Color Finale has to be the most popular third party colour grading plugin for Final Cut Pro X. Today, Color Trix has announced that a new workflow extension beta will become available that will allow FCPX editors to grade remotely.
With Covid restrictions staying with us to possibly the end of the year, we are all looking at working remotely to avoid the commute to work and the risk that goes with it.
Yes, we can swap Libraries and XMLs, but what about remote colour grading?
Today, Dmitry from Color Trix has announced an upcoming beta of Color Finale Connect, a workflow extension for Final Cut Pro that allows remote collaborative grading.
It is not available yet, but you can register on the site to be ready when it is made available.
If you haven't seen or used Color Finale before, make sure you check out Oliver Peter's excellent review on this grading plugin for FCPX.
There is a promo video, but at 12 seconds, there's not a huge amount of info in there! We will have to resort to the press release.
The Color Finale Connect workflow extension adds the ability to collaborate over the internet with a Director, a DoP, editors and clients, and also to teach color grading by example to color grading students, editors and anyone else who is interested in learning from professionals in real-time.
“Color Finale Connect lets editors and directors discuss color grading decisions with a colorist but it also enables business opportunities like, for example, inviting color grading talent to work remotely on editing projects created with Final Cut Pro X or guiding color grading amateurs through the finesses of color correction in one-on-one remote sessions. It’s the only solution available today that allows you to do that from within Final Cut Pro X and at this price point,” Dmitry Lavrov, Managing Director at Color Trix, says.
Color Finale Connect allows users to either join a remote color grading session or to broadcast a session. Users who join a session are able to see and comment upon what a colorist is doing.
When broadcasting a session, a user can either be a colorist who takes the lead or an editor or client who wants to be talked through or comment on color grading decisions taken by a colorist.
To keep Color Finale Connect streamlined and its network requirements as low as possible, attendees communicate with each other using Apple’s built-in Messages, Skype or other chat or VoIP apps.
A single session runs over a pass-word-protected bidirectional channel that uses Color Trix’s server for peer-to-peer communication between the Color Finale workstations logged in to the session.
Color Finale sends full-resolution single frames needed to display the grading changes once, then followed by adjustment metadata only. If the session partici-pants have the original, mirrored footage on their local workstations, only the ad-justment metadata is sent.
“Color Finale Connect is very efficient,” Lavrov says. “As soon as you start changing things, the clip in the Timeline will reflect those changes in near-real-time and settings sliders move accordingly. The color wheel and other UI ele-ments are updated as soon as you let go of the control to finish the action.”
All very interesting, but a bit of an enigma at the moment and that's why we have asked Oliver Peters to take the new Workflow Extension beta for a spin when it becomes available. Hopefully we will be publishing his findings in a fewf weeks.
In the meantime, why don't you head over to the Color Finale site and register so that you'll be the first to know when the beta is released.
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
