im thinking of getting the BLG software for flame as im working more and more with baselight graders again - seems to be a swing back to that. anyone using the BLG workflow?
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Iāve used it years agoā¦ it workedā¦ if the colorist hadnāt used external mattes, plugins or otherwise āweirdā stuff. Maybe that has improved by now, but back then it made us stop using it. Iād make sure to test various scenarios like that before purchasing it for Flame.
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Still has the same limitation as @Ton mentioned, so no external mattes/grain/images other than the plate itself obviously.
The other caveat is itāll only be able to render the frames/timecode that it knows so if the grader didnāt expand the handles when they exported the BLG then itāll error out on those frames.
Finally, itās beyond slow and acts like a little princess. Sometimes it takes quite a few tries of stopping/starting the renderer, reloading the BLG, F1, F4, rinse and repeat before it decides it wants to play nice and start, you know, actually applying a grade.
ā¦buuuuut it sure is nice to be able to just apply a grade or see a comp in context.
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We last tested it maybe like three or four years ago. Never mind weird stuff, it didnāt even work carrying over basic tracked shapes (weirdly aka power windows) for us, which stopped us using it.
Which is a shame, as virtually all our high-end jobs are a Baselight/Flame collab.
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$0.02 - Itās less problematic to exploit a flame centric open clip publish and subscribe workflow, and have the graded material just be a version.
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Hi Jon, we are regularly using BLGās here, they work pretty well now although no matte inputs etc and yes the rendering is a bit slow but fine.
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Yeah, there was a bug some time ago where the shape wouldnāt track if you either selected a single BLG or had it find the BLG from a folder (forget which one). As far as I recall, thatās been fixed.
doesnāt sound like its worth it. its 2k a year. just for a glorified LUT! I will skip!
The Resolve OFX plug in seems to be working pretty well on the tests Iāve done so far
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Thatās because youāre on Flameā¦ for anything elseā¦ itās freeā¦
It doesā¦ except you have to manually load each grade per shot, no?
yes, you do have to load them one at a time
Thereās a resolve plug in???
yep
fell free to DM or call
Aā¦ too bad. I had hoped I overlooked something. Hope they address that in the near future, would be awesome.
itās an improvement on the first version where you had to cut and paste the file location into the comments field!!!
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The difference though is if you are solving a pipeline issue (get non-LUT grades from colorist) vs. you just donāt like Flame color and want to do color in a different app. Different scenarios.
The Resolve OFX is obviously undergoing more active development than the knee-capped BLG plugin. But it too may have some issues - namely around tracked masked and how they translate in terms of TC. And presumably will have the same issues with external mattes, etc. though I donāt have specific test results.
Any headless plugin is facing an uphill battle. With BLE for Avid & Nuke, at least you get the full Baselight tool (minus a few features like grain/paint/etc) and can fix things that didnāt come across.
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It cant deal with ātimeā so any animated mattes arent going to lineup,
a bunch of other stuff isnt working as well, its more like a tech demo.
@finnjaeger - yep, sorry about that. I quit before it was finished. Evidently it still isnāt finished. Too bad - it could have been a good thing.
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