Preparing Your Media

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 ProRes mastering-quality compressed codecs:

ProRes 422
 Suitable for capturing and mastering standard definition media.
ProRes 422 (HQ)
 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)

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:

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, let us take care of it. However, if you or your editor are comfortable with this process and you'd like to perform this step yourself, the following is a good workflow:

  1. Drag the unsupported clip to track V2 (see 1 in illustration).
  2. Solo the auto-select control for track V2 by Option-clicking it (see 2 in illustration).
  3. Move the playhead to that clip, and mark it for export by pressing X. This sets the sequence In and Out points to match those of the clip (see 3 in illustration).Rendering Unsupported Clips
  4. Choose File > Export > QuickTime Movie...
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. Lastly, edit the rendered clip into the gap on track V1 underneath the original clip on track V2.Preparing Sequence 02

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 (Final Cut Studio 2 Only)

Color doesn't 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.

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 optical flow 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:

  1. Send each clip that uses a speed effect in your Final Cut Pro timeline to Motion.
  2. Once Motion opens, select the clip and open the Inspector.
  3. Open the Timing parameter group, and set the Frame Blending pop-up menu to Optical Flow.Preparing Speed Effects
  4. 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.
  5. When the analysis is finished, choose File > Export, and click the Options button next to the Export pop-up menu.
  6. 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 a Codec in Motion
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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, require special handling. Motion effects that cause problems include:

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.

For More Information

Click one of the links below for detailed information about how to prepare your project and its media.