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SpeedGrade
  • 95 Replies sorted by
  • rNeilrNeil

    @matt_gh2

    I did. Though, unfortunately, I wasn't thinking about saving the blame thing for a postmortem, I was just trying to get work done by deadline. So ... I didn't save-as the blown copy, just went back to P-Pro and started again.

    There's another thing to be aware of that I learned in a p-m from an Adobe staffer ... Speedgrade does NOT do auto-saves, you have to save manually. Which is odd, because every five minutes or so a box pops-up to notify of auto-saving going on. Apparently, it's from P-Pro running in the background, but as I'd not saved what I was doing in Speedgrade, P-Pro didn't actually see anything to save ... so for all those "autosaved" dialog boxes, there wasn't one additional save for P-Pro past when I'd initially sent the project over to Speedgrade.

    I've been p-m'd that they're considering changing that behavior ... yes, please! Or at least, TELL us that though it says it's auto-saving it isn't actually if you're currently in Speedgrade!

    So ... the p-m from Adobe wanted the project, but it sounded like ... the blown one, that I didn't save-as. I can send them the current state of the project if they'd like, and have offered. The staff has been quite helpful on it.

    Neil

  • rNeilrNeil

    New suggested workflow if using Speedgrade on a direct-send from Premiere Pro ...

    1. On "arrival" in Speedgrade, do a "save-as" with an incremental letter/number or something.
    2. Every so often, do a manual save ... perhaps doing a 'save-as' with another increment occasionally.
    3. When done, simply exit with the "save ... back to P-Pro" trip, or alternately, "save-as" back to the original project name if you wish.

    Either way, in P-Pro, you can then open your latest version and take right off working. Still it's a HECK of a lot faster than exporting/importing and all that ...

    Neil

  • maxrmaxr

    For the roundtrippin' undertakers: Moving Looks from Resolve to SpeedGrade • Complementary • And just 4 fun

  • rNeilrNeil

    Patrick Palmer just commented in a thread of mine over on the Adobe forums, useful stuff to know. Why do the Adobe Speedgrade scopes resize both the data and the 'dark' or "real" area of the scopes as you work? Because they use full floating-point calculations, and are designed to show the full amount of data at all times rather than allowing 'clipped' data to just thin-line. Some people actually like this, and find it intuitive to use scopes with a perhaps greyed-out but visible bottom-section of the scope showing where you've crushed your blacks without distorting the total shape of the data. (This does mean then the scale of the scope needs to be compressed, however.)

    Nice to understand ... but he gave a work-around if you want to have a static scope scale/size, preferring your 'clipped' data to just thin-line on top and bottom. It's pretty easy to do.

    1) Create a grading layer on top of all other layers on the timeline. (Note that in a direct-to-Speedgrade link from Premiere Pro CC you'll need to add an adjustment layer in P-Pro on top of your timeline BEFORE going to Sg.)

    2) Select that layer and add a " + " to the layer's palette dialog box from the bottom menu, choosing LUT from the long pop-up list.

    3) Go to the Lut selection pop-up, and choose " Clip_0_to_1.ilut ".

    Now, your scopes will give a static (standard-style) display. Takes far longer to describe than to do. He's also suggesting to their software engineers to add this into the scopes window as a simple switchable view, same as say seeing chroma or luma data.

    Now if we could just get graticules in the vector-scope.

    neil

  • rNeilrNeil

    http://lynda.com has a new series of tutorials up, "Up and running with Speedgrade CC", that is the best one I've seen yet for practical demos of how to get into Sg, do primaries and secondaries, masks & all, and get back to PPro. NO wasted time, yet he does show every step needed in each bit. And when to use the "direct" send from PPro and when to use Speedgrade as a separate program on the material involved.

    Good stuff.

    Neil

  • matt_gh2matt_gh2

    @rneil This sounds great - will check it out. Thanks for posting. We're editing in premiere now and have a few scenes that will need some "heavy lifitng" with masks so this will be great. Wonder if it's possible to open just a portion of a sequence in Speedgrade? My initial dabbling with it seemed to open whole sequence if I remember correctly.

  • rNeilrNeil

    I'm on CC and in general totally caught into the direct-to-Sg link. I'll create a sequence in PPro just to put a few clips onto, then take that direct to Sg to grade. The initial dialog box in Sg will allow me to choose the sequence "highlighted" before I "jumped", or one of the others in that project.

    Remember if in CC, you can't change the project's timeline on a direct-link move. So if you're going to need grading layers above your timeline, make adjustment layers in PPro, then use them for grading layers in Sg. Of course, you can have about as many layers on your footage as you can imagine without using separate grading layers, but they can be awfully handy to "tie" corrections to other similar footage.

    Neil

  • matt_gh2matt_gh2

    Cool thanks - figured it was something simple like that.

  • matt_gh2matt_gh2

    EDIT: I thought below tutorial would be good, but turns out it's kinda weak. I preferred the one @rNeil recommended called "Up and running with Speedgrade CC" on lynda.com

    Another overview tutorial on Speedgrade workflow.

  • rNeilrNeil

    Interesting. I'll look at more of it tomorrow.

    Neil

  • rNeilrNeil

    @madddog15 ...

    Interesting to have you pop up on the Adobe Speedgrade forum. Speedgrade's a love/irritant program. Some things so wonderful & cool/easy, many things that are quick & easy not actually documented or shown someplace so you either just push buttons to see what happens for several hours or watch tons of other people doing things ... and some obvious things that aren't easy or perhaps possible.

    Adobe's been dealing with issues on the multiple-card problem for sometime, and they're slowly getting it better. It's actually been easier on the PC side, especially as that last Mac OS switch through some real and unexpected nasty curveballs at Adobe & Blackmagic/Kona cards and all.

    I'd note ... one thing Adobe is trying to do that no other company is attempting ... is create a multi-program "native" workflow ingetion/subclipping/transcoding(Prelude) to NLE (PrPro) to grading (Sg) to titling/Fx (Ae) to render-out (AME). From what I can tell, trying to moosh the software from all those different programs together to work one basic project format back & forth ... is quite a mountain to move. Some parts they've done quite well, some ... um ... no.

    Still, for my little projects, the PrPro/Sg Direct Link process is a wondrous time-saver. Hope they get the multiple cards issue solved soon in Sg ... I'll "soon" be getting a new box designed ground-up for video processing which will be multi-carded.

  • rNeilrNeil

    Well, it was nice getting to NAB ... what a huge trade show! I even sat in for one of the Adobe staffer's demo-ing Speedgrade for a few minutes. The discussions with a few users of Resolve was ... interesting. Or should I say, they were very interested in the Sg process, and particularly how well the interface worked with "looks", LUT's, and custom profiles. As it was the first time I've ever actually worked a dual-display system with Speedgrade ... oh my lands ... do I want another BIG monitor ...

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

  • AlienheadAlienhead

    Per that review of the Kensington Mouse and Speedgrade, not really working so well -- a Wacom pad would give you finer control in 'precision' mode, and it has a wheel and assignable function buttons.

  • MikeLinnMikeLinn

  • rNeilrNeil

    @MikeLinn ... as one of the people who's howling about the old scopes (both on Adobe forums and in wishform requests) got me some interesting and direct comments back from the development team .. I'm thrilled with both the general quality/usability of the new scopes as they appear ... especially the vectorscope getting GOOD graticules ... and the ability to clamp/unclamp the signal shown on the scopes. That alone made this program far more "native" to my brain. I got to see it at NAB, and while watching one of 'the team' demo it to someone else, commented how wondrous the new scopes were. He ... um ... glanced at my name-tag, and even though NAB had put my first name rather than my middle name on it ... the guy knew who I must be immediately. Squeaky wheels & all? But still, those scopes are nice. Was THRILLED when they finally released the new version ...

  • rNeilrNeil

    @Vitaliy_Kiselev

    Different strokes for the reviewer & me ... I got that "Expert Mouse" and though the build quality isn't the highest, both within Speedgrade and in general computer work I love the thing. Within Sg, using the ball for the inside of the color-wheels (chroma correction) and the outer wheel for the luma corrections is spiffy. Scrolling with the wheel is great, and having all four buttons set for various actions it's a dream to use ... for me.

    As to the comment about a Wacom pad, I'm a lefty ... the Wacom is on my left, pen in hand ... the track-wheel mouse thing on my right ... and occasionally I'll even use the keyboard in the middle. Poor man's surface? ;-)

  • rNeilrNeil

    I'm starting to work in two new features of Speedgrade, the shot-matcher (which has been revamped from the older method) and the "Master Clip" option.

    The revamped shot-matching procedure does seem to work a lot better. Not always perfectly natch but definitely much closer results than before. I'm able to come close enough for my work to get quite a few "matches" good enough as to be no matter. Some still need a bit of tweaking, maybe a bit less than half, and when needed is a pretty small change.

    "Master Clip" use is in setting a master clip for a camera in a particular scene/lighting and having Speedgrade recognize other timeline occurrences or subclips of that bit of footage. You can then simply correct/modify the master clip itself and Speedgrade automatically updates all other instances of that group of footage accordingly.

    And both of these are simpler to use with the new scopes and scope-utilization choices. Much better "scoping" now. Masks ... somewhat better, but that is still an area that needs more improvement. Often my masks are now working as expected ... but ... still occasionally key-framing seems to glitch. Maybe next iteration/update that will be ironed out.

    Still, for my uses, shot-matching & master clip are big timesavers. My brain is still wrapping around master clip application, but that's not unusual. Sigh ... ;-)

    Neil

  • matt_gh2matt_gh2

    Do you think masks are better in Speedgrade or Premiere? (Are they best in After Effects?)

  • rNeilrNeil

    @matt_gh2

    As the old saying goes, it ... depends. In many ways for complicated moving masks the key-framing in AeFx is more reliable. Current masks in Sg can work great for this, but might kinda muss around in a slightly different use on the next sequence. When they work, they're quick & seem easier to me to do than in PrPro & Ae. That's probably just because for what little I've needed, Sg has normally worked and I've not had time to experiment in the other programs. In do know a lot of the professional work by others with these oft use PrPro or Ae for their heavy-lift masking jobs.

    I also know from discussions with the staffers who've posted on Adobe's Sg forum that they realize that the masking with Sg isn't always as robust or stable as it needs to be, and is a huge project for them to get the masking down better. They've made some nice upgrades in the most recent release, including somewhat better reliability in their masking operations. I'm wondering how soon they may get a better-masked release out.

  • matt_gh2matt_gh2

    Cool. Time to try em out. Thanks

  • rNeilrNeil

    Sg isn't any Holy Grail ... but what it does, especially once you kinda see how it's expected to work, is crazy easy. I do see people trying to make it do or be something else complaining how hard it is ... but they're fighting it rather than going with it.

    But also, a HUGE help is reading the van Hurkman or a couple other of the major tomes on color-correction/grading. Once you learn what those scopes are telling you, it's so much more sensible to see what happens when you do X.

  • rNeilrNeil

    @matt_gh2

    There's a book by a guy named van Hurkman on Speedgrade, it's only about a couple releases back but still very appropo to working with and understanding Speedgrade. And the Hullfish/Fowler book "Color Correction for Video [2nd edition]" is just excellent. That one shows the major tools used within most all grading programs, what they do "apparently" and what they do behind the curtain. Highly recommended reading, both.

  • matt_gh2matt_gh2

    @rNeil Thanks for the recommendations - great advice. I'm definitly going to check those out.

  • rNeilrNeil

    The van Hurkman book on Speedgrade I found "all on my own". The Hullfish/Fowler book I learned of through @shian 's recommendation on his website. It is the basic knowledge of what it is we do in correcting/grading digital video files. Not inexpensive, but you should go through it completely.

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