines here. 01:04:19.560 Speaker 1: It gives you amazing control over your color frame. 01:04:23.800 Speaker 1: And it's right there in the time line, which is what I have always been saying. 01:04:28.620 Speaker 1: Why don't we have better color tools right in the time line? 01:04:33.100 Speaker 1: So, thanks, Denver, for creating this, and I highly recommend you go check out Color Finale. 01:04:37.440 Speaker 1: You know, they have a seven-day trial period. 01:04:43.200 Speaker 1: You can download it, play with it. 01:04:45.520 Speaker 1: I don't know if it watermarks, but anyway, I don't think it does. 01:04:47.599 Speaker 1: Seven-day trial, and literally at 99 bucks, it's a slam dunk. 01:04:51.220 Speaker 1: So, I highly recommend Chris Van Oak approves, whatever that means. 01:04:55.700 Speaker 1: So, thanks for listening. 01:04:59.619 Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with another episode of The Grill, and I look forward to seeing all of you at NAB in a few. 01:05:00.579 Speaker 1: Few weeks later, later. 01:05:05.980 Speaker 2: Let me hit the stop button over here. 01:05:17.980