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Filed under: Editing •Hardware •Post Production •

Review: MC Color control surface

With a lot of control comes a lot of learning

With the MC Color being a smaller unit overall than the Tangent Wave, Euphonix has chosen to make fewer buttons operate more functions. This can be seen when navigating from room to room. When in a particular room both lines of the display change to reflect the knobs and trackballs so when you want to move to a different room you have to push, as I’ve already mentioned, the NAV, or navigation key. With that the display changes to the different room names and you press the corresponding knob to change rooms.

Once in a room there are two sets of buttons that you will become very familiar with. Those would be the Page left and right and the Bank 1 and 2 buttons. I was a bit confused trying to figure out exactly how these buttons corresponded to the Color interface so a trip to the user guide helps clarify. Think of the Bank keys as a way to move between tabs in a Color room, such as the Basic and Advanced tabs in the Primary room. Think of the Page keys as the way to move the rotary knobs to more functions, such as accessing Printer Points while in the Advanced tab of the Primary room.

The Bank keys won’t always move you to the different tabs such as in the Geometry room where there aren’t any control surface options for the Shapes and Tracking tabs. You must familirize yourself with the Page and Bank buttons as they will be used often.

The PAGE buttons will be frequently used as will the BANK buttons located on the upper right of the unit

One of the MC Color’s signature features would be its nine Soft Keys. These are grouped in 3’s above each of the track balls and labeled F1 - F9. The Shift key gives each button more than one function. The function of these keys depends on how they are setup in the EuControl software. What you’ll find when examining the EuControl software is a SoftKeys tab which is where you set the MC Color’s controls. There is a pop-up menu with 8 different pages. Each page corresponds to a room in Color. There’s a little button located on the top right of the MC Color (it looks like an eyeball) that is the “Show” key. This key will open the EuControl panel at any place in Color. The Show button will become your friend because as I said in the heading to this section, with a lot of control comes a lot of learning so it will take time to learn all of the soft keys.

The EUControl settings in my Color Primary In room

Toggling Shift will allow access to the Shift+press of a softkey

As for the pages:  Page 1 = Setup, Page 2 = Primary room, Page 3 = Secondaries room and so on until Page 8 = Render Queue. And each of these rooms has the ability to access the Shift key as well so that’s a lot of potential softkeys if you have different functionalities mapped for everything. I found that I was trying to standardize a lot of Soft Keys across the rooms that I used the most. For the occasional colorist like myself I wanted a few less buttons to remember hence the standardizing that I tried to do amongst the Color rooms. If you’re working in Color most all day every day then then all the different soft keys offer a huge level of functionality; it just might take some time to learn them all.

The functionality of MC Color extends beyond just the menu items of Color itself. Euphonix’s EuControl software will also allow the user to customize the control surface with keystrokes beyond what is just in the Color menu. For example I wanted to be able to zoom in and out of the Color timeline so I mapped the zoom timeline commands to the shift F2 and F3 buttons since I didn’t see them in the EuControl software as a default Color option:

Setting up a softkey to zoom the timeline. You can also see the result in the Toggling Shift image two images above

Another example of the multifunction nature of the MC Color buttons as well as the customization of the unit happens when you press both Page buttons simultaneously. This brings up adjustment for trackball and trackwheel sensitivity. These can be adjusted to your liking and inclues trackwheel adjustments for both the slow and fast operation of the trackwheels. Add to this sensitivity setting the Trackball & Wheel Accel command which “multiplies acceleration of ball and wheel 10 times” and there’s not really any sensitivity that you can’t achieve. There’s also a Mouse Injection mode which will let the center trackball to control the cursor and you can use the MC Color for basic mouse control as well without having to reach for another input device. Like a similar function on the Tangent Wave, it’s not for extended mousing use but handy to adjust a curve or something else in Color.

The right trackwheel can be toggled to a jog/shuttle controller

One complaint that I’ve been seen from several early MC Color users is about the lack of an integrated jog/shuttle wheel. There are transport control buttons for playback but no dedicated jog/shuttle wheel. You can toggle the right trackwheel into jog/shuttle mode and use it for that purpose so all is not lost but the is an extra step to jog/shuttle. On my unit the transport control buttons did have buttons that defaulted to step to previous and next edits:

My preference is for the next and previous edit buttons to be mapped to step frame by frame

A compromise for no dedicated wheel might be to have those buttons step frame by frame as I found with the way I worked with the MC Color I would rather have had the frame step button as a non-modifier key button. If you are building a dedicated grading suite and can afford Euphonix’s MC Transport then you could have a dedicated job/shuttle wheel as well as a number of other controls added to the mix. That raises the price above the Tangent Wave at that point but it would make for a very nice console.

Avid buys Euphonix

One bit of news that came out a few weeks ago at NAB was that Euphonix had been purchased by Avid. This might seem like a bit of a surprise if you only know Euphonix for the MC Color but they have long made quality, dedicated audio consoles. While Avid’s strategy was probably mostly driven to integrate Euphonix with their Pro Tools audio line I would bet they will also be adapting the MC Color to other uses across their product line. It has already been approved for use with RED’s RedCine-X application and the new low priced DaVinci Resolve probably isn’t far behind since it can use the Tangent Wave. Avid Symphony finishers will probably welcome the MC Color to the Avid color correction tools as I don’t think there’s a grading control surface available for the Symphony. Ditto for the Avid D|S. I would guess both of these markets would buy the MC Color in droves.

Which would I buy

When it comes down to the question of which control surface would I buy between the Tangent Wave and the Euphonix MC Color I would have to look at two different ways of working to make that decision.

My current use of Apple Color is sporadic, mainly coloring lower budget jobs that don’t go to our colorist or my own projects. It’s usually cranking up Color for a few hours at a time, half a day max. For this way of working I would go with the MC Color. It’s smaller size easily integrated into my desktop meaning I could keep the keyboard accessible and it’s quality construction made it a joy to use. While I had customized a lot of the controls to my liking I continued to refine them up until I sent the unit back and would have done even more. The lack of the dedicated jog/shuttle control didn’t bother me as much as I first thought.

But if I was setting up a dedicated color grading suite then my choice would lean toward the Tangent Wave. While I think the MC Color is a better looking and better constructed unit overall I would want that dedicated job/shuttle wheel if the control surface was my daily interaction with the computer and color grading application. Having that kind of control always there and available without having to toggle into a mode would make a difference when working on the surface all day, every day. If I could afford to add the MC Transport ($399) to the dedicated color suite then that would be my choice, the MC Color and MC Transport. But that takes the overall purchase price higher.

If you’re making this decision for yourself then do your best to put your hands on each of the surfaces before you buy as that’s going to let you have the most informed decision. Beg or buy your way into a suite that has the unit you want or try to get to some type of trade show or reseller that will let you feel each surface. The feel of one over the other might sway a buying decision. And when you are buying something like a control surface that you will have to touch and feel for hours at a time it’s important to touch before you buy.

As I said above the magic price point for these dedicated Color control surfaces is, IMHO, $999. If either the MC Color or the Tangent Wave (or maybe some yet to been seen product) was priced at $999 then that would be the winner in a shootout between the two. Until then, prepare to spend a bit more. But whichever control surface you choose the fact remains that any control surface will make for a much more pleasant color grading experience and you a more efficient colorist.

Pros: Well constructed, good looking, hight quality display, very nice feel to the trackwheels

Cons: lots of buttons to push for certain functions, no dedicated jog/shuttle wheel

Wish List: A dedicated jog/shuttle wheel but that might require a raising of the price

I’d buy the MC Color as it makes a great addition to the editing suite and will make life in Apple Color much easier and the color grading task a more pleasant one ... though that lack of a jog/shuttle wheel might lean my purchase more toward the Tangent Wave for full time grading.

FTC Disclosure: Per the new FTC guidelines regarding bloggers and disclosure, Euphonix sent me the MC Color a couple of months ago free of charge per a request I made to them for a review unit. It was on loan for around a month and then returned at my expense.

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It is one of those decisions where it would be best if one could use each unit for a full session ... but that’s not realistic. It’s also not realistic for many to be able to even touch both before a purchase either. But the good thing is that both of them have strengths and weaknesses but whichever you might buy I think you’ll be happy with it.

Posted by Scott Simmons  on  05/03  at  08:21 PM

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