When Does Color Correction Happen?
Typically, I start working on a project once the edit has been locked. Oftentimes, I receive the video portion of the program at the same time the audio has been handed off for post. Sometimes I'm hired to do an "offline" color correction pass of a project that's still being edited, usually in preparation for an important test screening in front of an audience. However, it's more usual for me to be brought in at the conclusion of the edit.
Is It Necessary to Recapture My Media?
If you've been editing your media using an offline format that's of lower quality then your original shooting format, then the answer is yes. However, just because your media is compressed doesn't mean it automatically needs to be recaptured. If your editing format is the same as your shooting format, there is no need to recapture prior to color correction. For example, if you originally shot your project using the DV format, and you captured the media using the DV codec, you don't need to recapture. The same is true for the HDV format (though with HDV, there are compelling reasons to upconvert the media to either the Uncompressed or ProRes codecs for efficiencies sake).
When recapture is necessary, most of my clients prefer to save money by recapturing their source media on their own. If you need me to recapture your program for you, video deck rental can be arranged for whichever format is necessary (due to the plethora of available formats, I choose not to maintain video decks of my own).
Preparing Your Sequence and Media describes in greater detail when recapture is necessary, and the steps you can take to prepare your project for the color correction process.
How Do I Bring My Project to You?
Once you've prepared everything, all you need to do is copy your Final Cut Pro project file and all the media your project is linked to (.mov files, image files like .tiff and .psd, Motion and LiveType projects) onto a portable hard drive so you can bring everything to my suite. Media managing your project using the Copy option makes this go much faster. Portable hard drives using FireWire 800 (good) or eSATA (even better) make the process of copying files quicker too.
A day or two in advance of the session, we meet and I copy all your project's media onto my accelerated hard drive array, and then open it and relink all of the files to double-check that everything is there. If there's any missing media, this gives you a chance to bring it with you later.
What Do You Use for Color Correction?
I offer two ways to color correct your project. One is to correct your edited sequence right in Final Cut Pro. The other is to send the sequence to Color. Both applications are capable of outputting high quality video. Which method is right for your project depends on a number of factors.
Using Final Cut Pro
Although known primarily as an editing application, Final Cut Pro has a color correction interface that I've used to correct many programs. In general, Final Cut Pro works well when:
- Projects need color correction while they're still being edited. Since the color corrections are applied to the clips in your sequence, if the clips are moved or reedited, the corrections follow along.
- You're working on an effects-intensive projects that has been composited inside of Final Cut Pro. In this case, significant time will be saved by avoiding the extra preparation that Color would require.
Using Color
Color is an excellent environment for for any program needing comprehensive grading.
- Since it's a dedicated color correction application, it's faster to apply effects like vignettes and secondary color correction operations to make more detailed adjustments.
- Color has numerous specialized features that make it easier to execute extreme corrections, and to apply more aggressively stylized "looks" to your piece.
- Because of its dedicated control surfaces and grade management tools, Color can be generally faster to work with.
On the other hand, because it's a round-trip process, Color works best for projects when the edit has been locked. Also, once your project has been graded using Color, any subsequent modifications to the project's color correction should also be done using Color.
The Color Round Trip Workflow
- Recapture the source media at highest quality, if necessary, and prepare the edited sequence.*
- Send the sequence to Color.
- Perform the color correction pass.
- Render an alternate set of graded media from Color.
- Send the rendered Color project back to Final Cut Pro and output the final program as an uncompressed, self-contained QuickTime master.
* You can perform these steps prior to the session.
The Color Workflow, Illustrated
Introduction
This page covers a variety of project preparation information that can help you and your editor to organize your project in advance of color correction and finishing. Your editor should be able to easily perform these steps prior to delivering your project to me, saving you time and money in the process.
However, if you would simply prefer me to take care of the necessary project preparation, that's no problem. We can schedule the project prep time in advance of your session.
This section covers the following topics:
Preparing Your Final Cut Pro Sequence for Color Correction
Before you bring your project to me for color correction, there are a few things you can do to prepare your project in so we can get started more quickly, saving yourself some money in the process. On the other hand, if you're not comfortable going through any of these steps, I can do them prior to the actual color correction session.
Duplicate Your Edited Sequence Before Following These Steps!
Before you follow any of the steps in this section to prepare your edited sequence for color correction, make a duplicate of it, and name it something like "My Great Project CC" to indicate that this is the sequence that's destined for color correction. This way, the original edited sequence is backed up along with all of the original clips and effects, should you ever need to refer back to the original
Move All Clips That Aren’t Being Composited to Track V1
Editors often use multiple tracks of video to assemble scenes, taking advantage of the track ordering rules in Final Cut Pro to determine which clips are currently visible. On the other hand, it’s faster, easier, and less ambiguous for the colorist (me) to navigate and work on a project that has all its clips on a single video track.
For this reason, please move all video clips that aren’t superimposed as part of a compositing operation down to track V1, as shown in the following screenshots. If two or more clips are superimposed as an effect (such as a title sequence), by all means leave it be, and I can color correct each layer separately.
Tip—if you hold the Shift key down while you drag clips up and down in the Timeline, you'll lock their position in time so you don't inadvertently move them out of sync with the audio. Furthermore, if you don't want to change the track order of audio items that are linked to the video clips you're moving, you can turn off Linked Selection. This lets you move video items without also moving their audio.
Remove All Non-Essential Filters
It's often difficult for me to distinguish between filters that are creating temporary effects that I'll need to replace, and filters creating permanent effects that you want to preserve. For this reason, if you've created any temporary color corrections during the offline phase of your edit, please remove these from your sequence before bringing it in.
Please note, I'm only talking about filters for color correction that were applied during the offline edit. It's not necessary to remove every filter in your program. By all means, retain any and all filters used to create effects that are integral to your program such as glows, flops, mattes (such as letterboxing), etc.
If you feel that these filters are a useful reference for the creative direction you'll want me to take, I can always open up your original sequence to take a look at what was done previously.
TIP—There's an easy way to find every clip with a filter (or motion effect) applied to it:
- Select the sequence you're preparing for Color in the Browser.
- Choose Sequence > Settings.
- When the Sequence Settings window appears, open the Timeline Options tab, turn on Clip Keyframes.
- Then, turn off all of the clip keyframes options except for Video: Motion Bar and Filters Bar (see the illustration below).
- Click OK.
After you click OK, your Timeline will change to display Motion and Filters bars underneath each video track of your sequence.
- Green bars appear underneath every clip with one or more filters applied.
- Blue bars appear underneath every clip with one or more motion effects applied, including scale, position, distort, crop, etcetera.
- Blue bars also appear for clips that have linear or variable speed effects applied to them, making this a great way of identifying slow motion speed effects clips that you want to pre-render by sending them to Motion (see Sending Clips to Motion).
Bring All Third Party Filters and Fonts Used in the Program
If your project uses third party After Effects or FxPlug filters that didn't come with Final Cut Studio, you need to bring those filters to me along with your other project and media files.
While most color-correction sessions don't involve motion graphics work, it's still good for me to be able to view your project as it's supposed to appear. The color and placement of superimposed titles sometimes necessitates changes to the color correction of the clip underneath. Also, if you need me to render a version of your program that includes the titles, I'll need to have the fonts.
Tip—After color correction, I recommend rendering at least one version of your program as a textless master. This lets you redo your titles at any time without having to re-render the entire program.
Media Manage Your Project
Once you've followed the above steps, it's best to eliminate unused media to save drive space, and to consolidate all the source media used by your project into a single directory for easy transport and relinking. This is also a good step to take prior to recapturing your media (if that's necessary).
Tip—If you're going to create high-quality slow motion clips using optical flow processing in Motion, it's best to media manage your sequence prior to taking this step. This will make it go much, much faster.
The safest way to use the Media Manager is to employ the following options:
- Which option you choose from the media referenced by selected sequence pop-up menu depends on whether or not your source media needs to be recaptured.
- If your media is already at its highest quality and you don't need to recapture it, then choose Copy. This safely duplicates the media used by your project onto another hard drive (which you choose using the Browse button in the Media Destination section near the bottom of this window), while leaving your original media untouched.
- If your media needs to be recaptured (see section 1), then choose Create Offline. This creates an offline version of your sequence, ready for the recapture process.
- Turn off Include master clips outside selection. This saves hard drive space.
- Turn on Delete unused media from selected sequence. This saves more space.
- Turn on Use Handles, leaving the handles duration field at the default of 1 second, just in case you need any last-minute editorial tweaks later on.
- Turn off Include affiliate clips outside selection. This saves more space.
- Turn on Duplicate selected items and place into a new project. This further protects you by saving all changes to a duplicate project file, which is also saved in the directory you choose with the Browse button. The original project file is left untouched.
- If this is a multi-camera edit, turn off Include nonactive multiclip angles if you've locked your edit. This will significantly reduce the amount of hard drive space you need to transport your project, and will make working with Color simpler. Warning–be sure to double-check your sequence after using the option to make sure that you have the correct clips.
- If you're using the Copy option, click the Browse button to choose an external hard drive on which you want to copy the resulting media.
The following screenshot shows the Media Manager set up to copy preexisting media.
Once you've media managed your project and copied all the files to your portable hard drive, it's a good idea to unmount the hard drive containing the original media, and then try opening up the newly copied project and media from your portable hard drive so you can double-check that every clip was managed correctly. This lets you check to make sure you've got everything, and that all the files relink to the project properly.
Important—Don't assume that the Media Manager worked perfectly, check every clip in the Timeline!
Preparing Your Media for Color Correction
It's always a good idea to consolidate your project's media in order to make it more portable. Once consolidated, most projects fit onto a single portable FireWire drive even with all their source media.
Recapture Your Source Media at the Highest Quality (If Necessary)
For the best results, it’s essential to use media that has been captured at the highest possible quality. If you’re following an offline/online workflow where you captured the source media at low quality in order to save hard drive space, you’ll need to recapture that media at its highest original quality. This is not to say that you need to recapture everything using the 10-bit Uncompressed 4:2:2 codec if it was originally shot using a compressed format.
For example, if you’re working on a program that was shot on NTSC DV tape but that was captured and edited using the OfflineRT format, you need only recapture the source media at its original resolution and format (in this case, the DV/DVCPRO - NTSC codec). Likewise, DVCPRO 50, HDV, DVCPRO HD, IMX, and HDCAM HD (35 Mb/sec VBR) are all suitable video formats for color correction using in the native codec.
Here's why–in either Final Cut Pro or Color, image data from supported compressed formats is decompressed at the beginning of the image processing pipeline, with all the internal image processing performed on uncompressed data. During rendering, the corrected, internally uncompressed image can be written straight to disk as an uncompressed file. In essence, the rendering process upconverts your program at the same time it processes your color corrections, preserving maximum image quality.
On the other hand, if you’re working with media that's in an analog or digital mastering format such as Betacam SP, Digital Betacam, or D-5, you should capture it using the 10-bit Uncompressed 4:2:2 codec if you want your media to be completely uncompressed. On the other hand, to save hard drive space you could alternately choose to capture your media using Apple's new ProRes mastering-quality compressed codecs:
- ProRes 422 is suitable for capturing and mastering standard definition media
- ProRes 422 (HQ) is suitable for capturing and mastering high-definition media
Export all Unsupported Effects Clips You Want to Color Correct as
Self-Contained QuickTime .Mov Files (optional)
(This step pertains only to preparing for a Color session)
If we've discussed your program in advance and you know for a fact that it will be corrected using Color, there's another optional step you can perform to prep your project. Certain types of clips and effects in Final Cut Pro sequences are not supported directly inside of Color, including:
- Still images (such as .tiff and .jpg files with durations greater then one frame)
- Final Cut Pro freeze frame clips
- Final Cut Pro generators
- Motion project files that are edited into the Timeline
- LiveType project files that are edited into the Timeline
- Filters (most FXScript and FxPlug filters are ignored by Color)
- Clips with Speed effects also need special handling (see section 3)
- Clips using Motion Tab effects need special handling if your sequence has interlaced clips
Most of these effects are simply ignored by Color, leaving offline clips in the Color timeline. However, unless they're titles or superimposition effects, these clips need to be color corrected along with the rest of the program. For the smoothest Final Cut Pro to Color round trip, it's usually best to render (export) such effects as self-contained QuickTime files, then import them back into your project and edit them back into your Final Cut Pro project to replace the original effect clip in your project.
Tip—Don't bother exporting Text generators. They'll pass through the Color round trip with no problems, and it's generally easier to finish your project keeping title generators live for future editing.
If you have any questions about this process, don't worry about it. This is a preparatory step that I can easily take care of. However, if you or your editor are comfortable with this process and you'd like to take care of it yourself, the following is a good workflow:
- Drag the unsupported clip to track V2 (see 1 in illustration).
- Solo the auto-select control for track V2 by Option-clicking it (see 2 in illustration).
- Move the playhead to that clip, and mark the clip for export by pressing X. This sets the sequence In and Out points to match those of the clip (see 3 in illustration).
- Choose File > Export > QuickTime Movie...
- In the Save window, choose a name and location for the new media file, and click Save. It's best to choose a consistent naming convention for all of your pre-rendered clips, like "PreRender 01," and to save all of your prerendered clips to the same directory so you can keep track of them.
- When it finishes rendering, reimport the new QuickTime movie back into your project. It's also helpful to create a new bin in which to store all of your prerendered clips.
- Lastly, edit the rendered clip into the gap on track V1 underneath the original clip on track V2.
After you've rendered all of the unsupported clips in your sequence, you can choose to remove the original superimposed effects clips from track V2 just to be safe. Leaving them in your sequence makes it easier to locate and rework these effects should you decide you ever need to make a change. Now that the effect has been turned into a QuickTime movie, it can be graded in Color just like any other clip.
Important—Don't forget to bring these rendered clips along with all the other media for your project.
Send All Clips With Slow Motion Speed Effects to Motion, and Use Optical
Flow Processing for the Best Quality (FCP Studio 2 Only)
Color doesn't quite support clips with speed effects as well as it could, so I recommend exporting all clips with speed effects as self-contained QuickTime movies with which to replace the original effect in the Timeline. Fast motion clips can be exported with a high quality result directly out of Final Cut Pro, as described in section 2.
However, if you have Final Cut Studio 2, you have the option of rendering clips with linear or variable slow motion speed effects at much higher quality by using the adaptive image analysis in Motion 3 to create smooth slow motion. This is highly recommended, as it's the easiest way to create beautifully smooth slow motion effects, while you avoid potential problems in Color at the same time.
Tip—It's best to save preprocessing of slow motion effects in Motion until after you've media managed your sequence. When you turn on Optical Flow processing, Color analyzes every single frame of the source media linked to that clip. That means if you're analyzing a five second clip that's linked to a fifteen minute piece of source media, Motion will have to analyze the entire 15 minutes. Media managing your sequence first lets you eliminate the unused media and analyze only the media that's necessary to create the effect.
Here's a good workflow:
- Send each clip that uses a speed effect in your Final Cut Pro timeline to Motion.
- Once Motion opens, select the clip and open the Inspector.
- Open the Timing parameter group, and set the Frame Blending pop-up menu to Optical Flow.
- After you've done step 3, you'll need to wait for the clip to be analyzed. If you choose Window > Show Task List, you'll see a progress bar showing how long this will take. You must wait for the entire clip to be analyzed before you can export it, otherwise you won't get a high quality result.
- When the analysis is finished, choose File > Export, and click the Options button next to the Export pop-up menu.
- When the Export Options window appears, choose one of either the ProRes or Uncompressed codecs (exporting using the default Animation codec is not recommended), and click OK.
- Choose Video from the Include pop-up menu (you don't want Video and Audio), then choose a name and location for the new media file, and click Export.
- When Motion finishes rendering, reimport the new QuickTime movie back into your project. It's always helpful to create a new bin in which to store all of your prerendered clips.
- Lastly, overwrite edit the new prerendered clip to take the place of the .motn project file that's currently in your project's timeline.
If Your Sequence is Interlaced, or Has a Mixed Fomat Timeline
Mixed format timelines that combine interlaced and progressive clips, and interlaced clips that use motion effects need special handling. Motion effects that cause problems include:
- Scale
- Rotation
- Center
- Aspect Ratio (in the Distort group)
- Time Remap (see section 3)
Follow the procedures in section 2 to export each clip with motion effects as a self-contained QuickTime movie, with which to replace the original clip in the prepared Timeline.
Note—If your sequence is non-interlaced and uses all noninterlaced media, prerendering these clips is not necessary.
Preparing Avid Media Composer and Other Projects
for Color Correction
If your project was edited using the Avid Media Composer, Premiere Pro, or any other NLE software or tape to tape editing environment, there is a simple way you can bring your project to me for color correction.
Export the Entire Project as a Self-Contained QuickTime Movie
If you're using Media Composer for the Macintosh, export the entire Timeline as a self-contained QuickTime movie using either the Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 or the Prores 422 codecs (Prores 422 if standard definition, Prores 422 HQ if high definition).
If you're using Media Composer on Windows, or some other editorial system that's incapable of generating a QuickTime movie file, you can output the timeline to tape using your mastering format of choice, and I can capture it to whichever format is necessary for color correction.
Export an EDL of the Project
Export an EDL of the timeline that you exported to either QuickTime or Tape using the CMX 3600 format.
Send Both the Media and EDL to Me Prior to the Color Correction Session
I'll need a bit of time to prep the media, so I recommend arranging to provide me with both the media and EDL in advance of the scheduled session so that I can take care of this before you arrive.
What You Receive At the End of the Process
Every project has unique needs, and the required deliverables can vary depending on the project. Typically, the deliverables that I hand off to you are:
- All project files, including effects project files
- All rendered effects clips if any were generated
- If your program was graded using Color, you also receive the rendered, corrected media
- An uncompressed, textless QuickTime master file at the project's native resolution and frame rate
It's important that you have a portable hard drive with enough room to fit all of the media I'll be giving you. I can provide you with an estimate of how much drive space you'll need in advance.
Although most of my clients require only a QuickTime master file, if you need tape output and/or format conversion (such as PAL to NTSC or SD to HD), those are also available at additional cost. For scheduling purposes, we should discuss any necessary tape output in advance. I can also create standard definition screening DVDs or compressed web movies, if needed, at additional cost.
What Do I Do With a Textless Master?
A textless master is simply the program without any titles. To create it, I disable all the title clips and generators in your edited Final Cut Pro sequence, and render out your program with all of its color correction and effects.
I then reimport the resulting QuickTime master .mov file into the project file, and edit it into a new sequence (which I like to name "Output Sequence") into which I've edited all of the title clips used by your program, superimposed and otherwise. Since title text often changes, setting up your project this way lets you quickly update your titles without having to rerender the entire program.
Typically, you'll receive your final audio mix after color correction has been completed, and you can edit the mix audio clips into the same output sequence prior to creating a DVD, rendering a web movie, or outputting to tape.
