Apple Color is now available

Apple Color, that "Colour grading for the rest of us" software with the wrong spelling (Color) is now shipping. And we can probably have a copy here in India next week.

Meanwhile the manual is out for download here...

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/Color_1.0_User_Manual.pdf

And some warnings on broadcast-safe and drop frame TC incompatibilities (finally an issue that does NOT affect PAL users) are also up at

http://www.apple.com/support/releasenotes/en/Color_1.0_rn/

From the manual it seems the DPX workflow is still there. Conform DPX sequences from EDL, convert DPX to Quicktime and back, export file-based EDL etc are described. How reliably they work (if at all) remains to be seen.

Working with Apple Color can also be a somewhat professional colour grading like experience if you add colourist panels like these from JL Cooper

http://www.jlcooper.com/pages/mcsspectrum.html

Or these from Tangent Devices...
http://www.tangentdevices.co.uk/products_cp_200.asp

Mind that these are rather costly. The Cooper is about $ 3000 and the Tangent about $ 5000. And if you add transport control panels and presets panels you're looking at $ 10,000 to $ 15000 just for panels. But if you ant to do this professionally you need panels. If only because 'real' colourists work with panels.

In the next two months or so, one will be able to make a realistic assessment on how well one can finish a full film DI on a Final Cut Studio system.