Post-Production : What Compositing Software Should I Use? by Patrik Gyltefors

Patrik Gyltefors

What Compositing Software Should I Use?

There are many options available for doing compositing. Nuke is the main software used for feature film, and larger studios, and After Effects for motion graphics and many indie productions. For those who want to learn Nuke, but are on a budget, Natron is a Nuke clone, although not as polished.

But there is another free alternative: Fusion. For DaVinci Resolve users, it is right there on the Fusion page, but if you are not used to node based compositing, it might look a bit intimidating at first glance.

For those who want to try it out, and have 5 min to spare, I made a small introduction video on how to make your very first comp in Fusion:

https://www.youtube.com/live/By28oJqd4BU

Cyrus Sales

Patrik Gyltefors Always enjoy watching your videos. If I could add for future videos. I'm getting back into film so some of the terms and wording or foreign. It would help me as a new person if you explained a little bit of what everything is. I've heard you mentioned Node before but what is it? Why is it important? What is compositing? When would I use it and why is it in important? Are you able to show reference of you work or films that use it. What is Fusion and why is it important? You showed an Interface at the end, I'm in audio so is it the same as what we use in audio or something different. While I most definitely can take a minute, pause the video, go search for each word and what it means, I then go down a rabbit hole and now I'm 10 different YouTubers in. I think this might also help with engagement with new people because you now become a one stop shop for us to continue consuming your content versus going off to another person page. I've seen people link YouTube's within their Youtube to get us to click over to a different video. I think this would be great. "Hey, if you aren't quite too sure what a Node is, click this link above and watch the video where I go in depth on what a Node is and why it is important," doesn't have to be a 20 minute video (I like your shorter content) but would help out a lot. Thank you again for sharing insight!

Patrik Gyltefors

Cyrus Sales, thank you for your valuable feedback. It is easy to forget that the viewer might not be familiar with the terminology, so I'll try to improve on that part. Translating the above to audio terms, a node is similar to an audio effect box, and a composition is several nodes connected together, like and effect chain. The interface is indeed similar to an audio interface, but it outputs a video signal instead. Fusion is the part of DaVinci Resolve where you can build compositions, just as Fairlight is the part where you add your audio effects. And finally, compositing (and Fusion), is important as it allows you to compose several video elements into one whole (just as an audio mix brings all audio tracks together). An example is combining footage of smoke, with footage with chimneys, making it look like the chimneys are emitting smoke, adding life to the buildings.

Cyrus Sales

Patrik Gyltefors Thank you for going further into detail and explaining everything. Makes way more sense now.

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