Tools I use every day
Dell Precision 5750
Prior to the pandemic, I was spending 50% of my time consulting/traveling on the road.
My key laptop is actually a Dell Workstation. I’m about to swap it out for the 5570 model (as it has four thunderbolt 3 ports.)
It’s easy for any pro as Premiere/Resolve/Media Composer are essentially the same application in either Windows/Mac OS.
What I search for are workstation level components - along with the ability to have on site service inside of 24 hours. As we speak a different laptop that I also use, will be gone for a week waiting for it’s diagnosis and repair.
I’d have aimed for it’s bigger brother, the 7750, which has a better screen (600 nits) and a better video card (Quadro 5000 from nVidia with a 16GB of vram, but it has less t3 ports.
nVidia 2080ti Card
Everything yellow on your timeline gets assistance from the GPU.
Up until about 2 months ago, this was the top of the line nVidia card (which I’ll be swapping out for the 3090, which was just released and hard to get.) I have this in an external GPU box from Akitio.
So, I feel my laptop is almost the equivalent of a desktop with similar hardware - and quite a bit more portable when necessary.
G-Technology G-Speed Shuttle
I’m running a G-Technology RAID - a G-Speed 5 Shuttle with 42 formatted TB of storage.
It runs at over 1800MB/s - which is fast enough for me to handle 10 bit 4kp60 footage without hiccups.
Storage is the backbone of what I do - you’re never going to need less bandwidth, RAM or storage for the rest of your life.
Since Western Digital makes the unit and the physical enterprise class drives, I’m buying it all from one place. I also have the version of this unit that is all SSDs, for when I need real speed.
More tools
Flanders Scientific CM240
What gives a colorist confidence is a grading monitor. This screen is calibrated and built to a higher set of standards than regular flat monitors. Scopes are built into the screen and some of them (this one) can be battery powered for checking on set.
Know that Flanders has inexpensive grading monitors - but the field is more expensive than the one normally connected to your system.
This, plus an 18% grey background and D65 lights (6500 kelvin) are part of the key ingredients to being able to be sure of what your imagery looks like.
Flanders will for free recalibrate your monitor for life (you have to pay the shipping both ways).
https://www.flandersscientific.com/
Loupedeck CT
When color grading, I try to stay away from the main keyboard. I’m trying to get as many features where they’re on a knob, rather than a button or a mouse click.
The Loupedeck CT is my “accessory” panel to complement my Tangent Ripple. It covers nearly everything I want that the Ripple can’t do - and comes well mapped out of the box for Adobe Premiere Pro users.
It supports the much the other Adobe CC tools as well.
https://loupedeck.com/en/products/loupedeck-ct?skip=true
X-Rite Color Checker Video and i1 Display Probe
The last key pieces of the puzzle?
Knowing what actual colors were shot and being able to calibrate all of your screens.
X-Rite i1 Display probe allows calibration of the various screens I have. I’m worried about drift over time - and this allows me to reliably have my screens setup on my system (including my grading monitor.)
The other pies, the Color Checker chart has the following swatches:
Colors that match the vectorscope targets
Fleshtones
Black to White across a grey scale
Black and white both matte and glossy
When something like this is shot - I can profile a camera and improve the grading speed for a given location/lighting setup.
https://www.xrite.com/products?industry=Filmmaking&sort=4&pagesize=24