What I Like About SG 7.2

Question

I'm coming from DaVinci Resolve; a new problem cropped up that I can't fix, and I was forced to try SG. It's always difficult to figure out a new workflow between applications, and the grading paradigm is very different than the one I'm used to in Resolve, but I find there's a lot to like here.
A little background. I tried SG CS6 a year and half ago or so, and I found it unusable. At the time I predicted that Adobe would drop SG and develop some sort of integration with Resolve. Evidently, I was mistaken, and it's a good thing, it seems.
Then a few months ago I got a three-year contract for a streaming series, and just out of curiosity I wanted to check out SG again, just to see where it was at, but I couldn't get it to launch. I had to create a new user on my Mac to make it work. Patrick told me 7.2 was coming out soon and would have a fix for my problem. That was going to be too late for me to deliver the first batch of episodes, so I went ahead and set up my project in Resolve.
Now, however, because Resolve has fritzed on me, I have to try SG. So here's what I like:
1. Of course, DL brings a non-linear aspect to the grading workflow, which is HUGE.
2. So far, Auto Color Match has worked very well with my footage, and does a great job speeding things up.
3. I like the color wheel controls, how it divides shadows, midtones, and highlights, with sliders to control the overlap. I do find the track ball controls from my panel to be far too coarse. Even setting the sensity to the minimum, barely touching the ball yields far too much adjustment -- I'd like to roll that ball a lot and get just a subtle response.
4. The color temperature adjustment is a welcome feature I've wished for in Resolve.
When I get time, I'll put in a couple of feature requests:
1. Ability to reduce track ball sensity by an additional order of magnitude or two.
2. Tear out the scopes into a separate window for dual screen application.
3. GPU acceleration to get faster visual feedback of grading adjustments.
4. Ability to add adjustment layers to dynamically linked timelines within SG.
5. Here's a big one: I need to be able to scale/zoom the timeline just as I do in PPro and After Effects.
I have a lot to learn in SG -- right now I have a deadline, so I'm just doing the most basic balancing and matching, but so far I see a lot of potential for SG. I just hope Adobe will soon address the core interface issues I mentioned above. These refinements are fundamentally necessary to make SG productive for professionals.

Answer 1

Manny,
I use a Kensington "Expert Mouse" which is a trackball pad with 2" diameter ball, surrounded by a spinning ring, and four buttons. Poor man's grading tablet, you know ...
And yea, I hear you about the speed of the ball sensitivity when using the color-wheel things. Takes a LOT of spinning the spinner to adjust luma (which is good! makes subtle so easy to do) but ... while I might get a little more wiggle of my ball than you per change of color ... wow, it's not a lot. Have to be VERY careful moving that ball or the color flies out too far.
And yea, it's a PITA (though a small one) to have to remember to make ALL possible needed adjustment layers for Sg work while in P-Pro ... still seems awful weird, but ... workable.
The scopes ... PLEASE feel free to do wish-requests on scopes issues! Three of them are for some of us rather large ... first, you're right, being able to move the scopes somewhere else on screen ... or to another monitor ... would be wonderful. I'm still stuck on one screen and though in some circumstances one can double-screen Sg, there's still limits on scope usage/placement that I seen many wish for.
Second ... those stupid "dynamically scaling" wave-form, parade, and histograms. Who the HADES thinks those are a useful idea? Almost everybody shoots footage these days towards the "flat" side of the in-cam controls. So of course, one has to widen out the DR in post. In Sg's scopes, this is AWFUL. When you either lower the darks or raise the uppers ... it doesn't change the stuff shown, it SHRINKS the scale and the window of the scope. What the hell?
In my latest project, some blues were below zero in the histogram ... change them a little either by wheel or going into the sliders controls ... and ... it shows that I've say taken -40 to plus 5. Release the control ... no, it's not actually +5 ... it's + 27. It jumps AFTER letting go. So getting the dang thing to a specific value takes me 5-10 iterations as every time I change it ... it goes to something other than what it showed at while the control was active. Slows me down and SO irritating!
And finally, the vectorscope ... which has NO graticules at all. Zip, nada, nothing. You know the little boxes that show when a color off say a color chart is "in bounds"? Not there ... ever. You know the line that is oft referred to as the 'skin-tone' line? Not there either. I've never seen any other application with a vectorscope that DOESN'T include the standard graticules. Might as well have a histogram without a scale on it, you know?
Sigh.
Neil