First client work with SG, impressions.

I've delivered my first client work graded with SG, here's a quick recap as feedback, hope you find something useful.

Problems:

- Imported a DPX sequence, did a scene detection, program crashed every time I clicked "Split into clips". Had to switch the master to prores4444 to have the sequence sliced without crashes.

- When pressing cmd-z (undo) while in right-mouse button edit mode sometimes mouse pointer disappears and I have to relaunch SG to get it back. Also, sometimes undo is not working or with one single cmd+z, the program did several steps back.

- Sometimes on "undo" appears a "optimizing timeline" progress bar which is very slow, and I have to abort it all the time.

- Per-clip Pan&scan is missing. I had to do a lot of pan an scan and was painful doing it with keyframes, hope Adobe finds a simple way to deliver that.

- Looks panel can't be hidden or moved. With a 1920x1200 monitor I have a lot of empty space on the right side, would be useful having an option to move the panel on the right side, or at lease to hide it.

- Sometimes I find it difficult to navigate through the timeline, specially when it's all zoomed out and I want to position a second reference playhead
. A mini-poput thumbnail, updating when scrubbing the mouse over the timeline, would be great to find the right clip in a short time.

- I found annoying that when I navigate through clips with cmd+arrow, an in/out point is set. That's useful but I think we need an option to disable it.

Things I didn't find out:

- Shortcuts for save/recall memories (like cmd+1, cmd+2...in other sw). I used the keypad, and it works great, but would be useful to store some temp memories.

- markers would be useful

- Are there keyboard shortcuts for "toggle in out points" and "replay"?

- Grade variations. Think I can already do grade variations adding more layers, in that case it's needed grouping (like photoshop folders) and layer renaming (at least).

- Multiple masks. I know there aren't, please this is hardly needed.

What I liked most:

- Responsiveness. SG is fast! I also worked on set with a late 2010 mbpro and I found everything very quick and responsive, sometimes I had a realtime playback!

- Interface. Straight to the point, once you get used it's very simple and everything it's there. Still room fore some improvement but I like it.

- Render. Render is solid and with "automatic color calibration" I never had the annoying quicktime gamma shift in preview proxies. Option for framing and one-click online/offline render and proxy size are great.

- I found the comparing with two playheads very intuitive. Didn't feel the need for a still store. Just a little difficult to set when the clips are one next to another. Would be useful a quick way to set the 2nd timeline and the screen to screen compare (e.g. mouse over clip to compare + keystroke).

- Right mouse button function it's great for who doesn't have a control surface or is on set, it's very sensitive compared to other softwares I used. I'm using a good mouse and can be very precise. As I stated above, I had some problems with the undo.

- Liked the shortcut "Copy grade from clip below mouse position", very handy

The obvious:

- Support for 3rd party video monitoring (blackmagic, aja, etc...)

- Support for more native formats (read: avchd)

- Roundtrip to premiere

Tip:

I found out a shortcut that wasn't mentioned in documentation: ctrl+h (on mac) brings out "history" window.

I was learning, so maybe there are some "workflow" mistakes or something I mentioned as missing is already there, just tell me where please

I think that if Adobe fix a lot of the things people are suggesting, speedgrade could really be a great product. For now, it feels a little bit "uncomplete". I keep fingers crossed, maybe next week at NAB Adobe will show something new!