Color User Manual
Copyright © 2009 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Your rights to the software are governed by the accompanying software license agreement. The owner or authorized user of a valid copy of Final Cut Studio software may reproduce this publication for the purpose of learning to use such software. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, such as selling copies of this publication or for providing paid for support services. The Apple logo is a trademark of Apple Inc.
Contents Preface 9 9 10 10 Welcome to Color About Color About the Color Documentation Additional Resources Chapter 1 13 13 16 23 28 Color Correction Basics The Fundamental Color Correction Tasks When Does Color Correction Happen? Image Encoding Standards Basic Color and Imaging Concepts Chapter 2 35 35 37 39 47 50 56 65 73 Color Correction Workflows An Overview of the Color Workflow Limitations in Color Video Finishing Workflows Using Final Cut Pro Importing Projects from Other Video Editing Applic
104 105 106 112 114 115 115 117 118 Relinking Media Importing Media Directly into the Timeline Compatible Media Formats Moving Projects from Color to Final Cut Pro Exporting EDLs Reconforming Projects Converting Cineon and DPX Image Sequences to QuickTime Importing Color Corrections Exporting JPEG Images Chapter 5 119 119 122 128 129 135 135 Configuring the Setup Room The File Browser Using the Shots Browser The Grades Bin The Project Settings Tab The Messages Tab The User Preferences Tab Chapter 6
Chapter 9 207 207 208 210 212 222 224 234 245 249 251 252 The Primary In Room What Is the Primary In Room Used For? Where to Start in the Primary In Room? Contrast Adjustment Explained Using the Primary Contrast Controls Color Casts Explained Using Color Balance Controls The Curves Controls The Basic Tab The Advanced Tab Using the Auto Balance Button The RED Tab Chapter 10 257 258 259 260 261 268 270 277 278 283 The Secondaries Room What Is the Secondaries Room Used For? Where to Start in the Secondari
334 334 335 336 343 Using the Copy Grade and Paste Grade Memory Banks Setting a Beauty Grade in the Timeline Disabling All Grades Managing Grades in the Shots Browser Managing a Shot’s Corrections Using Multiple Rooms Chapter 14 347 347 347 349 351 353 Keyframing Why Keyframe an Effect? Keyframing Limitations How Keyframing Works in Different Rooms Working with Keyframes in the Timeline Keyframe Interpolation Chapter 15 355 355 356 361 370 The Geometry Room Navigating Within the Image Preview The
411 412 413 413 414 414 414 414 415 Playback and Navigation Grade Shortcuts Timeline-Specific Shortcuts Editing Shortcuts Keyframing Shortcuts Shortcuts in the Shots Browser Shortcuts in the Geometry Room Still Store Shortcuts Render Queue Shortcuts Appendix C 417 417 417 418 418 419 Using Multi-Touch Controls in Color Multi-Touch Control of the Timeline Multi-Touch Control in the Shots Browser Multi-Touch Control of the Scopes Multi-Touch Control in the Geometry Room Multi-Touch Control in the Image Pr
Preface Welcome to Color Welcome to the world of professional video and film grading and manipulation using Color. This preface covers the following: • About Color (p. 9) • About the Color Documentation (p. 10) • Additional Resources (p. 10) About Color Color has been designed from the ground up as a feature-rich color correction environment that complements a wide variety of post-production workflows, whether your project is standard definition, high definition, or a 2K digital intermediate.
All of these tools are divided among eight individual “rooms” of the Color interface, logically arranged in an order that matches the workflow of most colorists. You use Color to correct, balance, and create stylized “looks” for each shot in your program as the last step in the post-production workflow, giving your programs a final polish previously available only to high-end facilities.
For more information on the Apple Pro Training Program, go to: • http://www.apple.
Color Correction Basics 1 To better learn how Color works, it’s important to understand the overall color correction process and how images work their way through post-production in standard definition (SD), high definition (HD), and film workflows. If you’re new to color correction, the first part of this chapter provides a background in color correction workflows to help you better understand why Color works the way it does.
Stage 1: Correcting Errors in Color Balance and Exposure Frequently, images that are acquired digitally (whether shot on analog or digital video, or transferred from film) don’t have optimal exposure or color balance to begin with. For example, many camcorders and digital cinema cameras deliberately record blacks that aren’t quite at 0 percent in order to avoid the inadvertent crushing of data unnecessarily. Furthermore, accidents can happen in any shoot.
Stage 5: Achieving a “Look” The process of color correction is not simply one of making all the video in your piece match some objective model of exposure. Color, like sound, is a property that, when subtly mixed, can result in an additional level of dramatic control over your program. With color correction, you can control whether your video has rich, saturated colors or a more muted look.
Stage 9: Creating Special Effects Sometimes a scene requires more extreme effects, such as manipulating colors and exposure intensively to achieve a day-for-night look, creating an altered state for a flashback or hallucination sequence, or just creating something bizarre for a music video. In the Color FX room, Color provides you with an extensible node-based tool set for creating such in-depth composites efficiently, in conjunction with the other primary and secondary tools at your disposal.
Furthermore, choices made during preproduction and the shoot, including the film or video format and camera settings used, can have a profound effect on the amount of flexibility that’s available during the eventual color correction process. Initial Color Correction When Transferring Film When a project has been shot on film, the camera negatives must first be transferred to the videotape or digital video format of choice prior to editing and digital post using a telecine or datacine machine.
However the color correction is handled during the initial telecine or datacine transfer, once complete, the footage goes through the typical post-production processes of offline and online editorial. Color Correcting Video Versus Film Color has been designed to fit into both video and film digital intermediate workflows. Since all footage must first be transferred to a QuickTime or image sequence format to be imported into Color, film and video images are corrected using the same tools and methods.
Once the camera negative has been conformed and the different shots physically glued together onto alternating A and B rolls, the negative can be color-timed by being run through an optical printer designed for this process. These machines shine filtered light through the original negatives to expose an intermediate positive print, in the process creating a single reel of film that is the color-corrected print.
If the online assembly is happening in a high-end online suite, then color correction can be performed either during the assembly of the master tape or after assembly by running the master tape through a color correction session. Videotapes Offline Edit Tape Suite Final Master Tape Note: If the final master tape is color corrected, the colorist must carefully dissolve and wipe color correction operations to match video dissolves and wipes happening in the program.
In addition, the color correction equipment available to the telecine colorist has evolved to match (and is sometimes identical to) the tools available to online video colorists, with the added advantage that the colorist can work directly on the uncompressed images provided by the telecine. After the conclusion of the second color correction pass, the color-corrected selects are reassembled to match the original edit, and the project is mastered to tape.
Advantages of Grading with Color When Does Color Correction Happen? discusses how color correction is accomplished in other post-production environments. This section describes how Color fits into a typical film or video post-production process. Color provides many of the same high-end color correction tools on your desktop that were previously available only in high-end tape-to-tape and telecine color correction suites.
About Importing Projects and Media into Color To work on a program in Color, you must be provided with two sets of files: • Final Cut Pro sequence data can be sent to Color directly using the Send To Color command. Otherwise, the edited project file (or files, if the program is in multiple reels) should be provided in a format that can be imported into Color. Compatible formats include Final Cut Pro XML files, and compatible EDL files from nearly any editing environment.
The RGB Additive Color Model Explained In the RGB color model, three color channels are used to store red, green, and blue values in varying amounts to represent each available color that can be reproduced. Adjusting the relative balance of values in these color channels adjusts the color being represented. When all three values are equal, the result is a neutral tone, from black through gray to white.
The sampling ratio between the Y′, CB, and CR channels is notated as a three-value ratio. There are four common chroma subsampling ratios: • 4:4:4: 4:4:4 chroma subsampled media encodes completely uncompressed color, the highest quality possible, as the color difference channels are sampled at the same rate as the luma channel.
As you can probably guess, more color information is better when doing color correction. For example, when you make large contrast adjustments to 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 subsampled video, video noise in the image can become exaggerated; this happens most often with underexposed footage. You’ll find that you can make the same or greater adjustments to 4:2:2 subsampled video, and the resulting image will have much less grain and noise. Greater contrast with less noise provides for a richer image overall.
Bit Depth Explained Another factor that affects the quality of video images, and can have an effect on the quality of your image adjustments, is the bit depth of the source media you’re working with. With both RGB and Y′CBCR encoded media, the higher the bit depth, the more image data is available, and the smoother both the image and your corrections will be.
• 10-bit images, on the other hand, use a full range of 0 to 1023 to store each color channel. (Again, Y′CBCR video uses a narrower range of 64–940 to accommodate super-black and super-white.) The additional numeric range allows for smoother gradients and virtually eliminates bit depth–related artifacts. Fortunately, while you can’t always control the bit depth of your source media, you can control the bit depth at which you work in Color independently.
• The midtones are the distribution of all tonal values in between the black and white points. Black Mids White An image’s contrast ratio is the difference between the darkest and brightest tonal values within that image. Typically, a higher contrast ratio, where the difference between the two is greater, is preferable to a lower one. Unless you’re specifically going for a low-contrast look, higher contrast ratios generally provide a clearer, crisper image.
For more information about adjusting image contrast, see Contrast Adjustment Explained. Luma Explained Luma (which technically speaking is gamma-corrected luminance) describes the exposure (lightness) of a video shot, from absolute black, through the distribution of gray tones, all the way up to the brightest white. Luma can be separated from the color of an image. In fact, if you desaturate an image completely, the grayscale image that remains is the luma.
Gamma Explained Gamma refers to two different concepts. In a video signal, gamma refers to the nonlinear representation of luminance in a picture displayed on a broadcast or computer monitor. Since the eye has a nonlinear response to light (mentioned in The Y′CBCR Color Model Explained), applying a gamma adjustment while recording an image maximizes the perceptible recorded detail in video signals with limited bandwidth.
Saturation Saturation describes the intensity of that color, whether it’s a bright red or a pale red. An image that is completely desaturated has no color at all and is a grayscale image. Saturation is also measured on a color wheel, but as the distance from the center of the wheel to the edge. As you look at the color wheel, notice that it is a mix of the red, green, and blue primary colors that make up video.
All these combinations can be seen in the illustration of three colored circles below. Where any two primaries overlap, the secondary appears, and where all three overlap, white appears. Complementary Colors Two colors that appear 180 degrees opposite each other on the wheel are referred to as complementary colors. Adding two complementary colors of equal saturation to each other neutralizes the saturation, resulting in a grayscale tone.
The HSL Color Space Model Explained The HSL color space model is another method for representing color and is typically used for user interface controls that let you choose or adjust colors. HSL stands for hue, saturation, and lightness (roughly equivalent to luminance) and provides a way of visualizing the relationships among luminance, hue, and saturation. The HSL color space model can be graphically illustrated as a three-dimensional cone.
Color Correction Workflows 2 Taking maximum advantage of Color requires careful workflow management. This chapter outlines where Color fits into your post-production workflow. Color has been designed to work hand in hand with editing applications like Final Cut Pro via XML and QuickTime media support, or with other editorial environments via EDL and image sequence support.
Each room gathers all the controls pertaining to that particular step of the color correction process onto a single screen. These rooms are organized from left to right in the order colorists will typically use them, so that after adjusting your project’s preferences in the Setup room, you can work your way across from the Primary controls, to the Secondary controls, Color FX, Primary Out, and finally Geometry as you adjust each shot in your project. • Setup: All projects begin in the Setup room.
• Geometry: The Geometry room lets you pan and scan, rotate, flip, and flop shots as necessary. The Geometry room also provides tools for creating custom masks and for applying and managing motion-tracking analyses. How Geometry room transformations are handled depends on your workflow: • For projects being roundtripped from Final Cut Pro, Geometry room transformations are not rendered by Color when outputting the corrected project media.
To accommodate editorial changes, reconforming tools are provided to synchronize an EDL or Final Cut Pro sequence with the version of that project being graded in Color. For more information, see Reconforming Projects. • Filters: Final Cut Pro FXScript or FxPlug filters are neither previewed nor rendered by Color. However, their presence in your project is maintained, and they show up again once the project is sent back to Final Cut Pro.
• Final Cut Pro generators and Motion projects: Final Cut Pro generators and Motion projects are completely ignored by Color. How you handle these types of effects also depends on your workflow: • If you're roundtripping a project between Final Cut Pro and Color, and you want to grade these effects in Color, you should render these effects as self-contained QuickTime .mov files. Then, edit the new .mov files into your sequence to replace the original effects shots prior to sending your project to Color.
Once that task has been accomplished, you can send the project data and files into Color for color correction. Upon completion of the color correction pass, you need to render the result and send the project back to Final Cut Pro for final output, either to tape or as a QuickTime file.
After the offline edit is complete, the media used by the edited program must be recaptured from the source tapes at maximum quality. The resulting online media is what will be used for the Final Cut Pro–to–Color roundtrip.
Stage 3: Recapturing the Source Media at Online Resolution If you originally captured your source media using an offline format, you need to recapture the media used in your project at the highest available quality prior to sending it to Color.
Stage 6: Grading Your Program in Color Use Color to grade your program. When working on a roundtrip from Final Cut Pro, it's crucial to avoid unlocking tracks or reediting shots in the Timeline. Doing so can compromise your ability to send the project back to Final Cut Pro.
Reconforming Online Media in a Tapeless Digital Video Workflow If a program uses a tapeless video format, the steps are similar to those described in A Tape-Based Workflow; however, they likely involve multiple sets of QuickTime files: the original media at online resolution and perhaps a second set of media files that have been downconverted to an offline resolution for ease of editing.
Important: When you create offline duplicates of tapeless media, it's vital that you duplicate and maintain the original filenames and timecode with which the source files were created. This is critical to guaranteeing that you'll be able to easily relink to the original high-resolution source files once the offline edit is complete. Stage 3: Editing the Program in Final Cut Pro Edit your program in Final Cut Pro, as you would any other project.
Stage 1: Shooting Your Film Shoot the project as you would any other film project. Stage 2: Telecining the Dailies After the film has been shot, process and telecine the dailies to a video format appropriate for your workflow. • Some productions prefer to save money up front by doing an inexpensive "one-light" transfer of all the footage to an inexpensive offline video format for the initial offline edit.
• If you did an inexpensive one-light telecine pass to an offline video format, you'll want to do another telecine pass where you transfer only the media you used in the program at high quality. Using Cinema Tools, you can generate a pull list, which you then use to carefully retransfer the necessary footage to an online-quality video format. Then, you need to recapture the new online transfer of this media using the highest-quality uncompressed QuickTime format that you can accommodate on your computer.
Note: Although capable of importing EDLs directly, Color reads only the video portion of edits in track V1. Video transitions, audio, and superimpositions are ignored. Final Cut Pro Import EDL to Create Project Recapture Media XML New Color Corrected Media Color Online Media Color Correction Render Send to Color XML Final Cut Pro Final Effects and Output Send to Final Cut Pro EDL EDL file Media Source Media Output Final Master Data Here's a more detailed explanation of this workflow.
Important: The EDL import capabilities of Color are not as thorough as those in Final Cut Pro, and are limited only to shots on track V1. All transitions in EDLs are imported as dissolves. Superimpositions and audio are not supported, and will be ignored.
Stage 3: Grading Your Program in Color Use Color to grade your program, as you would any other. Stage 4: Rendering New Source Media and Sending the Updated Project to Final Cut Pro When you finish grading, you use the Color Render Queue to render all the shots in the project as a new, separate set of graded media files.
Once all your source media has been transcoded or captured as Apple ProRes 4444, it can be imported into your Final Cut Pro project. If necessary, you can then create a duplicate set of lower-resolution offline media with which you can edit your project more efficiently. Upon completion of the offline edit, you then relink the program to the original Apple ProRes 4444 media before sending the sequence to Color, where you’ll be grading your program.
Mastering from a single set of Apple ProRes 4444 media keeps your workflow simple, making media management straightforward, and eliminating the need to retransfer or relink to the source DPX media later. The only disadvantage to this method is that it can require a substantial amount of storage, depending on the length and shooting ratio of the project.
Stage 2: Scanning All Film as DPX Image Sequences Depending on how the shoot was conducted, you can opt to do a best-light datacine of just the selects, or of all the camera negative (if you can afford it). The scanned 2K or 4K digital source media should be saved as DPX or Cineon image sequences.
Stage 4: Creating Offline Resolution Clips for Editing in Final Cut Pro (Optional) This step is especially useful if you’re working on a project at 4K resolution. High-resolution media can be processor-intensive, reducing application responsiveness and real-time processing unless you have an exceptionally robust system.
• If you're handing the project off to another facility, you may want to export the edited sequence as an XML file for eventual import into Color. In this case, you'll also want to use the Final Cut Pro Media Manager to copy the project's media to a single, transportable hard drive volume for easy handoff. Stage 8: Grading Your Program in Color Grade your program in Color as you would any other.
Stage 11: Creating Additional Transitions, Effects, and Titles In a 2K or 4K workflow, you can also use a compositing application such as Shake to create additional transitions or layered effects, including superimpositions, titles, and other composites, after the color correction has been completed. Each image file's frame number identifies its position in that program's Timeline.
Ingest Native RED QuickTime Media for Editing and Finishing It’s also possible to edit and finish using native RED QuickTime media. This is an efficient workflow that skips the need for reconforming, and gives you access to the high-quality native image data when you grade in Color. Since working with native RED QuickTime media is processor-intensive, this workflow may be most appropriate for short-form projects and spots. This workflow is illustrated in Editing and Finishing with RED QuickTime Media.
Offline Using Apple ProRes; Finishing with RED Media An advantage to editing with Apple ProRes media is that it’s less processor-intensive than editing using RED QuickTime files, which makes editing in Final Cut Pro more efficient. After you reconform, you can still work in Color at the higher quality with access to all of the raw image data in the R3D file, since Color can bypass QuickTime and use the RED framework directly to read the native 2K or 4K RGB 4:4:4 data inside of each file.
Stage 1: Archiving the Original RED Media It’s always recommended that you archive all of the original RED media for your project onto one or more backed-up volumes. Whether you’re shooting with CF cards or a RED drive, you should always copy the entire contents of each CF card or drive that you’ve finished recording with to an individually named folder on your archive volume. • If you’re using CF cards: The contents of each card should be copied into separate directories.
Stage 3: Editing Using Apple ProRes Media Edit your project in Final Cut Pro, being careful not to alter the timecode of the offline master media in any way. If you want to minimize the amount of preparation you’ll be doing later in Stage 5: Preparing Your Final Cut Pro Sequence, keep the following limitations in mind while you edit: • Restrict transitions in your project to cross dissolves only.
Stage 5: Preparing Your Final Cut Pro Sequence To prepare your edited sequence for an efficient workflow in Color, follow the steps outlined in Before You Export Your Final Cut Pro Project. If you’re planning on printing to film, it’s prudent to be even more cautious and eliminate any and all effects that are unsupported by Color, since the media rendered by Color will be the final media that’s delivered to the film recording facility.
Stage 8: Choosing How to Render the Final Graded Media When working with native RED QuickTime media, the frame size of your final graded media is determined by the Resolution Presets menu in the Project Settings tab of the Setup room. For more information, see Resolution and Codec Settings. The format you use to render your final graded media depends on whether you’re planning on printing to film, or sending the program back to Final Cut Pro for output to video.
The main disadvantage is that RED QuickTime media is processor-intensive when editing. Because of performance limitations, editing with less powerful computers or editing a feature length show using 4K RED QuickTime media may not be practical.
For more information on editing programs that will be printed to film, see Stage 3: Editing Using Apple ProRes Media. Stage 3: Preparing Your Final Cut Pro Sequence, Sending to Color, Grading, Rendering, and Finishing Because you’re already working with native RED QuickTime media, no reconforming is necessary. At this point, the workflow is identical to Stage 5: Preparing Your Final Cut Pro Sequence.
Digital Intermediate Workflows Using DPX/Cineon Media Color supports grading for 2K and 4K digital intermediate workflows. Simply put, the term digital intermediate (DI) describes the process of performing all effects and color correction using high-resolution digital versions of the original camera negative.
Deriving the offline media from the original digital media keeps your workflow simple and eliminates the need to retransfer the source film later. The only disadvantage to this method is that it can require an enormous amount of storage space, depending on the length and shooting ratio of the project.
To track the correspondence between the original still frames and the offline QuickTime files that you'll create for editing, you should ask for the following: • A non-drop frame timecode conversion of each frame's number (used in that frame's filename) saved within the header of each scanned image. • It can also help to organize all of the scanned frames into separate directories, saving all the frames from each roll of negative to separate directories (named by roll).
Stage 5: Preparing Your Final Cut Pro Sequence To prepare your edited sequence for an efficient workflow in Color, follow the steps outlined in Before You Export Your Final Cut Pro Project. Because you’ll be exporting an EDL to Color in order to relink to the original DPX image sequences, it’s prudent to be extremely conservative and eliminate any and all effects that are unsupported by the CMX EDL formats, or by Color itself. Cross dissolves are the one exception.
Stage 10: Rendering Your Media Out of Color Once you finish grading the project in Color, use the Render Queue to render out the final media. The Render Queue has been set up to let you easily render your project incrementally; for example, you can render out all the shots of a program that have been graded that day during the following night to avoid rendering the entire project at once. However, when you're working on a project using 2K image sequence scans, rendering the media is only the first step.
A Digital Intermediate Workflow Using Telecined Media A more traditional way to edit and color correct a project is to do an offline edit using a less expensive telecine transfer of the dailies, and then do a datacine film scan of only the shots used in the edit to create the online media.
Stage 2: Telecining the Dailies Once the film has been shot, telecine the dailies to a video format that's appropriate for the offline edit. Whether or not you telecine to a high definition video format for the offline depends on the configuration of the editing system you'll be working with and the amount of hard disk space available to you. Of more importance is the frame rate at which you choose to telecine the dailies.
Stage 4: Preparing Your Final Cut Pro Sequence To prepare your edited sequence for an efficient workflow in Color, follow the steps outlined in Before You Export Your Final Cut Pro Project. Because you’ll be exporting an EDL to Color in order to relink to the original DPX image sequences, it’s prudent to be extremely conservative and eliminate any and all effects that are unsupported by the CMX EDL formats, or by Color itself. Cross dissolves are the one exception.
Stage 8: Grading Your Program in Color Grade your program in Color as you would any other. For better performance, it’s advisable to use the Proxy controls in the User Prefs tab of the Setup room to work at a lower resolution than the native 2K or 4K frame size of the media. For more information, see Using Proxies.
This makes it easy to create and maintain a film frame-to-timecode correspondence between the original camera negative and the transferred video or DPX media. This correspondence carries through to the captured or converted QuickTime media that you edit in Final Cut Pro.
If you don’t already have a Cinema Tools database tracking your film media, you can easily create one. To create a Cinema Tools database from one or more directories of DPX or Cineon image sequences, simply drag all of the enclosing directories onto the Cinema Tools application icon, and a database is generated automatically. If necessary, you can use the Cinema Tools interface to check the reel numbers and timecode values of each shot, correcting any problems you find.
Required Image Sequence Filenaming Here's a sample filename of the first image sequence file that corresponds to the EDL event shown in Parsing EDLs for Digital Intermediate Conforms: fileName_0494794.dpx The first portion of the filename for each scanned frame (the alpha characters and underscore) is an ignored but necessary part of the filename. The file's frame number should equal the (non-dropframe) timecode conversion of that value appearing in the EDL.
Using the Color Interface 3 You can work in Color either by using a mouse with the onscreen interface, or, more directly, by using a dedicated control surface that’s been designed for professional color correction work. This chapter covers the general interface conventions used by Color. It describes the use of controls that are shared by multiple areas of the interface, as well as some of the specialized controls that are unique to color correction applications.
Setting Up a Control Surface Color was designed from the ground up to support control surfaces specifically designed for color correction from manufacturers such as Tangent and JL Cooper Designs.
Using the Mouse Color supports the use of a three-button mouse, which provides quick access to shortcut menus and various navigational shortcuts. Color also supports the middle scroll wheel or scroll ball of a three-button mouse, either for scrolling or as a button.
3 Press Return to confirm the change. To modify the value of a numeric or percentage-based text field with a virtual slider 1 Move the pointer to the field you want to adjust. 2 Middle-click and drag to the left to decrease its value, or to the right to increase its value. 3 Release the mouse button when you’re finished. To modify the value of a numeric or percentage-based text field with a scroll wheel 1 Move the pointer to the field you want to adjust.
• If you enter a partial number, the rightmost pair of numbers is interpreted as frames and each successive pair of numbers to the left populates the remaining seconds, minutes, and hours positions. Omitted numbers default to 00. For example, if you enter 1419, Color interprets it as 00:00:14:19. • When you enter timecode in a field, you don’t need to enter all of the separator characters (such as colons); they’re automatically added between each pair of digits.
The angle at which colors appear on the color wheel of color controls can be customized to match the interface of other color correction systems you may be used to. In addition, the speed with which control surface joyballs (trackballs) adjust the corresponding Color color controls can be modified. For more information, see Control Surface Settings. Using Organizational Browsers and Bins Color offers several browsers and bins for organizing shots, media, and grades that share some common controls.
When you select a media file in the file browser, a panel appears to the right displaying the first frame of that file along with information underneath.
µ To expand the file browser Move the pointer to the file browser divider at the left side of the window, and when it’s highlighted in blue, click once to expand it. For more information on the Setup room, see Configuring the Setup Room. The Shots Browser The other browser in the Setup room is the Shots browser. This browser lets you see all the shots that are in the current project in either icon or list view.
You can use this bin to apply saved grades to other shots in the Timeline. The contents of the Grades bin are available to all Color projects opened while logged into that user account. For more information on saving and applying grades, see Saving Grades into the Grades Bin. Corrections Bins The Primary In and Out, Secondaries, and Color FX rooms all allow you to save the corrections made inside those rooms as individual presets that you can apply to later shots.
Directory Navigation Controls The file browser and Grades and corrections bins also have directory navigation controls that you can use to organize and browse the grades and corrections that are saved on your hard disk. • Up Directory: Moves to and displays the contents of the parent directory. • Home Directory: Navigates to the appropriate home directory for that browser or bin. This is not your Mac OS X user home directory.
• Load button: Applies the selected grade or correction to the shot that’s at the current position of the playhead (if no other shots are selected) or to multiple selected shots (ignoring the shot at the playhead if it’s not selected). As with any Color bin, items displayed can be dragged and dropped from the bin into the Timeline.
Reorganizing Saved Corrections and Grades in the Finder Each of the corrections bins in Color simply mirrors the contents of the corresponding subdirectory in the /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Color directory. You can use the Finder to reorganize your saved corrections and grades by creating new subdirectories and moving previously saved grades and corrections into them. When you move saved corrections from one directory to another, it’s important that you copy both the .
To switch between single and dual display modes Do one of the following: µ µ Choose Window > Single Display Mode or Dual Display Mode. Press Shift-Command-0 to switch between modes. You must quit Color and reopen it for this change to take effect.
Importing and Managing Projects and Media 4 Color provides powerful tools for managing projects and media as you work. This chapter describes the commands and methods used to create and save projects, move projects from Final Cut Pro to Color and back again, and link and otherwise manage your projects and media once they’re within Color. It also covers compatible media formats, EDL import and export, and the conversion of DPX and Cineon image sequences to QuickTime media.
Creating and Opening Projects When you open Color, you’re presented with a dialog from which you can open an existing project or create a new one. Most users will send projects to Color straight from Final Cut Pro, but there are specific workflows that require you to create a new project in Color. To open an existing project Do one of the following: µ If Color is already open, choose File > Open (or press Command-O), choose a project from the Projects dialog, then click Open.
µ To save a project Choose File > Save (or press Command-S). µ To revert the project to the last saved state Choose File > Revert (or press Command-R). Color also has an automatic saving mechanism which, when turned on, saves the current project at an interval set by the Auto Save Time (Minutes) parameter in the User Prefs tab of the Setup room. By default, automatic saving is turned on, with the interval set to 5 minutes. For more information, see Auto Save Settings.
The Contents of Color Projects Color projects are actually bundles. Inside each Color project bundle is a hierarchical series of directories, each of which contains specific components belonging to that project, which are either image or XML files. It’s possible to open a Color bundle using the Show Package Contents command in the Finder. The directory structure and contents of these bundles are described here. • Archives directory: Contains all the saved archives of that project.
Saving and Opening Archives An archive is a compressed duplicate of the project that’s stored within the project bundle itself. For efficiency, the archive file lacks the thumbnail and Still Store image files that the full version of the project contains. Archives only save the state of the internal project file, Timeline, shot settings, grades, corrections, keyframes, and Pan & Scan settings, which are easily compressed and occupy little space.
Before You Export Your Final Cut Pro Project Whether you’re working on your own project, or preparing a client’s project in advance of a Color grading session, you should take some time to prepare the Final Cut Pro sequence you’ll be sending in order to ensure the best results and smoothest workflow. Here are some recommended steps.
Each reel should begin and end at a good cut point, such as the In point of the first shot of a scene, the Out point of the last shot of a scene, or the end of the last frame of a fade to black. As you’re creating your reels, make sure you don’t accidentally omit any frames in between each reel. This makes it easier to reassemble all of the color-corrected reels back into a single sequence when you’re finished working in Color.
It’s also important to make sure that the stills you use in your Final Cut Pro project aren’t any larger then 4096 x 2304, which is the maximum image size that Color supports. If you’re using larger resolution stills in your project, you may want to export them as self-contained QuickTime files with which to replace the original effects. To optimize rendering time, Color only renders a single frame for each still image file.
Important: If you’re recapturing or transcoding video clips that were originally recorded with a Y′CBCR format, be sure that the codec you use to recapture, export, or transcode your media doesn’t clamp super-white and overly high chroma components from the original, uncorrected media. It’s usually better to correct out-of-gamut values within Color than it is to clamp these levels in advance, potentially losing valuable image data.
Don’t Reedit Projects in Color By default, all the video tracks of projects sent from Final Cut Pro are locked. When you’re grading a project, it’s important to avoid unlocking them or making any editorial changes to the shots in the Color Timeline if you’re planning to send the project back to Final Cut Pro. If you need to make an editorial change, reedit the original sequence in Final Cut Pro, export a new XML file, and use the Reconform command to update the Color Timeline to match the changes.
Importing EDLs You can import an EDL directly into Color. There are two reasons to use EDLs instead of XML files: • To color correct a video master file: You can approximate a tape-to-tape color correction workflow by importing an EDL and using the Use As Cut List option to link it to a corresponding master media file (either a QuickTime .mov file or a DPX image sequence).
The EDL Import Settings dialog appears, defaulting to the default project directory specified in the User Prefs tab of the Setup room. 3 Choose the appropriate project properties from the available lists and pop-up menus. For more information, see EDL Import Settings. 4 When you finish choosing all the necessary settings, click Import. A new project is created, and the EDL is converted into a sequence of shots in the Timeline. The position of each shot should match the Timeline of the original project.
• Project Resolution: The resolution of the Color project you’re creating. In general, this should match the resolution of the source media that you’re linking to. • Height: The height of the selected frame size. • Width: The width of the selected frame size. • Source Directory: The directory specified here directs the EDL parser to the exact path where the DPX or Cineon scans or QuickTime files associated with that project are located.
Note: The source directory you choose can be either a local volume, or a volume on a SAN or LAN with sufficient performance to accommodate the data rate of the project’s media. • Browse Button: This button opens the file browser, allowing you to set the source directory for the EDL you want to import. Choosing a directory populates the Source Directory field. Relinking Media If necessary, you can manually relink media to a Color project.
Importing Media Directly into the Timeline You also have the option of importing media files to the Timeline directly, which lets you use Color to process digital dailies and convert DPX or Cineon image sequences to suitable QuickTime formats. You can import individual shots, or entire folders of shots. For more information on doing batch DPX to QuickTime conversions, see Converting Cineon and DPX Image Sequences to QuickTime.
6 Once shots have been placed into the Timeline, save your project. To import a folder of shots into the Timeline 1 Do one of the following: • Choose File > Import > Clip. • Click the Setup tab. 2 Use the navigation controls at the top left of the file browser to find the directory containing the media you want to import.
• A subset of codecs that can be used for rendering your final output when Original Format is chosen in the Export Codec pop-up menu of the Project Settings tab of the Setup room. (These appear in column 2.) Original Format is only available when you’ve used the Send To Color command in Final Cut Pro or when you’ve imported a Final Cut Pro file that’s been exported as an XML file.
Supported for import Supported as original format Supported as export codec DVCPRO HD 1080p25 Yes No DVCPRO HD 1080p30 Yes No DVCPRO HD 720p50 Yes No DVCPRO HD 720p60 Yes No DVCPRO HD 720p Yes No H.
Compatible Third-Party QuickTime Codecs Color supports the following third-party codecs from AJA for import: • AJA Kona 10-bit Log RGB • AJA Kona 10-bit RGB Note: The AJA Kona codecs are not installed by QuickTime by default and are available only from AJA. Color also supports native RED QuickTime files when you install the necessary RED software for Final Cut Studio. For more information, visit http://www.red.com.
Color also supports the following two offline-quality codecs for workflows in which you convert DPX or Cineon image sequences to offline-quality QuickTime clips for editing. Because they’re so highly compressed, these codecs are not suitable for high-quality mastering. DPX/Cineon conversions to QuickTime clone both the timecode and reel number of each shot. For more information, see Converting Cineon and DPX Image Sequences to QuickTime.
Which Codec Should You Use for Export? When choosing the codec you want to use for rendering the final output, there are four considerations: • If you’ll be outputting to a high-bandwidth RGB format (such as HDCAM SR), or are mastering 2K or 4K RGB media using QuickTime, you should export your media using the Apple ProRes 4444 codec for the highest-quality result.
• TIFF (import only): The Tagged Image File Format is a commonly used image format for RGB graphics on a variety of platforms. Color is compatible with 16-bit TIFF sequences. • JPEG (import only): A highly compressed image format created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group. The amount of compression that may be applied is variable, but higher compression ratios create visual artifacts, visible as discernible blocks of similar color.
2 Choose File > Send To > Final Cut Pro. There are two possible warnings that may come up at this point: • If you haven’t rendered every shot in Color at this point, you are warned. It’s a good idea to click No to cancel the operation and render all of your shots prior to sending the project back to Final Cut Pro.
Revising Projects After They’re Sent to Final Cut Pro If you need to make revisions to the color corrections of a sequence that you’ve already sent from Color to Final Cut Pro, don’t send the sequence named “from Color” back to Color.
Reconforming Projects Whether your project was sent from Final Cut Pro, or imported via an EDL from any other editing environment, you have the option of automatically reconforming your Color project to match any editorial changes made to the original Final Cut Pro sequence, which can save you hours of tedious labor. Color matches each project to the sequence that was originally sent to Color using an internal ID number.
• Alternately, you can convert 2K and 4K DPX and Cineon image sequences into finishing-quality QuickTime media files by simply choosing ProRes 4444 as the QuickTime export codec. • If your project media is in the QuickTime format, but you want to output a series of Cineon or DPX image sequences, you can do this conversion as well. The timecode of converted DPX or Cineon film scans is copied to the new media that’s created.
d Choose the codec you want to convert the image sequences to from the Export Codec pop-up menu. (For more information about choosing a suitable output codec, see Compatible QuickTime Codecs for Output.) 4 If necessary, grade the shots to make any corrections to the offline media that you’ll be generating. Sometimes, the source media from a particular camera or transfer process needs a specific color correction or contrast adjustment in order to look good during the offline edit.
After using this command, all grades in the destination project are overwritten with those from the source. To import the color corrections from one project to another 1 Open the Color project into which you want to import the corrections. 2 Choose File > Import > Color Corrections. 3 In the Projects dialog, select the Color project containing the corrections you want to import, then click Load. The shots in the currently open project are updated with the color corrections from the other project file.
Configuring the Setup Room 5 Before you start working on your project, take a moment to configure your Color working environment and project settings in the Setup room. The Setup room serves many purposes. It’s where you import media files, sort and manage saved grades, organize and search through the shots used in your program, choose your project’s render and broadcast safe settings, and adjust user preferences. This chapter covers the following: • The File Browser (p. 119) • Using the Shots Browser (p.
By default, the file browser displays the contents of the default media directory when Color opens. For more information on how to use the file browser, see Importing Media Directly into the Timeline. For more information on importing project data from other applications, see Importing and Managing Projects and Media. File Browser Controls These two buttons are at the top of the file browser. • Up Directory button: Moves to the next directory up the current file path.
Media Information and DPX/Cineon Header Metadata When you click a shot to select it, an enlarged thumbnail appears to the right of the list of media. Underneath the thumbnail, information appears about the shot, including its name, duration, resolution, frame rate, and timecode. If it’s an image sequence, its white point, black point, and transfer mode metadata also appear. Depending on the type of media, one or two buttons may appear at the bottom of the file browser.
Import Button Selecting one or more shots and clicking Import edits the selection into the end of the current Timeline for an unlocked project. This is useful if you’re using Color to convert DPX or Cineon image sequences to QuickTime, or vice versa. For more information, see Importing Media Directly into the Timeline. Note: You cannot import media into locked projects. This includes any project sent from Final Cut Pro.
Choosing the Current Shot and Selecting Shots in the Shots Browser Icons or entries in the Shots browser are colored based on their selected state. • Dark gray: The shot is not currently being viewed, nor is it selected. • Light gray: The shot at the current position of the playhead is considered to be the current shot and is highlighted with gray in both the Timeline (at the bottom of the screen) and the Shots browser.
Column Headers in the Shots Browser When the Shots browser is in list view, up to nine columns of information are visible. • Shots Browser Column Headers: These columns appear when the Shots browser is in list view. • Number: Lists a shot's position in the edit. The first shot is 1, the second is 2, and so on. • Shot Name: The name of that shot, based on its filename. • Colorist: Lists the name that occupied the Colorist field in the Project Settings when that shot was last corrected.
• To Do: The shot has not yet been corrected in any room. • Aborted: Rendering of this shot has been stopped. Possible Flags in the Reconform Column Each shot that has been affected by a Reconform operation has one of four possible flags that appear in the Reconform column of the Shots browser: • Shorten: The shot has been shortened. • Content Shift: The shot's duration and position in the Timeline are the same, but its content has been slipped.
µ To sort the Shots browser by any column Click a column's header to sort by that column. Shots are sorted in descending order only. Numbers take precedence over letters, and uppercase takes precedence over lowercase. µ To resize a column in the Shots browser Drag the right border of the column you want to resize. µ To reveal or hide the Time Spent column Click Show Time, located underneath the Shots browser.
When you've added a note to a shot, a checkmark appears in the Notes column. µ To remove a note from a shot Control-click or right-click the Notes column of the Shots browser, then choose Delete File from the shortcut menu. Note: Notes are saved within the subdirectory for that particular shot, within the /shots/ subdirectory inside that project bundle. Removing a note deletes the note file.
µ Click any shot, and then Shift-click a second shot to select a contiguous range of shots from the first selection to the second. Selected shots appear with a cyan overlay. To navigate to a specific shot in the Timeline using the Shots browser Do one of the following: µ µ Double-click any shot. Type a number into the Goto Shot field. The new current shot turns gray in the Shots browser, and the playhead jumps to the first frame of that shot in the Timeline.
By applying a grade to one or more shots, you can apply multiple corrections all at once. Grades saved into the Grades bin are available to all Color projects opened while logged into that user account. The Grades bin can display grades in either icon or list view, and shares the same controls as the other bins in Color. For more information on using the Grades bin controls, see Using Organizational Browsers and Bins. For more information on saving and applying grades, see Saving Grades into the Grades Bin.
• Render Dir: The render directory is the default directory path where media files rendered for this project are stored. (For more information about rendering Color projects, see The Render Queue.) It’s always best to choose the appropriate location for the render directory before you add items to the Render Queue, to make sure your shots are rendered in the correct location. If the specified render directory becomes unavailable the next time you open a project, you will be prompted to choose a new one.
• Frame Rate: This field displays the frame rate that the project is set to. Your project's frame rate is set when the project is created, and it can be changed by a pop-up menu so long as no shots appear in the Timeline. Once one or more shots have been added to the Timeline, the project's frame rate cannot be changed.
• Printing Density pop-up menu: This pop-up menu can only be manually changed when the Render File Type is set to DPX. It lets you choose how to map 0 percent black and 100 percent white to the minimum and maximum numeric ranges that each format supports. Additionally, the option you choose determines whether or not super-white values are preserved. For more information, see Choosing Printing Density When Rendering DPX Media.
Note: You can render your project out of Color using one of several high-quality mastering codecs, regardless of the codec or level of compression that is used by the source media. You can use the QuickTime Export Codecs pop-up menu to facilitate a workflow where you import compressed media into Color and then export the corrected output as uncompressed media before sending your project to Final Cut Pro.
• Phase: Lets you adjust the phase of the chroma. If Amplitude is set to 0, no change is made. • Offset: Lets you adjust the offset of a chroma adjustment. If Amplitude is set to 0, no change is made. • Chroma Limit: Sets the maximum allowable saturation. The chroma of signals with saturation above this limit will be limited to match this maximum value. • Composite Limit: Sets the maximum allowable combination of luma and chroma. Signals exceeding this limit will be limited to match this maximum value.
Handles This field lets you specify a duration of extra media to be added to the head and tail of each media file that's rendered out of Color. When a project is sent back to Final Cut Pro, handles allow editors to make small adjustments without running out of corrected media. The default value is 00:00:00:00.
For more information, see: • Media and Project Directories • Control Surface Settings • User Interface Settings • Grade and Scope Color Controls • Limit Shadow Adjustments and Show Control Surface Controls • Using Proxies • Playback, Processing, and Output Settings • How Do Bit Depth and Channel Data Correspond? • Auto Save Settings Media and Project Directories The Media and Project directories let you control where new files are saved by default. • Default Project Dir.
Control Surface Settings If you're using a control surface with Color, the following parameters let you adjust how motion applied to a particular control corresponds to the resulting adjustment that's made. • Hue Wheel Angle: This parameter specifies the angle at which colors appear on the color wheel of color controls in the Color interface and the corresponding angle at which these colors are adjusted when using the joyballs of a control surface.
• Joyball Sensitivity: This parameter controls how quickly color balance controls are adjusted when using a control surface's joyballs to adjust the Shadow, Midtone, and Highlight color controls in the Primary In, Secondary, and Primary Out rooms. The default setting is 1, which is extremely slow. Raise this value to increase the rate at which corrections are made with the same amount of joyball motion. User Interface Settings The following settings let you customize the Color interface.
• Maintain Framerate: This setting determines whether or not frames are dropped in order to maintain the project's frame rate during playback. • If Maintain Framerate is turned on (the default): The current frame rate is maintained no matter what the current processing workload is. If the currently playing grade is processor-intensive, then frames will be dropped during playback to maintain the project's frame rate. If not, playback occurs in real time.
• Grade Aborted color control: The color that's displayed in the Timeline render bar for shots that have had their rendering stopped. The default color is red. • Monochrome Scopes: Turning this option on draws the video scope graticules with a single color (specified by the Scope Color option, below). Many colorists prefer this display to avoid eye fatigue. On the other hand, it also eliminates the full-color display in the Vectorscope.
Using Proxies If you're working with a project that uses Cineon or DPX image sequences, you can use the Color proxy mechanism to work faster with high-resolution media. The proxy mechanism in Color is not available to projects using QuickTime media, unless you’re using native RED QuickTime media. RED QuickTime media is capable of generating proxy data on the fly depending on how the Render Proxy, Grading Proxy, and Playback Proxy pop-up menus are set.
Generating and Deleting Proxies In order to use proxies while working on projects using DPX and Cineon media, you need to first generate a set of half- and quarter-resolution proxy media for your project. µ To generate a set of proxy media for your project Choose File > Proxies > Generate Proxies. µ To delete all the proxies that have been generated for a project Choose File > Proxies > Delete Proxies.
• Force RGB: This option is disabled for standard definition projects. This setting is meant to be used when you're working with high definition Y′CBCR source media that you're monitoring on an external broadcast monitor via a supported broadcast video interface. It determines how the RGB image data that's calculated internally by Color is converted to Y′CBCR image data for display: • If Force RGB is turned off: This conversion is done by Color in software.
• Radial HSL Interpolation:: This setting affects how keyframed color adjustments are interpolated from one hue to another. • Turning this setting on causes keyframed changes in hue to be animated radially, with the hue cycling through all hues on the color wheel in between the current and target hues. This results in visible color cycling if you're animating a change from one hue to any other that's not directly adjacent on the color wheel.
Tip: Depending on your system's performance, you may find it advantageous to work at a lower bit depth in order to maximize real-time performance. Then, you can switch to the desired bit depth prior to rendering your final output to maximize image quality. However, If you graded your program with the Internal Pixel Format pop-up menu set to 8- through 16-bit, changing it to Floating Point may alter how certain Color FX operations work.
How Does Working in Floating Point Affect Image Processing? Aside from providing a qualitative edge when processing high-resolution, high–bit depth images, setting the Internal Pixel Format to Floating Point changes how image data is handed off from one room to the next, specifically in the Color FX and Primary Out rooms.
Because of this, you may occasionally notice differences between images that were initially corrected at less than 16-bit, and the same images changed to render at Floating Point. This is particularly true in the Color FX room.
Auto Saving saves only the current project. It does not create an archived copy of the project. For more information about creating and recalling archives, see Saving and Opening Archives.
Monitoring Your Project 6 The equipment and methods with which you monitor your work are critical to producing an accurate result. The importance of proper monitoring for color correction cannot be overemphasized. This chapter covers the monitoring options available in Color, including the configuration of the Scopes window, options for broadcast video output, the generation and use of LUTs for calibration and simulation, and how the Still Store is output to video for monitoring and evaluation.
µ Press Command-Shift-0 to switch between both modes. The Scopes window provides a preview display of the image that you’re working on, and it can also show either two (in single-display mode) or three (in dual-display mode) video scopes to aid you in image evaluation. For more information, see Analyzing Signals Using the Video Scopes.
Monitoring Broadcast Video Output For the most accurate monitoring of broadcast programs, Color ouputs standard and high definition video using supported third-party video interfaces. The drivers installed for the interface you have determine what resolutions, bit depths, and frame rates are available for outputting to an external monitor. µ To turn on external video monitoring Choose an option from the Video Output pop-up menu, in the User Prefs tab of the Setup room.
Other than specifying or choosing the initial shooting or transfer format, the bit depth of the source media on disk is predetermined (usually 8-bit, 10-bit, or 10-bit log). Since low bit depths can be prone to banding and other artifacts during the color correction process (especially when gradients are involved), it’s usually advantageous to process the video at a higher bit depth than that of the original source media (secondary corrections and vignettes can especially benefit).
Note: For all these reasons, consumer televisions and displays are not typically appropriate for professional work, although they can be valuable for previewing how your program might look in an average living room. Set Up Your Viewing Environment Carefully The environment in which you view your monitor also has a significant impact on your ability to properly evaluate the image. • There should be no direct light spilling on the front of your monitor.
Color is represented on CRTs, LCD flat panels, video projectors, and film projectors using very different technologies. If you show an identical test image on two different types of displays—for example, a broadcast display and a video projector—you can guarantee there will be a variation in color between the two.
Chromaticity refers to the exact values a display uses to represent each of the three primary colors. Different displays use different primary values; this can be seen on a chromaticity diagram that plots the three primaries as points against a two-dimensional graph representing hue and saturation within the visible spectrum. Since all colors represented by a particular display are a mix of the three primaries, if the three primary points vary from display to display, the entire gamut of color will shift.
Each corner of the cube represents a different mix of the R,G,B tristimulus values that represent each color. The black corner is (0,0,0), the opposing white corner is (1,1,1), the blue corner is (0,0,1), the red corner is (1,0,0), and so forth. The RGB color cube is an idealized abstraction, however. Actual display devices appear with much different shapes, defined by their individual gamut and chromaticity.
Important: LUTs are no substitute for a high-quality display. In particular, they’ll do nothing to improve muddy blacks, an inherently low contrast range, or a too-narrow gamut. When Don’t You Need a LUT? If you’re color correcting video and monitoring using a properly calibrated broadcast display that’s compatible with the standard of video that you’re displaying, it’s not generally necessary to use a LUT. Generating LUTs There are several ways you can generate a LUT.
2 Load a good evaluation image (such as a Macbeth chart) into the Timeline. 3 Display the same image on the target display using a second reliable video source. 4 Open the Primary In room and adjust the controls appropriate to make the two images match. 5 Choose File > Export > Display LUT. 6 When the Save LUT As dialog appears, enter a name for that LUT into the File field, choose a location to save the file, and click Save.
Monitoring the Still Store The Still Store lets you save and recall images from different parts of your project that you can use to compare to shots you’re working on. The Still Store is basically an image buffer that lets you go back and forth between the currently loaded Still Store image and the current image at the position of the playhead. You have options for toggling between the full image and a customizable split-screen view that lets you see both images at once.
Timeline Playback, Navigation, and Editing 7 The Timeline provides you with an interface for navigating through your project, selecting shots to grade, and limited editing. The Timeline and the Shots browser (in the Setup room) both provide ways of viewing the shots in your project. The Shots browser gives you a way to nonlinearly sort and organize your shots, while the Timeline provides a sequential display of the shots in your program arranged in time.
Basic Timeline Elements The Timeline is divided into a number of tracks that contain the shots, grades, and keyframes used by your program. • Render bar: The render bars above the Timeline ruler show whether or not a shot is unrendered (red), or has been rendered (green). • Timeline ruler: Shows a time scale for the Timeline. Dragging within the Timeline ruler lets you move the playhead, scrubbing through the program. • Playhead: Shows the position of the currently displayed frame in the Timeline.
Each of the four grades may include one or more Primary, Secondary, Color FX, and Primary Out corrections. By default, each grade appears with a single primary grade bar, but additional correction bars appear at the bottom if you’ve made adjustments to any of the other rooms for that grade. Each correction bar has a different color. • P(rimary) bar: Shows whether a primary correction has been applied. • S(econdary) bar: Shows whether one or more secondary corrections have been applied.
To change the units used in the Timeline ruler Do one of the following: µ Click the Setup room tab, then click the User Prefs tab and click the Frames, Seconds, Minutes, or Hours button corresponding to the units you want to use. µ Press one of the following keys: • Press F to change the display to frames. • Press S to change the display to seconds. • Press M to change the display to minutes. • Press H to change the display to hours.
µ To resize individual tracks Hold down the Shift key, then drag the center handle of the gray bar at the bottom of the track you want to resize until it’s the desired height. Note: The next time you resize all video tracks together, individually resized tracks snap to match the newly adjusted track size. Working with Tracks This section describes different ways you can change the state of tracks in the Timeline as you work. Note: The tracks of imported XML projects are automatically locked.
Selecting the Current Shot Whichever shot you move the playhead to becomes the current shot. The current shot is the one that’s adjusted whenever you manipulate any of the controls in the Primary In, Secondary, Color FX, Primary Out, or Geometry room. There can only be one current shot at a time. It’s the only one that’s highlighted in light gray.
In Color, playback is always constrained to the area of the Timeline from the In point to the Out point. If the playhead is already within this area, then playback begins at the current position of the playhead, and ends at the Out point. If the playhead happens to be outside of this area, it automatically jumps to the In point when you next initiate playback. This makes it faster to loop the playback of a specific shot or scene in the Timeline, which is a common operation during color correction sessions.
Switching the Playback Mode The playback mode lets you choose whether the In and Out points are automatically changed to match the duration of the current shot whenever you move the playhead or whether they remain set to a larger portion of your program. Shot Mode Shot mode is the default playback method. Whenever the playhead moves to a new shot, the Timeline In and Out points are automatically changed to match that shot’s Project In and Project Out points.
Maintain Framerate The Maintain Framerate setting in the User Prefs tab of the Setup room determines whether or not frames are dropped in order to maintain the project’s frame rate during playback. • If Maintain Framerate is turned on (the default): The current frame rate is maintained no matter what the current processing workload is. If the currently playing grade is processor-intensive, then frames will be dropped during playback to maintain the project’s frame rate. If not, playback occurs in real time.
Timeline Navigation The following procedures let you navigate around your program in the Timeline, scrolling through it, and moving the playhead from shot to shot. To move the playhead from shot to shot Do one of the following: µ µ µ µ Drag within the Timeline ruler to scrub the playhead from shot to shot. Press Up Arrow to move to the first frame of the next shot to the left. Press Down Arrow to move to the first frame of the next shot to the right. Click the Next Shot or Previous Shot buttons.
Selecting Shots in the Timeline There are certain operations, such as copying primary corrections, that you can perform on selected groups of shots. Color provides standard methods of selecting one or more shots in the Timeline. Note: You can also select shots using the Shots browser. For more information, see Using the Shots Browser. µ To select a shot in the Timeline Click any shot. Selected shots appear with a cyan highlight in the Timeline.
To deselect all shots in the Timeline Do one of the following: µ µ µ Choose Edit > Deselect All (or press Command-Shift-A). Select a previously unselected shot to clear the current selection. Click in an empty area of the Timeline. Important: If the current shot at the position of the playhead is not selected, it will not be automatically included in the selection when you apply saved corrections or grades from a bin.
If there wasn’t already a grade corresponding to the number of the grade you entered, one will be created. Whenever a new grade is added, the grades track expands, and the new grade becomes the selected grade. New grades are clean slates, letting you begin working from the original state of the uncorrected shot. To select the current grade 1 Move the playhead to the shot you want to switch the grade of. 2 Do one of the following: • Click the grade you want to switch to. • Press Control-1 through Control-4.
The Settings 1 Tab The timing properties listed in the Settings 1 tab are not editable. Instead, they reflect each shot’s position in the Timeline and the properties of the source media that each shot is linked to. • Project In and Project Out: Defines the location of the shot in the Timeline. • Trim In and Trim Out: Defines the portion of source media that’s actually used in the project, relative to the total available duration of the source media file on disk.
The Settings 2 Tab The Settings 2 tab contains additional settings that let you modify the header data of DPX and Cineon image files. • Override Header Settings: Selecting this button enables the Printing Density pop-up menu to be manually changed, so that you can override the printing density settings in the DPX header for the current shot.
Editing Controls and Procedures Color is not intended to be an editing environment, and as a result its editing tool set isn’t as complete as that of an application like Final Cut Pro.
• If the In point of the moved shot overlaps the second half of another shot, the shot you’re moving will be insert edited, and all other shots in the Timeline will be rippled to the right to make room. • If you’re moving a shot into an area of the Timeline where it doesn’t overlap with any other shot, it’s simply moved to that area of the Timeline without rippling any other shots. To delete a shot in the Timeline 1 Select one or more shots in the Timeline. 2 Do one of the following: • Press Delete.
2 Move the pointer to the edit point between the two shots that you want to roll, and drag it either left or right to make the edit. The Timeline updates to reflect the edit you’re making. Ripple Tool A ripple edit adjusts a shot’s In or Out point, making that shot longer or shorter, without leaving a gap in the Timeline.
This means that the portion of the shot that plays in the Timeline changes, while its position in the Timeline stays the same. No other shots in the Timeline are affected by a slip edit, and the overall duration of the project remains unaffected. 00:00:10:00 A 00:00:30:00 B C Before edit 00:00:17:00 A 00:00:37:00 B C After edit In the example above, the slip edit changes the In and Out points of shot B, but not its duration or position in the sequence.
2 Move the pointer to the Timeline ruler, and when the split overlay appears (a vertical white line intersecting the shots in the Timeline), drag it to the frame of the shot where you want to add an edit point. 3 Click to add an edit point. The Timeline updates to reflect the edit you’ve made, with a new edit point appearing at the frame you clicked. Splice Tool Whenever you cut a shot with the Split tool, the original shot is split into two shots separated by a through edit.
The Timeline updates to reflect the edit you’ve made, with a new edit point appearing at the position of the playhead. Merge Edits Command The Merge Edits command (Control-B) is similar to the Splice tool. It joins two shots separated by a through edit at the current position of the playhead into a single shot. Using this command eliminates the need to choose a tool. To merge two shots into one at a through edit point 1 Move the playhead to the frame at the through edit you want to merge.
Analyzing Signals Using the Video Scopes 8 In addition to a well-calibrated broadcast display, video scopes provide a fast and accurate way to quantitatively evaluate and compare images. Color provides most of the video scope displays that you’d find in other online video and color correction suites and includes a few that are unique to software-based image analysis.
• The Luma Histogram • The 3D Scope • The RGB Color Space • The HSL Color Space • The Y′CBCR Color Space • The IPT Color Space The location where the video scopes appear depends on whether Color is configured to single- or dual-display mode: • In single-display mode: Two video scopes are displayed underneath the video preview in the Scopes window, which is positioned to the left of the Color interface window.
• In dual-display mode: Up to three video scopes are displayed in the Scopes window, in addition to the video preview. The Accuracy of Color Video Scopes To create a real-time analysis of the video signal (even during adjustment and playback), Color downsamples the current image to a resolution of 384 x 192. The downsampled image is then analyzed and the resulting data displayed by the currently selected scopes.
3 To set the video scopes to update during playback, select Update Secondary Display. Tip: You can turn off Update Primary Display to improve playback performance. Some scopes can be switched among different modes. µ To change a scope to a different mode Click the button corresponding to the mode you want at the top of that scope. Any quadrant containing a video scope can also be switched to a different kind of scope.
Some scopes can be displayed in color. To turn video scope color on and off 1 Open the User Prefs tab, located inside the Setup room. 2 Click Monochrome Scopes to turn scope color on or off. Scope color is affected by the following customizable parameters: • When Monochrome Scopes is turned off: The UI Saturation parameter determines how intense the scope colors are. • When Monochrome Scopes is turned on: The Scope Color control directly underneath controls the color of the scope graticules.
To produce the overall analysis of the image, the individual graphs for each line of the image are superimposed over one another. Because the waveform’s values are plotted in the same horizontal position as the portion of the image that’s analyzed, the waveform mirrors the image to a certain extent. This can be seen if a subject moves from left to right in an image while the waveform is playing in real time.
Waveform Analysis Modes The Waveform Monitor has eight different modes. For more information, see: • The Parade Scope • The Overlay Scope • The Red/Green/Blue Channels Scopes • The Luma Scope • The Chroma Scope • The Y′CBCR Scope The Parade Scope The Parade scope displays separate waveforms for the red, green, and blue components of the image side by side. If Monochrome Scopes is turned off, the waveforms are tinted red, green, and blue so you can easily identify which is which.
The Parade scope makes it easy to spot color casts in the highlights and shadows of an image, by comparing the contours of the top and the bottom of each waveform. Since whites, grays, and blacks are characterized by exactly equal amounts of red, green, and blue, neutral areas of the picture should display three waveforms of roughly equal height in the Parade scope. If not, the correction is easy to make by making adjustments to level the three waveforms.
The Parade scope is also useful for comparing the relative levels of reds, greens, and blues between two shots. If one shot has more red than another, the difference shows up as an elevated red waveform in the one and a depressed red waveform in the other, relative to the other channels. In the first shot, the overall image contains quite a bit of red. By comparison, the second shot has substantially less red and far higher levels of green, which can be seen immediately in the Parade scope.
The Overlay Scope The Overlay scope presents information that’s identical to that in the Parade scope, except that the waveforms representing the red, green, and blue channels are superimposed directly over one another. This can make it easier to spot the relative differences or similarities in overlapping areas of the three color channels that are supposed to be identical, such as neutral whites, grays, or blacks.
The Luma Scope The Luma scope shows you the relative levels of brightness within the image. Spikes or drops in the displayed waveform make it easy to see hot spots or dark areas in your picture. The difference between the highest peak and the lowest dip of the Luma scope’s graticule shows you the total contrast ratio of the shot, and the average thickness of the waveform shows its average exposure.
The Chroma Scope This scope shows the combined CB and CR color difference components of the image. It’s useful for checking whether or not the overall chroma is too high, and also whether it’s being limited too much, as it lets you see the result of the Chroma Limit setting being imposed when Broadcast Safe is turned on.
The Vectorscope The Vectorscope shows you the overall distribution of color in your image against a circular scale. The video image is represented by a graph consisting of a series of connected points that all fall at about the center of this scale. For each point within the analyzed graph, its angle around the scale indicates its hue (which can be compared to the color targets provided), while its distance from the center of the scale represents the saturation of the color being displayed.
Spotting Color Casts with the Vectorscope You can also use the Vectorscope to spot whether there’s a color cast affecting portions of the picture that should be neutral (or desaturated). Crosshairs in the Vectorscope graticule indicate its center. Since desaturated areas of the picture should be perfectly centered, an off-center Vectorscope graph representing an image that has portions of white, gray, or black clearly indicates a color imbalance.
The I Bar The –I bar (negative I bar) shows the proper angle at which the hue of the dark blue box in the color bars test pattern should appear. This dark blue box, which is located to the left of the 100-percent white reference square, is referred to as the Inphase signal, or I for short. The I bar (positive I bar) overlay in the Vectorscope is also identical to the skin tone line in Final Cut Pro. It’s helpful for identifying and correcting the skin tones of actors in a shot.
The Q Bar The Q bar shows the proper angle at which the hue of the purple box in the color bars test pattern should appear. This purple box, which is located at the right of the 100-percent white reference square, is referred to as the +Quadrature signal, or Q for short.
For example, images with a red color cast have either a significantly stronger red histogram, or conversely, weaker green and blue histograms. In the following example, the red cast in the highlights can be seen clearly. The R, G, and B Histograms The R, G, and B histograms are simply isolated versions of each channel’s histogram graph. The Luma Histogram The Luma histogram shows you the relative strength of all luminance values in the video frame, from black to super-white.
The shape of the Histogram is also good for determining the amount of contrast in an image. A low-contrast image, such as the one shown above, has a concentrated clump of values nearer to the center of the graph. By comparison, a high-contrast image has a wider distribution of values across the entire width of the Histogram. The 3D Scope This scope displays an analysis of the color in the image projected within a 3D area.
The sides of the cube represent color of 100-percent saturation, while the center diagonal from the black to white corners represents 0-percent saturation. Darker colors fall closer to the black corner of the cube, while lighter colors fall closer to the diagonally opposing white corner of the cube.
The outer boundary does not identify the broadcast-legal limits of video, but it does illustrate the general range of color that’s available. For example, the following image has illegal saturation and brightness. If you turn on the Broadcast Safe settings, the distribution of color throughout the Y′CBCR color space becomes constricted.
The cones of the human eye that are sensitive to color have differing sensitivities to each of the primaries (red, green, and blue). As a result, a mathematically linear distribution of analyzed color is not necessarily the most accurate way to represent what we actually see.
This analysis can be valuable in situations where a specific feature within the image needs to be a specific value. For example, you can drag swatches across the frame if you’re trying to adjust a black, white, or colored background to be a uniform value, or if you have a product that’s required to be a highly specific color in every shot in which it appears. Note: These controls are visible only when the 3D scope is occupying an area of the Scopes window.
• Crosshairs identify that value’s location within the three-dimensional representation of color in the 3D scope itself. Each color target is numbered to identify its corresponding color swatch. • A vertical line appears within the Hue, Sat, and Lum curves of the Secondaries room, showing the position of the sample pixels relative to each curve.
The Primary In Room 9 The Primary In room provides your main interface for color correcting each shot. For every shot, this is where you begin, and in many cases this may be all you need. Simply speaking, primary corrections are color corrections that affect the entire image at once. The Primary In room provides a variety of controls that will be familiar to anyone who’s worked with other image editing and color correction plug-ins and applications.
• To adjust color in the highlights and midtones to correct for unwanted color casts due to a video camera's incorrect white balance settings, or lighting that was inappropriate for the type of film stock that was used. • To make changes to the overall color and contrast of an image in order to change the apparent time of day. For example, you might need to alter a shot that was photographed in the late afternoon to look as if it were shot at high noon.
Stage 1: Adjusting the Contrast of the Image Most colorists always begin by correcting the contrast of an image before moving on to adjusting its color. This adjustment can be made using the primary contrast controls, the Luma curve control, and the Master Lift, Master Gain, and Master Gamma controls in the Basic tab. Stage 2: Adjusting the Color Balance of the Image Once the black and white points of the image have been determined, the color balance is tackled.
Stage 4: Making More Specific Adjustments If you still feel that there are specific aspects of the image that need further adjustment after Stages 1 through 3, you can turn to the curves controls, which let you make targeted adjustments to the color and contrast of the image within specifically defined zones of tonality. Past a certain point, however, it may be easier to move on to the Secondaries room, covered in The Secondaries Room.
What Is the Contrast Ratio of a Shot? One of the most important adjustments you can make to an image is to change its contrast ratio. The contrast ratio of an image is the difference between the darkest pixel in the shadows (the black point) and the lightest pixel in the highlights (the white point). The contrast ratio of an image is easy to quantify by looking at the Waveform Monitor or Histogram set to Luma. High-contrast images have a wide distribution of values from the black point to the white point.
Using the Primary Contrast Controls The primary contrast controls consist of three vertical sliders that are used to adjust the black point, the distribution of midtones, and the white point of the image. Shadow Midtone Output: 0.00h 0.00s 0.501 Output: 0.00h 0.00s 0.001 Adjusts black point Highlight Adjusts midtones distribution Output: 0.00h 0.00s 1.001 Adjusts white point Each slider is a vertical gradient. Dragging down lowers its value, while dragging up raises its value.
Adjusting the Black Point with the Shadow Slider The behavior of the Shadow contrast slider depends on whether or not the Limit Shadow Adjustments preference (in the User Prefs tab of the Setup room) is turned on. (For more information, see User Interface Settings.) • If Limit Shadow Adjustments is turned off: Contrast adjustments with the Shadow slider are performed as a simple lift operation.
• If Limit Shadow Adjustments is turned on: The black point is raised, but the white point remains at 100 percent. This means that when you make any adjustments with the Shadow contrast slider, all midtones in the image are scaled between the new black point and 100 percent. Notice how the top of the slope in the Waveform Monitor stays in place while the black point changes.
Contrast adjustments to the shadows are one of the most frequent operations you'll perform. Lowering the blacks so that the darkest shadows touch 0 percent (seen in the bottom of the Waveform Monitor's graph or on the left of the Histogram's graph when either is set to Luma) deepens the shadows of your image. Deeper shadows can enrich the image and accentuate detail that was being slightly washed out before.
Here are two examples of using the Midtone contrast slider. The midtones have been lowered in the following image. Notice how the overall image has darkened, with more of the picture appearing in the shadows; however, the highlights are still bright, and the shadow detail has not been lost. The top and bottom of the gradient's slope in the Waveform Monitor remain more or less in place, and the slope itself curves downward, illustrating the nonlinear nature of the adjustment.
No matter what contrast ratio you decide to employ for a given shot, the Midtone slider is one of your main tools for adjusting overall image lightness when creating mood, adjusting the perceived time of day, and even when simply ensuring that the audience can see the subjects clearly.
If the highlights are too bright, you can lower the Highlight slider to bring them back down, without worrying about crushing the blacks. Overly bright highlights are often the case with images shot on video, where super-white levels above the broadcast legal limit of 100 percent frequently appear in the source media (as seen in the previous example).
While modest adjustments made with the Highlight slider won't affect the black point, they will have an effect on the midtones that is proportional to the amount of your adjustment. The influence of the Highlight slider falls off toward the shadows, but it's fair to say that adjustments made with the Highlight slider have a gradually decreasing effect on approximately the brightest 80 percent of the image.
Most images don't start out with the highest-contrast ratio possible for the shot. For example, even in well-exposed shots, video cameras often don't record black at 0 percent, instead recording black levels at around 3 to 4 percent. For this reason alone, small adjustments to lower the black point often impress without the need to do much more.
Of course, you also have the option to lower the contrast ratio of an image. This might be done as an adjustment to change the apparent time of day (dulling shadows while maintaining bright highlights for a noon-time look) or simply as a stylistic choice (lighter shadows and dimmer highlights for a softer look).
Contrast Affects Color Balance Control Operation There's another reason to expand or otherwise adjust the contrast ratio of an image before making any other color corrections. Every adjustment you make to the contrast of an image changes which portions of that image fall into which of the three overlapping tonal zones the color balance controls affect (covered in Using Color Balance Controls).
If you examine an image with a color cast in the Waveform Monitor set to Parade, you can often see the disproportionate levels of each channel that cause the color cast when you examine the tops of the waveforms (representing the highlights) and the bottoms of the waveforms (representing the shadows). Note: For clarity, the Parade scope is shown with the tinted red, green, and blue waveforms that appear when Monochrome Scopes is turned off in the User Prefs tab.
Using Color Balance Controls The color balance controls (which are sometimes referred to as hue wheels) work as virtual trackballs on the screen; however, they consist of three separate controls.
Using Color Balance Controls with a Control Surface The three color balance controls correspond to the three trackballs, or joyballs, on compatible control surfaces. Whereas you can only adjust one color balance control at a time using the onscreen controls with a mouse, you can adjust all three color balance controls simultaneously using a hardware control surface.
To correct this, you need to simultaneously lower the red channel and raise the blue channel, which you can do by dragging the Highlight color balance control. The easy way to remember how to make a correction of this nature is to drag the color balance control handle toward the secondary of the color that's too strong. In this case, the color cast is a reddish/orange, so dragging the color control in the opposite direction, toward bluish/cyan, rebalances the color channels in the appropriate manner.
About Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights Adjustments Like many other color correction environments, Color provides a set of three color balance controls for the specific adjustment of color that falls within each of three overlapping zones of image tonality. These tonal zones are the shadows, midtones, and highlights of the image. If you were to reduce the tonality of an image into these three zones, it might look something like the following illustration.
To prevent obvious banding or other artifacts, adjustments to the three tonal zones overlap broadly, with each color balance control's influence over the image diminishing gradually at the edges of each zone. This overlap is shown in the following graph. Shadow control influence Midtone influence Highlight control influence The ways in which these zones overlap are based on the OpenCDL standard, and their behavior is described below.
Shadows Color Adjustments The behavior of the Shadow color balance control depends on whether or not the Limit Shadow Adjustments preference is turned on. (For more information, see User Interface Settings.) • If Limit Shadow Adjustments is turned off: Color adjustments made using the Shadow control are performed as a simple add operation. (The color that's selected in the Shadow color control is simply added to that of every pixel in the image.
• If Limit Shadow Adjustments is turned on: A linear falloff is applied to color adjustments made with the Shadow control such that black receives 100 percent of the adjustment and white receives 0 percent of the adjustment. This is the method to use if you want to be able to selectively correct shadows while leaving highlights untouched.
This lets you make color adjustments that exclude the shadows and highlights in the image. For example, you could add a bit of blue to the midtones to cool off an actor's skin tone, while leaving your shadows deep and untinted and your highlights clean and pure. Highlights Color Adjustments Adjustments made using the Highlight color balance control apply a multiply operation to the image—the color that's selected in the Highlight color control is simply multiplied with that of every pixel in the image.
The Highlight color control is extremely useful for correcting color balance problems resulting from the dominant light source that's creating the highlights, without inadvertently tinting the shadows. In the following example, a bit of blue is added to the highlights to neutralize the orange from the tungsten lighting.
The following example shows this principal in action. If you adjust the Highlight color balance control to add blue to a linear gradient, you'll see the following preview. As you can see, this change affects both the whites and midtones.
The Curves Controls The curves controls, located underneath the color controls in the Primary In room, provide an additional method for adjusting the color and contrast of your images. If you're familiar with image editing applications such as Photoshop, chances are you've used curves before.
Adjustment Value Without any adjustments made, each curve control is a flat diagonal line; in other words, each source value equals its adjustment value, so no change is made. Source Value If part of a curve is raised by one or more control points, then the tonal area of the image that corresponds to that part of the curve is adjusted to a higher value. In other words, that part of the image is lightened.
Curve Editing Control Points and B-Splines By default, each curve has two control points. The bottom-left control point is the black point and the top-right control point is the white point for that channel. These two control points anchor the bottom and top of each curve. Curves in Color are edited using B-Splines, which use control points that aren't actually attached to the curve control to "pull" the curve into different shapes, like a strong magnet pulling thin wire.
To make curves sharper, move their control points closer together. To make curves more gentle, move the control points farther away from one another. The following procedures describe how to create, remove, and adjust the control points that edit curves controls. µ To add control points to a curve Click anywhere on the curve itself. µ To adjust a control point Drag it anywhere within the curve control area.
You can draw a general correspondence between the controls described in Contrast Adjustment Explained and the black point, midtones, and white point of the Luma curve. For example, moving the black point of the curve up raises the black point. Moving the white point of the curve down lowers the white point of the image. These two control points roughly correspond to the Shadow and Highlight contrast controls.
Moving the same control point down lowers the distribution of midtones, darkening the image while leaving the white and black points pinned in place. While these three control points can mimic the functionality of the Shadow, Midtone, and Highlight contrast controls, the true power of curves comes from the ability to add several control points to make targeted adjustments to the lightness of specific tonal regions in the image.
To make adjustments to a Luma curve 1 Before making any actual adjustments, pin down the midtones and shadows of the image by adding a control point to the curve without moving it either up or down. Adding control points to a portion of a curve that you don't want to adjust, and leaving them centered, is a great way to minimize the effect of other adjustments you're making to specific areas of an image.
That was a very targeted adjustment, but you can go further. Now that the sky is more subdued, you may want to brighten the highlights of the man's face by increasing the contrast in that part of the image. 3 Add a control point below the first control point you created, and drag it up until the man's face lightens. The man's face is now brighter, but the shadows are now a bit washed out.
What Is Color Contrast? Contrast in this documentation usually describes the differences between light and dark tones in the image. There is another way to describe contrast, however, and that is the contrast between different colors in an image. Color contrast is a complex topic, touching upon hue, color temperature, lightness, and saturation. To greatly simplify this diverse topic, color contrast can pragmatically refer to the difference in color that exists in different regions of the image.
To make a targeted color cast correction 1 Add a control point to the red curve near the bottom of the curve, and pull down until the red color cast becomes subdued. This should coincide with the bottom of the red waveform in the Parade scope lining up with the bottoms of the green and blue waveforms.
2 Add another control point near the top of the red curve, and drag it up until some red "fill" reappears on the side of the woman's face. This adjustment adds the red back to the woman's face, but now you've added red to the highlights of the key light source, as well. Since the key light for this shot is the sun coming in through the window, this effect is probably inappropriate and should be corrected.
At this point, the correction is finished. The red light appears in the fill light falling on the woman's face, while the shadows and very brightest highlights from the sun are nice and neutral, enhancing the color contrast of the image. Here is a before-and-after comparison so you can see the difference. The Basic Tab The Basic tab contains the controls for Saturation, as well as Master Lift, Gamma, and Gain parameters that let you make additional adjustments to the contrast of your image.
Saturation Controls Saturation describes the intensity of the color in an image. Image saturation is controlled using three parameters which, similar to the other controls in the Primary In room, let you make individual adjustments to different tonal zones of an image. Like the contrast and color controls, tonality-specific saturation adjustments fall off gently at the edges of each correction to ensure smooth transitions. • Saturation: This parameter controls the saturation of the entire image.
Beware of raising image saturation too much; this can result in colors that start to "bleed" into one another and a signal that's illegal for broadcast. A dramatically oversaturated image If the Broadcast Safe settings are turned on, the legality of the image will be protected, but you may see some flattening in particularly colorful parts of the image that results from the chroma of the image being limited at the specified value.
• Shadow Sat.: This parameter controls the saturation in the shadows of your image. You can selectively desaturate the shadows on your image to create deeper looking blacks and to eliminate inappropriate color in the shadows of your images for a more cinematic look. Shadow saturation turned up Shadow saturation turned all the way down Master Contrast Controls Three additional parameters also affect image contrast. For more information on contrast adjustments, see Contrast Adjustment Explained.
The Advanced Tab This tab contains another set of parameters for adjusting each of the three primary color channels within each of the three tonal zones. Additionally, there is a set of Printer Points controls for colorists who are used to optical color grading for film. For more information, see: • RGB Controls • Printer Points Controls RGB Controls These parameters provide per-channel control over contrast and color.
Printer Points Controls These parameters are available for colorists who are used to working with the printer points system for color timing film. Employed by film printing machines, the printer points system allows color correction to be performed optically, by shining filtered light through the conformed camera negatives to expose an intermediate positive print, in the process creating a single reel of film that is the color-corrected print.
The Printer Points Parameters These parameters control calibration and individual printer points for each color channel. • Printer Points Calibration: This value calibrates the printer points system according to the film gamma standard you wish to use. The default value of 7.8 is derived by multiplying the value 12 (points per ƒ-stop) by a value of 0.65 (the default film gamma standard used). 0.65 * 12 = 7.8. To recalibrate for a different film gamma value, insert your own gamma value into the equation.
2 Click Auto Balance. Once the analysis has been performed, the Red, Green, and Blue Lift and Gain parameters in the Advanced tab of the Primary In room are automatically set to contain the results of these adjustments. The result should render whites, grays, and blacks in the image completely neutral.
For clips that were imported with native color metadata, the RED tab provides access to the clip Color, Color Temp, and View metadata originally written by the RED camera. However, this metadata can also be overwritten during ingest using a custom color processing option in the Log and Transfer window.
• Kelvin: This value is set by options in the RED camera’s Color Temp menu, along with Tint. This setting is designed to compensate for the “warmth” of the available lighting to keep white elements of the scene looking neutral. Low Kelvin values will compensate for “warmer” lighting (such as tungsten), while higher Kelvin values compensate for “cool” lighting (such as noon-day sun or overcast days). Two user-selectable options set Kelvin to predetermined values: Tungsten (3,200K), and Daylight (5,600K).
• REDlog: A nonlinear, logarithmic gamma setting that maps the native 12-bit RED image data to a 10-bit curve. The blacks and midtones that occupy the lowest 8 bits of the video signal maintain the same precision as in the original 12-bit data, while the highlights that occupy the highest 4 bits are compressed. While this reduces the precision of detail in the highlights, this is a relative loss as the linearly encoded data has an overabundance of precision.
The Secondaries Room 10 Secondary color correction controls let you isolate a portion of an image and selectively adjust it without affecting the rest of the picture. Once you’ve made your initial corrections using the Primary In room, the next step in adjusting any shot is to move on to the Secondaries room to make more targeted adjustments. This chapter covers the following: • What Is the Secondaries Room Used For? (p. 258) • Where to Start in the Secondaries Room? (p.
What Is the Secondaries Room Used For? The Secondaries room has been designed for maximum flexibility. While its central purpose is to facilitate targeted corrections to specific features of the image, it can be used for a variety of tasks. • Isolating areas for targeted corrections: This is the primary purpose of the Secondaries room.
• Digitally relighting areas of the image: The same feature can be used in a different way, drawing custom shapes to isolate regions of the image and add beams or pools of light where previously there were none. This can come in handy in situations where the lighting is a bit flat, and you want to add some interest to a feature in the scene.
All these methods are described in this chapter. Once you’ve selected a region of the image to work on, the Control pop-up menu lets you apply separate operations to the inside and outside of the selection.
The state of the Enabled button is also keyframable. This means you can use keyframes to control this button to turn a secondary effect on and off as the shot plays. For more information on keyframing, see Keyframing Secondary Corrections. Choosing a Region to Correct Using the HSL Qualifiers One of the most common ways of isolating a feature for targeted correction is to use the HSL qualifiers (so named because they qualify part of the image for correction) to key on the portion you want to color correct.
The HSL controls work as a chroma keyer. By selecting ranges of hue, saturation, and lightness, you create a matte that is then used to define the region to which corrections are applied. Everything outside the matte remains unaffected (although you can also specify which portion of the matte you want to adjust, the inside or the outside). Original image HSL qualifier settings Matte Corrected image The HSL Qualifier controls always sample image data from the original, uncorrected image.
To use the eyedropper to pull a secondary key 1 Click the eyedropper. The eyedropper becomes highlighted, and crosshairs appear superimposed over the image in the preview and broadcast monitors. You use these crosshairs to sample the HSL values from pixels in the image. 2 Move the mouse to position the crosshairs on a pixel with the color you want to key on, then click once to sample color from a single pixel.
In addition to sampling individual color values, you can also use the eyedropper to sample an entire range of values. µ To use the eyedropper to sample a range of values Click the eyedropper, then drag the crosshairs over the range of pixels you want to sample. The HSL controls expand to include the entire range of hues, saturation, and lightness in the pixels you sampled. As a result, the keyed matte in the Previews tab is much more inclusive.
Each qualifier has three sets of handles—center, range, and tolerance—which correspond to three knobs on compatible control surfaces. These handles can also be manipulated directly onscreen using the mouse. Center Range Tolerance HSL Qualifiers Explained To make HSL adjustments efficiently, you should have an in-depth understanding of the nature of each type of adjustment. • H (hue): Defines the range of colors that contribute to the key.
• Tolerance: An outer pair of handles defines a range of values that surround the range values to create falloff, giving a soft edge to the keyed matte. These are the lighter gray pixels seen in the matte. Adjusting the HSL Controls This section explains how to adjust the HSL controls. µ To adjust the center point for any qualifier Drag anywhere within the center of the two Range handles.
µ To adjust the Tolerance handles Drag anywhere outside of the Center, Range, and Tolerance handles to widen or narrow the tolerance. You can also make asymmetric adjustments to tolerance by holding down the Shift key while dragging. The Color Swatches A set of six swatches underneath the HSL qualifiers lets you automatically set the Hue qualifier to a narrow range that’s centered on one of the primary red, green, and blue, and secondary cyan, magenta, and yellow colors.
Note: You can manually set the key blur to even higher values by typing them directly into the Key Blur field. No key blur With key blur One of the nice things about keying for color correction is that, unlike keying to create a visual effects composite, you don’t always have to create keyed mattes with perfect edges or completely solid interiors.
Note: The Matte Preview Mode and Vignette Outline appear in the preview display of the Scopes window only when the Previews tab in the Secondaries room is selected. Matte Preview Mode buttons Vignette outline Vignette preview HSL Qualifier Matte preview • Vignette preview: The image on the left (above) shows you the position and size of the currently selected vignette shape, when the Vignette button is enabled.
• Matte only: Shows the actual matte being used to limit the effect. This is similar to the image displayed in the HSL Qualifier preview display, except that it shows the sum of the vignette mask and the HSL mask, as well as the results of the mask as it’s modified by the Key Blur parameter.
Vignettes can also be used to select large regions of the frame for brightening or darkening. One common example of this is to use a shape to surround a region of the image you want to draw the viewer’s attention to, switch the Control pop-up menu to Outside, and darken the background outside of this shape using the contrast sliders to make the subject “pop out” more, visually.
Note: If you have a compatible control surface, you can also use its controls to customize the vignette. See Setting Up a Control Surface for more information. • Vignette button: This button turns the vignette on or off for that tab. • Use Tracker pop-up menu: If you’ve analyzed one or more motion trackers in the current project, you can choose which tracker to use to automatically animate the position of the vignette using this pop-up menu.
• Size: Enlarges or shrinks the shape. • Aspect: Adjusts the width-to-height ratio of the shape. Using the Onscreen Controls to Adjust Vignette Shapes The Angle, X Center, Y Center, Softness, Size, and Aspect parameters can all be adjusted via onscreen controls in the image on the left of the Previews tab.
µ µ To rotate the vignette Right-click or Control-click any of the four corners of the vignette and drag to rotate it to the left or right. To adjust the softness of the vignette Middle-click and drag to blur the edges of the vignette. This adjustment modifies the Softness parameter. The degree of softness is visualized in the Previews tab with a pair of concentric circles. The inner circle shows where the edge blurring begins, and the outer circle shows where the edge blurring ends, along with the shape.
3 Click in the Geometry preview area to add control points outlining the feature you want to isolate, then click the first control point you created to close the shape and finish adding points. The shapes you draw in the Geometry room default to B-Spline shapes, which use control points that are unattached to the shape they create to push and pull the shape into place (similar to the B-Splines used by the curves controls in the Primary In and Out rooms).
5 To feather the edge of the shape, increase the value of the Softness parameter. Two additional editable shapes appear to the inside and outside of the shape you drew. The inner shape shows where the feathering begins, while the outer shape shows the very edge of the feathered shape. If necessary, each border can be independently adjusted. 6 As an optional organizational step, you can type an identifying name into the Shape Name field, and press Return to accept the change.
When you use a user shape, the vignette controls in the secondary tab to which it’s assigned become disabled. If at any point you need to edit the shape, you must do so in the Geometry room; the secondary corrections that use that shape will automatically update to reflect your changes. Using Secondary Keying and Vignettes Together When you turn on the vignette controls while also using the HSL qualifiers to create a secondary key, the vignette limits the matte that’s created by the key.
• Outside: When set to Outside, all adjustments you make in that tab affect the exterior of the secondary matte (the area in black). Making a darkening adjustment to the outside of a softly feathered circle matte that surrounds the entire frame is one way of creating a traditional vignette effect. Before outside adjustment After • Copy Inside to Outside: Copies the correction that’s currently applied to the inside of the matte to the outside as well.
These curves work much differently than the curves controls of the Primary In room. Each of the secondary curves controls defaults to a flat horizontal line running halfway through the graph area. The visible spectrum is represented along the surface of the curve by a wrap-around gradient, the ends of which wrap around to the other side of the curve.
For example, if you add four control points to the Saturation curve to lower the green-through-blue range of the curve, you can smoothly desaturate everything that’s blue and green throughout the frame, while leaving all other colors intact. Before After Sat curve adjustment One of the nicest aspects of these controls is that they allow for extremely specific adjustments to narrow or wide areas of color, with exceptionally smooth transitions from the corrected to the uncorrected areas of the image.
The secondary curves use B-Splines, just like the primary curves controls. In fact, you add and edit control points on the secondary curves in exactly the same way. For more information, see Curve Editing Control Points and B-Splines. Important: Adjustments made using the secondary curves cannot be limited using the vignette or HSL controls. Using the Secondary Curves This section provides examples of how to use each of the three kinds of secondary curves.
The Sat Curve Tab Raising the Saturation curve increases the saturation in that portion of the spectrum, while lowering it decreases the saturation. This is a powerful tool for creating stylized looks that enhance or subdue specific colors throughout the frame.
The Lum Curve Tab Raising the Luminance curve lightens the colors in that portion of the spectrum, while lowering it darkens them. This is a good tool to use when you need to make contrast adjustments to specific regions of color. Before After Lum curve adjustment Reset Controls in the Secondaries Room The Secondaries room has two reset buttons, which are used to reset adjustments made in the secondary tabs. • Reset Secondary button: Resets only the currently open secondary tab.
The Color FX Room 11 When the primary and secondary color correction controls aren’t enough to achieve the look you need, Color FX lets you create sophisticated effects using a node-based interface. The Color FX room is a node-based effects environment. It’s been designed as an open-ended toolkit that you can use to create your own custom looks by processing an image with combinations of operations that take the form of nodes.
The Color FX Interface Explained The Color FX room is divided into four main areas. Node list Node view Parameters Color FX bin The functionality of these areas is as follows: • Node list: A list at the left of the Color FX room contains every image processing operation that you can add. Some of these nodes are single input, performing that operation to whatever image is input into them, while others are multi-input, taking multiple versions of the image and combining them using different methods.
• Adjusting Node Parameters • Bypassing Nodes • Cutting, Copying, and Pasting Nodes How Node Trees Work In the Color image processing pipeline, the Color FX room processes the image as it appears after whatever corrections have been applied in the Primary In and Secondaries rooms. Unattached node inputs automatically connect to the state of the image as it’s affected by the Primary In and Secondaries rooms.
The very last node in any node tree must be the Output node. This is the node that sends the image that’s been processed by the Color FX room back into the Color image processing pipeline. If there is no Output node, or if the Output node is disconnected, then the node tree will have no effect on that shot, and its effect will not be rendered by the Render Queue. Note: A CFX bar will only appear in the grades track of the Timeline for clips with connected Output nodes.
Any node’s output, on the other hand, can be connected to multiple nodes in order to feed duplicate versions of the image as it appears at that point in the tree to multiple operations. When you position the pointer over any node’s input, a small tooltip appears that displays its name. This helps you to identify which input to connect a node to so you can achieve the result you want.
New nodes always appear disconnected in the Node view. µ µ To insert a new node between two nodes that are already connected Drag a node from the Node list on top of the noodle connecting any two nodes, and drop it when the noodle turns blue. To automatically attach a new node to the input or output of a previously created node Drag a node from the Node list so that the hand pointer is directly on top of a disconnected input or output, then drop it.
To disconnect a node from the one above it Do one of the following: µ Click the input of any node with a connected noodle to disconnect it. µ Drag a noodle from the input of the node you want to disconnect to any empty area of the Node view. Tip: If you want to eliminate the effect a node is having without deleting or disconnecting it, you can turn on its Bypass button, at the top of the Parameters tab. For more information, see Bypassing Nodes.
Selected nodes appear highlighted in cyan, and if a selected node has any parameters, they appear to the right, ready for editing. You can edit node parameters the same way you edit parameters in any other room. You can also choose the point in a node tree at which you want to view the image. µ To show the image being processed at any node in the Node view Double-click the node you want to view.
As you fine-tune this effect, you want to adjust the amount the black-and-white image contributes to the final effect by adjusting the Curve node, but you need to view the output of the Multiply node in order to see how far to make the adjustment. In this case, you double-click the Multiply node so that it becomes the viewed node (highlighted in yellow). Then, click the Curve node once to load its parameters into the Parameters tab. (The node becomes highlighted in cyan.
Bypassed nodes are outlined with an orange dotted line. If you want to suspend the effect of an entire node tree without deleting it or individually turning on each node’s Bypass button, you must disconnect the Output node entirely. Cutting, Copying, and Pasting Nodes You can cut, copy, and paste selected nodes in the Color FX room. Using the Copy and Paste operations, you can duplicate one or more nodes whenever necessary.
Using Single Input Nodes The simplest use of this room is to apply one or two single-input nodes to create a stylized effect. In this case, all you need to do is add the nodes you want to use, connect them together in the order in which you want them applied, and then add an Output node to the very end.
In one of the simplest examples, you can tint an image by attaching a Color node (which generates a user-definable color) to one input of a Multiply layering node. This adjustment multiplies the color with the corrected image. (Remember, disconnected inputs always link to the corrected image data.) Because of the way image multiplication works, the lightest areas of the image are tinted, while progressively darker areas are less tinted, and the black areas stay black.
The Duotone, Curve, and Blur nodes tint, darken, and blur the image prior to adding it to the corrected image (coming in via input 2), and the result is a diffusion effect with hot, glowing highlights. Math Layering Nodes Explained The layering nodes shown in Using Layering Nodes use simple math to combine two differently modified versions of the image together.
Difference The pixels from the image that’s connected to Source 1 are subtracted from the pixels from the image that’s connected to Source 2. Black pixels have a value of 0, so any color minus black results in no change to the Source 1 image. The order in which the inputs are connected matters. This node is useful for darkening the Source 1 image based on the brightness of the Source 2 image. Multiply The pixels from each input image are multiplied together.
Any grayscale image can be used to create a matte that you can connect to the Alpha input, for a variety of effects.
The Blur node blurs the corrected image, but the matte image that’s connected to the Alpha input limits its effect to the areas of the image that don’t include the image detail around the edges that were isolated using the Edge Detector node. As you can see, the image that’s connected to the Alpha input of the Alpha Blend node limits the way the Source 1 and Source 2 inputs are combined. This is but one example of the power of the Alpha Blend node. You can use this node to limit many different effects.
If you don’t process each field separately, you may encounter unexpected image artifacts, especially when using filtering and transform nodes such as Blur, Sharpen, Stretch, and Translate. Saving Favorite Effects in the Color FX Bin When you’ve created a Color FX effect you really like, you can save it for future use using the Color FX bin. This bin works the same way as the corrections bins in every other room.
2 Do one of the following: • Double-click the effect in the bin. • Select a saved effect, then click the Load button underneath the bin. • Drag the saved effect onto the selected shots in the Timeline. The effect is then applied to all selected shots in the Timeline. For more information on saving and managing corrections, see Managing Corrections and Grades. Node Reference Guide This node reference guide contains a brief description of each node that appears in the Node list.
Blend This node mixes two inputs together based on the Blend parameter. The order in which the inputs are connected does not matter. Blend has one parameter: • Blend: When set to 0, only Input 1 is output. When set to .5, Input 1 and Input 2 are blended together equally and output. When set to 1, only Input 2 is output. Darken Emphasizes the darkest parts of each input. Overlapping pixels from each image are compared, and the darkest pixel is preserved.
B&W Desaturates the image to produce a monochrome image consisting of only the Luma component. This is done using very specific math, adding together 0.299 of the red channel, 0.587 of the green channel, and 0.114 of the blue channel to arrive at the final monochrome result. Bleach Bypass Raises the contrast and desaturates the image.
Edge Detector A Convolution filter that boosts image contrast in such a way as to reduce the image to the darkest outlines that appear throughout. Edge Detector has three parameters: • B&W: Desaturates the resulting image. Useful when using this node to generate mattes. • Scale: Adjusts the white point. Lowering Scale helps increase contrast and crush midtone values to emphasize the outlines. • Bias: Adjusts overall contrast. Lowering Bias increases contrast, while raising it lowers contrast.
• Grain Size: Increases the size of each “grain” of noise that’s added. Keep in mind that the size of the film grain is relative to the resolution of your project. Film grain of a particular size applied to a standard definition shot will appear “grainier” than the same-sized grain applied to a high definition shot. • Contrast: Makes an “s-curve” adjustment to contrast, which crushes the shadows and boosts the highlights, while leaving the midtones centered.
Grain Reduction Reduces grain and noise in an image by averaging adjacent pixels in that frame according to the values specified in the Master, Red, Green, and Blue Scale parameters. Edge detection can be used to preserve sharpness in areas of high-contrast detail via the Edge Retention parameter, and a sharpening operation can be applied after grain reduction to boost overall detail.
• Green Lift: Adjusts the green channel only, enabling color correction based on a lift adjustment for that channel. • Blue Lift: Adjusts the blue channel only, enabling color correction based on a lift adjustment for that channel. Maximum Averages adjacent pixels together (how many is based on the Brush Size parameter) to produce a single, larger pixel based on the brightest value in that pixel group. Larger values result in flattened, almost watercolor-like versions of the image.
Scale RGB Expands or contracts the overall contrast ratio of a shot, from the black point to the white point, centering the midpoint of this operation at a percentage of image tonality that you specify. This node has two parameters: • Scale: The amount by which to expand or contract the overall contrast ratio in the shot. This is a multiplicative operation, so a value of 1 produces no change, while larger values increase the contrast ratio, and smaller values decrease the contrast ratio.
Translate Offsets the image relative to the upper-right corner. This node has two parameters: • Horizontal Offset: Moves the image left. • Vertical Offset: Moves the image down. Utility Nodes The following nodes don’t combine images or create effects on their own. Instead, they output color channel information or extract matte imagery in different ways. All these nodes are meant to be used in combination with other layering and effects nodes to create more complex interactions.
RGB Split Outputs the red, green, and blue color channels individually, depending on which button you click. Each grayscale color channel can then be independently manipulated with different node tree branches, before being reassembled using the RGB Merge node. This node has three checkboxes: • Red: Outputs the red channel. • Green: Outputs the green channel. • Blue: Outputs the blue channel. Vignette Creates a simple square or circle vignette.
The Primary Out Room 12 The Primary Out room provides an additional set of controls for overall color correction, but it can also be used as a tool to trim the grades applied to a selected group of shots. This chapters covers the different uses of the Primary Out room, which shares the same controls as the Primary In room. For more information about primary color correction controls, see The Primary In Room. This chapter covers the following: • What Is the Primary Out Room Used For? (p.
Making Extra Corrections Using the Primary Out Room The Color interface was designed for flexibility. The functionality of each of the color correction rooms overlaps broadly, and although each room has been arranged to optimize certain types of operations, you can perform corrections using whichever controls you prefer. In many cases, colorists like to split up different steps of the color correction process among different rooms. This is detailed in Managing a Shot’s Corrections Using Multiple Rooms.
As the processed image makes its way from the Primary In to the Secondaries to the Color FX rooms, the corrections in each room are applied to the image that’s handed off from the previous room. Since the Primary Out room is the very last correction room in every grade, it processes the image that’s output from the Color FX room. You can take advantage of this to apply overall corrections to the post-processed image.
Note: If Enable Clipping and Broadcast Safe are both on, the lowest of the two standards is applied. These controls are used to adjust color channel ceiling settings: • Enable Clipping: Enables the Ceiling Red/Green/Blue controls. • Ceiling Red: Sets the maximum allowable chroma in the red channel. All values above this level will be set to this level. • Ceiling Green: Sets the maximum allowable chroma in the green channel. All values above this level will be set to this level.
Managing Corrections and Grades 13 Color provides many tools for managing the corrections and grades that you've applied. You can work even faster by saving, copying, and applying corrections and grades you've already created to multiple shots at once.
Corrections are adjustments that are made within a single room. You have the option to save individual corrections into the bins available in the Primary In and Out, Secondaries, and Color FX rooms. Once saved, corrections can be applied to one or more shots in your project without changing the settings of any other rooms.
To save a correction from the current shot into the current room’s bin 1 Move the playhead to the shot with a correction you want to save. 2 Click in the File field underneath the corrections bin, enter a name for the saved correction, and press Return. (This step is optional.) 3 Click Save. The correction is saved into the current room's bin with a thumbnail of the shot it was saved from.
2 Drag the correction bar (in the grades track of the Timeline) of the shot you want to save to the corrections bin. Tip: To overwrite a previously saved correction with a new one using the same name, select the correction you want to overwrite before saving the new grade, then click Replace when a warning appears. This is useful when you’ve updated a grade that you previously saved.
2 Move the playhead to the shot with a grade you want to save. 3 Select the grade that you want to save by clicking it in the Timeline. 4 Click in the File field underneath the corrections bin, enter a name for the saved correction, and press Return. (This step is optional.) 5 Click the Save button (in the bottom-right corner of the Grades bin). The grade is saved to the Grades bin. The grade is saved with a thumbnail from the shot it was saved from.
To save any shot’s grade 1 Click in the File field underneath the corrections bin, enter a name for the saved correction, and press Return. (This step is optional.) 2 Drag the grade bar of any shot you want to save into the Grades bin. Tip: To overwrite a previously saved grade with a new one using the same name, select the grade you want to overwrite before saving the new grade, then click Replace when a warning appears. This is useful when you’ve updated a grade that you previously saved.
The selected correction or grade is deleted, both from Color and from disk. This operation cannot be undone. Organizing Saved Corrections and Grades with Folders Saved corrections and grades are available to every project you open. For this reason, you may find it useful to save your corrections and grades into folders within each room's bin.
Every time you create a folder in a bin, you also create a subdirectory within the saved correction directory for that room within the /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Color directory. To save a correction or grade into a folder 1 Move the playhead to the shot with a correction or grade you want to save. 2 Double-click a folder in the corrections or Grades bin to open it. The Directory pop-up menu updates to display the directory path in the Finder of the currently open folder.
2 Do one of the following: • In the Grades or corrections bin, double-click the correction or grade you want to apply. • Select a saved correction or grade in the Grades or corrections bin, then click the Load button underneath the bin. • Drag the saved correction or grade from the Grades or corrections bin, then drop it onto the selected shots in the Timeline. The correction or grade is then applied to all selected shots in the Timeline.
To add a new grade to a shot Do one of the following: µ µ Control-click or right-click a grade, then choose Add New Grade from the shortcut menu. Move the playhead to the shot you want to add a new grade to, then press Control-1 through Control-4. If a grade corresponding to the number of the grade you entered doesn't already exist, one will be created. Whenever a new grade is added, the grades track expands, and the new grade becomes the selected grade.
µ To copy a correction from one shot to another Drag a single correction bar in the grades track of the Timeline to the shot you want to copy it to. The shot you drag the correction onto becomes highlighted, and after you drop the correction, the current grade for that shot appears with the same grade bar. Note: When you copy individual corrections, secondary corrections overwrite other secondary corrections of the same number.
µ To copy a grade to another grade in the same shot Drag a grade bar in the grades track of the Timeline onto another grade bar for the same shot. The copied grade overwrites all previous corrections. Tip: This is a great way to save a shot's grade at a good state before continuing to experiment with it. If you don't like your changes, you can easily switch back to the original grade. You can also drag a corrections or grade bar to copy it to multiple selected shots.
3 Release the mouse button to copy the correction or grade to the selected shots. Keep in mind the following rules when dragging corrections and grades onto multiple selected shots: • Dragging onto one of several selected shots copies that correction or grade to the currently selected grade of each shot in the selection.
• Dragging onto an alternate grade of one of several selected shots copies that correction or grade into the alternate grade of the shot you dropped it onto, but it’s copied into the currently selected grade of every other shot in the selection.
• Dragging onto a shot that’s not part of the current selection only copies that correction or grade to that shot.
• The current shot at the position of the playhead is not included in a multishot Copy operation unless it’s specifically selected (with a cyan highlight). Before After Using the Copy To Buttons in the Primary Rooms The Copy To Selected and Copy To All buttons in the Primary In and Primary Out rooms are powerful tools for applying Primary In room or Primary Out room corrections to other shots in your project.
4 Click Copy To Selected. The grade at the current position of the playhead is copied to all selected shots. To copy a primary correction to every single shot in the Timeline 1 Move the playhead to a shot with a grade you want to copy to other shots in your program. 2 Set the grade used by that shot to the one you want to copy. 3 Click Copy To All. The grade at the current position of the playhead is copied to every shot in your program.
Using the Copy Grade and Paste Grade Memory Banks You can use the Copy Grade and Paste Grade commands to copy grades from one shot and paste them into others. Five memory banks are available for copying and pasting grades. This means that you can copy up to five different grades—with one in each memory bank—and then paste different grades into different shots as necessary. To copy a grade into one of the five memory banks 1 Move the playhead to the shot you want to copy a grade from.
To mark a grade as the beauty grade 1 Move the playhead to the shot on which you want to set a beauty grade. 2 Select the grade you want to set as the beauty grade. 3 Do one of the following: • Choose Grade > Set Beauty Grade. • Press Shift-Control-B. • Move the pointer into the Timeline area, then press B. The currently selected grade turns rust red to show that it's the beauty grade. You can change which grade is set as the beauty grade at any time, or you can clear beauty grade designations altogether.
All corrections made with the Primary In, Secondaries, Color FX, and Primary Out rooms are disabled, and the grades track of the Timeline turns red to indicate that all grades are currently disabled. Note: Pan & Scan settings in the Geometry room remain enabled even when grades are disabled. Managing Grades in the Shots Browser The Shots browser provides a different way to navigate and organize the shots in your program, in a more nonlinear fashion than the Timeline allows.
Navigating and Arranging Shots in Icon View When you're working on a project with many shots, it can help to scroll around and zoom in and out to find the shots you're looking for. µ To scroll around the Shots browser when in icon view Middle-click anywhere within the Shots browser, then drag in the direction you want to scroll. To zoom in to or out of the Shots browser when in icon view Do one of the following: µ µ Press the Control key and drag with the left mouse button.
µ To select the grade used by a shot Double-click the grade you want to select. The selected grade turns blue, while the unselected grades remain dark gray. Note: Grades that have been rendered are colored green. Selecting Shots in the Shots Browser in Icon View When in icon view, you can select one or more shots in the Timeline just as you can when in list view. Additionally, you can select which grade a shot uses by expanding a shot to reveal all its grades.
µ To select a shot Click the shot's name bar, underneath its icon. Selected shots appear with a cyan highlight over their name bars, and are simultaneously selected in the Timeline. µ To select multiple shots Command-click the name bars of all the shots you want to select. Grouping and Ungrouping Shots A group is an organizational construct that's available in the Shots browser only when it's in icon view.
• Set the Shots browser to list view, then Shift-click or Command-click to select a range of contiguous or noncontiguous shots. • Use the Find field, or click a column header to sort the list view, to help you identify the shots you want to group together. 2 Set the Shots browser to icon view. 3 Press G. A group is created, and a group node appears with blue connection lines showing all the shots that belong to that group. Once created, you can rearrange the shot icons as necessary to clean up the browser.
A group is created, and a group node appears with blue connection lines showing all the shots that belong to that group. µ µ To add a shot to an already existing group Right-click anywhere on a shot's name bar, then drag a connection line to the node of the group you want to add it to. To ungroup a collection of grouped clips Select the group node you want to delete, then press Delete or Forward Delete. The node and its connection lines disappear, leaving the shots ungrouped.
When you release the mouse button, that shot will no longer be connected to the group. For more information on working with groups once you’ve created them, see Working with Groups. Working with Groups Once you've created one or more groups of shots, you can use the group node to show and hide the shots that are connected to the group, and to copy grades and corrections to every shot that's connected to that group. When a group is collapsed, the shots that are connected to that group are hidden.
Important: You can only copy corrections and grades from the Timeline to groups in the Shots browser. µ To copy a grade to a group Drag a grade bar from the Timeline onto any group node. The grade you dragged overwrites the currently selected grade of every shot in that group. Unselected grades are not affected. Managing a Shot’s Corrections Using Multiple Rooms Color's interface for correcting and manipulating the color of your shots is extremely flexible.
This is especially true for projects where the director of photography and the crew worked to achieve the desired look during the shoot, leaving you with the tasks of balancing the shots in each scene and making whatever adjustments are necessary to simply expand and perfect the contrast and color that you’ve been provided. Grading Across Multiple Rooms • You can also distribute the different color correction steps outlined above among multiple rooms.
Stage 3: Applying a Creative Look to the Scene Now that the shots have been optimized and the scenes balanced, you can focus on specific creative issues using tabs 2 through 8 in the Secondaries room. You might use these tabs to apply a creative look, or you could go further and make specific digital relighting adjustments. At this point in the process, you can also use the Color FX room to further extend your creative possibilities.
Keyframing 14 You can create animated grades and other effects using keyframes in the Timeline. The keyframing mechanism in Color is simple, but effective. It’s designed to let you quickly animate color corrections, vignettes, Color FX nodes, Pan & Scan effects, and user shapes with a minimum number of steps. This chapter covers the following: • Why Keyframe an Effect? (p. 347) • Keyframing Limitations (p. 347) • How Keyframing Works in Different Rooms (p. 349) • Working with Keyframes in the Timeline (p.
You Can’t Keyframe Clips That Use Speed Effects While color correcting projects that were sent from Final Cut Pro, there’s a limitation to shots with speed effects applied to them. While they can be adjusted in any of the rooms in Color like any other shot, speed-effected shots cannot be keyframed in Color.
How Keyframing Works in Different Rooms You can keyframe effects in the Primary In, Secondaries, Color FX, Primary Out and Geometry rooms. Each room has its own separate set of keyframes, stored in individual tracks of the keyframe graph of the Timeline. These tracks are hidden until you start adding keyframes within a particular room, which makes that room's keyframe track visible.
Note: How color adjustments are animated depends on the Radial HSL Interpolation setting in the User Prefs tab of the Setup room. In nearly all cases, you'll get the best results by leaving this option turned off. For more information, see The User Preferences Tab. Keyframing Secondary Corrections Like parameters and controls in the Primary In and Out rooms, most of the color correction parameters and controls in the Secondaries room can be animated.
Keyframing User Shapes You can keyframe user shapes created in the Shapes tab of the Geometry room to rotoscope (isolate by tracing frame by frame) moving subjects and areas of the frame for detailed correction in the Secondaries room. Note: You can only keyframe shapes after they have been assigned to a tab in the Secondaries room. Working with Keyframes in the Timeline It takes a minimum of two keyframes to animate an effect of any kind.
To move the playhead from one keyframe to the next in the currently open room Do one of the following: µ µ µ Press Option–Left Arrow to move to the next keyframe to the left. Press Option–Right Arrow to move to the next keyframe to the right. Control-click in the keyframe graph of the Timeline, then choose Next Keyframe or Previous Keyframe from the shortcut menu. Keyframes at the current position of the playhead are highlighted. You can delete keyframes you don't need.
µ To move a keyframe while updating the previewed image Press Option while dragging a keyframe to the left or right. If you need to, you can also make the keyframe graph in the Timeline taller, to make it easier to see what you're doing. For more information, see Customizing the Timeline Interface. You can also use the keyframe graph to navigate to a room with keyframed effects. µ To open the room corresponding to a keyframe track Double-click any keyframe track in the Timeline.
• Constant: Constant keyframes perform no interpolation whatsoever. All effects change abruptly to the next keyframed state when the playhead reaches the next constant keyframe. Constant keyframes are useful when you want an effect to change immediately to another state, such as increasing the contrast to simulate a sudden lightning strike flashing through a window. By default, all new keyframes that you create are smooth, although you can change a keyframe's interpolation at any time.
The Geometry Room 15 The Geometry room provides a way to zoom in to shots, create pan and scan effects, draw custom mattes for vignetted secondary operations, and track moving subjects to automate the animation of vignettes and shapes. The Geometry room is divided into an image preview (which contains the onscreen controls for all of the functions in this room) and three tabs to the right. Each tab has different tools to perform specific functions.
The Pan & Scan Tab The Pan & Scan tab lets you apply basic transformations to the shots in your projects. You can use these transformations to blow images up, reposition them to crop out unwanted areas of the frame, and rotate shots to create canted angles. You can also use pan and scan effects to reframe each shot when you’re downconverting a high-resolution widescreen project to a standard definition 4:3 frame.
• When outputting 2K and 4K Cineon and DPX image sequences, Pan & Scan transformations are processed within Color along with your color corrections when rendering the output media. • If your project uses 4K native RED QuickTime media, then Pan & Scan transformations are processed within Color, whether you’re rendering DPX/Cineon image sequences for film output, or QuickTime media to send back to Final Cut Pro.
Using the Onscreen Controls The onscreen controls for the Pan & Scan tab consist of an outer bounding box that represents the scaled output with four handles at each corner and a pair of action safe and title safe indicators within. By default, the onscreen control is the same size as the resolution of your project. The onscreen controls are designed to work in conjunction with the image that’s displayed by the preview and broadcast displays.
Because the onscreen control works by selecting a portion of the static source image, the onscreen control rotates in the opposite direction of the effect, but the preview and broadcast displays show the correct result. µ To reposition a shot Drag anywhere within the red bounding box. The onscreen control moves to select a different portion of the shot, and the preview and broadcast displays show the result. Note: There are no onscreen controls for the Aspect Ratio, Flip, and Flop controls.
Using the Pan & Scan Parameters Each of the adjustments you make using the onscreen controls is mirrored and recorded numerically by the parameters in the Pan & Scan tab to the right. If you want, you can directly manipulate these parameters by either entering new values into the fields or by holding down the middle mouse button and dragging within a field to adjust it using the virtual slider. • Position X and Y: Controls the portion of the image that’s viewed when you reposition the onscreen control.
If necessary, you can animate Pan & Scan effects in one of two ways: • Using keyframes: You can keyframe all the Pan & Scan transform controls. For more information on keyframing in Color, see Keyframing. • Using a tracker: You can also use motion tracking to automatically animate a Pan & Scan effect; for example, to move to follow a character who is walking across the screen.
Controls in the Shapes Tab The Shapes tab has the following controls: • Current Secondary pop-up menu: Lists which of the eight available tabs in the Secondaries room is the currently selected secondary operation, but you can choose any secondary tab from this pop-up menu prior to making an assignment. When you click the Attach button, this is the secondary tab that the currently selected shape will be attached to.
• Shapes list: This list shows all the unattached shapes that are available in a project, as well as the shapes that have been assigned to the current shot. Clicking a shape in this list displays it in the image preview area and updates all the parameters in the Shapes tab with the selected shape’s settings. • Name column: The name of the shape, editable in the Shape Name field. • ID column: An identification number for the shape.
• Main/Inner/Outer buttons: These buttons let you choose which points you want to select when dragging a selection box in the image preview, without locking any of the other control points. You can always edit any control point, no matter what this control is set to. About the Shapes List The Shapes list contains an entry for every unattached shape in the current project, as well as for all of the attached shapes used by the shot at the current position of the playhead.
B-Splines use control points that aren’t actually attached to the shape’s surface to “pull” the shape into different directions, like a strong magnet pulling thin wire. For example, here’s a curve with three control points: The control point hovering above the shape is pulling the entire shape toward itself, while the surrounding control points help to keep other parts of the shape in place. The complexity of a shape is defined by how many control points are exerting influence on that shape.
5 Enter a name into the Shape Name field, then press Return. (This step is optional.) 6 Click the Attach button to use the shape in the secondary tab. A duplicate of the shape you just drew appears in the list, which shows the number of the grade and the secondary tab to which it’s attached. (The original shape you drew remains in the list above, ready to be recycled at a future time.) At this point, you’re ready to use that shape in the Secondaries tab to which it’s been attached.
Selected control points turn green. You don’t have to select every control point in the shape; you can make a partial selection to resize only a portion of the overall shape. The center of all selected control points displays a small green crosshairs box that shows the position of the selected control points relative to the center handle. 3 Do one of the following: • Drag any of the four corners of the selection box to resize the shape relative to the opposite corner, which remains locked in position.
The Softness parameter applies a uniform feathering around the entire shape. This also reveals a pair of inside and outside shapes that represent the inner and outer boundaries of the feathering effect that’s applied to the shape. 2 If necessary, adjust the shape’s inner and outer shape to create the most appropriate feathering outline around the perimeter of the shape. This lets you create irregularly feathered outlines when you’re isolating a feature where one edge should be hard, and another feathered.
3 Click within the image preview area to add control points to the end of the selected shape. 4 Click the first control point of the shape when you finish adding more control points. Animating Shapes with Keyframes and Trackers If necessary, you can animate shapes in one of two ways: • Using keyframes: You can keyframe shapes. For more information on keyframing in Color, see Keyframing.
The Tracking Tab Motion tracking is the process of analyzing a shot in order to follow the motion of a specific feature in the image to create a motion path. Once you’ve done this, you can use these motion-tracked camera paths to animate secondary vignettes, Pan & Scan operations, user shapes, and the Vignette node in the Color FX room to follow these motion paths. This way, the corrections you make appear to follow moving subjects or the motion of the camera.
Will Motion Tracking Solve All Your Problems? With shots where there is a clearly defined target (something high-contrast and angular, preferably), automatic motion tracking can be the fastest way to quickly and accurately animate a vignette to follow the motion of the subject or camera in a shot, but not always.
If you track a limited range of a shot’s total duration by setting In and Out points for the tracker that are shorter than the length of the shot, the vignette stays at the initial position you drag it to until the playhead reaches the tracker’s In point, at which time the vignette begins to follow the tracker’s motion path. When the playhead reaches the Out point, the vignette stops and remains at the last tracked frame’s position until the end of the shot.
The Tracking tab has the following controls: • Tracker list: A list of all the trackers that have been created for the shot at the current position of the playhead. This list has three columns: • Name column: The name of that tracker. All trackers are named in the following manner: tracker.idNumber • ID number: The ID number that corresponds to a particular tracker. This is the number you choose from any Use Tracker pop-up menu to pick a tracker to use to animate that adjustment.
• Manual Tracker: Click to enter Manual Tracking mode, where you use the pointer to click on a feature in the preview area that you want to track. Each click positions the onscreen tracker control manually to create a tracking keyframe, and then advances the playhead one frame, until you reach the end of the shot. Using this feature, you can rapidly hand-track features in shots that automatic tracking can’t resolve.
In many cases, the In and Out points will include the whole shot. However, if the feature you’re tracking is not visible or only moves for a small portion of the shot, you may want to set In and Out points only for that section of the clip. If the In point was incorrectly placed, you can always move the playhead to the correct frame and click Mark In. 3 Drag anywhere within the center box of the onscreen control to move it so that the crosshairs are centered on the feature you want to track.
A green Out point appears in the Timeline. In many cases, this will be the last frame of the shot. However, if the feature you’re tracking becomes obscured, you’ll want to set the Out point to the last frame where the feature is visible. 7 Click Process. Color starts to analyze the shot, starting at the In point, and a green progress bar moves from the In point to the Out point to show how much of the clip has been analyzed.
2 Drag the playhead in the Timeline through the tracked range of the shot, and identify keyframes that stick out incorrectly, or that drift from the proper direction of the subject’s motion. 3 Drag the offending control point in the preview area so that it better fits the overall motion path. You can drag any control point in the motion path to a new position, not just the keyframe at the position of the playhead.
As you add more manual tracking points, a motion path slowly builds following the trail of the feature you’re tracking. 7 When you’ve finished manually tracking, stop clicking. That tracker is ready to be assigned to a parameter elsewhere in your project. Note: Turning off the Manual Tracker does not turn off your manually tracked keyframes. Sometimes a motion track is successful, but the resulting motion path is too rough to use in its original state.
2 Adjust the Tracking Curve Smoothness slider, dragging it to the right until the motion tracking path is smooth enough for your needs. The Tracking Curve Smoothness slider is nondestructive. This means that the original tracking data is preserved, and you can raise or lower the smoothing that’s applied to the original data at any time if you need to make further adjustments. Lowering the Tracking Curve Smoothness to 0 restores the tracking data at its originally analyzed state.
The Still Store 16 The Still Store provides an interface with which to compare shots to one another while you do scene-to-scene color correction. Using the Still Store interface, you can save images from different shots in a project to use as reference stills for comparison to shots you’re correcting to match.
3 Optionally, if you want to save the still with a custom name, you can click the Still Store tab and type a name in the File field below the Still Store bin. If you don’t enter a custom name, each still image you save will be automatically named in the following manner: Still.Day_Month_Year_Hour_Minute_SecondTimezone.sri The date and time reflect exactly when the still image was saved.
Why Is Your Project Getting So Big? Because all still images are saved within the “StillStore” subdirectory inside your project bundle, you may notice that your project takes longer to back up than it used to if you save a lot of still images. If you need to reduce the size of the project file, you should delete as many unused Still Store images as you can.
Recalling Images from the Still Store Once an image has been added to the Still Store, it can be recalled at any time. To display a saved still image, you need to load it into the Still Store and then enable the Still Store to view the image. To load an image into the Still Store 1 Click the Still Store tab. 2 Do one of the following: • Select the still image you want to load, then click Load. • Double-click the still image you want to load.
Still Store View Settings Each still image has its own settings for how that image will appear when it’s recalled. These settings can be found on the right side of the Still Store room. • Enable: Makes the currently loaded Still Store image visible in the preview and video output monitors. Identical to the Still Store > Enable (Control-U) command. • Transition: This parameter determines how much of the loaded still is visible onscreen. When set to 0, the loaded still is not visible at all.
Controls in the Still Store Bin The Still Store bin has the following controls: • Up Directory button: Clicking this button takes you to the next directory up the current path. You cannot exit the project bundle. To keep your project organized you should make sure that you save all your stills within the “StillStore" directory of your project bundle. • Home Directory button: Changes the directory path to the “StillStore” directory within your project bundle.
• Save button: Saves the frame at the current position of the playhead as a still image, for later recall. • Load button: Loads a still so that it’s available for comparison using the Enable button, or the Enable command in the Still Store menu (Control-U).
The Render Queue 17 Once you’ve finished color correcting your program, the controls in the Render Queue let you render the appropriate set of media files for the final output of your program, either to Final Cut Pro or for delivery to other compatible systems. This chapter covers the following: • About Rendering in Color (p. 389) • The Render Queue Interface (p. 395) • How to Render Shots in Your Project (p. 396) • Rendering Multiple Grades for Each Shot (p.
The Graphics Card You’re Using Affects the Rendered Output Color uses the GPU of the graphics card that’s installed in your computer to render the color correction and geometry adjustments that you’ve applied to the shots in your program. Different video cards have GPU processors with differing capabilities, so it’s entirely possible for the same Color project to look slightly different when rendered on computers with different graphics cards.
Effects That Are Only Rendered for 2K and 4K Output • When rendering out DPX or Cineon image sequences, all clips are rendered at the resolution specified by the Resolution Presets pop-up menu in the Project Settings tab of the Setup Room. • When rendering out DPX or Cineon image sequences, all the transformations you made in the Geometry room’s Pan & Scan tab are rendered.
Motion Settings, Keyframes, and Pan & Scan Adjustments in Roundtrips A subset of the static motion settings from Final Cut Pro is translated into the equivalent Pan & Scan settings in Color when you first import the project. These settings have a visible effect on your Color project and can be further adjusted as you fine-tune the program.
Whenever rendering your project changes the codec, frame size, or both, you are presented with a dialog when you send your project to Final Cut Pro that asks: “Change graded Final Cut Pro sequence to match the QuickTime export codec?” • If you click Yes to change the sequence settings to match the graded media rendered by Color, then the codec used by the sequence sent to Final Cut Pro will be changed from the one that was originally sent to Color.
If the original frame size of the sequence was a nonstandard high definition frame size, then you have the option of either changing the sequence frame size when you send the project back to Final Cut Pro to match that of the full-raster media rendered by Color, or leaving it alone. In either case, the Motion tab settings for each clip in Final Cut Pro are automatically adjusted so that all clips fit into the returned sequence in the same was as they did in in Color.
The Render Queue Interface You specify which shots in the program you want to render using the Render Queue list. Whenever you add shots to this list, they’re organized by shot number. The order in which shots appear in this column dictates the order in which they’re rendered—the topmost unrendered shot in the list is rendered first, and then rendering continues for the next unrendered shot on the list, and so on until the end of the list is reached.
• Start Render: Initiates rendering for all the shots that have been placed into the Render Queue. This button has the same function as the Render > Start Render menu command. Important: Once you’ve initiated rendering, you can stop it by pressing either Escape or Control-Period. When you’ve stopped rendering, whichever shot was interrupted will need to be rerendered from its In point.
• Printing Density: If you’re rendering DPX media, make sure that Printing Density is set to the correct format. For more information, see Choosing Printing Density When Rendering DPX Media. • Deinterlace Renders: This setting forces Color to deinterlace all media that’s rendered. Color does not have a sophisticated deinterlacing method, so this setting is inappropriate for high-quality output. For more information, see Resolution and Codec Settings.
Once you add shots to the Render Queue list, the status of each of the shots that you add changes to Queued in the Shots browser. In the Timeline, each of the shots that you added appears with a yellow status bar over the currently used grade for each queued shot, to show you which of the available grades is being rendered. Note: You can add a shot to the Render Queue with one grade enabled, then choose another grade for that shot and add it to the Render Queue again to render both grades for that shot.
Once the first shot in the Render Queue has finished rendering, the next one begins, and rendering continues from the top to the bottom of the list until the last shot is rendered. All rendered shots in the Timeline appear with a green render bar above the Timeline ruler and a green status bar over the grade that was rendered. Note: To pause rendering, press Escape (whichever shot is interrupted will have to start rendering over again from its beginning).
Rendering Multiple Grades for Each Shot Each shot in your Color project uses one of up to four possible grades. As you work, you have the ability to freely change which grade is used by any shot, switching among different looks as necessary during the development of the program’s aesthetic. You also have the ability to render each of a shot’s grades individually, or together.
The grade ID column in the Render Queue shows you what grades you’ve selected to render for each shot. Managing Rendered Shots in the Timeline Once you’ve rendered shots in the Timeline, they stay rendered unless you make a change to the grade. When you change the grade of a shot that’s already been rendered, its render bar will once again turn red, showing that its current state is unrendered. Rendering the new state of the grade for that shot overwrites the previous render file.
• Resolution of the rendered file • QuickTime Codec or Format • Number of Frames rendered in each rendered file • Time to render • Performance (in frames per second) The date and time that rendering was completed appears after the end of each session’s individual clip entries. The color.log file is stored in /Users/username/Library/Logs directory. However, you can view this log from within Color. µ To see the Color render log Choose Render Queue > Show Render Log.
• Video (64 Black - 940 White : Linear): The minimum and maximum values of 0 and 100 percent in Color’s scopes correspond to the digital values of 64 and 940 in rendered DPX files. Super-white values above 100, if present in Color, are preserved using this format. • Linear (0 Black - 1023 White): The minimum and maximum values of 0 and 100 percent in Color’s scopes correspond to the digital values of 0 and 1023 in rendered DPX files.
• Link Files: Creates aliases of the originally rendered files in the render directory. This is useful if you want to process the frames using an application on your computer, and you don’t want to duplicate the media unnecessarily. This is not useful if you’re intending to transport the media to another facility, since the alias files only point to the original media in the render directory, and contain no actual image data.
A Appendix Calibrating Your Monitor When using analog devices, make sure they are calibrated for accurate brightness and color so you can color correct your video accurately. This appendix covers the following: • About Color Bars (p. 405) • Calibrating Video Monitors with Color Bars (p. 405) About Color Bars Color bars are an electronically generated video signal that meet very strict specifications.
Monitors are calibrated using SMPTE standard color bars. Brightness and contrast are adjusted by eye, using the color bars onscreen. Adjusting chroma and phase involves using the “blue only” button found on professional video monitors. This calibration should be done to all monitors in use, whether they’re in the field or in the editing room.
The point where this bar is barely visible is the correct contrast setting for your monitor. (The example shown below is exaggerated to demonstrate.) When monitor brightness and contrast is properly adjusted, this strip should barely be visible above black. When adjusting the contrast, also watch the white square in the lower left. If the contrast is too high, the white square appears to “spill” into the surrounding squares.
Note: The step in the second bullet also applies to the monitoring of composite signals, but you really, really shouldn’t be monitoring a composite signal if you’re doing color correction. Once your monitor is correctly calibrated, all the gray bars will be evenly gray and all the black bars evenly black. When the phase (similar to hue) of the monitor is correctly adjusted, you should see alternating bars of gray and black, as shown.
B Appendix Keyboard Shortcuts in Color This chapter shows the various keyboard shortcuts that are available while working in Color. This appendix covers the following: • Project Shortcuts (p. 409) • Switching Rooms and Windows (p. 410) • Scopes Window Shortcuts (p. 411) • Playback and Navigation (p. 411) • Grade Shortcuts (p. 412) • Timeline-Specific Shortcuts (p. 413) • Editing Shortcuts (p. 413) • Keyframing Shortcuts (p. 414) • Shortcuts in the Shots Browser (p.
Keyboard shortcut Function A option Open archived version of project Import clip (opens the File browser in the Setup room) I G option Gather Rendered Media (only for Cineon or DPX projects) Undo; press Command-Z a second time to restore the change Z Cut X Copy C Paste V Select All A shift A shift ? Deselect All Open Color Help Switching Rooms and Windows Keyboard shortcut 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 410 Function Open Setup room Open Primary In room Open Secondaries room Open Color FX room Ope
Keyboard shortcut Function shift 1 shift 2 shift 0 Select Color window Select Scopes window Switches between single display and dual display modes the next time Color is opened Scopes Window Shortcuts Keyboard shortcut W V H C Function Change scope to Waveform Change scope to Vectorscope Change scope to Histogram Change scope to 3D Scope Playback and Navigation Keyboard shortcut space J K L Function Switches between play and stop Play backward Stop Play forward Move playhead to next shot Move p
Keyboard shortcut shift control Function Switch playback mode M Set In point in Timeline for playback I Set Out point in Timeline for playback O Grade Shortcuts Keyboard shortcut 412 Function Create new grade/switch to grade 1 control 1 control 2 control 3 control 4 control G shift control B shift option control 1 shift option control 2 shift option control 3 shift option control 4 shift option control 5 shift option 1 shift option 2 shift option 3 shift
Timeline-Specific Shortcuts Keyboard shortcut Function Zoom out Zoom in = shift Zoom to fit every shot into the available width of the Timeline Z Set Timeline ruler to frames F Set Timeline ruler to seconds S Set Timeline ruler to minutes M Set Timeline ruler to hours H Switch Timeline ruler between frames/seconds/minutes/hours tab Select all shots in timeline A shift A Deselect all shots in timeline Shift-click Select a contiguous region of clips in the timeline Command-click Select a
Keyframing Shortcuts Keyboard shortcut control 8 9 Add keyframe at position of playhead Add keyframe at position of playhead 9 control Change keyframe interpolation type at position of playhead Change keyframe interpolation type at position of playhead 8 control Function 0 Delete keyframe at position of playhead Delete keyframe at position of playhead 0 Move playhead to previous keyframe of current shot in current room option Move playhead to next keyframe of current shot in current room optio
Render Queue Shortcuts Keyboard shortcut option A shift option P Function Add selected shots to the Render Queue A Add all shots in the Timeline to the Render Queue Start Render Appendix B Keyboard Shortcuts in Color 415
C Appendix Using Multi-Touch Controls in Color The tables in this section show the various Multi-Touch controls that are available in Color. Multi-Touch controls require a Multi-Touch capable input device. This appendix covers the following: • Multi-Touch Control of the Timeline (p. 417) • Multi-Touch Control in the Shots Browser (p. 417) • Multi-Touch Control of the Scopes (p. 418) • Multi-Touch Control in the Geometry Room (p. 418) • Multi-Touch Control in the Image Preview of the Scopes Window (p.
Multi-Touch Gesture Description Pinch close Shrink icons Pinch open Enlarge icons Two-finger scroll Pan around the image preview Multi-Touch Control of the Scopes The following Multi-Touch controls let you modify the display of the Video Scopes.
Multi-Touch Control in the Image Preview of the Scopes Window The following Multi-Touch controls let you make adjustments to each shot’s Pan & Scan settings in the Geometry room, without having that room open.
Appendix D Setting Up a Control Surface Color is compatible with control surfaces from JLCooper and Tangent Devices. A control surface lets you make simultaneous adjustments to multiple parameters while you work. Not only is this faster, but it allows you to interactively make complex color adjustments to different areas of the image at once. This appendix describes how to connect and configure compatible control surfaces to your computer for use with Color.
• Your Controller configured with an Ethernet board supplied in Slot #1 • Multiport hub, router, or switch • Cat-5 Ethernet cables The Eclipse CX has a single Ethernet connection. The Ethernet connection for the MCS-Spectrum is bridged to the MCS-3000 using an Expander Cable. The MCS-3000 then connects to your computer via Ethernet.
c Enter a Subnet Mask number, then press ENTER to accept and continue. For example, you might enter: 255.255.255.000 d Enter a port number, then press ENTER to accept and continue. For example, you might enter: 49153 Note: To be safe, use one of the range of values set aside as “dynamic and/or private ports” from 49152 through 65535. 4 Turn off both the MCS-3000 and the MCS-Spectrum. Now that your control surface is configured, you need to set it up within Color.
Controls for the MCS-3000 Many of the controls in the MCS-3000 are identified by the text displays running along the top of each panel.
• M2: Inch playback • M3: Disable grade • Bank1: Switch/Copy/Paste Grade Bank 1 • Bank2: Switch/Copy/Paste Grade Bank 2 • Bank3: Switch/Copy/Paste Grade Bank 3 • Bank4: Switch/Copy/Paste Grade Bank 4 • Assign: Toggle Switch/Copy/Paste grade. (LCD Display would indicate which state you are in.) Using the Navigational Controls There are two different ways to navigate in the Timeline using the keypad on the MCS-3000.
Controls for the MCS-Spectrum Many of the controls in the MCS-3000 and MCS-Spectrum are identified by the text displays running along the top of each panel.
To set up and use the CP100 for use with Color 1 Connect the TDLan port of the CP100 to the primary Ethernet port of your computer using an Ethernet cable. Important: The CP100 cannot be connected to the second Ethernet port of your Mac Pro; it must be connected to your computer’s primary Ethernet port, if necessary through a router or switch if you need to share the port with an Internet connection. 2 Turn on the CP100 and wait for the unit to power up. 3 Open Color.
• Select: Toggle playback mode • Mix: Toggle show still • Grade: Toggle show grade • Delete: Return grade to identity or base-mem • |<: Previous event • >|: Next event • <: Play reverse • []: Stop playback • >: Play forward • Button next to jog/shuttle: Toggle x10 speed control • /< (while holding down Left Alt): Previous keyframe • >/ (while holding down Left Alt): Next keyframe • < (while holding down Left Alt): Step backward one frame • > (while holding down Left Alt): Step forward one frame • F1: Toggle
Tangent Devices CP200 Series Control Surface The Tangent Devices CP200 is a modular series of controllers all designed to work together.
Important: The CP200 series control surfaces cannot be connected to the second Ethernet port of your Mac Pro; they must be connected to your computer’s primary Ethernet port, if necessary through a hub or switch if you need to share the port with an Internet connection. 2 Before you open Color, turn on each of the CP200 devices you have, and write down the two- to three-character ID numbers that appear on the display of each. You use each device’s ID number to set up Color to communicate with these devices.
After you click Yes, Color connects with the control surfaces on the network. If this is successful, then each panel’s display should now go blank. The CP200 series control surfaces are now ready for use with Color.
• F5: Toggle secondary • F6: Toggle secondary In/Out control • F7: Toggle secondary vignette • F8: Previous secondary • F9: Next secondary Note: In the Secondaries room, when switching to preview mode, the vignette controls will override these controls.
• Delete: Return grade to Identity or base-mem • |<: Previous event • >|: Next event • <: Play reverse • []-: Stop playback • >: Play forward • Button next to jog/shuttle: Toggle x10 speed control When Left Alt is held down: • |<: Previous keyframe • >|: Next keyframe • <: Step backward one frame • >: Step forward one frame Controls in the CP200-K (Knob/Button Panel) The CP200-K has the following controls: • RGB channel controls Note: When you open the Previews tab in the Secondaries room, the HSL qualifi
Customizing Control Surface Sensitivity You can customize the sensitivity of the joyballs, knobs, contrast wheels, and the angle at which the joyballs adjust color, using settings located in the User Prefs tab of the Setup room. For more information, see Control Surface Settings.
