Workflo for Color grading in FCP and Color?

Jimmy Moss

Jimmy Moss

Well-known member
Just wanted to know what you workflo was for color grading in FCP and Color.

I work with HDV and DVCPRO had from a XH-A1 and HVX200a. I asume to workflo would be edit in HDV/DVCPRO HD then when you edit is done convert your clips to to Apple Intermediate and then move to a Color project and color grade? Then output using compressor for DVD/web.

How do you do it?
 
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Hey jimmy,

I don't have either of these programs in front of me but here it goes.

Go to File>send to>Color

then go to the user preferences tab (first tab, i think, at the top and makes sure your grading in Full resolution and rendering in Full resolution (the third, playback, one doesn't really matter as much, it just slows down your play back so i use Half resolution) then once you've finished your grading, go to the final tab and add all clips to render bin. When finished with that go to file>send to FCP

i hope that helps at all, but that's how i do it with my A1.


anyone else feel free to add in if i'm wrong.
 
Thanks for the reply. I'm really asking more about what codecs most people color grade in.

In otherwords what are the benefits of converting HDV to Apple intermediate codec and is there a better codec to convert HDV too before color grading. Same question for DVCPRO HD, ( which is of course much better than HDV).
 
Jimmy Moss said:
Thanks for the reply. I'm really asking more about what codecs most people color grade in.

In otherwords what are the benefits of converting HDV to Apple intermediate codec and is there a better codec to convert HDV too before color grading. Same question for DVCPRO HD, ( which is of course much better than HDV).
Click to expand...

oh whoops...haha sorry, best wishes!
 
This is kinda old but I want to bring it back.

I've been grading in uncompressed 10 bit and cant seem to get the aspect ratio right going from FCP to Color. Color always sqeezes the image. Does anybody have a recommended setting for color grading.

This is HVX DVCPRO HD @ 720pn. Is grading in uncompressed 10 bit really necessary or would Apple Pro Rez 422 HQ be good enough? I'm confused because I always read conflicting views on the subject.
 
Why are you converting DVCproHD at all for grading? As a 4:2:2 codec there should be plenty of color information to work with in grading...
But maybe you are doing highend effects work...?
 
No effects work as of yet. This is really just for color grading. First I thought Color does not handle DVCPRo files and they had to be converted to something else before you could move to Color. Second, I thought grading in a higher bit depth gave you the most flexibility as far as color correcting is concerned. More possibilities so to speak. But I'm asking because I'm not sure what the standard is.
 
My own workflow is this:

After editing, media manage. Specify 2-second handles for each clip.

Send the media-managed version to Color. It gets directed to store all the media in a folder containing all the segments for that particular episode. I don't do any transcoding and let Color work with the original color data. It will do any color interpolations internally and working with the original file helps ensure there's no distortion of color info prior to color correction and grading.

After grading, render to Apple ProRes with 2-second handles. Again, this also gets directed to store all the rendered media in the same folder for that episode. Makes archiving easier.

I'm working with XDCam EX but it was the same way when I worked with DVCPro HD files.
 
Awsome post. So your saying that Apples 32 bit processing takes care of any extra possibilities you might get while color grading, and then rendering to Pro Rez 422 maintains those changes when you round trip it to FCP? Cool.

Does anybody know of any good color grading tutorials? I've done a lot of searching and reading and still have failed to find a decent ADVANCED color grading tutorial. "The art and technique of digital color correction" by Steve Hullfish is the best I've come across but falls short in my opinion because there are no video's of the sessions he sits in on. You really need to see corrections like that step by step.

Everything I find out there are basic, "this is how you correct white balance," or "this is how you apply a magic bullet plug in."
 
Jimmy,

I work on a weekly TV show that uses a mix of HDV and DVCPro HD. Before going to Color I use the Media Manager to transcode all the HDV into DVCPro HD and I keep everything as DVCPro HD for the rest of the process.

Steve Hullfish has a new book out, "Color Correction for Video, Second Edition: Using Desktop Tools to Perfect Your Image" I haven't read it so I can't comment on it, but ultimately there is only so much you can learn watching, or imitating, other people. Also, the market for advanced color correction is still very small and very master/apprentice so it's not surprising that there isn't the dearth of info out there like there is for cinematography, for example. Coloruser.net has user made grades you can download and I've learned things by reverse engineering the grades other people have put up.


-A
 
I don't think that's really it. High end color correction is just such a small niche, and until very recently priced out of reach of the vast majority of users, that the internet knowledge base is still relatively small. Over at Creative COW and the official Apple discussion forums there are helpful people.

-A
 
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