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MillimeterReview: Apple Final Cut Studio 2
Sep 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By D. W. Leitner
Juggling a juggernaut.
Color, a Final Cut Studio 2 application that, only a year ago, was Silicon Color's professional $25,000 FinalTouch 2K Color Finishing System, enables professional results with the help of a reference-grade monitor and a USB colorimeter such as ColorVision Spyder2.
Where effects are concerned, FCP 6 embraces the FxPlug plug-in standard used in Motion and other applications, meaning that Motion's realtime, GPU-accelerated effects are now accessible in FCP too. A brief tour of the Effects menu (Effects>Video Filters) demonstrates that basic FCP categories such as Blur, Distort, Glow, Stylize, Tiling, and Time contain more than 25 new FxPlug effects. I know I'm looking for that right opportunity to use those new Earthquake and Bad TV filters.
The venerable Color Corrector and Color Corrector 3-way filters now exist in the lengthening shadow of Color, a Final Cut Studio 2 application that, only a year ago, was Silicon Color's professional $25,000 FinalTouch 2K Color Finishing System. That Apple acquired Silicon Color and folded FinalTouch into its Final Cut Pro 2 suite in a matter of months is amazing — and it shows. Starting up Color for the first time is a jolt to Mac-centric sensibilities, as you're confronted with a very un-Mac-like user interface that requires clicking around in weird-looking folders, seeking your root level to set up a media directory. (This oddity will no doubt vanish in the next release.) But no matter: This sophisticated, node-based, 10-bit platform with its HSL (hue, saturation, and luminance) slider controls for primaries, its adjustable saturation curves for secondaries, and its keying with full RGB control, inside and out, of custom shapes is a dream come true — and possibly a nightmare too.
I recently attended the Lincoln Center premiere of an hour-long film I shot in HDV. It was cut in FCP 6 (not by me) and projected as HDCAM using a 1920×1080 projector. Budget had run out, and color correction was done by the editor. He did his very best, but I was aware throughout of saturation errors and uneven blacks. Perhaps no one else in the audience registered this as I did, and the film was well-received. Still, I found myself wistful for a professional colorist's touch.
As I've noted in the past, to properly exploit Color's capabilities you need a reference-grade monitor and a USB colorimeter such as ColorVision Spyder2, or perhaps a tightly calibrated DLP projector, at least to keep things honest. A steroidal Mac Pro and a roaring graphics card can't hurt. A trackball control surface might come in handy too. But most of all, you need experienced eyes — mileage in a colorist's seat.
While results obtained using Color can rival a Da Vinci, for long-form projects, Color can't touch a dedicated color-grading system for speed and efficiency. These are among the reasons why seasoned professional colorists have nothing to fear with the advent of Color. If anything, Color, freed of the postproduction priesthood, might very well serve to include a new and curious generation in the fascinating intricacies of digital video color correction. That can't be bad.
With version 1.01, Apple Color has taken its first baby steps. Let's see over the coming years how the proud parent raises this promising child.
Leopard, the latest edition of Apple's Unix-based OS X, is due this October after a delay attributed to last spring's iPhone birthing pangs. By the time you read this, the eagerly anticipated Leopard, along with Apple's codec for importing 1920×1080 XDCAM EX files recorded at 35Mbps, may be in your hands. Ditto AJA Video Systems' Io HD ingest/output box, the first third-party capture device to support ProRes 422 in hardware, not yet available at this writing. All promise soon to lend impressive new capabilities to Final Cut Studio 2.
Fingers crossed that Apple can keep those sledgehammers a-hurtling.
Vitals
Company: Apple
www.apple.com
Product: Final Cut Studio 2
Assets: Advances in editing, effects, and audio post with improved integration and stability, FCP 6 open-format timeline accepts multiple resolutions and frame rates without rendering, adds new ProRes 422 lossless compression and FxPlug filter format, Color brings professional-grade color correction.
Caveats: Not all apps run equally on older Macs, Color's interface jarring at first.
Demographic: Mac users needing professional editing and finishing capabilities.
Price: $1,299 (full); $699 (upgrade from Final Cut Pro or Production Suite); $499 (upgrade from Final Cut Studio)
