Adobe needs to bring back send to SpeedGrade in Premiere Pro

I have made a lot of posts about Adobe needing to upgrade SpeedGrade, but I had been using it with premiere Pro 2014. And with Direct link to Adobe SpeedGrade you could send your sequence and do a full grade in SpeedGrade, then send it back to Premiere and it showed up as a Lumetri Grade Filter on the clips. It was awesome!Sure DaVinci Resolve is more powerful, but mainly because it has been consistently upgraded. There are still some things that I like better in SpeedGrade, like not only overall grading controls, but the same controls in light, medium and dark. I love just being able to increase contrast and saturation in just the mids! And the best features was Direct Link because the grade came back to Premiere, instead of being a rendered export from Resolve, making itinerant version changes much easier in commercials so much easier!What I hadn't realized because I was using SpeedGrade with an earlier  Creative Cloud, was that not only have try not upgraded SpeedGrade, but in Premiere Pro 2015.3 they removed Direct Link to SpeedGrade!?!?!? So it is obviously gone in 2017.Sure they have put some Lumetri controls in Premiere, but nothing like SpeedGrade. You can do color corrects, but the controls are very dumbed down, and not nearly as powerful! With most of the masking controls gone, and such simple controls, it is no replacement for SpeedGrade! And while DaVinci Resolve stills works great, the loss of Direct Link is a huge minus! There is of course a thread about it at Adobe Forums, but I doubt adobe is listening!Honestly this move is so very Apple like. Exactly like Apple buying Shake, making it affordable, then gutting it for the smallest technology out of it. Or Apps buying FinalTouch, turning it into color and killing it. Or killing Final Cut Pro 7 for iMovie Pro, oops, I mean Final Cut Pro X.And the best part is that while SpeedGrade could use some upgrades, even without them it is still so much more powerful than Lumetri controls in Premiere Pro!Adobe has made a huge mistake in losing it's powerful color correction tool. It is a huge sore point missing in Creative Cloud now.

Davinci Resolve 12.5.1 Supports Quicktime ProRes on Windows, death knell for Quicktime

BlackMagicDesign's Davinci Resolve 12.5.1 has been released and it includes Quicktime ProRES decoding on Windows! You can check out all the new features here.With Apple having ended Quicktime support for Windows, and now Adobe and DaVinci adding Quicktime Pro Res playback on Windows, that basically means that you can use all the old ProRes files you have, but it is time to move on. And it is unfortunate as ProRES HQ had really become a great intermediate format and ProRES 444 is an awesome alpha format.And it looks like it is time to move to AVID's DNxHD format, since like ProRES it is pretty much visually lossless at higher bitrates.

Blackmagic Design announces Fusion 8 for Mac and Linux

Blackmagic Design has announced Fusion 8 for Windows, Mac and Linux. It is currently windows only on Version 7, but version 8 which will be released in quarter 3 of 2015 for Windows, OS X and Linux, and is being shown at NAB.There will be a free and $995 full version as there are now.Looking forward to learning a new compositor at a reasonable price. I love what Black Magic is doing!

Blackmagic Designs releases Davinci Resolve 12

Blackmagic Designs have released Davinci Resolve 12. It is still Free for the Lite version, $995 for the full version or $29,995 for the full version including the full control surface.The new version has a new interface that is supposed to be easier on the eyes.It has multi-cam editing, that allows real time editing.It has also updated it's editing mode, with an improved Trim Mode and more.And it now has a new audio engine for better realtime playback.And of course grading improvements.

BlackMagic Designs shows off 2 new cameras at NAB, the URSA Mini and the Micro Cinema Cameras

BlackMagic have announced two new impressive looking cameras at NAB.The first is the URSA Mini which ranges from $2995 for the 4K EF Mount, to $5495 for 4.6K PL mount!Most impressive is that it has a global shutter at 30 FPS, and rolling shutter at up to 60 frames per second, with 15 stops of dynamic range! (I didn't realize that the 4K sensor does Global Shutter at up 60 FPS, but only has 12 stops of dynamic range, or that the Mini loses it's upgradeability that it's big brother has) Wow!Of course the shoulder kit is another $395 and the full viewfinder instead of the side screen is $1495!The second is the $995 Micro Cinema Camera, which seems to be a souped up 1080 version of a GoPro for flying on drones or mounting, and it can be remote controlled with radio control airplane receivers, and with additional equipment can even transit NTSC or PAL, and also has 13 stops of dynamic range!

Definition Magazine has an interesting comparison of Fusion, Nuke & Smoke

Adam Garstone at Definition Magazine gives a quick overview of these 3 powerful 3D Compositing Programs. Work a read.After learning Shake years back I would love to get into one of these, but can't afford either Nuke or Smoke, but once a free Mac version is released of Fusion by BlackMagic Designs I will probably spend the time to learn it, and hopefully they will have added a good 3D camera tracker by then.