Color-graded footage problem

Hi guys,
We shot a footage with a P2 Camera in DVCPRO50 format, and for some reason, a shot turned out slightly flat and the blue sky in the background appears grey. In any case, it doesn't seem like it was shot under the bright sun. So I tried to correct this in Color, using secondary vignettes to enhance the sky so that there's a balance of white and blue.
After grading, when I played it back, the blue portion of the sky switches back and forth between blue and white and grey. Also, on some frames, parts of the sky which is supposed to be white turns bluish for a couple of frames then back to white/grey again. When I reduced the blue enhancement (in secondary room, under overall midtones), the flickers stops. But again, the shot will not look as ideal cause I compromised the final colour.
I wonder if this is a bug in Color or if there's anything wrong in my grading. Has anyone experienced this?
Jimmy

Hi freeflyer,
Thanks for your reply there. I actually did increase the blur field by about 4-6 points, above which the original effect would seem negligible. Grabbing a whiter shade of blue actually does help reduce the flicker, just that it means I had to compromise on the final colour look that I want to achieve (eg, a blue sky that isn't so blue after all)
If this is a bug, I hope Apple will fix it in any upcoming update patch...

Similar Messages

Looking for Pre-Rendered Editing / Color Grading Workflow suggestions.

Looking for Pre-Rendered Editing / Color Grading Workflow suggestions.
All my material is rendered via RenderMan, our resolution is 1280x544, and our format is generally .exr in 32 bit space.
Our editor has been converting over to 32-bit tiffs, and using Apple Intermediate Codec for editing, mostly for speed concerns.
We need to re-vamp our workflow so that we can edit our footage, and then do color grading of the edit head to tail to smooth the look between scenes. We want to do this in Color, being fed by Final Cut Pro's timeline.
We want to keep our bit depth as high as possible when coming into Color.
My question is, does anyone here have any workflow suggestions for doing what I am talking about.
I wasn't sure if we should just export and EDL from FCP and try to get Color to load our single frames from that. Or if there is a special Quicktime wrapper we should be using, or converting our 32-bit .exr files into some other format more readily available for using in Color?
Any thoughts would be great, thanks in advance!

You're not going to get anywhere beyond 10-bit. That's it.
Try encoding to 10-bit LOG dpx if you need upscale RGB.
jPo

Need To Purchase Color Grading Monitor Today. Please Help

I've been color-correcting via the 3-Way plugin in FCP for years. At SD, normally DV, resolution via Firewire out to a color, CRT broadcast monitor. So now I'm color grading with Apple Color. Love it. But, I need a new output device and monitor. I say I need a new monitor b/c I now work (sometimes) at HD resolution. It's not often but I do. So my question are:
• Overall which card and monitor combo should I get?
• Should I stick with a SD CRT since most of my work is SD?
• And, if I do, can I still color-correct HD projects with it when the time comes?
• Should I do some type of HD monitor set-up?
Right now I'm working with the following:
• Dual 3Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon G5 Tower
• 8GB RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT
• 1 Apple Cinema Display and 1 Wacom Cintiq display

Jonathon,
Did you not read my very post to your question? I answered this question for you. Look above, you'll see I tell you that the Kona LHe downconverts hd on the fly and I view it through component analong in my Sony PVM. I don't mind helping but you've asked this question 3 times now.
Worst case scenario (I guess) would be to down convert the HD footage to SD and color-correct in FCP via a Firewire and a SD CRT monitor. Correct? And if that's the case how would you do the the down conversion before the color-correction?
Yes, that is a very worst case scenario and one you should avoid. Personally, shooting hd to deliver in sd makes no sense to me at all. Darn near every show I've worked on this year is acquired in hd and then broadcast in sd and we use hardware downconverters that are horrendously expensive and yet the product is marginal.
If this is the workflow you're going to use, you'll want to use Compressor to change formats but geez, why on earth would you do this when a Kona LHe will do everything you want it to, right out of the box.

Color grading workflow question

Lets say I want to color grade my whole Final Cut project, should I grade each RAW clip individually then edit in FCP? If you do grade each RAW file wouldn't take take too long since I only use a portion of the raw clip? or should I import that whole, edited, FCP project to Grade in after effects? How do you color grade each individual clip when after effects recognizes your edit as a single clip?

Traditionally, color grading is the last step in a project before final delivery.
The reasons: any other way of doing it results in much unnecessary AE render time and excessive drive space to store extraneous footage.
It IS possible to do it the way you want.
Just make sure that you have 1) the time and 2) the storage to indulge your workflow preferences.

Color Grading won't export in fcpx 10.1.2

Ive noticed this has been happening recently on a lot of my projects since updating:
Been getting very sporadic color grades upon export, as in some clips will receive the grade while others won't. I can't seem to find an issue related to any of my media, as Ive tried multiple tests of optimizing the media, trying to start a new project, reimporting all of the media, deleting the render files, and nothing seems to work. Ive noticed it does happen more often when I paste attributes but I've done a test of going through and applying a preset manually and it still wont export with the grade.
Deleting the render files on one project seemed to work well although I found there was a clip or two that still didnt export with the grade.
Im getting frustrated and nervous now though as I have a color grading job that needs to be finished very soon and I will have a client that will be very angry.
Ive noticed on a few other threads this seems to be a common problem with the update and its quite annoying Apple hasn't fixed this bug or brought it up. Im hoping some people have found a workaround?
Mahalo

Did you try toggling on and off?
That bug never bit me, so I can't say first hand that 10.1.3 cured what was wrong with 10.1.2. However, judging from the posts on this forum, it has, Here are the release notes.
Final Cut Pro X: Version 10.1.3 release notes
Russ

Advice for logical workflow for color correcting and color grading

I am an experienced user of PPRO CS5. I am a novice with color correcting and color grading. I am also just barely competant in AE CS5. It has been suggested that I use AE for color correcting my footage. Can you advise me as to the most logical workflow for doing this in coordination with PPRO CS5? Are there some tutorials that you recommend? I subscribe to Lynda.com and I think that they have some great tutorials, I am unsure as to where to begin looking and what to search for.
Thanks so much,
Lisa

lisaellensegal wrote:
I am an experienced user of PPRO CS5. I am a novice with color correcting and color grading. I am also just barely competant in AE CS5. It has been suggested that I use AE for color correcting my footage.
You can do it that way, sure. But you don't have to. You can accomplish quite a lot without leaving PPro. This has two major advantages. First, if you aren't using AE for anything else, it gets you out of using AE at all, so gets you out of climbing another set of learning curves.
Second, even if you are using AE for other things (I use AE to make motion lower thirds, for example), doing the work in PPro can improve exporting speeds. This is because AE gets restricted to a single processor core in some workflows as discussed in this thread and others (search around if you're interested). This can make exporting take 3x as long or longer, depending on how much footage has to be processed by AE.
So, how to do color correction without leaving PPro? Use either a luma corrector or luma curve effect to set black and white points, and contrast (use a waveform monitor to help). Then use a three way color corrector effect to get rid of any residual color casts (use the vectorscope to help, and the RGB parade, etc.).
If you find you have specific colors that need to be fixed, you can apply another three way color correction effect and use it to make that secondary color correction (for example I find the blue dyes used in many labels tend to fluoresce under fluorescent lighting, and has to be desaturated with a secondary color correction or it "blooms" on an HDTV -- IOW, it has to be made "broadcast safe").
If you want tutorials for using these tools, the ones on Creative Cow by Andrew Devis are quite good, and free. The ones on color correction with PPro cs6 start at tutorial number 47. There's a bunch of them. All good.
Finally, get a copy of Van Hurkman's Color Correction Handbook. May be the best technical book I've ever read, and it'll certainly point you in the right direction for doing color correction work regardless of which tools you use to do it.

COLOR has serious problems

Just finished my first color grading job in COLOR. I'll never subject myself to that kind of pain again.
This was a simple scene to scene CC job captured from digibeta with BM 10bit at 29.97. The footage was a final & locked edit for a network show.
Used FCP to cut up the edit then SEND to color with a resounding crash, every time.
So, I reloaded the entire FCP suite and ran the updates, tried again, same results.
With the deadline looming large, I imported the entire clip into color and cut it up there. And did all CC work... it was perfect, yeah, until the output.
Using SEND to FCP didn't crash! But the fun was over when I checked it against the orginal edit. Every edit was clipped by 1 frame at the end. Plus the extra bonus of FCP putting 5 frame gaps between each edit. Yes, yes the frame rates, image size, pixel aspect and interlace where the same between Color and FCP and the source footage.
So, now it's 8pm the runner from the show has now been waiting for an hour, my phone is ringing every 5 mins with producers screaming.
now what do ya do?
Yep, exactly, I went back to COLOR and rendered 65 stills of the last frame of each edit. then dumped all 65 back into fcp. and TA-DA! it was finished.
But, still not exactly a happy ending. It seems that color did something to the images causing them to look soft, like a compression or ?
Someday COLOR will be a useful tool... Meanwhile it's back to ae for cc, uhhhggg

I find these kinds of posts bemusing! It's always the same thing - 'Color ruined my life when I had deadline!' I think there are a couple of things that people should bear in mind with Color...
Color was developed from a very specific industry tool, Final Touch, which was never designed to be an application that anyone could just jump on in with, have a play around and expect everything to work. Although it is an extremely sophisticated tool it's also fairly crudely put together, quite the opposite to something like Motion for instance which can be driven by a five year old without too much danger of breaking anything. In the case of Color I think you really have to read the manual properly, take time to prepare your material for use in the application, and doing some testing during some downtime.
As far as practical advice would go for your case in particular: If the 'send to' was crashing it might suggest an XML export issue. Did you make sure that there were no elements in the sequence that Color cannot handle? Nested sequences in particular will screw up an XML export.
Did you specify handle lengths within Color? Easily missed but I had a similar issue a while back with each last frame rendering out corrupt - solved by adding handles.
Also I know that Autosave has in the past caused some frame rendering issues so I just leave it off now.
On the whole I've had a mixed experience with Color but what I have learned is that the user has to share some responsibility and make sure they are fully prepared when using the app.
Hope that's a help!

Color grading inside FCP using Lab color space? Any plugins?

Hi guys,
Is it possible to color grade footage with Lab color space? I don't think Apple Color supports Lab so I'm hoping there's some other way. Are there any plugins that allow you to do that? If there are no plugins, are there any color grading apps you'd recommend that support Lab?
Thanks for any tips!
Nick

Why use LAB if it doesn't end up in LAB colour space?
I get the comment by a lot of people who don't understand what LAB is
It is kind of like saying how can a print designer do work on a computer monitor when the printed material ends up on paper as cmyk.
Basically you use LAB because you can do things in LAB that you can't do when Editing in CMYK or RGB. (Note Editing - you convert to RGB or CMYK after.)
The main advantage of it as a Tool is that is treats Tone / Luminance (L) independent to colour.
You can ramp up curves without blowing out the image or shifting the colour.
or vice versa you can change the colour without changing the tone.
You can't do this with CMYK or RGB because the tone of the image, the luminance, is embedded into the colour channels.
And you can REALLY ramp things up and still get great looking images.
That makes LAB a great grading tool - for a look that would be unavailable if Editing in CMYK or RGB.
We have print graders using LAB for work that ends up printed as CMYK,
I use LAB for online work that ends up as RGB - in a professional advertising agency.
By device independent I mean that it is at a level higher than CMYK or RGB.
It is not relying on the output device - a monitor, tv screen or printer - to define how the colour is created.
You can do you work in LAB then export it out to CMYK & RGB with very little loss as LAB encompasses both colour spaces and far far more.
That is what makes LAB a powerful colour space.

Conform from edl, replace mov with color graded dpx seq

Hi all,
I successfully import the edl from FCP to PPro with the correct in and out points for each clip.
The source files of that FCP edit are .mov, but now, I need to replace all the .mov in my bin with color graded .dpx sequence.
I tried both right click > replace footage, and right click > link media to try linking it to .dpx, but I can only link it to a single .dpx file instead of a dpx sequence.
Is is possible to do that on PPro?
Thanks
(sorry for my bad english)

Hi all,
I successfully import the edl from FCP to PPro with the correct in and out points for each clip.
The source files of that FCP edit are .mov, but now, I need to replace all the .mov in my bin with color graded .dpx sequence.
I tried both right click > replace footage, and right click > link media to try linking it to .dpx, but I can only link it to a single .dpx file instead of a dpx sequence.
Is is possible to do that on PPro?
Thanks
(sorry for my bad english)

Color grading controller used in Apple's video?

Hi,
I was watching an "In Action" Final Cut Studio video on Apple's website (the "Euro RSCG" one to be more precise):
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/action/
and I was wondering what Color grading controller was that guy using?
http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/mac/finalcutstudio2/2008/inaction/applefinalcutstudio_eurorscg_20080617640x360.mov

It's a JL Cooper control surface. http://www.jlcooper.com/cgi/index.cgi?home

HP DreamColor Monitor for FCP Color grading

Hello, apologies that I posted this question also on the beginners video forum.
I am about to get a new Mac Pro set up specifically for color grading as I am a cinematographer and need more control over small projects where there is no budget for color grading of images at professional post houses. My vendor suggests using the 24" HP DreamColor LP 2480zx monitor driven from a Black Magic Intensity Pro card using the HDMI output. I have read conflicting reports and read a huge amount on forums such as Creative Cow about this but still not convinced I can get full 30bit grading from a Mac OS X using this monitor. I am in Australia and most projects here are in PAL format in HD at 1080p25 or 50i. I use FCP 7.
Any advice please?

are you saying I should look at Da Vinci Resolve to grade? Why?
It depends on whether you're a day-in and day-out business, and your preferred workflow. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. The Balckmagic-branded daVinci has a number of internal core processing advantages, a tracker that works, far superior color science, especially in secondary processing, but suffers from an old, "tape-to-tape" single-layer capability. However, it is truly "real-time", but that isn't as important to some.
The latest version of Resolve supports multiple-GPU processing on Mac, so the difference between the OSX offering and the much more expensive LInux may not be that great in actual performance. You can build a faster machine with more hardware.
The question... is it the software or controller that makes is (sic) so good? misses the point. Its a synergy of elements, just like good grading itself.
jPo

LCD for Color Grading

I'll need to dive into Color when I finish editing my one-hour long documentary in a couple months. The doc is intended to be shown on a large theatre screen one time, then broadcast on community-access television and lent through our regional public library system on DVD. My question(s): Can the Apple 30" Cinema Display be used for color grading? Or HP's 2480zx LCD Monitor? Would the Spyder3Elite Display Calibration product be useful? Thanks in advance.

Interestingly enough, the options for trying to push a computer text display into being a grade monitor are narrowing down to nothing. The harder people have been trying to make a silk purse out of these sow's ears has resulted in the inevitable conclusion that hey, there really is no such thing as free lunch. Even the vaunted ACD's after watching two of them for nearly three years now, can't hold a calibration for more than a couple of hours and then go magenta. Its because we need so much green to make D65 white. Those poor green dots just peter out and then red and blue take over. So you better be fast, because you will be working with a different monitor for the second half of the day.
An interesting thread on a pro telecine site has been discussing the HP Dreamcolor... the general conclusion is that it is probably great for a cubicle farm full of compositing and animation artists who more need a match between them than truly accurate colorimetry. At least its consistent. A high end grading device company member warned against using certain types of "probes", since at varying resolutions of display, you really have no idea what the thing is integrating to come up with a white point.
One of the really huge things that is missing is the ENVIRONMENT that the grade is taking place in. Sure, the monitor is important... but almost equally so is the room in which it is situated... its ambient illumination and the requirement for a constant contrast neutral 18% D65 background against which to judge the monitor itself, not just what it is trying to display.
That's one of the reasons that the COLOR GUI is that "ugly" grey.... even though its probably not grey at all if the monitor you're using to display it is whacked. Every time you look at it... it is influencing the balance of your target image. Imagine you're the beer taster at the world's finest brewery.... and what (hold on a minute while I savour the fantasy.... okay, I'm back) but between samples you take a big gulp of vinegar. Right. Is that going to work?
jPo

Color grading - Munsell Hue Vision Test

Just thought I'd change the subject from all of this FCPX talk...
I was watching something about color grading and the Munsell Hue Test came up... I googled it and found this:
www (dot) colormunki (dot) com / game / huetest_kiosk
Anyhow, it's pretty neat (I scored 100%, woohoo!...)

mishmumken wrote:
My score was 67 ...
my score is 18 ...
and as far as I understand the scale, that is not too far from perfect (=0) ...
with a 10y old monitor, never color proofed

Question about "Native ISO" and Color Grading in PP

I have a question about "Native ISO" in the real world and how it relates to color grading. I was shooting 35mm film before all these digital cameras became flat-out amazing practically overnight. Then the goal was always to shoot with the lowest ISO possible to achieve the least amount of grain (unless you were making an artistic decision to get that look). If I was shooting outside plus had a nice lighting package I'd shoot 5201/50 ASA (Daylight) and 5212/100 ASA (Tungsten) 99 times out of 100.
I've recently been shooting a lot with the Blackmagic 4K and have read that its "Native ISO" is 400. Because of my film background this seems counter-intuitive. Yesterday I was shooting for a client and had the camera at an f16 with a 200 ISO. Because of what I'd read, I was tempted stop down to an f22 and change my ISO to 400... but the "little film voice in my head" just wouldn't let me do it. It kept telling me "Higher ISO means more noise... stay at 200 and you will get a cleaner image".
So how does it work with "Native ISO"? Should I really shoot at a 400 ISO every chance I get in order to capture the best image for how the camera is calibrated? Will it really give me more latitude when color grading? Or would I still get a cleaner image staying at ISO 200? I've Googled around quite, but haven't found any articles that answer specifically this question. Would love to hear from someone who knows a bit more on the subject or has a link that could point me in the right direction.
Thanks much.

Hey, shooter ... yea, interesting discussion and always nice to learn. Great pic, too!
jamesp2 ...
Great answer. I've followed quite a bit of the discussion about the BM cams as well, one does feel a need to check out the possibilities for that next beastie one will need to acquire. But ... which one?
I've always been a bit of a hard-case about testing testing testing. For instance, what happens with dome down or use of a flat diffuser vs. dome in the up position in metering? Back in the film days, we had our own lab and did our own printing as well as the um ... difficult images ... from other studios. I needed to know how to get exactly the same diffuse highlight no matter whether it was a "standard" light 3:1 studio shot, or a near-profile with no fill that needs dark shadows. I tested & burned through boxes of medium-format polaroid & 120 film and a lot of color paper. Finding? To get the same print time no matter the contrast or lighting style, needed to be metered either with the flat disc (Minolta) or dome-down (Sekonic) and held at the highlight-location pointed at the main light source. I could meter and nail the exposure every time. Ahh no, insist so many ... one must have the dome on/up and pointed at the camera! Right. Do that, change the contrast, and see what happens to your diffuse forehead highlight on a densitometer ... and see how your printing exposure times change. Oh, and you've just moved your center-of-exposure up or down on the film's H&D curve, which will also change the way the shadows & highlights print. In truth, though it was subtle, we had realistically no matter latitude for a best-case image with pro neg film as one had with chromes. You could probably get away with being "off" easier, but it still wasn't dead-on.
So wading into video ... oi vey, you may have noticed the things claimed here there & everywhere ... this setting is God's Gift to Humanity but no, it's total crap ... this sensor is totally flawed but someone else is certain it's the finest piece out there. Yes, opinions will be all over ... but ... in film, it was the densitometer. In video, it's the scopes. Truth. And getting to that can be a right pain. I've seen quite a few contradictory comments about using the BM cams in film mode and also at ISO 200. Yours above gives the most ... comforting? ... explanation (for me) because of your reference to your scopes & the waveform patterns. Thank you.
Love to learn ...
Neil

Color Grading - Adobe Speed Grade or ..?

Hi!
I'm looking for suggestions and opinions on Color Grading Software. I've been editing videos for about a year for my aerial video business, and am admittedly getting over my head and want to take my editing to the next level.
I'm upgrading all of our gear in the next few weeks, and need to step up my knowledge and ability. I'll be diving deep in e-learning, tutorials, and the Adobe community forums (which are absolutely amazing I must say). I currently have an Adobe CC membership and use Pr for both my editing and Color correction (which mostly consists of Brightness/Contrast, Luma Curve, Shad/High, and the occasional pre-packaged warming filter).
I have a lot to learn, and I know the software is just a tool...but I'm looking for suggestions on what software to begin with. I love adobe and would love to keep everything within the Adobe CC world, but I know Speedgrade is somewhat new and there are other major players in the color grading world.
If you have suggestions on CC software, pro/cons on Speedgrade, or even useful hints or tutorials regarding Speedgrade or where to start with CC that would be appreciated.
Thanks everyone
Craig

Speedgrade pros:
Extremeley powerful for color-grating (perhaps not quite to the level of resolve, but plenty for most users)
Well integrated with Pr and AE via dynamic link (especially compared to a non-adobe app)
Speedgrade cons:
A bit of a learning curve (but probably nothing a few good tutorials can't remedy)
So, if you're using PrPro and AE as your main editing and effects tools (not to mention photoshop, audition and perhaps lightroom), then Speedgrade seems like a no brainer to me unless you already have a lot of time and assets fully invested in some other color grading solution. I'm truly not just trying to hawk out producs, it just seems to make the most sense in your case.

Color-graded footage problem

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