Tutorial: Benefits of Avid Symphony color corrector

Avid’s current range of editing programs is based on two products: Media Composer and Symphony, leaving Avid DS as a finishing program (or in other words to do a little bit of everything).

Over the years the differences between Media Composer (MC) and Symphony have been shortening version after version, being nowadays reduced mainly to their color correctors (there are some more but it is not my intention to talk about them here).

What are those famous advantages of the Avid Symphony color corrector over the MC color corrector? Well, the one that more or less everyone may be familiar with is that Symphony’s cc has the ability to perform up to six secondary corrections per tone in the image.

This will allow us to isolate skies, skins and other tones for later independent, useful work. However, in my opinion this is not the main (or at least not the only) advantage of the Symphony corrector, so I am going to tell you others that I think can be very useful for those of you who use it:

Alterable luminance ranges

Any color corrector distinguishes between shadows, midtones and highlights in the primaries, but what is each in a particular image, and more importantly, can we alter these ranges? The Avid Symphony color corrector, like Baselight or the new version 9 of DaVinci Resolve, allows you to change what the program considers shadows, midtones and highlights for a particular shot. This will allow for more selective and accurate primaries.

Above you can see how the Avid Symphony shows in black the shadows of the image, in gray the midtones and in white the highlights, being able to alter them in the upper curves.

Channels

Another option of the Avid Symphony color corrector is to be able to modify the mix of each of the image channels. By default the red channel contains 100% red, 0% green and 0% blue, but this mix can be altered. For what purpose? To make up for the lack of information of one with that of the others (for example), it can also be a powerful tool when creating image looks. This tool, initially intended for the correction of material coming from photochemical (in which there are several layers of emulsions for the different primary or secondary colors), can also be found in SGO’s Mistika.

Clips or “legalizer” for television without rendering

One of the legendary advantages of the Symphony corrector is the absence of the need to render the correction when it is dumped to tape in most cases (tape to tape type correction). This applies to primaries, secondaries and all other elements of the corrector, including the clip or “legalizer” for television. This means that if we do not have time to carry out a color correction but we have to output the signal in standard for television broadcast we can apply this clip and dump to tape for rendering.

This clip is also present in MC as well as an effect in the palette called Safe Color that allows more legalization options, but both will require rendering for a safe dump.

Hue master control

Accompanying the three spheres for shadows, midtones and highlights, Avid Symphony’s color corrector incorporates a fourth for global tone adjustments, in the same style as DaVinci Resolve 9.

Color correction based on project and sequence metadata

For me, the biggest advantage of Symphony’s corrector over MC’s, especially when working in television, lies in the possibility of making corrections using the metadata of the Avid project. What exactly is this and what can it be used for?

We have mentioned that inside an Avid MC and Symphony are practically the same, so that even if I edit in MC and then take the sequence to Symphony (or if I edit directly in Symphony) all the information about tapes, sources, clips, subclips and edited shots in each sequence is maintained. That is to say that in each sequence the metadata about the provenance of each segment (or edited shot) is there. This will allow the corrector to make corrections per segment (the default) or per clip, subclip, tape, etc. in the sequence.

In other words, if in a sequence we have the boy’s shot, the girl’s shot and the general shot repeated in the classic “duck duck” we can correct ONCE the boy’s shot and this correction will be copied to all the boy’s segments, then the girl’s and then the general shot. We have made three color corrections and the timeline is corrected (without copying and pasting corrections shot by shot). Later if we want to adjust shot by shot we can convert these “linked” corrections into segment corrections so that they affect only the independent shots.

Based on the same logic Symphony allows us to automatically copy corrections from one sequence to another. Either because we have modified the sequence in which we were color correcting or because we want to copy corrections from another sequence in which the same shots are found. In this way editing and color correction can establish parallel flows instead of linear ones, since the colorist can start working with preliminary edits and update his sequence to the new versions of the edit without losing the previous work and without “copying and pasting” manually. We would use the options “update” or “merge” corrections depending on the case.

These same workflows can be established between some editors and DaVinci Resolve. However as they are different companies the metadata exchange is never as complete and secure as between MC and Symphony (logically).

Up to three different color corrections on the same plane

Complementing the above structure Symphony contains up to three different types of color corrections for each plane: the so-called Source (Src), Program (Prog) and the CC effect. The first two do not require rendering and the third one does (it is the same that has the MC color corrector and is used to provide compatibility with it, so that if color corrections are made with MC these can be viewed and edited later in Symphony).

As you can see in the menu, each one can have a different mission within the sequence: the program can act at the level of the shot or at the level of the timeline track, the source can work at the level of the shot or with the metadata we were talking about before and the CC effect will be the only one that can be applied on a filler or empty track. This allows the colorist to organize the session according to the project or workflow. For example, he could use the source (green) for correction and make the adjustments indicated by the director of photography in the program (blue). Or if the editor performs a first correction job in MC, use the CC effects as a base and then complement it in Source. As I say, it will depend on each work mode, project and person.

Of course in each type (source, program or CC effect) all the parameters of the corrector can be used from scratch (so that in total up to 18 different secondaries could be applied in one plane, for example).

Of course in addition to primaries and secondaries it also has masks, although these were also incorporated a few versions ago to MC and are found outside the corrector, in the effects palette (spot color effect) Unfortunately being a separate effect of the CC module has many fewer options and can be clumsy (but there is the option).

As you can see the Avid Symphony color corrector not only has secondaries, it has many other options that make it work very fast especially for television, especially now that you can use an external controller. It is true that it is an old color corrector and its color correction calculations are not as fine as I would like but it is also true that with a little subtlety and good taste you can do a good job quickly, which for certain workflows is very important. I admit that after spending three years operating one in London I am fond of it 🙂

If you are interested in color correction and want to learn the basics of the discipline regardless of the program used, using several of them as examples, we have a course this weekend that can be practical.

And if you use MC and you want to make secondaries I leave you a video where they show you how to do it by compositing, it will take you a little longer but it is possible. Anyway I imagine that in the near future they will merge Avid MC and Symphony into a single program (in fact as many of you already know the Symphony corrector is “hidden” in MC 😉

Let’s see if when they join them together they improve a little bit certain things of the corrector while they are…oh, and resolution above HD please!!!, (this in case someone from Avid reads me 🙂 The truth is that if they join the three (MC, Symphony and DS) in only one it would be great (now that the Kings are coming, I mean).

Well, I hope you find this tutorial useful and here you have the video