User Shape in Secondaries

HI!
I'm new in Color, and I'm testing how it works, because I shall colorgrade a video with around 200 shots next week.
I have run in to a strange problem. In Secondaries I make a User Shape, this brings me to Geometry. There I track my mask, safe it, and attach it to the mask (In this case tracker 1). I Attach my mask on the Secondary (In this case 3). I go back to my Secondary. Colorgrade the selekted, ..are happy. Close down and go home. Next morning when I open my projekt, my Secondary (3) are emty.
I can find (load) my mask in Geometry, then I can attach my tracker again. Then my colorgrade are back too.
But why are the Shape and the Track information not saved with the projekt?
Can anyone tell me where I go wrong?
Pleace...
Christina

Here's a little treasure hunt for you all, some directory spelunking.
A COLOR project container saves everything that could be used to move the entire project to another machine. The "bins" that exist within the interface are just ways of splitting up the grade internally so that components can be copied within the timeline. Abandon all "Final Cut" thinking before proceeding... paraphrasing Dante... Abbandona ogni speranza, tutti che entrate. Actually as you drill down through the container, you may be reminded of his tour of the various circles of ****...
Try this. Navigate to the directory containing the COLOR project. For me, its in "Final Touch Items". its a bit of a private, ironic joke. Right-click on the .colorproj line item. Select "Show package contents". You should be presented with a pane containing a number of files and folders like "Archive", "Still Store", "Shots", the xml files (if created) and some ls files. Open the "Shots" directory.
You will be presented with a directory listing corresponding to all the clips in your project, numbered like the shot list in the Setup Room. Pick one that might be interesting, like "Clip 31", which has a tracked user shape in it, maybe. It will open to reveal more files and directories, "Grades", "Pan and Scan", a thumbnail, and a .si file which is a very interesting little file to interrogate (use Text Editor) to figure out why that clip is behaving in some weird way, because it is essentially the XML translated "Item Properties/Format" dialogue that FCP has sent to COLOR. If you have run a tracker, there should be a trk file, which is the tracker data for that clip. Each grade that you have composed for that clip will have a grade-directory. Each grade directory will contain a file that represents the IN primary color correction (pcc), an OUT pcc, a scc (secondary) and a cfx. It may contain a kfd file, which is the keyframe data. It may contain a bsx file, which is the user shape, which I think you are calling a "mask".
In answer to your direct question "are my masks saved in the Secondary bin?" No. They are saved as part of the overall grade, and you access it through the Geometry Room/User Shapes interface.
By the way, the on-screen representation of the user shape will disappear every time you exit the clip you are working on. (Its a bit of a pain, actually) You are required to re-select it in the user shapes bin in the Geometry Room/User Shapes to re-reveal it. By any chance... ? Because you don't see the shape control points doesn't mean that it isn't being applied, if it has been connected. I wonder if that has led you to believe that the shape has been thrown away.
The internal architecture of COLOR is not something that most people delve into until faced with some kind of nightmare forensic reconstruction... care to speculate on how I got to know it so well?
Not from somebody else's training DVD, that's for sure.
jPo

Similar Messages

Changing a color completely in a user shape.

Thanks in advance for any ideas! Have 2 shots that require hats on people to be changed to a completely different color. The Opposite color to be exact. Need to use a "usershape" to isolate it as it's too close to skin color on the subjects for a simple tweak.
I know how to do this is FCP with the color wheel, but color seems much more pixel accurate and easier to create a mask. Any ideas how I could alter the color from magenta to green?
Thanks!!!

it's too close to skin color
how I could alter the color from magenta to green?
So the skin color is magenta? Might want to massage that and try to give yourself some more separation, maybe in Primary.... and even if you have to introduce a little bit of error, maybe think about re-fixing it at a later stage...
I was going to advise using an HSL qualifier in Secondaries..., and you might try that anyway, in conjunction with a User Shape. And you'll likely need a tracker if the tolerances/separations are really too tight, which will add its own baggage.
If this is a moving picture, I expect you'll also need to animate the user shape as the character will likely be changing shape within the scene.
Curves in secondaries will not be available to you as a tool, as they are not vignette or HSL qualifiable.
User shapes are a non-starter in the COLORFX room, where inserting an "Invert" node would be one tempting option to flip the magenta over to green... especially if the luminance value is close to 50%. You could still fix that with a brightness node, though.
It is sort of possible, with some effort and "add" nodes, to build up a kind of user shape with ovals... but this is one of the reasons why that room is of very limited value, unless you are applying "overall" effects. In the end, though, probably so ridiculously awkward as to not be worthwhile.
So there are several things you can't do... and my own approach would be to eyedropper the hat and see what kind of real separation there might be, before I resorted to the much more labor intensive user shapes. Within the HSL qualifier, if that worked reasonably well, then its going to be a fairly straightforward 3-way-Inside correction. A coarse oval or very, very simple user shape might help if there were some "cleanup" garbage-matte fixes necessary.
If the separation isn't there, I'm afraid you're really into a rotoscope and I hope you've got plenty of time on your hands. You will likely have to animate the user shape in the Geometry/User Shapes room. Save, save, save. And I hope you're on the latest version, because COLOR regularly forgets things that are done in this room. If you do use a tracker.... they are not re-connected (in versions prior to 1.5.3) on re-opening the project, so you should render out the clips immediately!
Make the tool do as much of the work as possible... I thought that's what computers were for!
Actually, this would be a fairly straightforward task in an application like daVinci "Resolve", but they have a completely different architecture.
jPo

Tracking a user shape

When I create a custom user shape in the geometry room, say a shape around a person, how can I then track that shape? Do I have to use the manual tracker in conjunction with the user shape? Any insight is appreciated.

You don't track the shape, you track the object. Create a motion database by picking an in and out point and letting the analysis proceed. You are not forced to use the manual tracker unless the base video is so bad that the auto tracker can't follow the target. That file then is attached to the user shape, which, in turn, is attached to a secondary. The COLOR tracker is only single-point and is only as good as the point that you pick. It will not do any corner-pinning or anything to the user shape other than X-Y translations, so if your target object changes in any way, you will eventually wind up hand-animating it.
Good luck.
jPo

Tracking user shapes

Hi all!
I'm trying to track a user shape in my secondary room but it seems it can't be done or am I doing anything wrong? I can make it work with a square and a circle but when I want to assign a tracker to a user shape I can't select it in the "Use Tracker...-selector". The manual states I can do it but did I get that wrong as well?

Hi Moqtev, I also just tried the footage that comes with the Color Apple Pro training book and ran a manual tracker on the boat and yes you can only use the circle or the square. You can not select the tracker number. When I did a course on Color with this book,interestingly the user shape was never taught during the tutorials but only the circle or square was used to make changes in the secondary.
FCC63

Can I apply SFX to a secondary shape?

I have a really boring talking head shot and I want to blur the background a little and keep the subject in focus. I'm trying to apply a shape surrounding the subject and add the blur effect to the background only. Is that possible?
thanks!

It is possible, but is the shot boring or is the head boring?
User shapes are not eligible, but there is an oval generator in ColorFX that you can use as an alpha. Beware that there are some serious issues involved with interlacing if you use a blur-- it is a pixel remapping function and it will mess up the dominance.
jPo

Aspect Ratio is Officially Jacked Up

Forum,
I read some other threads on this similar problem, but this one seems like even more of a maze than some other stuff I've come across. So any help would be greatly appreciated!
I exported my entire rendered HDV,24p, ProRes 422 sequence back to FCP from Color. Some of it has maintained the same aspect ratio and some of it is now an entirely different ratio. Could this have anything to do with my latest QT 7.5 update? I'm sorry if this post is looks similar to others, but judging from the posts I've been reading, the project settings and media formats seem to be the crux of the matter.
With that being said, it would probably take me forever to find someone with the identical problem that I'm facing.
The craft of editing is such a whacked up mess, yet we all love it!
Von

JPo,
I don't understand why there would be mixed resolutions if I shot everything the same. There was originally a 3:2 pulldown but I removed it prior to sending to Color.
Under Item Properties>Format, all of my clips are labeled as 1920x1080 despite all the different aspect ratios that are being displayed from clip to clip.
My suspicion is that it has something to do with the geometry room because I wrote in a previous thread about a problem with aspect ratios changing while I was in Color. The advice given to me at the time was not to do any scaling or rotating in Geometry, but make those changes in Color.
So, I made sure to reset all of my geometrical changes back to there original state. Although the issue with different aspect ratios (in Color and FCP both) was not fixed.
I think what I might have to do is send a copy of the original ungraded project to Color and regrade the whole thing minus any scaling or rotating. What do you think about this plan?
P.S. I'm thinking that using Geometry for user shapes in conjunction with the secondaries room should be okay just as long as there's no scaling or rotating. What do you think?
Thanks for helping me as my project has come a long way and I just can't wait to knock this grading out!
Trey

Tracking shots that need to be re-rendered

Hi guys
Been doing some jobs on Color and finding my way around. I normally work on DS or Film Master, so there are some questions.
1. If I corrected some shots and rendered them, timeline goes green, all well. Now I make a change to the grade, timeline remains green..mmmm, is there a way to get Color to revert the clip to unrendered automatically.
2. I can't get consistent results tracking user shapes and using them in Secondaries...any step by step help?
Patrick Morgan
Freelance Colourist
London

Jpo,
You are right, it doesn,t say original format ( it's there but you can not apply it).
I did my project in hdv 720 50p (from fcp) and rendered it out using apple Pro Res 422 HQ.
Those files aren't that big as 8 bit-uncompressed 4 2 2.
Everything still looked nice. I do not have any experience in color with full HD but as color is a 1.0 release we just have to wait I guess.
Your ideas on this?
Tim

Applying different b/w point operations to same plate

I have several shots in a project that have composited TV feeds burned into television screens.
these are log 10bit Prores files.
The burn in element and the BG element have different black and white points.
To color correct these shots properly i need to apply different black and white point operations to the portion of the plate that is the screen and the surrounding BG environment.
I am a first time Color user and this does not seem like something that Color is able to do.
Am I missing something?
At first glance it seems that the secondaries room would be able to accomplish this, but the geometry I can use in the secondaries room only seems to mask off operations I do with the high mids and lows color wheels---not the luma, sat and hue curves.
If i want to isolate a luma operation in the secondaries room I can only isolate it via a color key--which just will not work for these shots.
Any ideas?

No, I concur that Curve corrections behave quite differently. I don't use them at all. They seem to be mostly suited to a Photoshop approach, and are a boon to the stylus/mouse interface. But otherwise, not my first choice for a couple of reasons. The entire scale is being re-mapped with control points, which can accelerate banding. They used to be incredibly noisy and are still not keyframe-able -- so if you ever need to do something like that, you'll be locked out of the game.
I believe the difficulty you're encountering is that the 'mids' adjustment doesn't, and can't achieve the same gamma coefficient as the custom characteristic that you're feeding in by using the luma curves. Its something we could do in Power Windows with daVinci, but the implementation in FinalTouch/COLOR doesn't allow for a customized gamma transfer characteristic within secondaries. There is a custom curve available in the COLORFX room.... but the catch there is that there is no access to the user shape vignette. You might have to back up a step and correct the plates separately and re-composite them. Why wouldn't you keep the SHAKE work, or is there a contextual reason for trying to re-invent this particular wheel in COLOR?
jPo

Copy and Paste Vignette?

Quick question - is it possible to copy and paste a vignette?
Doug_

Yes it is.
However, its the whole secondary that comes with it. You have a .scc storage bin associated with the secondaries room where you can save corrections. However, it saves and pastes the entire secondary correction and will overwrite any current settings. This is also the only way to copy keyframed corrections forward.
A work around might be to create a user shape vignette and simply create clones of it and re-attach it to the various secondary tabs as you desire.
jPo

Turn a color into white in Secondary room

Hi everyone,
This might be a pretty simple thing to do but I have not been able to figure it out and Google has not provided much luck. Basically, I have a window in a scene that was filmed at night, so it's all black...problem is, the rest of the scene takes place during the day. All I want to do is select the black portion of the window and change it to white. Is there a way to do this in the Secondaries room? Thanks!

Just curious to know... a number of things.
A. What does "Google" know about color grading?
B. We often hear about "Day for Night"... but... "Night for Day"?
C. How did "Secondaries" become the candidate for what is clearly an FX fix?
D. Do you not have a "compositing" application... or experiential background in repurposing such a shot?
You will probably have to custom-shape a matte to re-introduce another element to stand in for the window, as pi suggests, and I'm also betting there will be some tracking/stabilizing necessary. A straight correction will not work, since the noise that will come along with your "film" values will be astonishingly objectionable. I'd suggest a key, but the black noise will probably rule that out as well. A white solid is a good idea... I'd also toss out the idea of using an "inverse" of the original shot -- so that all the blacks are now white -- and work some combination of window(matte/vignette)+key. You can do that with HSL qualifiers in the COLORFX room. In COLORFX, of course, there are no user-shape nodes or the ability to import a roto-shape, say from SHAKE. In fact exporting the shot to another application will give you more control to finesse the effect convincingly.
I'd try the new DaVinci/Blackmagic Resolve. This would be easy in that application, because it does all those things that COLOR cannot, or will not... depends on the developer, I guess.
If you don't do this right, you may as well not do it, or re-shoot. Your audience will want their money back otherwise.
jPo

Calculate rendering time

If it takes 1 hour to render 4 minutes (in proResHQ for example)
Can I calculate that 40 minutes will take 10 hours?
thanks.

Probably. Maybe plus or minus something.. 10 or 20 percent.
Although I suspect a sliding scale, where the longer the project, render times may stretch a little, and overall render times do remain utterly dependent on the complexity of the grades. Try something with 6 or 7 secondaries, each qualified with a tracking user shape and a COLORFX node with a de-interlace tree, vignetted depth-of-field blur, and an RGB-split noise reducer, each channel with a different amount of median filtering....
jPo

Masterslides and item on slides?

I am creating courses that will eventually be viewed on tablets (Android and iPad). I've had some issues with some of my slides loading really slow, when I play a course on an android device.
I had created the course originally in Captivate 5, but updated it in Captivate 7 and published it to html5 for viewing on mobile devices. Anyways, some of the "look" of the course I created by using shapes and lines etc, because in Captivate 5 you couldn't really edit the look of captions etc. I, for example, used transparent captions over shapes to create a more pleasing "look". I've heard that having too many items on one slide may cause issues when viewing a course on a tablet. I've experienced some issues when testing this course using an Android tablet, where some captions and shapes wouldn't load completely or not at all.
Therefore, I am thinking it might make sense to "declutter" some of my slides, and remove the extra objects, especially since shapes can now have texts.
So here is my question about master slides. If I place a shape on a master slide, will it still be an "additional" object on the slide, or does the master slide become more like a background picture and therefore anything that's on the master slide becomes more like one object.
Hope this question makes sense

For the sake of other users: shapes have always been able to be text containers, nothing new there. Even the drawing objects in CP5 had that functionality. And you could and can create custom captions, only it is a bit cumbersome. Totally agree with the ease of shapes, my blog proves that I'm a big fan: Why I like Shape Buttons - Captivate 6! - Captivate blog and Toggle Shape buttons - Captivate 6 - Captivate blog and Buttons on Question/Score Slides in Captivate 6? - Captivate blog
When developing for mobile, try to limit the number of slides, to limit the number of objects, to use objects on master slides or timed for the rest of the project and... use shared actions instead of advanced actions. All tips to reduce file size.

Hello , I have a shot with two lips kissing each other , how can I keep

Hello , I have a shot with two lips kissing each other , how can I keep the lips red and turn the rest of the face into black ? I tried shaping but the result was negative because the shape was moving all teh time , I tried color correction but the face and lips`s color was similar so I couldn`t do it with that , is there any other way ? Thanks so much

You're gonna have fun with this because the HSL qualifiers probably won't see much separation between the areas that you want to isolate. You could try combinations of turning off Hue, Saturation, or Luminance. See what you get.
Otherwise you're into a roto. (Manually tracked and animated User Shape)
jPo
Message was edited by: JP Owens

Red offline clips

i'm working inside color and for some reason some of the clips have the 'offline' red mark. I know they aren't and they actually do show up in the viewer, but i wonder if this is some other type of warning?
thanks
while i'm here i'll ask another.. is it possible to attach a 'custom shape' mask to a motion path? The 'use tracker' feature won't highlight when you create your own mask even though i've already tracked the path.
double thanks
aa

I don't have an answer for your offline clip problem.
But to attach a user shape to a motion tracker, you need to first attach the shape to your secondary, then use the secondary to assign the motion tracker.
More information can be found in the Color Users Manual, starting on page 225.

Can I send just the color file to my editor without sending the sequence

I am coloring a trailer and I am new to color. What I want to do is grade my sequence that I media managed from my editor and then save it and send my editor just the color info to him so he can render it on his system.
I'm trying to avoid media managing it again and dropping off my drive to him.

You could try to simply send the colorproj. Have your editor open the Media Managed version that you were working with. There may be some path reconnecting to do, or not.
Or they could create a new project, as long as it is identical in every way, then an "Import Color Corrections" from your session will apply all your grades to that project. Be aware that there may be some aspects of the project that do not travel with that container folder -- User Shapes, plugins, etc., that otherwise reside in the User/Library/Application Support/COLOR folder.
I've often thought this might be an interesting business model, except for the fact that not all GPUs render the export image exactly alike. So, keep that in mind, too.
jPo

User Shape in Secondaries

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