Last week I started reading Alexis Van Hurkman’s book on Color Correction. I do plan on post a review in a couple weeks once I finish enough of it to provide good feed back. But so far, I’m 100+ pages deep and loving the inside he give into the reasons why colorists do what they do. Stay tuned for a bit more on the Encyclopedia of Color Correction.

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In our latest technology purchase, our shop has bought a Blackmagic Intensity Pro card for our MacPro. We’re hoping to capture off our DVR and use news footage for our shows. After deboxing the B&H shipping box, I discovered the product in a box that seemed to be way to small! I knew the PCI-Express card was small, but man, it was much smaller than expected. Inside, you will find the card, a CD and a small tri-fold quick install guide. The full 35 page manual is on the CD (way to be green!).

After carefully reading the install instruction and reading up on PCI slot choices, I popped open the MacPro and dropped the card into slot #2. Blackmagic’s site mentions that you may be prompted to adjust performance to the slots, but after powering up, I wasn’t prompted. Granted this is the only other card in the machine besides our ATI (ehh) video card.

After installing the software there wasn’t a noticeable difference in the performance of the computer, heck there wasn’t even any outward difference in starting FCP, Color or any of the other apps. However, FCP now has more easy setups, and more options under external video monitoring. I connected our 9″ Sony production monitor via the component out (NTSC out) of the card. Instantly, after setting the Video Output in FCP to Intensity NTSC, the monitor showed video. Amazing! Beyond FCP, I then became interested in if Color would also broadcast to this monitor in the same way. I fired up color, and bam! I had an external monitor for color correcting in Color! Sweet! At $350, this card was becoming a GREAT investment.

We currently don’t have a HDMI monitor in the shop, but I’m pulling for a low end small HDMI TV (about $500). Stay tuned as I will be testing the capture capabilities of this card. But if its as easy as setting up an external monitor, I’ll be highly recommending this product to anyone with a MacPro.

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Check out this article on communicating with a colorist.

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Check out this article from the COW. While I haven’t had the experience to work with either of these companies or these systems, I have heard a lot about each. And the new system that was just announced appears to be promising!

“The combination of the da Vinci 2K Plus® front-end coupled with the dual stream-capable Sledgehammer back-end has reinvented the way we color grade our clients’ projects,” said Terry Lockhart, chief engineer at Finish. “As we were evaluating the direction we wanted to take, it was clear that the 2K was our key investment, delivering the best and most complete toolset possible. Now that the 2K is integrated with the dual stream Sledgehammer, our clients have a fully non-linear, uncompressed, and in-context experience in the suite and they’ve never been happier.”

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