VFCPUG Online

Courtesy of Silicon Color

One of the reasons I cleared my day to attend the VidCom Open House was to see Final Touch colour correction software, in action for the first time. I’ve been avidly following Mike’s adventures with the HD version of the application over at HD4NDs for quite a while, but hadn’t managed to see it up close and in action before. Again this won’t be news for a lot of you, but it’s simply stunning.

Silicon Color’s President and Founder, Roland Wood came into town to give the presentation and he has managed to sell me in much the same way I imagine he’s has everybody else! His story is incredible had his company has had a remarkable year—they’ve gone from 11 customers to well over 200, seen their application used on over 1000 projects, and expanded the product line to include SD, HD, and 2K versions (Roland said we might want to keep our eyes open for a 4K rev at NAB).

The main presentation involved a thorough survey of the application and workflow—static interface, “rooms”, primary correction, multiple grades, secondary correction, vignettes, motion tracking, and effects. As we stepped through different features Roland would insert anecdotes about the evolution of the different tools and drop tantalising hints about where things are heading—we should look out for updates to the timeline and the way Final Touch works with keyframes.

For those of us eager for more, Roland provided more intimate demonstration with a more sophisticated system—a Quad G5 (Don’t ask about mine, I have no idea where it is) and a CP100 control panel from Tangent Devices.

I’m not a colourist, but I too have now seen the light (pun only slightly intended), and I can see a huge amount of potential in Final Touch. I believe it was only a turn of phrase rather than an announcement, or indication of future plans, but I was very interested to hear Roland describe his software as the “most expensive of the Pro Apps”!!