Quote Originally Posted by samsc
And this colour balance function would need 10 dmx channels to simulate.

10 channels just to do colour balance?

What would we call them - and how would we display such functionality with 8 characters names on a hog 2 display?
Complex color correction could open up a can of worms but could be cool to have. If you ever are confronted with the opportunity to color correct a bad video, be sure to charge by the hour as no one person percieves color the same way.

Many lighting programmers organize all their colors chromatically for all fixtures into the same palette, i.e. red for VL3000 is Red for studio colors, cyan is cyan for VL5s and Studio Beams, etc... I do the same with Catalyst colors in the cmy image color space mode. There are very few lighting fixtures that don't mix using CMY subtractive, the VL7 uses HLS and the old color pro actually used RGB, VL5bs are completely proprietary as are some areas of regular 5s so it makes sense to keep color values for this modal uniform across modes. Even Versatiles, though LEDS, mix in the CMY image color space mode.

Probably the easiest way to have a semi-advanced method of color correction would be to have a separate color correction channel that would give you RGB, HSV, HLS, CMY, and TMV image color space modes. Choose accordingly and adjust using your encoders to achieve the desired effect but this would really only be different ways to mix if you couldn't stack the final effect.

A more effective approach could be if you had a dedicated channel each for Low1 Mid1 High1 (which could be the current cyan mag yel encoder channels), L2, M2, H2,(3 channels for the second range) L3, M3, H3 (3 more channels) and had your color corrector channel(7) dictate which color mode you wanted to correct in, along with an extra gamma(8) channel and Alpha channel(9), then you could really color correct on the fly. An example, you could select RGB mode and adjust the RGB for the Low, mid and high ranges of the video or you could do the same with Hue, Level, Saturation. You could just do this in post (AE) rather then adding a 9 more channels for correction, though 9 channels isn't all that much these days and the effects you could create be pretty cool.

I would also be interested in more transfer modes in the standard color fx channel such as difference, stencil luma, Sillhouette luma, darken, multiply and the like, to be able to do more interesting interactions with multiple layers in wild, transparent ways. For example, you could do things like allow transparency of the layer beneath to show through based on its luminosity or intersecting color values. This would allow for more on the fly creation of new content based on old content. Recycling content becomes a neccesity after you've done a few jobs for the same client.

A new trend with some content providers is to provide the buyer several elements along with After effects files for you to output the default combinations and then create your own semi-original content. A good example of this is Digital Vision's Geolectrics, form, flux, nexxus, light forms, and many more. These elements on their own can be uninteresting and dull but with more transfer modes available, you could mix them to create new interesting content on the fly all the time.

Sorry for the book, just too much to think about.
Christian