Color Grading a Source Clip

Color Grading a Source Clip

Sometimes you need to color grade a source clip because you may find that easier than applying it to the many parts editing into the timeline. This might be typical for a long interview. It may also be that you're not happy with what autobalance has done even as a starting point. If you try to drag color board effect to clip in the Event Browser you'll find that futile.

Select clip in Event Browser
Right Click and select Open in Timeline. Clip opens in its own timeline.
In Inspector select Color Correction 1 and the far right arrow and Open the Color Board
You can now color grade the clip and you'll not that the Filmstrip in the Event Browser will change to reflect the grade.
You can now use the source clip with the grade attached.

Note that in my initiate testing, if you then edit in the graded clips and then go back to the source and change or reset the grade, it has no impact on the graded clips already in the timeline.

Nice feature.



www.strypesinpost.com

You could do this in in FCP7, thought the slowness of the app meant working with it could be a pain.

All the best,

Tom

Tom Wolsky Wrote:
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> You could do this in in FCP7, thought the slowness
> of the app meant working with it could be a pain.

This is one of the examples that make FCPX really nice for certain workflows.

It's a great Alpha version. Lots of potential. Apple may eventually have a killer NLE. I really wish the thought through their marketing and release strategy though.

>thought the slowness of the app meant working with it could be a pain.

I did cut stuff with a CC filter applied, but i was cutting timeline to timeline, as I don't like to drop effects onto the source clips, unless it's a 180 degree rotation. With a 3 way CC, you get full RT effects on most systems.

One big advantage of FCP X is the background rendering, on top of the fact that it is 64 bits. However i am wondering if it is possible to selectively render sections. Eg, in segments where you have lots of PIP effects, as opposed to using the default background rendering which renders everything from the top.

An alpha version means that the app will go through lots of changes, and the final release would usually bear little resemblance to the alpha, but this is an initial release, which means that a track based approach (critical to some paying jobs) and the ability to batch capture from tapes is probably gone for good. The first time i heard that line of speculation, I thought it was a joke, because tape is still critical to many workflows.



www.strypesinpost.com

To me alpha means features not yet implemented. Beta is the testing of the features once implemented.
FCPX has too many features not yet implemented but I do think they will happen for the most part and most will happen in a matter of months. Others never of course.

It depends what you mean by "batch capture"
As I understand it, AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox will all have tape capture with RS422 deck control.
As to how one batch captures a tape based timeline, I'm not sure if or how.
Back out to tape might involve exporting a rendered timeline though.
BTW when it comes to tape capture, I thought I'd heard DIRECTLY into FCPX but I'd have to dig around for that/those sources. At least that's what I thought I'd heard in reference to AJA.

I have no problem working in the trackless environment at all. As long as there's intelligent metadata tagging so export to outside post chain such as color grading and DAW work, that shouldn't be a problem. I think that will happen as well.

BTW you can turn off background rendering and there is a render selection command.

Well, trimming the media and re-capturing would probably be really hard to implement, since the support seems to be almost exclusively 3rd party. Perhaps it is possible to wrangle the data out as XML and trim and batch capture from a 3rd party tool, eg. FCP 7 or the davinci resolve.

Trackless yea, but I can imagine the hours we will spend disabling lower thirds and graphics because the station wants a sub master, and because some editor didn't know he has to keyword collect that stuff.



www.strypesinpost.com

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since the support seems to be almost exclusively 3rd party.

We'll have to see what AJA does since the posts I've seen around them seem to be direct in. The implications are that Apple is building an API for this. I have no problem with 3rd party since, in every case, tape capture involves third party hardware except DV/HDV.

Quote
Trackless yea, but I can imagine the hours we will spend disabling lower thirds and graphics because the station wants a sub master, and because some editor didn't know he has to keyword collect that stuff.

One of the problems I have with FCPX is that while I like the relational database/metadata direction it's headed in, the implementation is currently very primitive. Tagging would have to be near automatic.

I can envision how this might work conceptually so it would be a simple as tracks. In most NLEs, the act of assigning a clip to a trace is, in effect, tagging with the purpose of that track. For example, Track 3 might be VO. Track 5&6 stereo FX, Track 7&8 Music, etc.

In order to replicate that simplicity, tagging would have to be on edit. Just as one would edit VO to Track 3, one would have to tag a clip as VO in the edit. Selecting the VO tag on the edit has to be as simple as targeting Track 3. It may be that one "targets" a keyword tag just as one targets a track during an edit.

Another method could well be through Secondary Storyline assignments, which would be similar in many respects to tracks. The problem is currently it's really awkward to setup a Secondary Storyline.

All things brings to another analogy of where FCPX is currently. They've built this incredible jet engine and in order to get it out the door they put it in a go-cart body. The more I play with it the more I respect the engine and the more I'm frustrated with the go-cart. On a straight away I can travel 300mph. Then when I try to drive it on a super highway I discover that not only can't it handle the narrow turn radius but there's no left turn signal yet.

The problem is that everyone is seeing the crapy go-cart and not the jet engine. I can't blame anyone because Apple's marketing people have absolutely done the worst job they've ever done. They touted the jet engine and even showed off some of that. They never mentioned that it would take time to move from go-cart to a fly by wire jet. Think of how OSX was introduced in the OS9 days or even how Intel was introduced during the PPC days. They were upfront that it would take some time to get from point A to point B.

I have no doubt FCPX has a jet engine . . . but when you surprise deliver a go-cart, one begins to doubt they have any intention of making it a fly by wire jet.

I even think FCPX is the appropriate name as well. FCP7 is to FCPX as OS9 was to OSX. How useful was Cheetah or Puma? It really was Jaguar where it finally was something one could actually live in. It took about 17 months to get from Cheetah to Jaguar. Cheetah to Puma was six months. We'll see that when all the features Apple promised in the FAQ and London come by this December. The Jaguar step may take until next summer.

. . . but I really do think they built a nice engine.

And QT7 vs QTX. QTX is not a pro app, yet. It has the underbelly of a rocket ship and the usefulness of a fish tank. And how long has QTX been out now? Since 2009. And to the best of my knowledge it's still version 10.0.

We still use QT7 (first released in 2005 - I think the last revision was in 2009) every day.

And that's another good example. QT7 and QTX booth exist during a long transition.
That's one more example of why FCP7 to FCPX is the exception. It doesn't follow Apple's pattern of long transitions.

I suspect QTX has been in a holding pattern because it couldn't move forward until AV Foundation was in place. QTX's main new feature is the ability to handle HTTP Live Streaming. The new Compressor 4 is the first time Apple has integrated HTTP Live Streaming presets. Also note if you go to the bottom of this page.
[www.apple.com]
and click on the Learn more link next to QTX
it should resolve to
[www.apple.com]
but apparently Apple killed that because the link bounces to
[www.apple.com]

So I suspect QTX is also not what it was at the missing description and well soon become something that may also hook into AV Foundation.

In every case Apple has ALWAYS had a long transition into new technology. In every case the two technologies coexisted for a year or more (usually much more).

The one and only exception is FCP7 to FCPX.
This is completely out of character with every bit of Apple's history going back a decade.
I can't help but think there was something other than just a marketing mistake involved. There's no way, no how, they thought FCPX was a current replacement for FCP7. I think something else happened.

In every case though, the new technology came into it's own some time later. The one exception to that is QTX and I suspect that's going to change as well soon.

>Another method could well be through Secondary Storyline assignments, which
>would be similar in many respects to tracks

That would be nice, and it also has to ripple with the primary storyline.


My guess is that they decided to focus on the DSLR/semi pro market. Let's face it, FCP X is great if you are coming from iMovie, but @#$%& if you are coming from FCS '09. Also, of the 3 most commonly used NLEs, the most likely NLE to make it onto touch screen devices is FCP X.



www.strypesinpost.com

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That would be nice, and it also has to ripple with the primary storyline.

I'm not sure what your point is. The Secondary Storyline is connected only at one point. You can move anything you want in the Secondary Storyline and nothing ripples in the Primary. You can move anything you want in the Primary and the Secondary will not move UNLESS you move the clip it's connected to. You can even change the point of connection using Command Option and clicking someplace else (another frame or another clip). It gives me more option than a track would and these are options that I can use or not at my choosing. I see no problem and many advantages. Sometimes I want things to follow and sometimes not. I can do either.

I was thinking of turning off all lower third supers in a sequence. When you edit, you want to move the lower thirds along with the clips in the primary storyline, (which are connected as connecting clips), and when you want to turn off the lower thirds, you would disable those tracks. I'm not sure how they would implement that, since a secondary storyline would also be used for Brolls. Naturally for the Apple? way of editing, you would have to categorize the lower thirds using a keyword collection, so you can choose to disable them.



www.strypesinpost.com

Disabling the supers in FCPX is relatively easy. Just use the Timeline Index window (cmd shift 2) and select titles only view. Highlight all the titles in the Timeline Index and then return to the timeline/storyline and press "v" to disable.

Not as quick as simply turning off a track granted but potentially very powerful. Especially as in FCP7 you can never be 100% that a super has not be accidentally put on the wrong track.

Nice, but how about the graphic layer under it?



www.strypesinpost.com

I think in the ideal FCPX world you would create a supers template in Motion 5 then publish it to FCPX. That way all the elements would come in as a Title file. You could also use the rigging feature to let you further tweak the super once in FCPX.

In the real world you're back to tagging with meta data as you import. Maybe even re naming your graphic files with a suffix like GFX. E.g. "GFX_filename" . Then using the timeline index to filter in all GFX files with GFX when you need to disable them.

i think tagging could, in the end, be a very elegant way of organically organising the timeline. It just needs to be thought out properly - which it obviously isn't! I would love to be able to tag a clip (audio /video/ title) with a weight. Eg Titles could carry a weight of 1 and would always "float" to the top and music clips a weight of 10 so they always "sink" to the bottom. That way all the different types of media would group together while still being connected to the primary storyline?. or they could just simply give us tracks back ;-)

Talking about Color Grading. Nice demo of DaVinci Resolve v8.0

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/media/891676/davinciresolvedemo.mov

I don't know how this would fix into a FCP X workflow. I guess you could...