i use it all the time. You can always get 20% with the code bloom20

+1 and all that - Looks 2 - what is there not to love?

FCPX wasn't ready for me until Looks 2 was available - its integration of Colorista (which is probably all the Colour Correction mere mortals require), the curves and the subtlest vignettes outclass anything you don't pay huge bucks for.

It's not perfect, but you'll rapidly find that the merest hint of TeleCine Net and Cosmo are your dirty little secret too. It's the famous five: colorista, vignettes, curves, telecine net and cosmo - used subtly (find what you like and back off by 50%)... well, editing without MBL is like cooking without salt: you know everyone says its unhealthy, but you have to do it otherwise nobody enjoys it.

I've bought a lot of rubbish and one hit wonders when it comes to plugins, but MBL has been worth the investment, paying for its self in saved time, efficiency and sheer wow factor very rapidly.

This is an interesting point, and picked up on another thread here.

Namely, does one go for Colorista II AND Looks? Or what?

Colorista 1 was Color for Mortals. Colorista II is a whole new beastie, and probably added more responsibility to shooter/editors than perhaps they'd want, especially as the workflow was 'start in the middle and work backwards'. However, very powerful package.

Then MBL2 comes out, doing all of Colorista 1 in-situ. And a lot more besides.

So... One can do primary (elastoplast and lysterine) correction with Colorista 2, but without using its amazing colour replacement and selective twiddly bits, then add MBL2 to add a look, or use Colorista 1 Free, which is in MBL2 anyway, or you can go the whole hog and really use Colorista 2 as far as you dare to ensure MBL2 is all about what it does for a living.

For fun...



Totally understand why peeps here will do Colorista 1/2 as a primary pass per shot, then do MBL on top to get a scene looking right. Suits the Narrative/Long Form workflow. I'm guilty of wearing the Short Form specs too much, where MBL2 is the only plug-in I want/need throughout, where Cmd+Opt+Copy and Cmd+Opt+Paste followed by individual shot tweaks ensures we get a good look and any exposure/colour anomalies are taken care of.

I think the main take-home is that MBL/Colorista do things in a way that the Colour Board (aww, bless) does NOT.

Having said that, and a propos of nothing in particular except perhaps 7x render times when using MBL2 in FCPX, anyone tried Tonalizer? I sent off for a trial but heard nothing more.

Sorry to butt in, but just been doing some tests, specifically on the WFM within Looks vs the WFM in FCPX.



I think we may have a gamma shift issue with MBL2 in FCPX, which means stuff looks a little darker and grubbier once it's been through MBL2, which may have influenced my keenness on Tonalizer. I'd expect a maintenance rev on MBL2 sometime soon.

Returning you to your regular programming...

I used MB Looks on Final Cut Pro 7, and it was AWESOME!
I really need to get it for FCP X, does anyone know if it is a free upgrade? or will I have to purchase MB Looks 2.0

Looks really is, truly, awesome.

However, the new MBL2 for FCPX has some issues with Gamma. Won't bore you with the technicalities, but let's just say that MBL2 for FCPX maybe assumes the same colour space as MBL2 for FCP7, and therefore anything out of MBL2 in FCPX looks dark and smudgy. I have a trouble ticket lodged with Red Giant concerning this, but that's opened a can of worms regarding 'what gamma should we be using for Rec709? Mac screens are 2.2, sRGB is 2.2, but some are 1.961, others round down to 1.9, and it's all a bit haywire.'

This is why I fell upon Tonalizer like a hungry vampire on a black pudding. It works within the FCPX colour space and gamma, whereas any work in Magic Bullet Looks 2 for FCPX needs a further tweak with the colour board to get it back into shape, and that (with my 8 bit 4:2:0 AVCHD footage from my beloved FS100) pulls apart the image one stage too much and we get quantisation, posterisation, lack of dynamic range, all sorts of ills.

My fear is that, if I were to do an in-depth expose of the whole thing, it would take more time that it would for plug-in developers - hell, even Apple - to fix the mess. I want a WFM that tells the truth, even if I don't like the truth it tells. Don't let a WFM suck up to me and make everything look wonderful! Where the feck is my 255 white? What is black?

However, a mess still exists, I have moved from FCPX to Premiere and am purchasing a Pix220 for my FS100 to be rid of these piddly irksome pockmarked irritations. Yes, Premiere WFMs suck too, BTW. But still... <grumble grumble grumble>

Don't forget that FP7 wasn't colour managed, so after 10 years of knowing what you'd get out of FCP and having an established workflow with plug-ins that behave predictably, many FCPX users are having issues with it. The FCPX scopes now have my trust, but the legalizer is stil a little tricky, and the issue above is irritating.

I'm still using it, but the scopes seem to be still in the FCP7 days, which means there's a lot of back-and-forth.

"well, gosh-darn it" - how funny.

After writing the reply above, I noted on my usual breakfast trawl of the FCPX websites that Red Giant had updated MBL to fix it with the new version of FCPX - 10.0.5.

In a wafer thin gap between projects, I hit the button to update, and took the opportunity to update MBL too.

Immediately, I note that the WFMs of MBL are now going ABOVE IRE100, rather than clamping at 100IRE as before. I think they may have fixed the problem i outlined above, specifically, the clamping down to 100IRE and the subsequent 'droop' in levels back in FCPX.

Case closed - MBL back on top.