If you’ve ever wanted to try out one of the high-end color grading and finishing systems that color grades and finishes many of the films you watch, then you’re in luck, as Baselight for MacOS is now available. If you’re not familiar with Baselight, it’s a high-end color grading and finishing system from FilmLight. It’s been around for many years, and Baselight v6 is the latest release that has been out in the world and battle-tested to get to the MacOS Baselight release, which is based on v6. You can read the press release about Baselight for MacOS for some good discussion from the company, but I’ll summarize a bit about the release here.

There are two different versions of Baselight for MacOS:

• Baselight S is a budget-friendly option for the single freelancer, with full grading features but without advanced collaboration tools.
• Baselight M is for facilities that require multi-user interconnectivity, such as with Baselight CONFORM and Baselight ASSIST. It allows facilities and smaller shops to ramp up their grading and finishing capability, while enabling the same workflow and colour pipeline used in their high-end suites – also allowing assistant colourists to progress professionally.

These are the bullet point features of Baselight for MacOS:

• Flexible software-only licence subscription to run on user-supplied Apple Mac platform.
• Capable of running the same Baselight software version as the full Linux Baselight systems (see Baselight version datasheet for functionality).
• Optimised to use latest NVMe SSD cache subsystems for fluid and productive grading.
• Full support for all Baselight grading operations including Machine Learning operations on the macOS platform.
• Support for Blackboard Classic, Slate and third- party control surfaces.
• Play back and grade raw digital camera footage directly from the timeline with no transcoding.
• Support for video output hardware facilitates SD to HD, 2K and 4K with full 10-bit 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 colour at display frame rates up to 60P – including stereo.
• Full support for HDR Apple displays like MacBook Pro XDR and Apple Pro XDR.
• Automatic background rendering and high- speed disk caching for instant real-time playback.
• Full support for grade import and export using the lightweight FilmLight BLG file format, which supports grades of any complexity including CDL data.
• Simple bidirectional project exchange between Baselight and Avid/NUKE/Flame without the need to copy media or generate intermediate renders.

There’s a full data sheet (PDF link) that dives into all the details about Baselight for MacOS.

If you’d like to give Baselight for MacOS a try, there’s a free 14-day trial so you can kick the tires. Baselight for MacOS isn’t available for online purchase so you have to go through a reseller. You can purchase either a a 3-month or 12-month licence and the only price I see mentioned on the website is “from $7500pa” so that would start at $7,500 per year.

If you’re indeed interested in Baeslight for MacOS you are most likely familiar with the Filmlight/Baeslight universe so you’ll know exactly where to go. I think this will be a welcome edition to the high-end color grading world as it’s a formidable alterative to DaVinci Resolve, especially for those who aren’t so much into the nodes way of working. Baselight is flexible, mature, well supported and very powerful.

An interesting thing about the life of Baselight on Mac is that Baselight has been running on MacOS for years. I first saw a Mac laptop running Baselight at NAB many years ago but it wasn’t a commercial product. If I remember correctly, there was a Mac version available to full Baselight customers, but it was more of a training tool. There was also a Mac-based Baselight STUDENT version, later changed to Baselight LOOK, which allowed students and colorists to learn the Baselight software and train to move up to the real thing. I briefly worked at a facility that had a Baselight system, so I’ve been familiar with it for years. Since part of the Baselight experience is fantastic 24/7 support, I think a software-only Mac product wasn’t quite what they wanted as a business model, but that has now changed.

If you’re not familiar with Filmlight as a company, you may have heard of Baselight, as there has been a Baselight plug-in for Avid Media Composer and Nuke for many years now. The Avid plug-in came along in 2012 and was a clever implementation as it’s basically a mini version of Baselight that runs in Avid (and Nuke). You can grade with it or have a colorist on a full Baselight system grade your show and then have those grades returned non-destructively to Avid via the plug-in. This allows the full grade within Avid while still having the ability to make changes and noodle around with the edit. There was also Baselight for Final Cut Pro 7, which, at the time, was one of the most advanced Final Cut Pro plugins I had ever seen, but with the release of Final Cut Pro X, the Baselight for Final Cut Pro wasn’t long for this world. I think many of us hoped we would see Baselight for Adobe Premiere Pro, but I think the resources it took to develop the FCP version, only to have it disappear with the change in the FCP market, might have doomed a Premiere version.

System requirements for Baselight on MacOS:

• Supported on macOS 13-15
• Apple Silicon Mac Studio or Mac Pro
• 64GB or greater unified memory
• 1TB or greater internal storage
• External fast Thunderbolt NVMe enterprise SSD with 8TB or greater reserved for cache (Large internal Apple NVMe SSD storage can be utilized for Baselight’s cache; however, this may exhibit a limited life span and is difficult to replace)

With these recommended options to spec out the proper Mac Baselight system:

• External high-performance image storage disk system
• SDI video monitoring (for higher playback performance)
• Supported devices include: AJA: Kona, Io4k/Plus, T-Tap/Pro BMD: Ultrastudio Mini/HD/4k, Decklink 8k Pro
• 10/25/100GbE connection to other Baselight systems or FLUX Store