Color Correction - Prem/AE Workflow

denzlite

denzlite

Active member
Can someone describe or throw out some links on color correcting in Prem and AE? I've got all my cuts lined up in Prem and now I'm wondering how I color grade all that. Effects on each individual clip? Dynamic link? Do you render the whole thing out and then bring into AE? My question isn't so much how to actually color correct as it is finding an efficient way to do it.

I wonder if there isn't some way where you could:
1. Color correct a source clip
2. Make edits
3. But if you change your mind and edit the settings on the source clip, the edits all update...

Any help appreciated.
 
Shigeta said:
http://tinyurl.com/2eovy93
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That's a lazy, idiotic response to an excellent question.

OP: I believe most folks perform straight cuts in Premiere and then finish the work in AE, either through C&P or Dynamic Link. DL will afford you more leeway. Color correcting should be performed toward the end, just prior to rendering. Never render the same footage more than once.
 
First thing you want to do is prep your Premiere project for export to AfterEffects. Gotta warn you. You need to have a locked print to work with. I don't know of a round trip way that would be economical. Maybe someone else here does.

By prepping the project, AfterEffects imports Premiere Projects, I mean putting all of the video clips into one video track. After Effects will see this and cascade all of your clips in the timeline of the After Effects project. It's nice. Try it without and see how confusing it can get in AfterEffects.

Save project as *forExport.

Open AE.

File > Import > Adobe Premiere Project

You can then color correct all of the clips individually after switching the bit depth of the project to 16 bit and applying Color Finesse for CC. I make an individual adjustment layer for each clip too.

When you are done, export a TGA sequence and an audio file of the sequence too. You can do this in Premiere too. Don't compress your footage on export from AE.

Import the audio and the TGA sequence into Premiere and put in timeline. Use media encoder to make dirivatives.
 
Thanks Jordan and WMonkey!

You can then color correct all of the clips individually after switching the bit depth of the project to 16 bit and applying Color Finesse for CC. I make an individual adjustment layer for each clip too.
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Yes, I've just started playing around with Color Finesse - amazing tool. Also, the tip about making an adjustment layer for each clip - that sounds like it's going to save me a lot of time.

I'll have to google the 16bit thing, I've been meaning to read up on that.

Here's what I'm trying to figure out: Let's say you have a sequence with multiple edits that you want to apply the same CC to. But you also want to easily change the CC for all the edits without having to go through one by one.

So in theory one could import a Prem Proj into AE. Take all the clips/edits that you want to apply the same CC to -- and drag them down under one adjustment layer?

Thanks again. It's valuable to see what different folks' workflows are.
 
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Aha! Adjustment layers! This is the answer I've been looking for since making the switch to Adobe from Vegas last month.

Vegas lets you apply 'media FX' which are applied to the clip in your bin and will appear on any subclip or instance of that original clip on the timeline.

I've not figured out an effective way to do CC to multiple files in AE or Premiere yet and had not even considered adjustment layers in AE. I'll give it a try on the wedding I'm finishing at the moment and see if I can get it to work efficiently. I'm still a little unsure how I'd layer the tracks but I'll play around and see what I can do!

Thanks Denzlite for giving me this epiphany!
 
Yep tried it last night and worked nicely. You can highlight all the clip layers in AE and then drag them down to reorder them so they're all stacked next to each other. This won't affect playback. Put an adjustment layer on top of them. Applied CC.

Now I think if you Pre-Compose those layers along with the Ad.Layer.CC, you can put other layers underneath without that adj layer affecting any other clips...

WMOnkey - do you need to convert or otherwise prep the footage before working in 16 bit color depth?
 
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WhiteMonkey said:
File > Import > Adobe Premiere Project

You can then color correct all of the clips individually after switching the bit depth of the project to 16 bit and applying Color Finesse for CC. I make an individual adjustment layer for each clip too.
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That sounds like a good option. I had a shoot yesterday of a car interior with 5 passengers driving around. There wasn't much time to prep the shot so my exterior is pretty blown out. To make things worse I could still stand to lighten up the skin tones of the passengers faces in the back row which makes a total white out for my exterior. Is there a simple way to track the Blown out windows and correct them on another layer?
 
The hidden power with adjustment layers and colour correction in AE is using layer modes. For example adding a Curves filter on a clip to yank up contrast also punches up saturation. But use Curves on a adjustment layer set to 'luminance' then the colours are left at their original saturation. Experiment!
 
No compression is truly lossless. Uncompressed avi files can be huge and cumbersome. You must do what you need to do and if you're satisfied with the results, then it works.

I could understand doing this or using something like Automatic Duck for getting the files into FCP—unless compatibility has changed between these programs; I don't keep up on it because I'm not on a Mac—but why don't you use Premiere Pro and save yourself the hassle?
 
Jordan_S said:
No compression is truly lossless. Uncompressed avi files can be huge and cumbersome. You must do what you need to do and if you're satisfied with the results, then it works.

I could understand doing this or using something like Automatic Duck for getting the files into FCP—unless compatibility has changed between these programs; I don't keep up on it because I'm not on a Mac—but why don't you use Premiere Pro and save yourself the hassle?
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Well I started using Vegas around version 4, now it's version 9. The only time I tried Premier was when it was 6.0 and I hated it, I know ALOT has changed, but I just don't want to learn a hole new program / spend the cash, although I know After Effects in and out I'm not sure how different Premier would be from it.

I've been using uncompressed for my 30fps footage (18x the original size lol.., but I have 1TB drives so nuh) and DNXHD for my 24fps, both work alot better than the original avchd.mov file and get me real time playback in my programs. Wish dnxhd had a 30fps option though.
 
JohnFB said:
Isn't it fine as long as you render the footage in a "loss less" compression or uncompressed, as I work with Vegas/After Effects and that's how I get the files to AE from Vegas.
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Try rendering out a targa sequence. AVI's and MOV's can get corrupted and you'll lose all of your work. It's safer to have an image sequence to work with.
 
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