Baselight for Avid

[Tom Evans]

Any experience with Baselight for Avid? How does it cope with a full hardware based Baselight system when it comes to Speed?

[Igor Riđanović]

My main issue is that it has to be applied to each clip as an effect. You can't just advance to the next clip, or any clip in the sequence. You always have to drag and drop the effect. This is not a weakness of the plugin but merely the way Media Composer FX presets work.

[Nicolas Hanson]

You can also store the grade in one of your bins and apply it to multiple clips that is selected, but it's still not the way I prefer to work.

[Mazze]

On 8/27/2016 at 8:49 AM, Igor Riđanović said:

My main issue is that it has to be applied to each clip as an effect. You can't just advance to the next clip, or any clip in the sequence. You always have to drag and drop the effect. This is not a weakness of the plugin but merely the way Media Composer FX presets work.

That is true.

Workflow-wise ("renderless") this plugin works pretty well to transfer grades from BL to Avid.

But using it to actually grade inside Avid is not of too much joy.

[Bruno Mansi]

On 27/08/2016 at 7:49 AM, Igor Riđanović said:

My main issue is that it has to be applied to each clip as an effect. You can't just advance to the next clip, or any clip in the sequence. You always have to drag and drop the effect. This is not a weakness of the plugin but merely the way Media Composer FX presets work.

This is not strictly true as you can apply the Baselight effect once on a filler layer above all your shots, open the Baselight UI, use the subdivide effect command to apply edits to the filler layer to match the shots below, and step through the shots using F5 & F6.

I posted a  brief explanation on the plugin on the Avid forums, which I've reproduced below...

If you still want to retain the convenience and speed of the Symphony colour correction, the Baselight plugin makes for a good additional grading tool to give your material that extra polish. You can add the Baselight effect on a separate filler track above your shots. The plugin has a feature to allow you to subdivide the effect based on the shots below (similar to the subdivide function in Avid's reformat effect) so you can grade a group of shots or one shot per baselight effect.

The way I've used the plugin is to do a base grade using Avid's tools and then do all the secondary correction using Baselight's vastly superior matte/power windows/keyers to make precise selections.

Baselight opens in the LH screen in a dual screen setup.

With the plugin open, you cannot control/select anything else in Symphony, so previewing is done within the plugin. You can only preview the shot you're currently parked on, but you do get the preview on your external monitor. You can jump to the previous/next shot using the F5/F6 function keys.

The Baselight plugin effect is supposedly real-time, but this depends on your hardware, complexity of the grade and your quality settings. I found working at green/yellow (half) resolution seemed to give me the best trade-off between quality and real-time performance. Rendering Baselight effects is fairly fast.

Because Baslight has a single monitor interface, things are a little cramped (compared to a full Baselight system) so you don't get a layers view/timeline or a gallery of stored grades. You can store grades just as you would store any Avid effect, but that means having to jump out of the Baselight plugin. Luckily, Baselight provide a 'scratchpad' (using the numeric keypad) where you can store and retrieve grades.

Baselight is a layers-based system, rather than a node-based approach (as in Davinci Resolve), so if you're not used to working with nodes, Baselight will be more familiar to the way you've worked in Avid.

As previously mentioned, you can take your Baslight-graded timeline to another Avid (Symphony or MC) and using the free Baselight playback plugin to view your grade without having to render the effects or copy any media across. Of course, you cannot make any changes without the full plugin installed.

One of the beauties of the Baselight system is that if you do want to roundtrip to a full Baselight system (using AAF), it's just a transfer of metadata. The AAF just references the media, so once the full Baselight system has a copy of the media, you can round-trip as many times as you want without any rendering or copying of new media, and you can always change a grade in Avid that you've received from the Full Baselight.

Hope this helps.

 

[Tom Evans]

 

17 hours ago, Bruno Mansi said:

This is not strictly true as you can apply the Baselight effect once on a filler layer above all your shots, open the Baselight UI, use the subdivide effect command to apply edits to the filler layer to match the shots below, and step through the shots using F5 & F6.

I'm familiar with the color correction worklow in Avid so this makes sense. 

[Tom Evans]

And It will not limit my computer's maximum performance compared to the standard edition? 
 

[Bruno Mansi]

31 minutes ago, Tom Evans said:

And It will not limit my computer's maximum performance compared to the standard edition? 
 

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'standard edition', but I'm assuming you're referring to the responsiveness of the plugin compared to using Avid's built in CC tools. The Baselight plugin uses the processing power of your GPU to provide real-time performance. In fact, I don't think it will run properly without a reasonably modern graphics card. I've run it on systems with a Quadro 4000 card, which is quite a few years old (and sells on Ebay for around $150) so I'm not talking high-end.

The plugin is very responsive, and appears as a green dot effect on the Avid timeline. It can play in real-time, but this is going to depend the complexity of the grade and what else you've got layered on your timeline. The effects render pretty quickly - 10's of seconds rather than minutes for the average length shot.

If you want to see it in action, the best thing is to head over to the Filmlight web site and look at some of the tutorial videos for Baselight Editions.

[Tom Evans]

Sorry that I was unclear. I meant to say "compared to the standard Baselight edition" as I thought that there were a chance that the plug-in is slower. This seems like a nice solution for old Symphony online editors like me. 

[Nicolas Hanson]

Any information about the price level? 

[Bruno Mansi]

4 hours ago, Nicolas Hanson said:

Any information about the price level? 

It's $995 for a full, permanent licence. This can be node-locked, or floating, so you can carry it around with you. With the one licence you not only get Editions for Avid, but also for Nuke, as long as they're on the same workstation.

[Tom Evans]

Thank you Bruno, can't appreciate enough your contribution to this forum!

[Aaron Rosapepe]

Would anyone here consider the Avid edition to be something to consider vs. Davinvci Resolve or does one need to buy into the full system to really enjoy the benefits of grading with Baselight?

[Bruno Mansi]

12 hours ago, Aaron Rosapepe said:

Would anyone here consider the Avid edition to be something to consider vs. Davinvci Resolve or does one need to buy into the full system to really enjoy the benefits of grading with Baselight?

I don't think you can really compare a full Resolve or Baselight system with a plugin on an editing system. If your workflow is such that you're not able to go to a dedicated grading suite, Baselight Editions is a very good substitute. It will certainly give you a good introduction to the power of Baselight, but someone who wants to go in-depth with the software would probably want to try out Baselight Student.

[Aaron Rosapepe]

6 hours ago, Bruno Mansi said:

I don't think you can really compare a full Resolve or Baselight system with a plugin on an editing system. If your workflow is such that you're not able to go to a dedicated grading suite, Baselight Editions is a very good substitute. It will certainly give you a good introduction to the power of Baselight, but someone who wants to go in-depth with the software would probably want to try out Baselight Student.

Thanks Bruno. I am currently evaluating the Student Edition as well. Unfortunately there are no studios in my area that have a full Baselight system so not sure what my future with the software will be. The Editions version is within reach but I am sure whatever the entry level hardware dongle is will be out of my price range as a freelancer. 

At any rate, I am enjoying exploring the software and how the layer based workflow differs from DR.

[Chris DiBerardino]

19 hours ago, Aaron Rosapepe said:

Would anyone here consider the Avid edition to be something to consider vs. Davinvci Resolve or does one need to buy into the full system to really enjoy the benefits of grading with Baselight?

Hi Aaron,

I've been working with the Baselight plugin in Avid since it first came out.  It's a wonderful and powerful tool if you need to do some more in depth grading inside of an Avid workflow.  It's also great for going back and forth with a full Baselight system.  I use the plugin as mostly a secondaries tool within Avid, doing most primaries in the Symphony tool.  The speed at which you can execute high end grades within the Avid environment is awesome.  So if your workflow is dependant on Avid, or turning something around quick, it's really not a bad way to go.

  That being said, Davinci Resolve or a full Baselight are much better at workflow when it comes to coloring.  I can color something a lot faster in DR than I can using the Baselight for Avid plugin.  I don't think Baselight plugin is a substitute for a full fledged grading program, but in it's own right the plugin can really shine and improve a workflow.  As with everything in this industry it's all about the time and budget!

Edited January 25, 2018 by Chris DiBerardino

[Aaron Rosapepe]

Just now, Chris DiBerardino said:

Hi Aaron,

I've been working with the Baselight plugin in Avid since it first came out.  It's a wonderful and powerful tool if you need to do some more in depth grading inside of an Avid workflow.  It's also great for going back and forth with a full Baselight system.  I use the plugin as mostly a secondaries tool within Avid, doing most primaries in the Symphony tool.  The speed at which you can execute high end grades within the Avid environment is awesome.  So if your workflow is dependant on Avid, or turning something around quick, it's really not a bad way to go.

  That being said, Davinci Resolve or a full Baselight are much better at workflow when it comes to coloring.  I can color something a lot faster in DR than I can using the Baselight for Avid plugin.  I don't think Baselight plugin is a substitute for a full fledged grading program, but in it's own right the plugin can really shine and improve a workflow.  As with everything in this industry it's all about the time and budget!

Thanks for the insights!

[Chris DiBerardino]

No problem, hope it helps you figure out what you want to do!