Apple Color Tutorials.

There are a series of tutorials for Apple Color (Part of the Final Cut Studio suite) on CreativeCow .net by Walter Biscardi. They are very elementary and really only serve as an introduction. Mr Biscardi has also released a more comprehensive tutorial disc called Stop Staring and Start Grading with Apple Color. It has a rather naff trailer but comes recommended by Paul Harrill in a review at the excellent Self Reliant Film blog.

Useful Color Correction resources.

I'm going to try and post some useful info on colour correction as a sort of follow up to a previous post about low budget colour correction using Apple's Color [sic]. I'll start off with a great video about colour perception from apple that's been posted on Youtube.

Low Budget Colour Correction for Mac

In an earlier post I mentioned that colour grading is a weak spot in many low budget productions. Proper reliable colour correction is generally only available on high end equipment generally costing tens of thousands of pounds (at the cheap end!)

I came across this review from DVuser magazine of the Matrox MXO interface. It plugs into the DVI output of an intel Mac Pro, Intel iMac or MacBook Pro (older iMacs and normal Macbooks are not supported because of lower spec graphics cards) and acts as an HD card allowing a proper HD video signal to be sent to a monitor, or a special DVI signal to be sent to a Apple Monitor, when used with Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro CS3.

The output is correctly deinterlaced (so you'll see proper 50 field playback for interlaced video) or not as necessary, and the monitor can be calibrated to a reasonable degree of accuracy that the reviewer states "I would feel totally confident grading tropical fish with this set up, that’s how good it is." The cost of a Matrox MXO Plus an Apple 23" monitor is about £1200 plus VAT. That's expensive, but not THAT expensive, and for what it offers is really extraordinarily cheap, and within the reach of a lot of low budget outfits. You could throw in a top of the line fully loaded top of the line iMac, Final Cut Studio 2 AND a J L Cooper EclipseCX control surface and STILL be under half the price of that £20,000 broadcast CRT monitor by itself.

The reviewer thinks that this is set up is a serious replacement for a £20,000 HD monitor and HD card for colour correction and grading purposes, bordering on too-good-to-be-true territory. I'm sceptical of that, and find it unlikely that much broadcast or any professional movie work will be done with it, but for corporate, educational or low budget/indie work it would be ideal. Of course it should be stated that having a good colour correction system (be it for £12,000 or £20,000, or a £200,000 Da Vinci system) doesn't make you a good colourist, just as owning a Fender Stratocaster doesn't make you a Jimi Hendrix.

Update: here's another glowing review for the MXO/Apple 23" display combination.