Color Correction Across Dissolves

Anyone know if there is any downside to adding cross dissolves before color correction across mulit-clips? The back to back cuts from different cameras will need contrast, brightness and hue adjustments. I'd prefer to add dissolves beforehand while I'm concentrating on the cut as opposed to coming back after color work and figuring out where I want or need to put the dissolves.

thx!
FC 5.0.4

There are downsides: the hue values are working in a "circle", so if you change hue from one clip to another one there won't be a linear change of values this is very obvious within the transitions and could show very bad results.

Andreas

i;m not sure i understand the circle analogy,
what would it look like, andreas?

if there were problems during colour correcting, though, you'd do something to address that.

really you must be led by the editing decisions.

if you need a dissolve, add a dissolve.

at least i always have

cheers,
nick

Nick Meyers wrote:

> i;m not sure i understand the circle analogy,
> what would it look like, andreas?
My non native english catched me again.
Another try;
look at the color wheels - wheels are like circles. A keyframe change from B to Y1 will make his way thru MG, R instead of making it thru B , Neutral to Y1.
This will only be an issue, if you apply a global (keyframed) CC to the cuts.
>
> if there were problems during colour correcting, though, you'd
> do something to address that.
What I'd tried to say was, that there could be downsides if you apply a CC to all of the clips, which may include transitions, dependig on how you do it
>
> really you must be led by the editing decisions.
I totally agree
>
> if you need a dissolve, add a dissolve.
Sure, but at what point of time during the process.
You got two options: having the transition handling the 'transtition' from one CC'd clip to another, or having the CC keyframes to cover the transition's CC - which is more complicated.
>
> at least i always have
me too
>
> cheers,
> nick
>
Hope this was a better one
Andreas



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Well then, I'm going to add my dissolves before CC while the inspiration is right. I'll just let the dissolves look white on the timeline like they always do. No tellin" how many frames they steal from the clip before and the clip to follow. And, I guess the dissove frames just carry the CC from each clip on each side of the dissolve. Good thing it happens relatively quickly.

thx all
dm

DM wrote:

> I'll just let the dissolves look white on
> the timeline like they always do.

that;s a worry.
why do your dissolves always look white?
they shouldn't.

> No tellin" how many frames
> they steal from the clip before and the clip to follow.

yes there is.
it's half the length of the dissolve
or am i missing something?

> I guess the dissove frames just carry the CC from each clip on
> each side of the dissolve. Good thing it happens relatively
> quickly.

yeah i find key-framing the CC filter to be very awkward,
and if iDO need a dynamic on the CC, i'll simply blade the clip, apply 2 different CC,s and use a dissolve.

cheers,
nick

that;s a worry.
why do your dissolves always look white?
they shouldn't.

Oops, what I mean is, the color of the dissolve symbol when added to the timeline. The dissolve itself doesn't go to white.

The deal with this project is,,, I have three cameras to cut, two of them are the same model (XL-1s) and the third is a GL-2. The XL's were preset to indoor white balance and match pretty well already outside of F stop differences. The GL-2 will be pulled around to match the XL-1s. So when I have a GL clip next to an XL clip and their is a dissolve in between them, that's what begs the question. I don't know if FC ignores the dissolve frames when they already in place when doing CC.

oh, i see.

dont worry.
any filters will work for the whole clip, including any handles thru transitions.

nick

thx,
well I do find myself wondering however, with regard to professional editing suites, is color correction applied after final edit (dissolves and everything else) or at what point is CC applied?

Yes, mostly CC is done once the cut is finished, because it's a waste of time to correct stuff that might not even make the cut.

The dissolves shouldn't affect your grading.

for the most part, CC is done after the edit.

and then it depends on your workflow

generally what i'm doing is offline only.
so if a shot stands out i can tweak it, and leave it at that.

i had a slightly similar situation to yours a while back when they were shooting with a second 35mm camera on a feature.
the 2nd camera was looking a bit pink, so i saved a CC setting that matched it to the A cam.
so previoews were ok,
and we were going back to film, so i didnt have to worry about there being a filter on the shot.

the show i'm cutting a the moment is DV.
we played a version out to tape which was bumped up to DigiBeta, for CC.
i;d already applied the odd bit of CC myself,
so i went thru and took off my clumsy CC, so the grader could have a decent go at it.
some shots, (like where we'd made shots B&W) i left

if i;m finishing in FCP, i can leave the filters on.

again it comes down to editing, and story telling.
if you need to grade a shot to make a point, (day for night, for instance), then you should do that while your cutting.
also badly out of whack shots can be worth tweaking while you work,
but for general overall grading, i;d say leave it till last.
you'll waste hours grading shots that might never be in the final film, when you should be thinking about more important things.

when i used to do music videos we'd actually get our "look" in the telecine, which did help me with the cut.
the few i;ve done off tape, i;ve graded after the cut.
once, after i'd started cutting, i realised that we needed to create a new look.
so i took time out to tweak a few shots as a kind of "proof of concept".
we found our look, but it wasn't a RT situation, so i just went back to cutting, ungraded, knowing what it would look like.


cheers,
nick

I also tend to colour-correct if a shot is jarring with the rest so badly that it would affect producers' and clients' perception of the edit. Same for temp sound mixing. If it doesn't distract, I leave it alone. There are usually people much better than I -- and paid specifically -- for colour correction and sound mixing. Spend too much time on this at the editing stage, and you end up a) rendering for hours and b) losing time for actually exploring the story and rhythm.

Generally if a shot misbehaves in a transition, I find a workaround -- a common one is to use opacity keyframes ("rubber bands" to perform dissolves rather than the transition tools. Opacity keyframes rarely glitch.