Color Correction techniques

G

Gundorf Dunderklumpen

Well-known member
I edit with FCP and, unfortunatly, use it's standard color correction tools. I think that it is limited in it's capabilities. Does anyone have any advice for cood color correction in another program?
 
high8 said:
I edit with FCP and, unfortunatly, use it's standard color correction tools. I think that it is limited in it's capabilities. Does anyone have any advice for cood color correction in another program?
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G Film effects kicks ass. It renders in a fraction of the time of magic bullet. Its only $100. And its Engineer and CEO is Graeme Natress a memember of this forum and personally responds to emails or PM's within the day usually
You can see it in my short by clicking the winners link below.
here's a link to G Film and you can download a demo too:
http://www.nattress.com/filmEffects.htm
 
I own magic bullet and since I dropped the cash to buy it I feel obliged to get my money's worth.

I am by no means a good cinematographer, but putting combo's and variations of the preset's that came with it my footage ends up looking half decent. Then I play around with 3 way color correction to fine tune till all my shots match.

As somewhat mention by jdanstan, Magic Bullet is extremely time consuming with it's render times. Apparently the new version with a good video card isn't that bad.

Also, the dvd Broken which is advertised on this site... there is apparently a behind the scenes on color correction in final cut. Not sure how informative it is, maybe someone's seen it and can answer that.
 
Stabb_Films said:
I own magic bullet and since I dropped the cash to buy it I feel obliged to get my money's worth.

I am by no means a good cinematographer, but putting combo's and variations of the preset's that came with it my footage ends up looking half decent. Then I play around with 3 way color correction to fine tune till all my shots match.

As somewhat mention by jdanstan, Magic Bullet is extremely time consuming with it's render times. Apparently the new version with a good video card isn't that bad.

Also, the dvd Broken which is advertised on this site... there is apparently a behind the scenes on color correction in final cut. Not sure how informative it is, maybe someone's seen it and can answer that.
Click to expand...

They use G Film on Broken. A 15 minute short I did took 12 hours to render with Magic Bullet. I can render that in 15 - 30 minutes in G Film. I totally hear you about getting your money's worth - and I don't work for G Film - but think of what that sort of time saving can do for your workflow and like I said its only $100 and you can try it for free -- I know I sound like an infomercial but its just one of those things worth raving about like the DVX, or EVS, or Barry Green's book/dvd.

The reason Magic Bullet renders so slow in FCP is that they are basically After Effects Plugins so they don't run as well on a Mac.

I'm rendering a small snippet of the BTS color correction clip that I have on the Zombie Fest DVD for Shed right now, and I'll post it here tomorrow. Basically I did what they did on Broken -- shot with TONS of light and brought the image down in post. I also shot with the master ped way down too.
 
... what do you mean then? ... to white balance ... MB and G film are the color correction tools outside FCP ... if you mean just to white balance the three way color correct in FCP rocks - I can tell you how to use it to get best results if that's what your after
 
I guess what I mean is to be able to to what a telecine artist does. check out www.syndicate.tv
I don't think they use plug-ins like MB. They are using a "Davinci" that is a million dollar machine. I just wanted to know if there are more "specialized" tools for coloring for us digital people. After Affects? or other specialized software?
thanks
 
There's always shake if you have a few extra grand laying around. It don't get much better than that.
 
My understanding is motion is pretty much the dumbed down version of Shake. You can do some effects and some color correction.

And telecine has to do with converting 24 frames per second to 29.97... probably some colot tweaking too but:

"The most complex part of telecine is the synchronization of the mechanical film motion and the electronic video signal. Every time the video part of the telecine samples the light electronically, the film part of the telecine must have a frame in perfect registration and ready to photograph. This is relatively easy when the film is photographed at the same frame rate as the video camera will sample, but when this is not true, a sophisticated procedure is required to change frame rate."

from wikepedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine

I had some 16mm converted to DV a few years back at a big production place and for big bucks you could sit there and color correct the footage. For little bucks they would just transfer it for you. We worked a deal where they did a pass that was corrected towards cool, one corrected towards warm and one with no CC. the color correction didn't have anything to do with the transfer per se but more to do with the fact that the film wasn't always correctly color balanced.

At anyrate, since i had the raw pass on there I was able to do anything they could in terms of the color in FCP if not better.

I guess I'm sort of asking are you going for stylilzed CC or very accurate CC -- in either case I think you have all the tools you need.

Jar head was edtited on FCP...

And stuff is broadcast all the time cut from FCP...

I think you are set :)
 
I'm just a simple guy. No DaVinci in my future. I also like economical. If I should ever shoot something that's going out to film, I'll employ a real colorist.

But for the educational stuff (and other fun stuff I do for myself), I mostly use the tools in FCP and Nattress' film effects.

I like the tutorial at Ken Stone's site for getting the most out of FCP
http://tinyurl.com/bxwuo

Like jdanstan, I'm a huge fan of Graeme Nattress and what he's done for the common man with his plug ins (I use film effects and the standards converter). There is no better value out there for your money. Oh, and besides charging only $100 for the plug in, he GIVES YOU FREE UPDATES FOREVER!

Check out his site at
http://nattress.com/
 
Unless you're going up to Lustre or something, in my opinion you can't do any better on the desktop than Color Finesse. It comes with After Effects now, and can also be bought standalone to work with FCP, etc. Unbelievable control and results, and it also works in 32-bit float color space, just like Lustre, etc.

http://www.synthetic-ap.com/products/cf/
 
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