eye dropper tool in 3-way color corrector not changing any values

Hello,

I have some footage shot under practical fluorescent lighting in a naval ship that is a little off white balance.

Because I could see this, I shot a color chart at the beginning of each set-up.

So in FCP7, using 3-way color corrector, I use the eye dropper tool to select the white portion of the color chart, but the value in the white doesn't change one bit. I've tried selecting other parts of the image and the hue control doesn't move at all.

This has worked fine previously for me, but for whatever reason, it's not working now.

Does anyone know how to fix this issue? Is there some kind of setting I need to enable or disable?

Thanks!

-Alex

could be you are using the eyedropper tool from the LIMIT EFFECT area of the colour corrector?
the one to use is the tiny eyedropper near the bottom of each colour wheel.


nick

Hey Nick,

I was definitely using the tiny eyedropper tool near the bottom left of each color wheel.

How fast, how much ram in your machine? PowerPC or Intel?

A quick way to confirm changes is to lower, then raise, the opacity value of the clip you're treating. This works on less than current hardware.

To quickly see if your machine can keep up with color changes, hold down Command and drag, say, the Midtones puck in the 3-way CC panel to make some quick color extremes. If your monitor updates quickly you should be OK. If it doesn't your data pump is slow.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytips:
Copy clip Attributes with Command-C
Paste selected Attributes with Option-V
Remove selected Attributes with Command-Option-V !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide™ Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Hi Loren,

The eye dropper tool being used on whites has worked wonders for color correcting with my system before.

But all of a sudden, nothing happens when I use it now. I did what you said with the mid tones puck, and it worked fine. I do have a relatively new Macbook Pro.

Excellent. The only thing which comes to mind? You're applying changes to a clip that isn't actually loaded in the Viewer. Can't tell you how often my double-clicks in the timeline don't 'take" and I find myself sampling colors which change a clip I've already worked on. *DOH!*

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytips:
Copy clip Attributes with Command-C
Paste selected Attributes with Option-V
Remove selected Attributes with Command-Option-V !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide™ Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

> You're applying changes to a clip that isn't actually loaded in the Viewer.

It's possible, but not definitive. I know for a fact that Color Corrector sometimes gets this bug where it stops responding to adjustments (and I almost never adjust the "master" filter by mistake, not for any significant length of time), and I'm sorry to say I have never found an adequate fix that works every time, because this problem doesn't happen often enough for me to come up with a pattern. Try dumping preferences and repairing permissions, or disconnect the clip and reconnect media, or starting a new project file.


www.derekmok.com

guess i should ask:

have you tried trashing your preferences?
that can fix all sort of things



nick

Hey Loren and Derek, yes the clip is loaded into the viewer. Still no dice. Thanks for the response though!

Nick, I have not tried trashing my preferences, I will look up how to do that.

Thanks!

This just started happening to me this week. At first I thought it was a conflict with TotalFinder, since deactivating it solved the issue for awhile.

But now it's back without let-up. The 3-Way Color Corrector otherwise works perfectly. Only the eyedropper function is borked.

Anyone ever solve this?

Running Mavericks, FCP 7.0.3.

Cheers.

Well, that was a lucky guess.

On a whim I tried forcing the MacBook's graphics to remain on "high performance." Problem solved.

But this begs the question as to why high performance graphics are automatically invoked on FCP startup.