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Avid Artist Color with DaVinci Resolve 11

Ariel Benson

Ariel Benson

Hey Fellow Color Nerds,

I finally took the plunge and bought myself a control panel- an Avid Artist Color. Starting tomorrow I'll be grading a documentary using the panel in DaVinci Resolve 11 Lite, and I'm hoping a tutorial might exist somewhere. I feel like I'm not getting a good understanding of what each key does or how to reprogram them for increased functionality. I actually read the manual, something I usually never do, but it wasn't much help. Some of my confusion might stem from the fact that Resolve isn't my usual home base, but I'm not completely foreign to it either. Any suggestions?

At the end of the day, at least I have better, more fine control of lift, gamma, and gain (hey, isn't there a website by that name?) but more mind blowing functionality across the (literal) board would be pretty great.

Thanks so much!
Ariel
 
Years of practice will help. Time will help improve your muscle memory to the point where you can work quickly and get very precise control over every parameter.

Tutorials exist on Resolve overall -- Alexis Van Hurkman's done several through Ripple Training, Warren Eagles has done them through FXPHD, and Patrick Inhofer has some through MixingLight.com. All three have different approaches, each is useful. But it's a huge subject.
 
Yes, of course to mastery of the program. I completely agree and understand that is something that will take time. That said, of course, I would love to actually understand what my soft buttons do. There's no transparency within the EuControl programming in that regard so far as I can tell. When I open up F1, it says it's programmed to command F1. Helpful...

I'm not a novice to color, I've been doing it professionally for nearly a decade. I've also been quite enjoying Patrick Inhofer's tutorials on Lynda, since my usual territory is Symphony. This is more of a question about the console. I apologize if that was initially unclear.
 
I think you're under an impression, that you can re-map the MC Color. Unfortunately, none of the supported panels by Resolve including the $30k panel can be re-programmed to your liking. All panels are used just the way someone at some point at BM decided is the best way to operate Resolve with a panel. Get comfy and read the manual...
 
it might be worth a sticky as this question gets asked so often.. i also have PDF's of both artist and elements mapping for v10, i found it on bmd's site quite a while ago;
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/6949179/DaVinci_Resolve_10_AvidArtistColorPanel.pdf

unfortunatly that link has been broken for a long time now, and searching their site got me nowhere, pm me and i'll send it on to you, can't seem to attach it here..

nothing has changed in v11 for the artist, same crappy mapping, but it's better than no surface by a long shot... elements had an update to the mapping, so the v10 PDF is past it's sell by date.. but end game is much the same imho, so i feel no need for surface envy...
 
pm sent.. and to be fair there is some mapping i find really useful, adding nodes, adding and adjusting masks, adn some that jsut seem mad.. like 5 seperate controls for xsfx... and nothing for rgb lift/gamm/gain... piviot, saturation and contrast are on one page, with a unmapped knob beside them where exposure should be... but exposure (offset in Resolve land) is two pages over, and most colorists if they are working log will need all four controls, not three and page over twice, page back twice, rinse and repeate...

like i said really mad crazy thoughtless mapping... maybe they were really drunk and start throwing darts at a board.. to decide where to put the functions... and rgb llg got left out, and the pretty useless for everyday use ysfx got top billing...

good luck, and if you want to see just how good the mapping can be, load up a demo of BLE....
 
I don't think they were drunk, just intentionally hobbling the mapping enough to make it somewhat useable but not usable enough so they loose sales on their big panels. Because whoever can afford big boy panels is really going to settle for elements? Basically every year after each new version of resolve we all have get on the forums and create massive threads about how terrible the mapping is so they can add a couple more features to the mapping so it is somewhat in sync with the software.
 
yes we get ONE button a year, so choose wisely...
anyway, isn't it about that time a year when we start a thread and start complaining loudly so we get our one button added?
 
Harris Charalambous said:
I don't think they were drunk, just intentionally hobbling the mapping enough to make it somewhat useable but not usable enough so they loose sales on their big panels.
Click to expand...

I don't think that's it. I honestly don't think BMD makes that much money on the full-size panels. Bear in mind the exact same panels in Ethernet sold for more than $80,000 about 7 years ago. Cutting the price to $30,000 is a relative bargain. I also think BMD has about 350 things that are more pressing to implement on Resolve, so panel mapping slips to the bottom of the list.

Resolve 10 MC Color file attached.
 

Attachments

  • Avid MC Color Panel Resolve 10.pdf
    70.4 KB · Views: 518
Tero Ahlfors said:
Now I wish I wouldn't have checked that. That's so much better.
Click to expand...

really when they first mapped the thing why would they have left out RGB/LLG, and put the 4 controls most used for log gradeing across 3 pages leaving empty un-mapped controls.? ouch... and who were the beta testers? were they on crack too?

it just should have never made it out the door in the first place so utterly f'd up, i can see engineers making decisions based on what ever engineers decide.. but that's why beta testers exist.. whom ever was on that beta cycle would be the only one's who will ever know what really went down.. or if they screwed up and dropped the ball cause they are all on big panels anyway... in that case it's the product manager at BMD that is responcable for these errors...

now to go look for a reason to use the 5 knobs dedicated to YSFX.... yea 5 of them.... and not one for RGB/LLG that gets used 1,000+ times a day....

Baselight obviously listens to their users, and the developers have a few more braincells functioning... one minuite infront of the same surface with BLE shows that.. i'm not much of a beer drinker, but i'd bet the beer in London is much better too

oh well...
 
So, I happen to be doing a freelance gig at a place, that uses CP-300. I haven't used it in a long time, so a little refresher could do me good, but... I can't find the PDF for panel mapping anywhere. Should it be so difficult to find it? Tangent's site points at the old file location, that no longer exists. And just like with the pleas for a better panel mapping, questions asking for improvements to the "new" site are going unanswered. The old site was so much better. Do I even need to say it? Style over substance is never a good thing.
Meanwhile, anyone has a PDF for CP300?
 
Dermot Shane said:
Baselight obviously listens to their users, and the developers have a few more braincells functioning... one minute in front of the same surface with BLE shows that.. i'm not much of a beer drinker, but i'd bet the beer in London is much better too
Click to expand...

I can remember times at Lowry Digital here in LA where we'd call Baselight tech support with a problem/feature request, and within 24 hours they'd log onto our machine, apply a fix, we'd reboot the machine, and boom -- new feature and fix were in place.

In fairness to BMD, Filmlight is a much more specialized company that only has a handful of products and software, plus they have a much smaller (and more expensive) market. But their panel mapping to the Blackboard is very impressive. I dunno about 3rd-party support.
 
Marc Wielage said:
In fairness to BMD, Filmlight is a much more specialized company that only has a handful of products and software, plus they have a much smaller (and more expensive) market. But their panel mapping to the Blackboard is very impressive. I dunno about 3rd-party support.
Click to expand...

It's a piss-poor excuse for making crap. Apple is the largest company in the world and they never hide behind "we're biggest and we don't have time for small details". Apple exists simply to delight and please their customers and there is nothing too small for such outstanding company. As a result, in the long run Apple is widely successful, while Microsoft and Google still suck. BMD is not different... in sucking department that is.
 
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