SpeedGrade question

[Vincent Oliver]

I have been experimenting with SpeedGrade for a couple f days, but am getting nowhere fast.

I Export a 30 second clip from Premiere to Speedgrade and this takes over 6 minutes before it is available. Older clips are still on the Speedgrade timeline, how do I remove these, I have tried dragging them off and also dragging them off holding down the Ctrl key etc, to no avail.

I try to save a Look and am told I can't write to a protected disk, my disk is not protected as I am the only user.

Thumbnail for EX3 files are not generated, this was something I liked with Premiere CS6, where are they in Speedgrade

Can anyone shed some light on SpeedGrade, have watched several tutorials and they all seem to ingest the footage very quickly. Does anyone have a link to some more detailed help files/

Enough from me, for the time being

[Vincent Oliver]

I should have added that I have a very fast PC, intel i7 CPU 2600mhz, 16gb of RAM and a nvidia card for the Mercury Playback Engine. Several hard drives etc.

Don't get me wrong with this question, the Speedgrade certainly looks like a useful tool to have and as soon as I have sorted these few problems I will be using it often. I just need to sort the problem first.

[Jordan Hooper]

Have you visited AdobeTV?

There's quite a lot of tutorials there on all the Adobe products.

Start here (link below) for videos about using SpeedGrade. Click on "more episodes" at the bottom to reveal more.
Products | SpeedGrade | Adobe TV

[Vincent Oliver]

Thanks Jordan, I have been watching these for some time (couple of weeks), but they do not address any of my questions.

[Charles W. Hull]

Originally Posted by Vincent Oliver

Thanks Jordan, I have been watching these for some time (couple of weeks), but they do not address any of my questions.

There is quite a bit of discussion on the Adobe Forums for SpeedGrade, and the Adobe staff seems to be answering specific questions relative to Premiere to SpeedGrade. Maybe they can help.

[Vincent Oliver]

Thanks Charles, I have found the answer. SpeedGrade converts your files into a DPX import, that's why it takes so long. At the moment SpeedGrade is still under Adobe development and no doubt over the next few months we will see a tighter integration with the other Adobe products (Premiere, After Effects et.) So for the time being the application is a - cloud in the sky with a potential silver lining.

[Steve Kalle]

Sorry for being rather blunt, but its not hard to find the technical info for SpeedGrade which says that XDCAM EX must be converted to DPX when going from PPro into SG. In addition, H264 also must be converted, but there are some formats that do not need to be converted (primarily Image Sequences). It seems that SG almost mirrors Resolve's formats (XDCAM EX cannot be imported either).

I find that it helps to understand WHY software does certain things rather than how to push buttons only (ie., reading Adobe's info on SG versus watching videos on how to perform certain tasks). Knowing this sort of info can greatly help when someone needs to export from AE or 3D programs because you know that you need to export an Image Sequence to import into SG.

Maybe its my OCD, but I immediately read the PDF Adobe first released on SG which also says that the Quadro SDI card is the only SDI card that works with SG (currently).

[Vincent Oliver]

Pushing buttons to accomplish a job is not my style. However, I do expect software/hardware to be intuitive when being used. Adobe has done a great job with incorporating EX files into the Production suite, it really is very handy to see thumbnail previews of all the clips, I just wondered why this could not have been incorporated into SG as they obviously have the ability to do this.. Of course reading the manual does help sort out most problems. the only trouble with that is that there is no manual for SpeedGrade as yet.

[Bart Walczak]

The manual for SG is here:

SpeedGrade Help | Help and tutorials

I also miss H.264 and XDCAM EX support in mp4 wrapper (and would love to see it in Resolve as well).

As far as external montoring goes, because SG essentially lives in your GPU, adding support for other boards seems to be pretty hard. SG guys have been aware that this is a major feature request even since acquisition, and if it were easy, I'm sure it would be already incorporated. We shall see.

[Vincent Oliver]

Thanks Bart,

I get the feeling that SG was a late addition to CS6 and was not quiet ready at the time of release. Nevertheless it was a good move to include it at least we get to try it out. I am sure we will get plenty of updates over the next year. It would be ideal if this were listed as an Video Effect in Premiere and After Effects rather than a stand alone application - just like Synthetic Aperture.

[Steve Kalle]

With Resolve on Windows now, its very low price (or free for Lite) and its based on Nodes, I don't see any compelling reason to use SG.

If SG remains Layers based, it will never be as good as Resolve.

I know Bart agrees with me that Dynamic Linking has never worked well for small projects and falls apart with larger projects; so, I don't see it being implemented with PPro > SG.

[Vincent Oliver]

Do you have a url for Resolve, couldn't find it on a Google search

[Vincent Oliver]

Found it Thanks,

Blackmagic Design: DaVinci Resolve Software

[Bart Walczak]

SpeedGrade integration is lacking, to say the least. Unfortunately Resolve in our case (XDCAM EX) also does not resolve any problems. An ideal solution for me would be to implement SG as a "room" in Premiere or allow SG to read Premiere sequences with all the effects, and go the Baselight way with a plugin - which has already started with After Effects reading SpeedGrade looks. Perhaps an ability to browse SG looks in Premiere and apply them or change them in context would get close.

However, the software architectures of these two programs are so vastly different, that my bet is we will sooner see a dedicated CC mode in Premiere written from scratch, than seamless integration of SG and PPro.

I must say, that for longer forms, a dedicated grading app is a tremendous help, and the current plugin workflow present in Premiere is a major waste of time.

As for as layers vs nodes, I honestly don't care. Nucoda is layer-based, and it's a pro grading software in every sense of the word. These days it's more likely a matter of preference and what you're more familiar with.

[Vincent Oliver]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

With Resolve on Windows now, its very low price (or free for Lite) and its based on Nodes, I don't see any compelling reason to use SG.

.

Thank you for this information Steve, I have downloaded Resolve Lite and other than a steep learning curve it seems like an excellent application with a strong backup for both tutorials, manuals and hardware (that bit isn't free)

I'm having fun and ignoring my cat who is sitting in front of me on the desk