Apple Color 1.0 User Manual

Color

User Manual

Apple Inc.

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Note:

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Preface 9 Color Documentation and Resources

What Is Color?

Using the Color Documentation

Color Websites

Apple Service and Support Website

Chapter 1 13 Color Correction Basics

What Is Color Correction?

When Does Color Correction Happen?

Color Correction in Color

Image Encoding Standards

Basic Color and Imaging Concepts

Chapter 2 35 Color Correction Workflows

An Overview of the Color Workflow

Limitations in Color

Video Finishing Workflows Using Final Cut Pro

Importing Projects from Other Video Editing Applications

Using Color in a Digital Intermediate Workflow

Using EDLs, Timecode, and Frame Numbers to Conform Projects

Chapter 3 59 Using the Color Interface

Setting Up a Control Surface

Using the Onscreen Controls

Organizational Browsers and Bins

Using Color with One or Two Monitors

Chapter 4 71 Importing and Managing Projects and Media

Creating and Opening Projects

Saving Projects and Archives

Moving Projects Between Final Cut Pro and Color

Reconforming Projects

Importing EDLs

Exporting EDLs

Relinking QuickTime Media

Importing Media Directly into The Timeline

Compatible Media Formats

Converting Cineon and DPX Image Sequences to QuickTime

Importing Color Corrections

Exporting JPEG Images

Chapter 5 91 Setup

The File Browser

The Shots Browser

Grades Bin

Project Settings Tab

10 2

Messages Tab

10 2

User Preferences Tab

Chapter 6 111 Monitoring

111

The Scopes Window

113

Monitoring Broadcast Video Output

11 5

Using Display LUTs

12 0

Monitoring the Still Store

Chapter 7 121 Timeline Playback, Navigation, and Editing

12 2

Basic Timeline UI Elements

12 3

Customizing the Timeline Interface

12 5

Working with Tracks

12 6

Selecting the Current Shot

12 6

Timeline Playback

12 8

Timeline Navigation Selecting Shots in the Timeline

12 9

131

Working with Grades in the Timeline

13 2

The Settings Tabs

13 3

Editing Controls and Procedures

Chapter 8 141 Video Scopes

141

What Scopes Are Available?

14 4

Video Scope Options

14 5

Analyzing Images Using the Video Scopes

Chapter 9 163 Primary In

163

What Is the Primary In Room Used For?

166

Using the Primary Contrast Controls

168

Adjusting Contrast in the Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights

17 9

Using Color Balance Controls

Contents

183

Understanding Shadow, Midtone, and Highlight Adjustments

18 9

Curves Controls

201

Basic Tab

204

Advanced Tab

206

Auto Balance

Chapter 10 209 Secondaries

209

What Is the Secondaries Room Used For?

211

Where to Start?

212

Choosing a Region to Correct Using the HSL Qualifiers

219

Previews Tab

221

Isolating a Region Using the Vignette Controls

228

Adjusting the Inside and Outside of the Selection

229

Using the Secondary Curves

234

Reset Controls

Chapter 11 235 Color FX

235

The Color FX Interface

236

How to Make Color FX

238

Creating and Connecting Nodes

239

Adjusting Node Parameters

241

Bypassing Nodes

242

Creating Effects in the Color FX Room

247

Using Color FX with Interlaced Shots

248

Saving Favorite Effects in the Color FX Bin

249

Node Reference Guide

Chapter 12 259 Primary Out

259

Using the Primary Out Room Making Extra Corrections Using the Primary In Room

260 260

Understanding the Image Processing Pipeline

261

Using the Ceiling Controls

Chapter 13 263 Managing Corrections and Grades

263

The Difference Between Corrections and Grades

264

Saving and Using Corrections and Grades

268

Applying Saved Corrections and Grades to Shots

269

Managing Grades in the Timeline

272

Using the “Copy to” Buttons in the Primary Rooms

273

Using the Copy Grade and Paste Grade Memory Banks

274

Setting a Beauty Grade in the Timeline

274

Disabling All Grades

Contents

274

Managing Grades in the Shots Browser

281

Using the Primary, Secondary, and Color FX Rooms Together to Manage Each Shot’s Corrections

Chapter 14 285 Keyframing

285

Why Keyframe an Effect?

286

How Keyframing Works in Different Rooms

288

Working with Keyframes in the Timeline

290

Keyframe Interpolation

Chapter 15 293 Geometry

293

Navigating Within the Image Preview

294

The Pan & Scan Tab

298

Shapes Tab

306

Tracking Tab

Chapter 16 315 Still Store

315

Saving Images to the Still Store

317

Saving Still Store Images in Subdirectories

317 Removing Images from the Still Store 318 Recalling Images from the Still Store 318 Customizing the Still Store View

319 Controls in the Still Store Bin

Chapter 17 321 Render Queue

321 About Rendering in Color 322 Which Effects Does Color Render? 323 The Render Queue Interface 324 How to Render Shots in Your Project 326 Rendering Multiple Grades for Each Shot 328 Gather Rendered Media

Appendix A 329 Calibrating Your Monitor

329 About Color Bars 329 Calibrating Video Monitors With Color Bars

Appendix B 333 Keyboard Shortcuts

333 Project Shortcuts 334 Switching Rooms and Windows 334 Playback and Navigation 335 Grade Shortcuts 335 Timeline Specific Shortcuts 335 Editing Shortcuts 336 Keyframing Shortcuts

Contents

336 Shortcuts in the Shots Browser 336 Shortcuts in the Geometry Room 337 Still Store Shortcuts 337 Render Queue Shortcuts

Appendix C 339 Setting Up a Control Surface

339 JLCooper MCS-3000, MCS-Spectrum, MCS-3400, and MCS-3800 Control Surfaces 344 Tangent Devices CP100 Control Surface 346 Tangent Devices CP200 Series Control Surface 351 Customizing Control Surface Sensitivity

Index 353

Contents 7

Color Documentation and Resources

Welcome to the world of professional video and film grading and manipulation using Color.

What Is Color?

Color has been designed from the ground up as a feature-rich color correction environment that complements a wide variety of post-production workflows, whether your project is standard definition, high definition, or a 2K digital intermediate. If you’ve edited a program using Final Cut Pro, it’s easy to send your program to Color for grading, and then send it back to Final Cut Pro for final output. However, it’s also easy to reconform projects that originate as EDLs from other editing environments.

Color has the tools that professional colorists demand, including:

Â Primary color correction using three-way color balance and contrast controls with

individual shadow, midtone, and highlight control

Â Curve controls for detailed color and luma channel adjustments

Â Up to eight secondary color correction operations per shot with HSL qualifiers,

vignettes, user shapes, and separate adjustments for the inside and outside of each secondary

Â Color FX node-based effects for creating custom color effects

Â Pan & Scan effects

Â Motion tracking that can be used to animate vignettes, user shapes, and other effects

Â Broadcast legal settings to guarantee adherence to quality control standards

Â Support for color-correction-specific control surfaces

Â And much, much more

Preface

All of these tools are divided among eight individual “rooms” of the Color interface, logically arranged in an order that matches the workflow of most colorists. You’ll use Color to correct, balance, and create stylized “looks” for each shot in your program as the last step in the post-production workflow, giving your programs a final polish previously available only to high-end facilities.

Using the Color Documentation

The documentation that accompanies Color consists of a printed setup Guide and an onscreen user manual.

Color Setup Guide

The Color Setup Guide provides excerpts from the onscreen user manual that are designed to show you how Color fits into each of a variety of post-production workflows, and help you to configure the project settings and user preferences in Color to best suit your needs. If you’ve just installed Color and want to figure out how to set up your system to work most efficiently, this is the place to start.

Color Onscreen User Manual

The Color User Manual, available from the Help menu, provides comprehensive information about the application, and is written for users of all levels of experience.

Â Editors and post-production professionals from other disciplines who are new to the

color correction process will find information on how to get started, with detailed explanations of how all controls work, and why they function the way they do.

Â Colorists coming to Color from other grading environments can skip ahead to find

detailed information about Color’s inner workings, and exhaustive parameter-byparameter explanations for every room of the Color interface.

Note: The onscreen user manual provides all of the information contained in the Color Setup Guide, in an easily searchable form with full-color illustrations.

Tutorials

A collection of onscreen video tutorials on DVD-ROM is available to help you quickly get started using Color. These tutorials walk you through every major area of the interface, and are a good way to get an overview of where everything is prior to diving into the user manual.

Color Websites

The following websites provide general information, updates, and support information about Color, as well as the latest news, resources, and training materials.

For more information about Color, go to:

Â http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/color

For more information on the Apple Pro Training Program, go to:

Â http://www.apple.com/software/pro/training

To provide comments and feedback about Color, go to:

Â http://www.apple.com/feedback/color.html

10 Preface Color Documentation and Resources

Apple Service and Support Website

The Apple Service and Support website provides software updates and answers to the most frequently asked questions for all Apple products, including Color. You’ll also have access to product specifications, reference documentation, and Apple product technical articles:

Â http://www.apple.com/support

For support information that’s specific to Color, go to:

Â http://www.apple.com/support/color

Preface Color Documentation and Resources 11

1 Color Correction Basics

To better learn how Color works, it’s important to understand the overall color correction process and how images work their way through post-production in SD, HD, and film workflows.

If you’re new to color correction, the first part of this chapter provides a background in color correction workflows to help you better understand why Color works the way it does. The second part goes on to explain important color and imaging concepts that are important to the operation of the Color interface.

This chapter covers the following:

Â What Is Color Correction? (p. 13)

Â When Does Color Correction Happen? (p. 16)

Â Color Correction in Color (p. 22)

Â Image Encoding Standards (p. 24)

Â Basic Color and Imaging Concepts (p. 27)

What Is Color Correction?

In any post-production workflow, color correction is generally one of the last steps taken to finish an edited program. Color has been created to give you precise control over the look of every shot in your project by providing flexible tools and an efficient workspace with which to manipulate the contrast, color, and geometry of each shot in your program.

The Goals of Color Correction?

When color correcting a given program, you’ll be called upon to perform many, if not all, of the tasks described in this section. Color gives you an extremely deep feature set with which to accomplish all this and more. While the deciding factor in determining how far you go in any color correction session is usually the amount of time you have in which to work, the dedicated color correction interface in Color allows you to work quickly and efficiently.

The Fundamentals

Every program requires you to take, at the very least, the following steps. With practice, most of these can be accomplished using the primary color correction tools (for more information, see Chapter 9, “Primary In,” on page 163).

Â Making sure that key elements in your program look the way they should: Every scene of

your program has key elements that are the main focus of the viewer. In a narrative or documentary video, the focus is probably on the individuals within each shot. In a commercial, the key element is undoubtedly the product (for example the label of a bottle or the color of a car). Regardless of what these key elements are, chances are you or your audience will have certain expectations of what they should look like, and it’s your job to make the colors in the program match what was originally shot.

When working with shots of people, one of the guiding principles of color correction is to make sure that their skin tones in the program look the same as (or better than) in real life. Regardless of ethnicity or complexion, the hues of human skin tones, when measured objectively on a Vectorscope, fall along a fairly narrow range (although the saturation and brightness vary). Color gives you the tools to make whatever adjustments are necessary to ensure that the skin tones of people in your final edited piece look the way they should.

Â Correcting errors in color balance and exposure: Frequently, images that are acquired

digitally (whether shot on analog or digital video, or transferred from film) don’t have optimal exposure or color balance to begin with. For example, many camcorders and digital cinema cameras deliberately record blacks that aren’t quite at 0 percent in order to avoid the inadvertent crushing of data unnecessarily.

Furthermore, accidents can happen in any shoot. For example, the crew may not have had the correctly balanced film stock for the conditions in which they were shooting, or someone may have forgotten to white balance the video camera before shooting an interview in an office lit with fluorescent lights, resulting in footage with a greenish tinge. Color makes it easy to fix these kinds of mistakes.

Â Balancing all the shots in a scene to match: Most edited programs incorporate footage

from a variety of sources, shot in multiple locations over the course of many days, weeks, or months of production. Even with the most skilled lighting and camera crews, differences in color and exposure are bound to occur, sometimes within shots meant to be combined into a single scene.

When edited together, these changes in color and lighting can make individual shots stand out, making the editing appear uneven. With careful color correction, all the different shots that make up a scene can be balanced to match one another so that they all look as if they’re happening at the same time and in the same place, with the same lighting. This is commonly referred to as scene-to-scene color correction.

14 Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics

Â Creating contrast: Color correction can also be used to create contrast between two

scenes for a more jarring effect. Imagine cutting from a lush, green jungle scene to a harsh desert landscape with many more reds and yellows. Using color correction, you can subtly accentuate these differences.

Â Achieving a “look”: The process of color correction is not simply one of making all the

video in your piece match some objective model of exposure. Color, like sound, is a property that, when subtly mixed, can result in an additional level of dramatic control over your program.

With color correction, you can control whether your video has rich, saturated colors or a more muted look. You can make your shots look warmer by pushing their tones into the reds, or make them look cooler by bringing them into the blues. You can pull details out of the shadows, or crush them, increasing the picture’s contrast for a starker look. Such subtle modifications alter the audience’s perception of the scene being played, changing a program’s mood. Once you pick a look for your piece, or even for an individual scene, you can use color correction to make sure that all the shots in the appropriate scenes match the same look, so that they cut together smoothly.

Â Adhering to guidelines for broadcast legality: If a program is destined for television

broadcast, you are usually provided with a set of quality control (QC) guidelines that specific the “legal” limits for minimum black levels, maximum white levels, and minimum and maximum chroma saturation and composite RGB limits. Adherence to these guidelines is important to ensure that the program is accepted for broadcast, as “illegal” values may cause problems when the program is encoded for transmission. QC standards vary, so it’s important to check what these guidelines are in advance. Color has built-in broadcast safe settings (sometimes referred to as a legalizer) that automatically prevent video levels from exceeding the specified limits. For more information, see “Broadcast Safe Settings” on page 100.

Detail Work

If you have the time, the Color toolset allows you to go even further to adjust the look of your program:

Â Adjusting specific elements separately: It’s sometimes necessary to selectively target a

narrow range of colors to alter or replace only those color values. A common example of this might be to turn a red car blue or to mute the excessive colors of an article of clothing.These sorts of tasks are accomplished with what’s referred to as secondary color correction, and Color provides you with numerous tools with which to achieve such effects. For more information, see Chapter 10, “Secondaries,” on page 209.

Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics 15

Â Making digital lighting adjustments: Sometimes lighting setups that looked right

during the shoot don’t work as well in post. Changes in the director’s vision, alterations to the tone of the scene as edited, or suggestions on the part of the director of photography (DoP) during post may necessitate alterations to the lighting within a scene beyond simple adjustments to the image’s overall contrast. Color provides powerful controls for user-definable masking which, in combination with secondary color correction controls, allow you to isolate multiple regions within an image and fine-tune the lighting. This is sometimes referred to as digital relighting. For more information, see Chapter 10, “Secondaries,” on page 209, and “Shapes Tab” on page 298.

Â Creating special effects: Sometimes a scene requires more extreme effects, such as

manipulating colors and exposure intensively to achieve a day-for-night look, creating an altered state for a flashback or hallucination sequence, or just creating something bizarre for a music video. In the Color FX room, Color provides you with an extensible node-based toolset for creating such in-depth composites efficiently, in conjunction with the other primary and secondary tools at your disposal. For more information, see Chapter 11, “Color FX,” on page 235.

If that sounds like a lot to do, it is. Fortunately, the Color interface helps you to keep these tasks organized.

When Does Color Correction Happen?

A program’s color fidelity shouldn’t be neglected until the color correction stage of the post-production process. Ideally, every project is begun with a philosophy of color management that’s applied during the shoot, is maintained through the various transfer and editing passes that occur during post-production, and concludes with the final color correction pass conducted in Color. This section elaborates on how film and video images have traditionally made their way through the post-production process.

Color Management Starts During the Shoot

Whether a program is shot using film, video, or high-resolution digital imaging of another means, it’s important to remember that the process of determining a program’s overall look begins when each scene is lit and shot during production. To obtain the maximum amount of control and flexibility over shots in post-production, you ideally should start out with footage that has been exposed with the end goals in mind right from the beginning. Color correction in post-production is no substitute for good lighting.

Optimistically, the process of color correction can be seen as extending and enhancing the vision of the producer, director, and director of photography (DoP) as it was originally conceived. Often, the DoP gets personally involved during the color correction process to ensure that the look he or she was trying to achieve is perfected.

16 Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics

At other times, the director or producer may change his or her mind regarding how the finished piece should look. In these cases, color correction might be used to alter the overall look of the piece (for example, making footage that was shot to look cool look warmer, instead). While Color provides an exceptional degree of control over your footage, it’s still important to start out with clean, properly exposed footage.

Furthermore, choices made during preproduction and the shoot, including the film or video format and camera settings used, can have a profound effect on the amount of flexibility that’s available during the eventual color correction process.

Initial Color Correction When Transferring Film

When a project has been shot on film, the camera negatives must first be transferred to the videotape or digital video format of choice prior to editing and digital post using a telecine or datacine machine. A telecine is a machine for transferring film to videotape, while a datacine is set up for transferring film directly to a digital format, usually an image sequence.

Camera Negative

Telecine Video Tapes

Usually, the colorist running the film transfer session performs some level of color correction to ensure that the editor has the most appropriate picture to work with. The goals of color correction at this stage usually depend on both the length of the project and the post-production workflow that’s been decided upon.

Â Short projects, commercials, spots, and very short videos may get a detailed color

correction pass right away. The colorist will first calibrate the telecine’s own color corrector to balance the whites, blacks, and color perfectly. Then the colorist, in consultation with the DoP, director, or producer, will work shot by shot to determine the look of each shot according to the needs of the project. As a result, the editor will be working with footage that has already been corrected.

Â Long-form projects such as feature-length films and longer television programs

probably won’t get a detailed color correction pass right away. Instead, the footage that is run through the telecine will be balanced to have reasonably ideal exposure and color for purposes of having a good image for editing, and left at that. Detailed color correction is then done at another stage.

Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics 17

Â Projects of any length which are going through post-production as a digital

intermediate are transferred with a color correction pass designed to retain the maximum amount of image data. Since a second (and final) digital color correction pass is intended to be performed at the end of the post-production process, it’s critical that the image data is high-quality, preserving as much highlight and shadow detail as possible. Interestingly, since the goal is the preservation of image data, and not to create the final look of the program, the highest quality image for grading may not be the most visually appealing image.

However the color correction is handled during the initial telecine or datacine transfer, once complete, the footage goes through the typical post-production processes of offline and online editorial.

Color Correcting Film Versus Video

Color has been designed to fit into both video and film digital intermediate workflows. Since all footage must first be transferred to a QuickTime or image sequence format to be imported into Color, film and video images are corrected using the same tools and methods.

Three main attributes affect the quality of media used in a program, all of which were determined when the footage was originally captured or transferred prior to Color import:

Â The type and level of compression applied to the media

Â The bit depth at which it’s encoded

Â The chroma subsampling ratio used

For color correction, spatial and temporal compression should be minimized, since compression artifacts can compromise the quality of your adjustments. Also, media at higher bit depths is generally preferable (see “Bit Depth” on page 26).

Most importantly of all, high chroma subsampling ratios, such as 4:4:4 or 4:2:2, are preferred to maximize the quality and flexibility of your corrections. There’s nothing stopping you from working with 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 subsampled footage, but you may find that extreme contrast adjustments and smooth secondary selections are a bit more difficult to accomplish with highly compressed color spaces.

For more information, see “Chroma Subsampling” on page 25.

Traditional Means of Final Color Correction

Once editing is complete and the picture is locked, it’s time for color correction (referred to as color grading in the film world) to begin. Traditionally, this process was accomplished either via a Color Timing session for film or via a Tape-to-Tape color correction session for video.

18 Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics

Color Timing for Film

Programs being finished and color corrected on film traditionally undergo a negative conform process prior to color timing. When editorial is complete, the original camera negative is conformed to match the workprint or video cut of the edited program using a cut list or pull list (if the program was edited using Final Cut Pro, this can be derived using Cinema Tools), which lists each shot used in the edited program, and shows how each shot fits together. This is a time-consuming and detail oriented process, since mistakes made while cutting the negative are extremely expensive to correct.

Once the camera negative has been conformed and the different shots physically glued together onto alternating A and B rolls, the negative can be color timed by being run through an optical printer designed for this process. These machines shine filtered light through the original negatives to expose an intermediate positive print, in the process creating a single reel of film that is the color-corrected print.

The process of controlling the color of individual shots and doing scene-to-scene color correction is accomplished using just three controls to individually adjust the amount of red, green, and blue light that exposes the film, using a series of optical filters and shutters. Each of the red, green, and blue dials is adjusted in discrete increments called printer points (with each point being a fraction of an f-stop, the scale used to measure film exposure). Typically there’s a total range of 50 points, where point 25 is the original neutral state for that color channel. Increasing or decreasing all three color channels together darkens or brightens the image, while making disproportionate adjustments to the three channels changes the color balance of the image relative to the adjustment.

The machine settings used for each shot can be stored (at one time using paper tape technology) and recalled at any time, to ease subsequent retiming and adjustments, with the printing process being automated once the manual timing is complete. Once the intermediate print has been exposed, it can be developed and the final results projected.

Camera Negative Conform Negative Optical Color Timing

Final Film Print

While this system of color correction may seem cumbersome compared to today’s digital tools for image manipulation, it’s an extremely effective means of primary color correction for those who’ve mastered it.

Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics 19

Note: Color includes printer points controls for colorists who are familiar with this method of color correction. For more information, see “Advanced Tab” on page 204.

Tape-to-Tape Color Correction

With projects shot on videotape (and those shot on film that can’t afford a second telecine pass), the color correction process fits into the traditional video offline/online workflow. Once the edit has been locked, the final master tape is assembled, either by being reconformed on the system originally used to do the offline or by taking the EDL and original source tapes to an online suite compatible with the source tape formats.

If the online assembly is happening in a high-end online suite, then color correction can be performed either during the assembly of the master tape or after assembly by running the master tape through a color correction session.

TelecineVideo Tapes

Offline Edit

Tape Suite

Final

Master Tape

Note: If the final master tape is color corrected, the colorist must carefully dissolve and wipe color correction operations to match video dissolves and wipes happening in the program.

Either way, the video signal is run through dedicated video color correction hardware and software, and the colorist uses the tape’s master timecode to set up and preserve color correction settings for every shot of every scene.

While video color correction started with controls as humble as those used by film colorists, the evolution of the online color correction suite introduced many more tools to the process, including separate corrections for discrete tonal zones, secondary color correction of specific subjects via keying and shapes controls, and many, many other creative options previously unavailable to the film colorist.

Color Correcting Via a Second Telecine Pass

Programs shot on film that are destined for video mastering, such as for an episodic broadcast series, may end up back in the telecine suite for their final color correction pass. Once editing is complete and the picture is locked, a cut list or pull list (similar to that used for a negative conform) is created that matches the EDL of the edited program.

20 Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics

Using the cut list, the post-production supervisor pulls only the film negative that was actually used in the edit. Since this is usually a minority of the footage that was originally shot, the colorist now has more time (depending on the show’s budget, of course) to perform a more detailed color correction pass on the selected footage that will be assembled into the final video program during this final telecine pass.

Although this process might seem redundant, performing color correction directly from the film negative has several distinct advantages. Since film has greater latitude from black to white than video has, a colorist working straight off the telecine potentially has a wider range of color and exposure from which to draw than when working only with video.

In addition, the color correction equipment available to the telecine colorist has evolved to match (and is sometimes identical to) the tools available to online video colorists, with the added advantage that the colorist can work directly on the uncompressed images provided by the telecine.

After the conclusion of the second color correction pass, the color-corrected selects are reassembled to match the original edit, and the project is mastered to tape.

Camera Negative

Inexpensive

One-Light

Telecine Pass

Offline Media

Offline Edit

Best-Light

Telecine Pass

Reconform

Final Master

Incidentally, even if you don’t intend to color correct your program in the telecine suite, you might consider retransferring specific shots to make changes that are easier or higher quality to make directly from the original camera negative. For example, after identifying shots you want to retransfer in your Final Cut Pro sequence, you can use Cinema Tools to create a selects list, for example, just for shots you want to optically enlarge, speeding the transfer process.

Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics 21

Other Advantages to Telecine Transfers

In addition to color correction, a colorist working with a telecine has many other options available, depending on what kinds of issues may have come up during the edit.

Â Using a telecine to pull the image straight off the film negative, the colorist can

reposition the image to include parts of the film image that fall outside the action safe area of video.

Â With the telecine, the image can also be enlarged optically, potentially up to 50

percent without visible distortion.

Â The ability to reframe shots in the telecine allows the director or producer to make

significant changes to a scene, turning a medium shot into a close-up for dramatic effect, or moving the entire frame up to crop out a microphone that’s inadvertently dropped into the shot.

Color Correction in Color

You’ve seen how color correction is done in other post-production environments. This section describes how Color fits into a typical film or video post-production process.

Color provides many of the same high-end color correction tools on your desktop that were previously available in high-end tape-to-tape and telecine color correction suites. In addition, Color provides additional tools in the Color FX room that are more commonly found in dedicated compositing applications, which give you even more detailed control over the images in your program (for more information, see Chapter 11, “Color FX,” on page 235).

Color has been designed as a color correction environment for either film or video. It’s resolution independent, supporting everything from standard definition video up to 2K film scans. It also supports multiple media formats and is compatible with image data using a variety of image sequence formats and QuickTime codecs.

Color also has been designed to be incorporated into a digital intermediate workflow. Digital intermediate refers to a high-quality digital version of your program that can be edited, color corrected, and otherwise digitally manipulated using computer hardware and software, instead of tape machines or optical printers.

Editors, effects artists, and colorists who finish video programs in a tapeless fashion have effectively been working with digital intermediates for years, but the term usually describes the process of scanning film frames digitally, for the purposes of doing all edit conforming, effects, and color correction digitally. It is then the digital image data which is printed directly to film or compiled as a file for digital projection.

22 Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics

Finishing film or video programs digitally frees colorists from the limitations of film and tape transport mechanisms, speeding their work by letting them navigate through a project as quickly as in a nonlinear editing application. Furthermore, working with the digital image data provides a margin of safety, by eliminating the risk of scratching the negative or damaging the source tapes.

When Does Color Correction in Color Happen?

Color correction using Color usually happens at or near the conclusion of the online edit or project conform, often at the same time the final audio mix is being performed. Waiting until the picture is locked is always a good idea, but it’s not essential, as Color provides tools for synchronizing projects that are still being edited via XML files or EDLs.

Color has been designed to work hand-in-hand with editing applications like Final Cut Pro; Final Cut Pro takes care of input, editing, and output, and Color allows you to focus on color correction and related effects.

About Importing Projects and Media into Color

To work on a program in Color, you must be provided with two sets of files:

Â The edited project file (or files, if the program is in multiple reels) in a format that can

be imported into Color. Compatible formats include Final Cut Pro XML files and EDL files from nearly any editing environment. Final Cut Pro sequence data can also be sent to Color directly if you have Final Cut Pro installed on the same computer, using the “Send to Color” command.

Â You must also be given high-quality digital versions of the original source media, in a

compatible QuickTime or image sequence format.

What Footage Does Color Work With?

Color can work with film or video shots as either QuickTime files or image sequences, at a variety of resolutions and compression ratios. This means you have the option of working on anything from highly compressed QuickTime DV-25 shots, up through uncompressed 2K .tif image sequences, at 8- or 10-bit (linear or log)—whatever your clients provide.

Project and media format flexibility means that Color can be incorporated into a wide variety of post-production workflows. For an overview of different color correction workflows using Color, see Chapter 2, “Color Correction Workflows,” on page 35.

About Exporting Projects from Color

As mentioned above, Color doesn’t handle video capture or output to tape on its own. Once you’ve finished color correcting your project in Color, you render every shot in the project to disk as an alternate set of color corrected media files, and you then send your Color project back to Final Cut Pro, or hand it off to another facility for tape layoff or film out. For more information, see Chapter 17, “Render Queue,” on page 321.

Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics 23

Image Encoding Standards

The following section provides important information about the image encoding standards supported by Color. The image data you’ll be color correcting is typically encoded either using an RGB or Y´CBCR (sometimes referred to as YUV) format. Color is extremely flexible and capable of working with image data of either type.

The RGB Additive Color Model

In the RGB color model, three color channels are used to store red, green, and blue values in varying amounts to represent each available color that can be reproduced. Adjusting the relative balance of values in these color channels adjusts the color being represented. When all three values are equal, the result is a neutral tone, from black through gray to white.

More typically, you’ll see these ratios expressed as digital percentages in the Color parade scope or histogram. For example, if all three color channels are 0%, the pixel is black. If all three color channels are 50%, the pixel is a neutral gray. If all three color channels are 100% (the maximum value), the pixel is white.

While a few high-quality QuickTime codecs encode video using RGB (Animation is one of the most commonly used), RGB-encoded images are typically stored as uncompressed image sequences.

The Y’CBCR Color Model

Video is typically recorded using the Y´CBCR color model. Y´CBCR color coding also employs three channels, or components. A shot’s image is divided into one luma component (luma is image luminance modified by gamma for broadcast) and two color difference components which encode the chroma (chrominance). Together, these three components make up the picture that you see when you play back your video.

Â The Y´ component represents the black-and-white portion of an image’s tonal range.

Because the eye has different sensitivities to the red, green, and blue portions of the spectrum, the image “lightness” that the Y´ component reproduces is derived from a weighted ratio of the (gamma-corrected) R, G, and B color channels. Viewed on its own, the Y’ component is the monochrome image.

Â The two color difference components, C

information in such a way as to fit three color channels of image data into two. A bit of math is used to take advantage of the fact that the Y’ component also stores green information for the image. The actual math used to derive each color component is C

= B’ – Y’, while CR = R’ – Y’.

and CR, are used to encode the color

Note: This scheme was originally created so that older black-and-white televisions would be compatible with the newer color television transmissions.

24 Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics

Chroma Subsampling

In Y´CBCR encoded video, the color channels are typically sampled at a lower ratio than the luma channel. Because the human eye is more sensitive to differences in brightness than in color, this has been used as a way of reducing the video bandwidth (or data rate) requirements without perceptible loss to the image.

The sampling ratio between the Y´, CB, and CR channels is notated as a three value ratio. Common chroma subsampling ratios are:

Â 4:4:4 chroma subsampled video encodes completely uncompressed color, the

highest quality possible, as the color difference channels are sampled at the same rate as the luma channel. 4:4:4 subsampled image data is typically obtained via telecine or datacine to a video mastering or image sequence format capable of containing it. RGB encoded images are always 4:4:4.

Few video acquisition formats are capable of recording 4:4:4 video, but those that do include HDCAM SR and certain digital cinema cameras, including the Thompson Viper FilmStream camera and the Genesis digital camera system.

Â 4:2:2 is a chroma subsampling ratio typical for high-quality video formats, including

Beta SP, Digital Betacam, Beta SX, IMX, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO HD, and HDCAM.

Â 4:1:1 is typical for consumer and prosumer video formats including DVCPRO 25

(NTSC and PAL), DV and DVCam (NTSC).

Â 4:2:0 is another consumer-oriented subsampling rate, used by DV and DVCAM (PAL),

HDV, XDCAM HD, and MPEG-2.

Note: As their names imply, Apple Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2, Apple Uncompressed 10bit 4:2:2, Apple ProRes 422 (SQ), and Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) all use 4:2:2 chroma subsampling.

It’s important to be aware of the advantages of higher chroma subsampling ratios in the color correction process. Whenever you’re in a position to specify the transfer format with which a project will be finished, make sure you ask for the highest quality format your system can handle (for more information about high quality finishing codecs, see “A Tape-Based Workflow” on page 40).

As you can probably guess, more color information is better when doing color correction. For example, when you make large contrast adjustments to 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 subsampled video, film grain or video noise in the image becomes exaggerated. This happens most often with underexposed footage. You’ll find that you can make the same or greater adjustments to 4:2:2 subsampled video, and the resulting image will have much less grain and noise. Greater contrast with less noise provides for a richer image overall.

Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics 25

Furthermore, it’s common to use chroma keying operations to isolate specific areas of the picture for correction. This is done using the HSB qualifiers in the Secondaries room. These keying operations will have smoother and less noisy edges when you’re working with 4:2:2 subsampled video. The chroma compression used by 4:1:1 and 4:2:0 subsampled video results in “blockiness” when you isolate the chroma, which affects the mattes that are created by the HSB qualifiers.

However, it’s important to bear in mind that it is definitely possible to aggressively correct highly compressed video. By paying attention to image noise as you stretch the contrast of poorly exposed footage, you can focus your corrections on the areas of the picture where noise is minimized. When doing secondary color correction to make targeted corrections to specific parts of the image, you may find it a bit more time consuming to pull smooth secondary keys. However; with care and patience, you can still achieve beautiful results.

Film Versus Video and Chroma Subsampling

In general, film footage is usually transferred with the maximum amount of image data possible, especially when transferred as a completely uncompressed image sequence (4:4:4) as part of a carefully managed digital intermediate workflow. This is one reason for the higher quality of the average film workflow.

Standard and high definition video, on the other hand, is usually recorded with lower chroma subsampling ratios (4:2:2 is typical even with higher quality video formats, and 4:1:1 and 4:2:0 are common with prosumer formats) and higher compression ratios, depending entirely upon the recording and video capture formats used. Since the selected video format determines compression quality at the time of the shoot, there’s nothing you can do about the lost image data, other then to make the best of what you have.

That said, with a bit of care you can color correct nearly any compressed video or image sequence format with excellent results, and Color gives you the flexibility to use highly compressed source formats including DV, HDV, and DVCPRO HD.

Bit Depth

Another factor that affects the quality of video images, and can have an affect on the quality of your image adjustments, is the bit depth of the source media you’re working with. With both RGB and Y´CBCR encoded media, the higher the bit depth, the more image data is available, and the smoother both the image and your corrections will be.

The bit depth of your source media depends largely on how that media was originally acquired.

26 Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics

Most of the media you’ll receive falls into one of the following bit depths, all of which Color supports:

Â 8-bit: Most standard and high definition consumer and professional digital video

formats capture 8-bit image data, including DV and DVCPRO-25, DVCPRO 50, HDV, DVCPRO HD, HDCAM, and so on.

Â 10-bit: Many video capture interfaces allow the uncompressed capture of analog and

digital video at 10-bit resolution.

Â 10-bit log: By storing data logarithmically, rather then linearly, a wider contrast ratio

(such as that of film) can be fit into a 10-bit data space. 10-bit log files are often recorded from datacine scans using the Cineon and DPX image sequence formats.

Â 16-bit: It takes 16 bits of linear data to match the contrast ratio that can be stored

with 10-bit log. Since linear data is easier for computers to process, this is another data space that’s available in some image formats.

Higher bit depths accommodate more image data by using a greater range of numbers to represent the tonal range that’s available. This is apparent when looking at the numeric ranges used by the two bit depths most commonly associated with video.

Â 8-bit images use a full range of 0–255 to store each color channel (Y´C

video uses

BCR

a narrower range of 16–235 to accommodate super-black and super-white). 255 isn’t a lot of values, and the result can be subtly visible “stairstepping” in areas of the picture with narrow gradients (such as skies).

Â 10-bit images, on the other hand, use a full range of 0 to 1023 to store each color

channel (again, Y´CBCR video uses a narrower range of 64–940 to accommodate super-black and super-white). The additional numeric range allows for smoother gradients, and virtually eliminates bit-depth related artifacts.

Fortunately, while you can’t always control the bit depth of your source media, you can control the bit depth at which you work in Color independently. That means that even if the source media is at a lower bit depth, you can work at a higher bit depth to make sure that the quality of your corrections is as high as possible. In particular, many effects and secondary corrections look significantly better when Color is set to render at higher bit depths. For more information, see “Playback, Processing, and Output

Settings” on page 106.

Basic Color and Imaging Concepts

Color correction involves controlling both an image’s contrast and its color (exercising separate control over its hue and saturation). This section explains these important imaging concepts so that you can better understand how the Color tools let you alter the image.

Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics 27

Contrast

Contrast adjustments are the most fundamental, and generally the first, adjustments made. Contrast is a way of describing an image’s tonality. If you eliminate all color from an image, reducing it to a series of grayscale tones, the contrast of the picture is seen by the distribution of dark, medium, and light tones in the image.

Controlling contrast involves adjustments to three aspects of an image’s tonality:

Â The black point is the darkest pixel in the image.

Â The white point is the brightest pixel in the image.

Â The midtones are the distribution of all tonal values in between the black and white

points.

Black

Mids

White

28 Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics

An image’s contrast ratio is the difference between the darkest and brightest tonal values within that image. Typically, a higher contrast ratio, where the difference between the two is greater, is preferable to a lower one. Unless you’re specifically going for a low-contrast look, higher contrast ratios generally provide a clearer, crisper image. The following two images, with their accompanying histograms which show a graph of the distribution of shadows, midtone, and highlights from left to right, illustrate this.

Furthermore, maximizing the contrast ratio of an image aids further color correction operations by more evenly distributing that image’s color throughout the three tonal zones that are adjusted with the three color balance controls in the Primary In, Secondaries, and Primary Out rooms. This makes it easier to perform individual corrections to the shadows, midtones, and highlights.

For more information about adjusting image contrast, see “Using the Primary Contrast

Controls” on page 166.

Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics 29

What Is Setup

Beginning colorists sometimes confuse the black level of digital video with setup. Setup refers to the black level of an analog video signal and is only an issue with analog video. If you are outputting to an analog tape format using a third-party analog video interface, you should check the documentation that came with that video interface to determine how to configure the video interface for the North American standard for setup (7.5 IRE) or the Japanese standard (0 IRE). Most vendors of analog video interfaces include a software control panel that allows you to select which black level to use. Most vendors label this as “7.5 Setup” versus “0 Setup,” or in some cases “NTSC” versus “NTSC-J.”

Video sent digitally via SDI has no setup. The Y´C

black level simply remains at the

BCR

appropriate digital value corresponding to the bit depth of the video signal (represented by 0 percent on a video scope).

Luma

Luma (which technically speaking is gamma-corrected luminance) describes the exposure (lightness) of a video shot, from absolute black, through the distribution of gray tones, all the way up to the brightest white. Luma can be separated from the color of an image. In fact, if you desaturate an image completely, the grayscale image that remains is the luma.

Luma is measured by Color as a digital percentage from 0 to 100, where 0 represents absolute black and 100 represents absolute white. Color also supports super-white levels (levels from 101 to 109 percent) if they exist in your shot. While super-white video levels are not considered to be safe for broadcast, many cameras record video at these levels anyway.

0% luminance

Black

100%

White

Note: Unadjusted super-white levels will be clamped by the Broadcast Safe settings if they’re turned on with their default settings, such that pixels in the image with luma above 100 percent will be set to 100 percent.

109%

Superwhite

30 Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics

Gamma

Gamma refers to two different concepts. In a video signal, gamma refers to the nonlinear representation of luminance in a picture displayed on a broadcast or computer monitor. Since the eye has a nonlinear response to light (mentioned in “The Y’CBCR Color Model” on page 24), applying a gamma adjustment while recording an image maximizes the perceptible recorded detail in video signals with limited bandwidth. Upon playback, a television or monitor applies an inverted gamma function to return the image to its “original” state.

You want to avoid unplanned gamma adjustments when sending media from Final Cut Pro to Color. It’s important to keep track of any possible gamma adjustments that occur when exporting or importing clips in Final Cut Pro during the editing process, so that these adjustments are accounted for and avoided during the Final Cut Pro to Color round trip. For more information on gamma handling in Final Cut Pro, see the Final Cut Pro User Manual.

Gamma is also used to describe a nonlinear adjustment made to the distribution of midtones in an image. For example, a gamma adjustment leaves the black point and the white point of an image alone, but either brightens or darkens the midtones according to the type of adjustment being made. For more information on gamma and midtones adjustments, see Chapter 9, “Primary In,” on page 163.

Chroma (Chrominance)

Chroma (also referred to as chrominance) describes the color channels in your shots, ranging from the absence of color to the maximum levels of color that can be represented. Specific chroma values can be described using two properties, hue and

saturation.

Hue

Hue describes the actual color itself, whether it’s red or green or yellow. Hue is measured as an angle on a color wheel.

Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics 31

Saturation

Saturation describes the intensity of that color, whether it’s a bright red or a pale red. An image that is completely desaturated has no color at all and is a grayscale image. Saturation is also measured on a color wheel, but as the distance from the center of the wheel to the edge.

As you look at the color wheel, notice that it is a mix of the red, green, and blue primary colors that make up video. In between these are the yellow, cyan, and magenta secondary colors, which are equal mixes of the primary colors.

Color Relationships

Understanding color wheel interactions will help you to see how the Color controls actually affect colors in an image.

Primary Colors

In any additive color model, the primary colors are red, green, and blue. These are the three purest colors that can be represented, by setting a single color channel to 100 percent and the other two color channels to 0 percent.

Secondary Colors

Adding any two primary colors produces a secondary color. In other words, you create a secondary color by setting any two color channels to 100 percent while setting the third to 0 percent.

Â Red + green = yellow

Â Green + blue = cyan

Â Blue + red = magenta

One other aspect of the additive color model:

Â Red + green + blue = white

All of these combinations can be seen in the illustration of three colored circles below. Where any two primaries overlap, the secondary appears, and where all three overlap, white appears.

32 Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics

Complementary Colors

Two colors that appear 180 degrees opposite one another on the wheel are referred to as complementary colors.

Adding two complementary colors of equal saturation to one another neutralizes the saturation, resulting in a grayscale tone. This can be seen in the two overlapping color wheels in the illustration below. Where red and cyan precisely overlap, both colors become neutralized.

Understanding the relationship of colors to their complementaries is essential to learning how to eliminate or introduce color casts in an image using the Color Primary or Secondary color correction controls. For example, to eliminate a bluish cast in the highlights of unbalanced daylight, you add a bit of orange to bring all of the colors to a more neutral state. This is covered in more detail in Chapter 9, “Primary In,” on page 163.

The HSL Color Space Model

The HSL color space model is another method for representing color, typically used for user interface controls that let you choose or adjust colors. HSL stands for hue, saturation, and lightness (roughly equivalent to luminance) and provides a way of visualizing the relationships among luminance, hue, and saturation.

Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics 33

The HSL color space model can be graphically illustrated as a three dimensional cone. Hue is represented by an angle around the base of the cone, as seen below, while saturation is represented by a color’s distance from the center of the cone to the edge, with the center being completely desaturated and the edge being saturated to maximum intensity. A color’s brightness, then, can be represented by its distance from the base to the peak of the cone.

Color actually provides a three-dimensional video scope that’s capable of displaying the colors of an image within an extruded HSL space, for purposes of image analysis. For more information, see “3D Color Space Scope” on page 157.

34 Chapter 1 Color Correction Basics

2 Color Correction Workflows

Taking maximum advantage of Color requires careful workflow management. This chapter outlines where Color fits into your post-production workflow.

Color has been designed to work hand in hand with editing applications like Final Cut Pro via XML and QuickTime media support, or with other editorial environments via EDL and image sequence support. While video and film input and editing are taken care of elsewhere, Color gives you a dedicated environment with which to focus on color correction and related effects.

This chapter gives you a quick overview of how to guide your project through a workflow that includes using Color for color correction. Information is provided about both standard and high definition broadcast video workflows, as well as 2K digital intermediate workflows.

This chapter covers the following:

Â An Overview of the Color Workflow (p. 35)

Â Limitations in Color (p. 37)

Â Video Finishing Workflows Using Final Cut Pro (p. 39)

Â Importing Projects from Other Video Editing Applications (p. 47)

Â Using Color in a Digital Intermediate Workflow (p. 49)

Â Using EDLs, Timecode, and Frame Numbers to Conform Projects (p. 56)

An Overview of the Color Workflow

The Color controls are divided into eight tabbed rooms, each of which corresponds to a different stage in a typical color-correction workflow. Each room that you select remaps the buttons, dials, and trackballs of your control surface (if you have one) to correspond to the controls in that room.

Each room gathers all the controls pertaining to that particular step of the colorcorrection process onto a single screen. The rooms are organized in the order of a typical color-correction workflow, so you can work your way across from the Primary controls, to the Secondary controls, Color FX, Primary Out, and finally Geometry as you work on each shot in your project.

Â Setup: All projects begin in the Setup room. This is where you import and manage

the shots in your program. The grade bin, project settings, and application preferences are also all found within the Setup room. For video colorists, the project settings area of the Setup room is where you find the Broadcast Safe controls, which allow you to apply gamut restrictions to the entire program.

Â Primary In: Primary color corrections affect the entire image, so this room is where

you make overall adjustments to the color and contrast of each shot. Color balance and curve controls let you adjust colors in the shadows, midtones, and highlights of the image. The lift, gamma, and gain controls let you make detailed contrast adjustments, which affect the brightness of different areas of the picture. There are also controls for overall, highlight, and shadow saturation, and printer point (or printer light) controls for colorists used to color timing for film.

Â Secondaries: Secondary color corrections are targeted adjustments made to specific

areas of the image. This room provides numerous methods for isolating, or qualifying, which parts of the image you want to correct. Controls are provided with which to isolate a region using shape masks. Additional controls let you isolate areas of the picture using a chroma keyed matte with individual qualifications for hue, saturation, and luminance. Each shot can have up to eight secondary operations. Furthermore, special-purpose secondary curves let you make adjustments to hue, saturation, and luma within specific portions of the spectrum.

Â Color FX: The Color FX room lets you create your own custom effects via a node-

based interface more commonly found in high-end compositing applications, similar to Shake. These individual effects nodes can be linked together in thousands of combinations, providing a fast way to create many different types of color effects. Your custom effects can be saved in the Color FX bin for future use, letting you apply your look to future projects.

Â Primary Out: The Primary Out room is identical to the Primary In room except that its

color corrections are applied to shots after they have been processed by all the other color grading rooms. This provides a way to post-process your images after all other operations have been performed.

36 Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows

Â Geometry: The Geometry room lets you pan and scan, rotate, flip, and flop shots as

necessary. The Geometry room also provides tools for creating custom masks and for applying and managing motion tracking analyses. How Geometry is handled depends on your workflow:

Â For projects being round-tripped from Final Cut Pro, Geometry room

transformations are not rendered by Color when outputting the corrected project media. Instead, all the geometric transformations you create in Color are translated into Final Cut Pro Motion settings when the project is sent back to Final Cut Pro. You’ll then have the option to further customize those effects in Final Cut Pro prior to rendering and output.

Â For 2K digital intermediates, Geometry room transformations are processed by

Color when rendering the output media.

Note: When you send a project from Final Cut Pro to Color, compatible Motion tab effects are translated into Geometry room settings, which lets you preview and adjust these transformations as you color-correct. For more information, see Chapter 15, “Geometry,” on page 293.

Â Still Store: You can save frames from anywhere in the Timeline using the Still Store,

creating a reference library of stills from your program from which you can recall images to compare to other shots you’re trying to match. You can load one image from the Still Store at a time into memory, toggling between it and the current frame at the position of the Playhead using the controls in the Still Store menu. The Still Store also provides controls for creating and customizing split screens you can use to balance one shot to another. All Still Store comparisons are sent to the preview and broadcast monitor outputs.

Â Render Queue: When you’ve finished grading your program in Color, you’ll use the

Render Queue to manage the rendering of the shots in your project.

Limitations in Color

Color has been designed to work hand in hand with editing applications like Final Cut Pro; Final Cut Pro takes care of input, editing, and output, and Color allows you to focus on color correction and related effects. However, as feature rich as Color is, there are specific things it does not do:

Â Recording: it’s incapable of either scanning or capturing film or video footage. This

means that you need to import projects and media into Color from another application.

Â Editing: Color is not intended to be an editing application. The editing tools that are

provided are primarily for colorists working in 2K workflows where the Color project is the final version that will become the digital master. By default, the tracks of imported XML project files are locked to prevent new edits from introducing errors when the project moves back to Final Cut Pro.

Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows 37

To accommodate editorial changes, reconforming tools are provided to synchronize an EDL or Final Cut Pro sequence with the version of that project being graded in Color. For more information, see “Reconforming Projects” on page 79.

Â Filters: Final Cut Pro FXScript or FxPlug filters are neither previewed nor rendered by

Color. However, their presence in your project is maintained, and they show up again once the project is sent back to Final Cut Pro.

Note: It’s not generally a good idea to allow color-correction filters to remain in your Final Cut Pro project when you send it to Color. Even though they have no effect as you work in Color, their sudden reappearance when the project is sent back to Final Cut Pro may produce unexpected results.

Â Transitions: Color preserves transition data that might be present in an imported EDL

or XML file, but does not play the transitions during previews. How they’re rendered depends on how the project is being handled:

Â For projects being round-tripped from Final Cut Pro, transitions are not rendered in

Color during output. Instead, after the project’s return, Final Cut Pro is relied upon to render those effects.

Â For 2K digital intermediates, all video transitions are ignored.

Â Superimpositions: Superimposed shots are displayed in the Timeline, but

compositing operations involving opacity are neither displayed nor rendered.

Â Speed effects: Color doesn’t provide an interface for adding speed effects, instead

relying on the editing application that originated the project to do so. Linear and variable speed effects that are already present in your project, such as those added in Final Cut Pro, are previewed during playback, but they are not rendered in Color during output. Instead, Final Cut Pro is relied upon to render those effects in roundtrip workflows.

Â Final Cut Pro generators, and Motion or LiveType project shots: Final Cut Pro generators,

Motion projects, and LiveType projects are completely ignored by Color. How you handle these types of effects also depends on your workflow:

Â If you’re round-tripping a project between Final Cut Pro and Color, and you want

to grade these effects in Color, you should render these effects as self-contained QuickTime .mov files. Then, edit the new .mov files into your sequence to replace the original effects shots prior to sending your project to Color.

Â If you’re round-tripping a project between Final Cut Pro and Color, and there’s no

need to grade these effects, you don’t need to do anything. Even though these effects aren’t displayed in Color, their position in the Timeline is preserved, and these effects will reappear in Final Cut Pro when you send the project back. Titles are a good example of effects that don’t usually need to be graded.

Â If you’re working on a 2K digital intermediate, you’ll need to use a compositing

application like Shake or Motion to composite any effects using the image sequence data.

38 Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows

Important: When you send frames of media to a compositing application, it’s vital

that you maintain the frame number in the filenames of new image sequence media that you generate. Each image file’s frame number identifies its position in that program’s Timeline, so any effects being created as part of a 2K digital intermediate workflow require careful file management.

Â Freeze Frame clips and Still image files: Still frames used in Final Cut Pro projects,

including .tiff, .jpg, or Final Cut Pro created Freeze Frame clips, are also ignored by Color. If you want to grade still frames in Color, you need to render them as selfcontained QuickTime .mov files, and edit them back into your Final Cut Pro sequence to replace the original shot prior to sending the project to Color.

Â Video or film output: While Color provides broadcast output of your project’s

playback for preview purposes, this is not intended to be used to output your program to tape. This means that when you finish color correcting your project in Color, the rendered output needs to be moved to Final Cut Pro for output to tape or to another environment for film output.

Video Finishing Workflows Using Final Cut Pro

If a program has been edited using Final Cut Pro, the process of moving it into Color is fairly straightforward. After editing the program in Final Cut Pro, you must reconform the program, if necessary, to use the original source media at its highest available quality.

Once that has been accomplished, you can send the project data and files into Color for color correction. Upon completion of the color-correction pass, you’ll need to render the result and send the project back to Final Cut Pro for final output, either to tape or as a QuickTime file.

Source Media

Final

Cut Pro

Media Data

Edit

Online Media

XML

Send to

Color

Correction

Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows 39

Color Final

Color

Render

New Color

Corrected

Media

Final Cut Pro

XML

Send to

Cut Pro

Final

Effects and

Output

Final

Master

Exactly how you conform your source media in Final Cut Pro depends on the type of media that’s used.

A Tape-Based Workflow

For a traditional offline/online tape-based workflow, the process is simple. The tapes are captured into Final Cut Pro, possibly at a lower quality offline resolution to ease the initial editing process by using media that takes less hard drive space, and is easier to work with using a wider range of computers.

After the offline edit is complete, the media used by the edited program must be recaptured from the source tapes at maximum quality. The resulting online media is what will be used for the Final Cut Pro to Color round trip.

Source Media

Offline Duplicates

Final

Cut Pro

Final

Effects and

Output

Final

Master

Offline

Media Data

Edit

Final

Cut Pro

Online

Reconform

Online Media

XML

Send to

Color

Correction

Color

Render

New Color

Corrected

Media

XML

Send to

Final Cut Pro

The following steps break this process down more explicitly.

Step 1: Capture the source media at offline or online resolution

How you approach capturing your media prior to editing depends on its format. Compressed formats, including DV, DVCPRO-50, DVCPRO HD, and HDV, can be captured at their highest quality without requiring enormous storage resources. If this is the case, then capturing and editing your media using its native resolution and codec lets you eliminate the time-consuming step of recapturing (sometimes called conforming) your media later on.

40 Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows

Uncompressed video formats, or projects where there are many, many reels of source media, may benefit from being captured at a lower resolution or with a more highly compressed codec. This will save drive space and also enable you to edit using less expensive equipment. Later, you’ll have to recapture the media prior to color correction.

Step 2: Edit the program in Final Cut Pro

Edit your program in Final Cut Pro, as you would any other project. If you’re planning on an extensive use of effects in your program during editorial, familiarize yourself with the topics covered in “Limitations in Color” on page 37.

Step 3: Recapture the source media at online resolution if necessary

If you originally captured your source media using an offline format, you’ll need to recapture the media used in your project at the highest available quality prior to sending it to Color.

Â If your media was originally recorded using a compressed format (such as DV,

DVCPRO-50, DVCPRO HD, or HDV), then recapturing it using the original source codec and resolution is fine; Color can work with compressed media, and automatically promotes the image data to higher uncompressed bit depths for higher quality imaging when monitoring and rendering.

Â If you’re capturing a higher bandwidth video format (such as Betacam SP, Digital

Betacam, HDCAM, and HDCAM SR) and require high quality but need to use a compressed format to save hard drive space and increase performance on your particular computer, then you can recapture using the Apple ProRes 422 codec, or the higher quality Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) codec.

Â If you’re capturing high-bandwidth video and require the highest quality

uncompressed video data available, regardless of the storage requirements, you should recapture your media using Apple Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2 or Apple Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2.

You may also want to take the opportunity to use the Final Cut Pro Media Manager to delete unused media prior to recapturing in order to save valuable disk space, especially when recapturing uncompressed media. For more information, see the Final Cut Pro documentation.

Note: Some codecs, such as HDV, can be more processor intensive to work with than others. In this case, capturing or recompressing the media with a less processorintensive codec, such as Apple ProRes 422 or Apple ProRes 422 (HQ), will improve your performance while you work in Color, while maintaining high quality and low storage requirements.

Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows 41

Step 4: Pre-render any still images or effects you want to grade in Color

Color can’t display or process still images, certain motion settings, FXScript or FxPlug filters, Final Cut Pro generators (including titles), Motion project files, or LiveType project files. If you want to grade clips using these effects in Color, you need to render those shots in Final Cut Pro as self-contained QuickTime .mov files, and edit them back into your Final Cut Pro sequence to replace the original clips prior to sending the project to Color. For more information about effects and features that aren’t compatible with Color, see “Limitations in Color” on page 37.

Step 5: Prepare your Final Cut Pro sequence

To prepare your edited sequence for an efficient workflow in Color, follow the steps outlined in “Before You Export Your Final Cut Pro Project” on page 75.

Step 6: Send the sequence to Color, or export an XML file

When you’ve finished prepping your edited sequence, there are two ways you can send it to Color.

Â If Color is installed on the same computer as Final Cut Pro, you can use the “Send to

Color” command to move an entire edited sequence to Color, automatically creating a new project file.

Â If you’re handing the project off to another facility, you may want to export the

edited sequence as an XML file for eventual import into Color. In this case, you’ll also want to use the Final Cut Pro Media Manager to copy the project’s media to a single, transportable hard drive volume for easy handoff.

Step 7: Grade your program in Color

Use Color to grade your program. When working on a round trip from Final Cut Pro, it’s crucial to avoid unlocking tracks or reediting shots in the Timeline. Doing so can compromise your ability to send the project back to Final Cut Pro.

If the client needs a reedit after you’ve started grading, you should instead perform the edit back in Final Cut Pro, and export an XML version of the updated sequence which you can use to quickly update the Color project in progress using the Reconform command. For more information, see “Reconforming Projects” on page 79.

Step 8: Render new source media, and send the updated project to Final Cut Pro

When you’ve finished grading, you’ll use the Color Render Queue to render all the shots in the project as a new, separate set of graded media files.

Afterward, you’ll need to send the updated project to Final Cut Pro using one of the two following methods:

Â If Color is installed on the same computer as Final Cut Pro, you can use the “Send to

Final Cut Pro” command.

Â If you’re handing the color-corrected project back to the originating facility, you need

to export the Color project as an XML file for later import into Final Cut Pro.

42 Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows

Important: Some parameters in the Project Settings tab of the Setup room affect how

the media rendered by Color is rendered. These settings include the Deinterlace Renders, QuickTime Export Codec, Broadcast Safe, and Handles settings. Be sure to verify these and other settings prior to rendering your final output.

Step 9: Adjust transitions, superimpositions, and titles in Final Cut Pro

To output your project, you need to import the XML project data back into Final Cut Pro. This happens automatically if you use the “Send to Final Cut Pro” command. At this point, you can add or adjust other effects that you had applied previously in Final Cut Pro, before creating the program’s final master. Things you may want to consider while prepping the program at this stage include:

Â Do you need to produce a “textless” master of the program, or one with the titles

rendered along with the image?

Â Are there any remaining effects clips that you need to import and color-correct

within Final Cut Pro?

Step 10: Output the final video master to tape, or render a master QuickTime file

Once you’ve completed making any last adjustments in Final Cut Pro, you can go ahead and use the Print to Video, Edit to Tape, or Export QuickTime Movie commands to create the final version of your program.

Reconforming Online Media in a Tapeless Digital Video Workflow

If a program uses a tapeless video format, the steps are similar to those described above; however, they likely involve multiple sets of QuickTime files: the original media at online resolution, and perhaps a second set of media files that have been downconverted to an offline resolution for ease of editing. After the offline edit, the online conform involves relinking to the original source media, prior to going through the Final Cut Pro to Color round trip.

Source Media

Offline Duplicates

Final

Cut Pro

Final

Effects and

Output

Final

Master

Offline

Media Data

Edit

Final Cut Pro

Online

Reconform

Online

Media

XML

Correction

Send to

Color

Render

New Color Corrected

Media

XML

Send to

Final Cut Pro

Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows 43

Here’s a more detailed explanation of the offline-to-online portion of this workflow.

Step 1: Shoot and back up all source media

Shoot the project using whichever tapeless format you’ve chosen. As you shoot, make sure that you’re keeping backups of all your media, in case anything happens to your primary media storage device.

Step 2: Create offline resolution duplicates, and archive original resolution media

If necessary, create offline resolution duplicates of the source media in whatever format is most suitable for your system. Then, archive the original source media as safely as possible.

Important: When you create offline duplicates of tapeless media, it’s vital that you

duplicate and maintain the original filenames and timecode that the source files were created with. This is critical to guaranteeing that you’ll be able to easily relink to the original high-resolution source files once the offline edit is complete.

Step 3: Edit the program in Final Cut Pro

Step 4: Relink your edited sequence to the original source media

Once your offline edit is complete, you’ll need to restore the original online quality source media, and relink your project to the high-resolution files.

Step 5: Pre-render effects, send the sequence to Color, and grade

At this point, the workflow is identical step 7 in “A Tape-Based Workflow” on page 40.

44 Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows

Reconforming Online Media in a Film-to-Tape Workflow

If you’re working on a project that was shot on film, but will be mastered on video, it must be transferred from film to tape using a telecine (telecined) prior to being captured and edited in Final Cut Pro. At that point, the rest of the offline and online edit is identical to any other tape-based format.

Camera Negative

Telecine

Transferred Video Media

Final

Cut Pro

Offline

and Online

Edits

Online Media

XML

Color

Correction

Color

Render

New Color Corrected

Media

XML

Final

Cut Pro

Final

Effects and

Output

Final

Master

Media Data

Send to

Color

Send to

Final Cut Pro

Here’s a more detailed explanation of the offline-to-online portion of this workflow.

Step 1: Shoot your film

Shoot the project as you would any other film project.

Step 2: Telecine the dailies

After the film has been shot, process and telecine the dailies to a video format appropriate for your workflow.

Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows 45

Â Some productions prefer to save money up front by doing an inexpensive “one-light”

transfer of all the footage to an inexpensive offline video format for the initial offline edit (a one-light transfer refers to the process of using a single color-correction setting to transfer whole scenes of footage). This can save time and money up front, but may necessitate a second telecine session to retransfer only the footage used in the edit at a higher level of visual quality.

Â Other productions choose to transfer all the dailies (or at least just the director’s

selected takes) via a “best-light” transfer, where the color-correction settings are individually adjusted for every shot that’s telecined, optimizing the color and exposure for each clip. The footage is transferred to a high-quality video format capable of preserving as much image data as possible. This can be significantly more expensive up front, but saves money later since a second telecine session is not necessary.

Step 3: Capture the source media at offline or online resolution

How you capture your media prior to editing depends on your workflow. If you telecined offline-quality media, then you might as well capture using an offline quality codec.

If you instead telecined online-quality media, then you have the choice of either pursuing an “offline/online” workflow, or capturing via an online codec, and working at online quality throughout the entire program.

Step 4: Edit the program in Final Cut Pro

Edit your program in Final Cut Pro, as you would any other project. If you’re planning on the extensive use of effects in your program during editorial, familiarize yourself with the topics covered in “Limitations in Color” on page 37.

Step 5: Recapture or retransfer the media at online resolution (if necessary)

How you conform your offline project to online-quality media depends on how you handled the initial video transfer.

Â If you originally did a high-quality telecine pass to an online video format, but you

captured your source media using an offline format for editing, you’ll need to recapture the media from the original telecine source tapes using the highest quality uncompressed QuickTime format that you can accommodate on your computer (such as Apple ProRes 422, or Apple Uncompressed), and relink the new media to your project.

Â If you did an inexpensive one-light telecine pass to an offline video format, you’ll

want to do another telecine pass where you transfer only the media you used in the program at high quality. Using Cinema Tools, you can generate a pull list, which you then use to carefully retransfer the necessary footage to an online-quality video format. Then, you’ll need to recapture the new online transfer of this media using the highest quality uncompressed QuickTime format that you can accommodate on your computer.

46 Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows

Important: Do not use the Media Manager to either rename or delete unused media in

your project when working with offline media that refers to camera negative. If you do, you’ll lose the ability to create accurate pull lists in Cinema Tools.

Step 6: Pre-render effects, send the sequence to Color, and grade

At this point, the workflow is identical to step 7 in “A Tape-Based Workflow” on page 40.

Importing Projects from Other Video Editing Applications

Color is also capable of importing projects from other editing environments, by importing Edit Decision Lists (EDLs). An EDL is an event-based list of all the edits and transitions that make up a program.

Once you’ve imported your project file into Color, and copied the program media onto a storage device with the appropriate performance, you can then link the shots on the Color Timeline with their corresponding media.

Importing EDLs in a Final Cut Pro to Color Round Trip

If you’ve been provided with an EDL of the edited program and a box of source media, you can import the EDL into Final Cut Pro to capture the project’s media and prepare the project for sending to Color. In addition to being able to recapture the footage, Final Cut Pro is compatible with more EDL formats than is Color. Also, Final Cut Pro is capable of reading superimpositions and audio edits, in addition to the video edits.

Note: Although capable of importing EDLs directly, Color only reads the video portion of edits in track V1. Video transitions, audio, and superimpositions are ignored.

Source Media

and EDL file

Import EDL

to Create

Project

Media Data

Final

Cut Pro

Recapture

Media

Online Media

XML

Send to

Color

Correction

Color

Render

New Color Corrected

Media

XML

Send to

Final Cut Pro

Final

Cut Pro

Final

Effects and

Output

Final

Master

Step 1: Import the project into Final Cut Pro

Import the EDL of the edited project into Final Cut Pro.

Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows 47

Step 2: Capture media at online resolution

You’ll need to recapture the sequence created when importing the EDL using the highest quality QuickTime format that you can accommodate on your computer (such as Apple ProRes 422 or Apple Uncompressed).

Step 3: Pre-render effects, send the sequence to Color, and grade

At this point, the workflow is identical to step 7 in “A Tape-Based Workflow” on page 40.

Importing and Notching Preedited Program Masters

Another common way of obtaining a program for color correction is to be provided with an edited master, either on tape or as a QuickTime movie or image sequence, and an accompanying EDL. You can use the EDL to automatically add edits to the master media file in Color (called “notching” the media), to make it easier to grade each shot in the program individually.

Tap e

Master

Capture

Entire

Program

Final Cut Pro

Media Data

Online Media

Create Color

Project from

EDL

to “Notch”

Online Media

Color

Correction

New Color Corrected

Media

Render

XML

Send to

Final Cut Pro

Final

Cut Pro

Final

Effects and

Output

Final

Master

Step 1: Import the project into Final Cut Pro

Import the EDL of the edited project into Final Cut Pro.

Step 2: Capture the program master (if necessary)

If you were given the program master on tape, you’ll need to capture the entire program using the highest quality QuickTime format that you can accommodate on your computer (such as Apple ProRes 422 or Apple Uncompressed). If you’re being given the program master as a QuickTime file, you should request the same from whomever is providing you with the media.

For this process to work correctly, it’s good if the timecode of the first frame of media matches the first frame of timecode in the EDL.

Step 3: Import the EDL into Color, and relink to the master media file

Either select the EDL from the Projects dialog that appears when you first open Color, or use the File > Import > EDL command. When the EDL Import Settings dialog appears, choose the EDL format, project, EDL, and source media frame rates.

48 Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows

To properly “notch” the master media file, you need to be sure to turn on “Use as Cut List,” and then choose the master media file that you captured or were given. For more information, see “Importing EDLs” on page 80.

Step 4: Grade your program in Color

Use Color to grade your program.

Step 5: Render new source media, and send the updated project to Final Cut Pro

When you’re finished grading, you’ll use the Color Render Queue to render all the shots in the project as a new, separate set of graded media files.

Afterward, you’ll need to send the updated project to Final Cut Pro using one of the two following methods:

Â If Color is installed on the same computer as Final Cut Pro, you can use the “Send to

Final Cut Pro” command.

Â If you’re handing the color-corrected project back to the originating facility, you need

to export the Color project as an XML file for later import into Final Cut Pro.

Note: When you send a project to Final Cut Pro that was originally imported into Color, you’re only sending the shots that are available in Color, which are usually restricted to those on track V1. Color doesn’t support audio tracks or superimposed effects.

Step 6: Adjust transitions, superimpositions, and titles in Final Cut Pro

Step 7: Output the final video master to tape, or render a master QuickTime file

Using Color in a Digital Intermediate Workflow

Color supports grading for 2K digital intermediate workflows. Simply put, the term digital intermediate describes the process of performing all effects and color correction using high-resolution digital versions of the original camera negative. Color can work with the 2K 10-bit log image sequences produced by datacine scanners, processing the image data with extremely high quality, and rendering the result as an image sequence suitable for film output.

The following sections describe different 2K workflows that you can follow, and shows you how to keep track of your image data from step to step.

Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows 49

A Tapeless DI Workflow Using Online/Offline Digital Duplicates

The easiest digital intermediate workflow is one where you scan all footage necessary for the offline edit and then create a duplicate set of offline media to edit your project with. Upon completion of the offline edit, you then relink the program to the original 2K source frames in Color.

Deriving the offline media from the original digital media keeps your workflow simple and eliminates the need to retransfer the source film later on. The only disadvantage to this method is that it can require an enormous amount of storage space, depending on the length and shooting ratio of the project.

Camera Negative

Correction

Media Data

Datacine Transfers

Conform

Color

Render

Gather

Rendered

Media

Color

2K Resolution

DPX Image

Final Output

Sequence

Film Recorder

Offline

QuickTime

Conversion

Offline

Edit

Final Cut Pro

Film Print

50 Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows

The following steps break this process down more explicitly.

Step 1: Shoot film

Ideally, you should do some tests before principal photography to see how the film scanner to Color to film recorder pipeline works with your choice of film formats and stocks. It’s always best to consult with the film lab you’ll be working with in advance to get as much information as possible.

Step 2: Scan all film as 2K DPX image sequences

Depending on how the shoot was conducted, you could opt to do a best-light datacine of just the selects, or of all of the camera negative, if you can afford it. The scanned 2K digital source media should be saved as DPX or Cineon image sequences.

To track the correspondence between the original still frames and the offline QuickTime files that you’ll create for editing, you should ask for the following:

Â A non-drop frame timecode conversion of each frame’s number (used in that frame’s

file name) be saved within the header of each scanned image.

Â It can also help organize all of the scanned frames into separate directories, saving all

the frames from each roll of negative to separate directories (named by roll).

Step 3: Convert the DPX image sequences to offline-resolution QuickTime files

Create offline-resolution duplicates of the source media in whatever format is most suitable for your editing system. Then, archive the original source media as safely as possible.

When you convert the DPX files to offline QuickTime files:

Â The roll number of each image sequence should be used as the reel number for each

.mov file.

Â The timecode values stored in the header of each frame file should be used as the

timecode for each .mov file.

You can use Color to perform this downconversion by creating a new project with the Render File Type set to QuickTime, and the Export Codec set to the codec you want to use. Then, simply edit all the shots you want to convert into the Timeline, add them to the Render Queue, and click Start Render. For more information, see “Converting

Cineon and DPX Image Sequences to QuickTime” on page 88.

∏ Tip: If you downconvert to a compressed high definition format, such as Apple ProRes

422 or Apple ProRes 422 (HQ), you can offline your project on an inexpensively equipped computer system, and still be able to output and project it at a resolution suitable for high-quality client and audience screenings during the editorial process.

Step 4: Do the offline edit in Final Cut Pro

Edit your project in Final Cut Pro, being careful not to alter the timecode or duration of the offline shots in any way.

Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows 51

Step 5: Prepare your Final Cut Pro sequence

To prepare your edited sequence for an efficient workflow in Color, follow the steps outlined in “Before You Export Your Final Cut Pro Project” on page 75.

Step 6: Export an EDL

When you’ve finished with the edit, you’ll need to generate an EDL in either the CMX 340, CMX 3600, or GVG 4 Plus formats.

Important: You cannot use the “Send to Color” command to move 2K projects to Color.

Step 7: Import the EDL into Color, and relink to the original DPX media

Use the File > Import > EDL command to import the EDL. In the Import EDL dialog, you also specify the directory where the original high-resolution source media is located, so that the EDL is imported and the source media is relinked in one step.

Step 8: Grade your program in Color

Grade your program in Color as you would any other.

Important: When grading scanned film frames, it’s essential to systematically use

carefully profiled LUTs for monitor calibration, and to emulate the ultimate look of the project when printed out to film while you make adjustments in Color. For more information, see “Using Display LUTs” on page 115.

Step 9: Conform transitions, effects, and titles

In a 2K workflow, you’ll also need to use a compositing application such as Shake to create any transitions or layered effects, including superimpositions, titles, and other composites, using the 2K image sequence data.

Important: Each image file’s frame number identifies its position in that program’s

Timeline. Because of this, when you send frames to a compositing application, it’s vital that the frame numbers in filenames of newly rendered media are identical to those of the original source media. This requires careful file management.

Step 10: Render your media out of Color

Once you’ve finished grading the project in Color, use the Render Queue to render out the final media. The Render Queue has been set up to let you easily render your project incrementally; for example, you can render out all the shots of a program that have been graded that day during the following night to avoid rendering the entire project at once.

However, when you’re working on a project using 2K image sequence scans, rendering the media is only the first step. The rendered output is organized in the specified render directory in such a way as to easily facilitate managing and rerendering the media for your Color project, but it’s not ready for delivery to the film recording facility until the next step.

52 Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows

Step 11: Use the Gather Rendered Media command to assemble the final image

sequence for delivery

Once every single shot in your program has been rendered, you’ll need to use the Gather Rendered Media command to consolidate all of the frames that have been rendered, eliminating handles, copying every frame used by the program to a single directory, and renumbering each frame as a contiguously numbered image sequence. Once this has been done, the rendered media is ready for delivery to the film recording facility.

A Digital Intermediate Using a Telecined Offline/Online Workflow

A more traditional way to go about editing and color-correcting a project is to do an offline edit using a less expensive telecine transfer of the dailies, and then do a datacine film scan of only the shots used in the edit to create the online media.

Camera Negative

Cinema Tools

Final Cut Pro

Capture

Media Data

Datacine

Conform

Color

Correction

Render

Gather

Rendered

Media

Color

DPX Image

Sequence

Telecine

Final Output

Sequence

Create

Database

Export

Pull List

Film Recorder

Offline

Edit

Film Print

Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows 53

The following steps break this process down more explicitly.

Step 1: Shoot the film

Ideally, you should do some tests before principal photography to see how the film scanner to Color to film recorder pipeline works with your choice of film formats and stocks. It’s always best to consult with the film facility you’ll be working with in advance to get as much information as possible.

Step 2: Telecine the dailies

Once the film has been shot, telecine the dailies to a video format that’s appropriate for the offline edit. Whether you telecine to a high definition video format for the offline or not depends on the configuration of the editing system you’ll be working with and on the amount of hard drive space available to you.

Of more importance is the frame rate at which you choose to telecine the dailies.

Â To eliminate an entire media management step, it’s recommended that you telecine

the film directly to a 23.98 fps video format.

Â Otherwise, you can telecine to a 29.97 fps video format and use Cinema Tools in a

second step to perform 3:2 pulldown removal.

To more easily maintain the correspondence between the telecined video and the 2K film frames that will be scanned later, you should request the following:

Â The timecode recorded to tape during the offline telecine must be non-drop frame.

Â Each roll of negative should be telecined to a separate reel of tape. This way, the reels

specified by the EDL will match the rolls of camera negative from which the shots are scanned.

Step 3: Use Cinema Tools and Final Cut Pro to perform the offline edit

As with any other film edit, generate a Cinema Tools database from the FLEx files provided by the telecine operator, then capture the corresponding media, and edit the program.

Important: When working with offline media that refers to camera negative, do not

use the Media Manager to either rename or delete unused media in your project. If you do, you’ll lose the ability to create accurate pull lists in Cinema Tools.

Step 4: Prepare your Final Cut Pro sequence

To prepare your edited sequence for an efficient workflow in Color, follow the steps outlined in “Before You Export Your Final Cut Pro Project” on page 75.

Step 5: Export an EDL for Color, and a pull list for datacine

Once the offline edit is complete, a pull list is generated for performing the final datacine transfer at 2K resolution, and the entire project is exported as an EDL for importing and conforming in Color.

54 Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows

Â The pull list specifies which shots were used in the final version of the edit (this is

usually a subset of the total amount of footage that was originally shot). Ideally, you should export a pull list that also contains the timecode In and Out points corresponding to each clip in the edited project. This way, the timecode data can be written to each frame that’s scanned during the datacine transfer to facilitate conforming in Color.

Â The EDL moves the project’s edit data to Color, and contains the timecode data

necessary to conform the scanned image sequence frames into the correct order.

Step 6: Do a datacine transfer of the selected shots from negative to DPX

Using the pull list generated by Cinema Tools, have a datacine transfer done of every shot used in the project.

During the datacine transfer, specify that the timecode of each frame of negative be converted to frames and used to generate the filenames for each scanned DPX file, and that the timecode also be written into the DPX header of each shot. The names of the resulting image sequence should take the following form:

reel_number.0632368.dpx

Each image sequence from the film scanner should be placed into a directory that is named after the roll of camera negative from which it was scanned. It’s a good idea to have a separate directory for each roll of camera negative that’s scanned.

Step 7: Import the EDL into Color, and relink to the original DPX media

Step 8: Grade your program in Color

Grade your program in Color as you would any other.

Important: When grading scanned film frames, it’s essential to systematically use

carefully profiled LUTs for monitor calibration and to emulate the ultimate look of the project when printed out to film while you make adjustments in Color. For more information, see “Using Display LUTs” on page 115.

Step 9: Conform transitions, effects, and titles, render media, and gather rendered

media

At this point, the process is the same as in “A Tapeless DI Workflow Using Online/Offline

Digital Duplicates” on page 50.

Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows 55

Using EDLs, Timecode, and Frame Numbers to Conform Projects

Using careful data management, you can track the relationship of the original camera negative to the video or digital transfers that have been made for offline editing using timecode.

How Does Color Relink DPX/Cineon Frames to an EDL?

The key to a successful conform in Color is to make sure that the timecode data in the EDL is mirrored in the scanned DPX or Cineon frames you’re relinking to. Color attempts to relink to image sequence media in a number of different ways, depending on what information is available in the file:

Â First, Color looks for a timecode value in the header of the DPX or Cineon frame file. If

this is found, it’s the most reliable method of relinking.

Â If there’s no matching timecode number in the header data, then Color looks for the

timecode value in the filename, and for the corresponding reel number in the enclosing directory.

Â If there’s no reel number in the enclosing directory, then Color attempts to relink all

the shots using the timecode number only.

Parsing EDLs for Digital Intermediate Conforms

This section explains how Color makes the correspondence between the timecode values in an EDL and the frame numbers used in the timecode header or file name of individual image sequence frames.

Here’s a sample line from an EDL:

001 004 V C 04:34:53:04 04:35:03:04 00:59:30:00 00:59:40:00

In every EDL, the information is divided up into eight columns:

Â The first column contains the edit number. This is the first edit in the EDL, so it is

labeled 001.

Â The second column contains the reel number, 004. This is what the directory of the

scanned 2K image files that correspond to that shot should be named.

Â The next two columns contain video/audio track and edit information that, while

used by Color to assemble the program, isn’t germane to conforming the media.

The last four columns contain timecode—they’re pairs of In and Out points.

Â The first pair of timecode values are the In and Out points of the original source

media (usually the telecined tape in ordinary online editing). In a digital intermediate workflow, this is used for naming and identifying the scanned frames that are output from the datacine.

Â The second pair of In and Out points identify that shot’s position in the edited

program. This is used to place the media in its proper location on the Timeline.

56 Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows

Image Sequence File Naming for Conforming Digital Intermediates

Here’s an example filename of the first image sequence file that corresponds to the EDL event shown above:

my_file_name.0494794.dpx

The first portion of the filename for each scanned frame (the alpha characters) is ignored, but the numeric extension listing that file’s frame number should equal the (non-dropframe) timecode conversion of that value appearing in the EDL.

For example, a frame with timecode 05:51:18:28 would have a numeric extension of

632368. Numeric extensions should always be padded to seven digits; in this case, we would add one preceding 0, like this:

my_file_name.0632368.dpx

Only the numeric extension and the .dpx or .cin are strictly required, since the initial alpha characters of the filename are ignored by Color. For example, the above filename could also be:

0632368.dpx

Alternately, you could utilize the unused first portion of the filename to keep track of the reel number that frame file comes from:

reel_004.0632368.dpx

Chapter 2 Color Correction Workflows 57

3 Using the Color Interface

You can work in Color either by using a mouse with the onscreen interface, or more directly by using a dedicated control surface that’s been designed for professional color correction work.

This chapter covers the general interface conventions used by Color. It describes the use of controls which are shared by multiple areas of the interface, as well as some of the specialized controls that are unique to color correction applications.

This chapter covers the following:

Â Setting Up a Control Surface (p. 60)

Â Using the Onscreen Controls (p. 60)

Â Organizational Browsers and Bins (p. 64)

Â Using Color with One or Two Monitors (p. 70)

Setting Up a Control Surface

Color was designed from the ground up to support control surfaces specifically designed for color correction from manufacturers such as Tangent and JL Cooper Designs. These control surfaces typically include three trackballs that correspond to the three overlapping tonal zones of the Primary and Secondary color balance controls (shadows, midtones, and highlights), three rotary controls for the three contrast controls (black level, gamma, and white point), and a number of other rotary controls and buttons that support different functions depending on which room you’ve selected.

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B3R3

12345678

M2 M3

M4 M5

JOG SHUTTLE

HOURS MINUTES SECONDS FRAMES

TIME CODE DISPLAY

BANK 1

BANK 2

BANK 4

ASSIGN UTILITY

F1 F2 F3

F7 F8 F9

F4 F5 F6

DO UNDO

CUE

MEM

ALT

PREV NEXT

GRACE DELETE

00 0

CLEAR

56+

MODE

REDO

OUTINMARK

You can either choose a control surface to use when Color starts up, or you can click Show Control Surface Dialog in the User Prefs tab of the Setup room to choose an available control surface at any time. For more information on setting up a control surface, see Appendix C, “Setting Up a Control Surface.” For more information on configuring a control surface from within Color, see “Control Surface Settings” on page 103.

Using the Onscreen Controls

If you don’t have a control surface, you can still operate every feature in Color using the onscreen controls. In addition to the standard buttons, check boxes, and pop-up menus common to most applications, Color uses some custom controls that are described in this section.

60 Chapter 3 Using the Color Interface

Using the Mouse

Color supports the use of a three-button mouse, which provides quick access to shortcut menus and various navigational shortcuts. Color also supports the middle scroll wheel or scroll ball of a three-button mouse, either for scrolling or as a button.

Mouse button Documentation reference

Left mouse button Click

Middle mouse button Middle mouse button or Middle-click

Right mouse button Right-click (identical to Control-click with a single button mouse)

Accelerating Controls Using the Option Key

Many controls can be accelerated to 10x their normal speed by pressing the Option key while you drag.

Tabs

Tabs are used to navigate among the eight different Color “rooms.” Each room is a distinct portion of the interface that contains all the controls necessary to perform a specific task. Changing rooms changes the available interface, the keyboard shortcuts, and the mapping of the control surface controls.

In addition, some rooms have additional functionality that can be revealed using additional sets of tabs within that room.

Text Fields and Virtual Sliders

There are four types of data that can populate edit fields in Color:

Â Timecode

Â Text, including filenames, directory paths, and so forth.

Â Whole numbers; fields that display whole numbers cannot accept either decimals or

fractional values.

Â Percentages and fractional values, such 0.25 or 1.873.

There are three ways you can modify text fields.

To enter text into a field using the keyboard:

1 Click the text field you want to edit.

The text in that field becomes highlighted.

2 Type something new.

3 Press Return to accept the change.

Chapter 3 Using the Color Interface 61

To modify the value of a numeric or percentage-based text field with a virtual slider:

1 Move the pointer to the field you want to adjust.

2 Middle-click and drag to the left to decrease its value, or to the right to increase its value.

3 Release the mouse button when you’re finished.

To modify the value of a numeric or percentage-based text field with a scroll wheel:

1 Move the pointer to the field you want to adjust.

2 Without clicking in the field, roll the scroll wheel or ball up to increase that field’s value,

or down to decrease that field’s value.

To adjust a field using a shortcut menu:

m Control-click or right-click any field, and choose one of the following options from the

shortcut menu:

Â Reset: Resets the field to its default setting.

Â Min: Chooses the minimum value available to that field.

Â Max: Chooses the maximum value available to that field.

Â Set as Default: Sets that parameter to the default value.

Timecode Fields

Timecode fields display timing information, such as media In and Out points, and the position of the playhead. Time is represented in Color in one of two ways:

Â Within fields, most time values are represented with standard SMPTE timecode.

SMPTE timecode is represented by four colon-delimited pairs of digits: hh:mm:ss:ff, where hh is hours, mm is minutes, ss is seconds, and ff is frames.

Â Time values in the Timeline Ruler may be displayed as non-drop frame timecode,

drop frame timecode, or frames.

Note: Drop-frame timecode appears with a semicolon between the seconds and frames positions.

Navigating with Timecode

Here are some pointers for entering values into the hours, minutes, seconds, and frames positions of timecode fields:

Â Time values are entered from left to right (similar to entering a duration into a

microwave); however, the last value you type is assumed to be the last digit of the frames position.

Â Press Return whenever you’ve finished typing a timecode value to confirm the new

value you entered.

Â If you enter a partial number, the rightmost pair of numbers is interpreted as frames

and each successive pair of numbers to the left populates the remaining seconds, minutes, and hours positions. Omitted numbers default to 00.

For example, if you enter 1419, Final Cut Pro interprets it as 00:00:14:19.

62 Chapter 3 Using the Color Interface

Â When you enter timecode in a field, you don’t need to enter all of the separator

characters (such as colons); they’re automatically added between each pair of digits.

Â You can type a period to represent a pair of zeros when entering longer durations.

For example, type “3.” (3 and a period) to enter timecode 00:00:03:00. The period is automatically interpreted by Color as 00.

Â To enter 00:03:00:00, type “3..” (3 and two periods).

These periods insert pairs of zeros into both the seconds and frames position.

Â Type 3... to enter 03:00:00:00.

Â Use the plus (+) symbol to enter a series of single-digit values for each time position.

For example, type “1+5+8” to enter timecode 00:01:05:08.

Color Controls

Color controls are used in several rooms in Color to let you choose and modify colors using the HSL model.

Â Dragging within the main color wheel lets you simultaneously adjust the hue and

saturation of the selected color.

A crosshair within the color wheel shows the current color value that’s being selected. The remaining controls depend on the type of color control being displayed.

Â Dragging up and down within the multicolored Hue slider lets you adjust the hue.

Â Dragging up within the single-colored Saturation slider increases the saturation of

the current hue, dragging down decreases its saturation.

Â Dragging up within the single-colored Brightness slider increases the brightness of

the current color, dragging down decreases its brightness.

Customizing Color Controls

The angle at which colors appear on the color wheel of color controls can be customized to match the interface of other color correction systems you may be used to. In addition, the speed with which control surface joyballs adjust the corresponding Color color controls can be adjusted. For more information, see “Control Surface

Settings” on page 103.

Chapter 3 Using the Color Interface 63

Organizational Browsers and Bins

Color presents several browsers and bins for organizing shots, media, and grades which share some common controls. All these browsers and bins are used to manage files on your hard drive, rather then data that’s stored within the Color project file itself. As a result, their controls are used to navigate and organize the directory structure of your hard drive, much as you would in the Finder.

The File Browser

The browser that dominates the left half of the Setup room lets you navigate the directory structure of your computer’s disk drives (and by extension any RAID, DAS, and SAN volumes that are currently mounted), in order to find and import compatible QuickTime and Still Image media files.

It’s important to bear in mind that the file browser is not a project bin in any way. The files displayed within the file browser are not associated with your Color project in any way unless you drag them into the Timeline manually or relink the shots of an imported project to their associated media files on disk using the Relink Media or Reconnect Media commands.

Note: The file browser displays only directories and media files that are compatible with Color.

When you select a media file in the file browser, a panel appears to the right displaying the first frame of that file along with information underneath, including:

Â Shot Name: The filename

Â Duration: Its total duration

Â Codec: The codec used to encode that file

Â Resolution: The frame size of the file, width by height

Â Frame Rate: The frame rate of the file

Â Timecode: The timecode value of the first frame in that file

At the bottom of this panel, an Import button appears that lets you edit the currently selected shot into the Timeline at the current position of the playhead.

Collapsing the file browser

If you like, the file browser can be collapsed to enable the tabbed area on the right to occupy the entire Color window.

64 Chapter 3 Using the Color Interface

To hide the file browser:

m Move the pointer to the file browser divider at the right-hand side of the file browser,

and when it’s highlighted in blue, click once to collapse it.

To uncollapse the file browser:

m Move the pointer to the file browser divider at the left-hand side of the window, and

when it’s highlighted in blue, click once to uncollapse it.

For more information on the Setup room, see Chapter 5, “Setup,” on page 91.

The Shots Browser

The second browser in the Setup room is the Shots tab, which is inside of the Setup room. This browser lets you see all the shots that are in the current project in either list or icon view.

In icon view, you can also create groups of shots that you can use to copy and paste grades to multiple shots at once. For more information, see “Managing Grades in the

Shots Browser” on page 274.

Chapter 3 Using the Color Interface 65

In list view, you can sort all of the shots using different info fields. For more information on using the Shots browser, see “The Shots Browser” on page 92.

The Grades Bin

The Grades bin, in the Setup room, lets you save and organize grades combining primary, secondary, and Color FX corrections into a single unit.

You can use this bin to apply saved grades to other shots in the Timeline. The contents of the Grades bin are available to all Color projects opened while logged into that user account. For more information on saving and applying grades, see “Saving Grades into

the Grades Bin” on page 265.

Correction Bins

The Primary, Secondaries, and Color FX rooms all allow you to save the corrections made inside those rooms as individual presets that you can apply to later shots. The contents of corrections bins are available to all Color projects opened while logged into that user account.

Â Primary In and Out: Lets you save and organize primary corrections. The Primary In

and Primary Out rooms both share the same group of saved corrections.

Â Secondaries: Lets you save and organize secondary corrections.

Â Color FX: Lets you save and organize Color FX corrections.

66 Chapter 3 Using the Color Interface

Grades Versus Corrections

There is a distinct difference between grades and corrections in Color. Corrections refer to adjustments made within a single room. You have the option to save individual corrections inside the Primary, Secondaries, and Color FX rooms and apply them to shots individually.

A grade can include multiple corrections across several rooms, saving one or more primary, secondary, and Color FX corrections together. By saving a group of corrections as a grade, you can apply them all together as a single preset.

Still Store

Although the Still Store isn’t a grade or correction bin, it’s managed in almost exactly the same way. This room is one big bin that’s designed to hold still frames from a variety of shots that you can use for purposes of comparison to other shots in your program. For more information on using the Still Store, see Chapter 16, “Still Store,” on page 315.

Browser, Grade and Correction Bin Controls

All browsers and bins share the following controls:

Display Controls

All browsers and bins have display controls that let you choose how you want to view and organize their contents.

Â List View button: Displays the contents of the current directory as a list of filenames.

Â Icon View button: Displays the contents of the current directory as icons.

Â Icon Size slider: Appears only in icon view. Scales the size of icons.

Directory Navigation Controls

The file browser and Grades and Corrections bins also have directory navigation controls that you can use to organize and browse the grades and corrections that are saved on your hard drive.

Chapter 3 Using the Color Interface 67

Â Go Up: Moves to and displays the contents of the parent directory.

Â Go Home: Navigates to the appropriate home directory for that browser or bin. This

is not your Mac OS X user home directory:

Â File browser: The home button takes you to the currently specified Color media

directory.

Â Primary In, Secondaries, Color FX, and Primary Out: Home takes you to the

appropriate subdirectory within the /Users/username/Library/Application Support/ Color directory. Each room has its own corresponding subdirectory, within which are stored all the corrections you’ve saved for future use.

Â Still Store: Home takes you to the StillStore directory inside the current project

directory structure.

File Controls

The file browser and Grades and Corrections bins also have directory creation and navigation controls at the bottom.

Â File field: Displays the file path of the currently viewed directory.

Â Directory pop-up menu: This pop-up menu gives you a fast way to traverse up and

down the current directory hierarchy or to go to the default Color directory for that room.

Â New Directory button: Lets you create a new directory within the currently specified

path. You can create as many directories as you like to organize the grades and corrections for that room.

Â Save button: This button saves the grade or correction settings of the shot at the

current position of the playhead in the directory specified in the above text fields.

Â Load button: Applies the selected grade or correction to the shot that’s at the current

position of the playhead (if no other shots are selected), or to multiple selected shots (ignoring the shot at the playhead if it’s not selected). As with any Color bin, items displayed can be dragged and dropped from the bin into the Timeline.

How Are Grades and Corrections Saved?

Grades and corrections that you save using the grade and correction bins in Color are saved within the Color preferences directory in your /Users/username/Library/ Application Support/Color directory.

Saved correction category Location on disk

Grades /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Color/Grades/

Primary corrections /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Color/Primary/

Secondary corrections /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Color/Secondary/

Color FX corrections /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Color/Effects/

Saved grades and corrections in these bins are available to every project you open.

68 Chapter 3 Using the Color Interface

Individual corrections in each of the above directories are saved as a pair of files; a .lsi file which contains a thumbnail for visually identifying that grade, and the specific file for that type of correction which actually defines its settings. Unless you customized the name, both these files have the same name, followed by a dot, followed by the date (day month year hour.minute.secondTimeZone), followed by the file extension that identifies the type of saved correction it is.

Â Grade_Name.date.lsi: The thumbnail image used to represent that grade in icon view

Â Grade_Name.date.pcc: Primary correction file

Â Grade_Name.date.scc: Secondary correction file

Â Grade_Name.date.cfx: Color FX correction file

Saved grades are, in fact, file bundles that contain all the correction files that make up that grade. For example, a grade that combines primary, secondary, and Color FX corrections would be a directory using the name given to the grade, “Grade_Name.date.grd,” containing the following files:

Â Grade_Name.date.lsi

Â Grade_Name.date.pcc

Â Grade_Name.date.scc

Â Grade_Name.date.cfx

Reorganizing Saved Corrections and Grades in the Finder

Each of the correction bins in Color simply mirrors the contents of the corresponding subdirectory in the /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Color directory. You can use the Finder to reorganize your saved corrections and grades by creating new subdirectories and moving previously saved grades and corrections into them.

When you move saved corrections from one directory to another, it’s important to make sure that you copy both the .lsi thumbnail image for that grade, and the .pcc, .scc, or .cfx file that contains the actual grade information, together.

If you reorganize saved grades and corrections in the Finder while Color is open, you’ll need to manually refresh the contents of the Grades and corrections bins you changed so that they correctly display the current contents.

To update the contents of the currently displayed correction bin:

m Click the Home button.

The contents of the correction bin update to show the current state of the Finder.

Chapter 3 Using the Color Interface 69

Moving Saved Corrections and Grades to Other Computers

If you have saved corrections and grades that you want to move to Color installations on other computers, you can simply copy the folders described on page 68 to a portable storage device, and then copy their contents into the corresponding folders on the new system. The next time you open Color, the saved corrections and grades will appear as they did before.

Using Color with One or Two Monitors

Color is compatible with both one- and two-monitor computer configurations. Most users will benefit from using Color in dual display mode with two monitors, as this provides the most screen real estate and also allows for the most flexible use of the preview and video scopes displayed on the Scopes window of the second monitor.

However, Color can also be used in single display mode, which lets you operate Color in situations where a second display is not available. Single display mode is only recommended on 30-inch Cinema Displays.

Note: Color requires a minimum resolution of 1680x1050 in either single or dual display mode.

To switch between single and dual display modes, do one of the following:

m Choose Window > Single Display Mode or Dual Display Mode.

m Press Shift-0 to toggle between both modes.

You must quit Color and reopen it for this change to take effect.

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4 Importing and Managing Projects

and Media

Color provides powerful tools for managing projects and media as you work.

As mentioned in Chapter 2, “Color Correction Workflows,” on page 35, there are three main ways you can import a project and its media. You can import (or send) XML project data from Final Cut Pro, you can import an EDL and reconnect its media, or you can place the media itself directly into the Timeline manually.

This chapter describes the commands and methods used to create and save projects, import project data and media from other applications, and manage your project within Color.

This chapter covers the following:

Â Creating and Opening Projects (p. 72)

Â Saving Projects and Archives (p. 72)

Â Moving Projects Between Final Cut Pro and Color (p. 75)

Â Reconforming Projects (p. 79)

Â Importing EDLs (p. 80)

Â Exporting EDLs (p. 82)

Â Relinking QuickTime Media (p. 82)

Â Importing Media Directly into The Timeline (p. 83)

Â Compatible Media Formats (p. 84)

Â Converting Cineon and DPX Image Sequences to QuickTime (p. 88)

Â Importing Color Corrections (p. 89)

Â Exporting JPEG Images (p. 89)

Creating and Opening Projects

When you first run Color, you’re presented with a dialog with which you can open an existing project or create a new one.

To create a new project when Color is first opened:

1 Open Color.

2 When the Projects window opens, choose a location for the project.

By default, the Create Project dialog opens to the Default Project Directory you chose when you first launched Color.

3 Type a name for the project in the File field, and click Save.

A new project is created in the directory you chose, and is opened.

To create a new project while Color is running:

1 If necessary, save the current project.

Color can only have one project open at a time, so creating a new project will close the currently open project.

2 Choose File > New (Command-N).

3 Choose a name and location for the project from the Create Project dialog, and click Save.

An empty project appears, ready for use.

To open an existing project, do one of the following:

m Double-click a Color project file in the Finder.

m Choose File > Open (Command-O), choose a project from the Projects window, and

click Open.

Color can only have one project open at a time, so opening a second project closes the one that was originally open.

Saving Projects and Archives

The essential process of saving files has been divided into two tasks: saving updates to the project file itself and saving archives of the project file.

Saving a project works the same way in Color as it does in any other application you’ve used. As with any application, you should save early and often as you work.

To save a project:

m Choose File > Save (Command-S).

Note: Whenever you manually save a project, an archive is also automatically saved with the date and time as its name.

72 Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media

To revert the project to the last saved state:

m Choose File > Revert (Command-R).

Saving and Opening Archives

An archive is a compressed duplicate of the project that’s stored within the project bundle itself. For efficiency, the archive file lacks the thumbnail and Still Store image files that the full version of the project has, saving only the state of the internal project file, Timeline, shot settings, grades, corrections, keyframes, and pan and scan settings, which are easily compressed and occupy little space.

Whenever you manually save your project, an archive is automatically created, named with the date and time at which it was saved. If you want to save an archive of your project at a particular state with a more easily identifiable name, you can use the Save Archive As command.

To save an archive of the project with a specific name:

1 Do one of the following:

Â Choose File > Save Archive As.

Â Press Command-Option-S.

2 Type a name into the Archive Name field, and click Archive.

There is no limit to the number of archives you can save, so the archives list can grow quite long. Archives are compressed using both .tar and gzip (a “tarball”) so they take up little room. All archive files for a particular project are saved in the Archives subdirectory inside of that project bundle.

Later, if anything should happen to your project file’s settings, or if you want to return the project to a previously archived state, you can load one of the archive files.

To open an archive:

1 Choose File > Load Archive (Command-Option-O).

2 Select an archive to open from the Load Archive window, then click Load Archive.

Opening an archive overwrites the current state of the project with that of the archive.

Automatic Saving

The Color automatic saving mechanism, when turned on, saves the current project at an interval set by the Auto Save Time (Minutes) parameter in the User Prefs tab of the Setup room. When a project is automatically saved, no archive is created. This prevents your archive list from being inundated with entries. By default, automatic saving is turned on, with the interval set to 5 minutes.

For more information, see “Auto Save Settings” on page 109.

Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media 73

What Is a Color Project?

The only shots that are in your project are those in the Timeline (which are also mirrored in the Shots browser). Color projects only contain a single sequence of shots. Furthermore, Color projects have no organizational notion of shots that aren’t actually in the Timeline, and so they contain no unused media.

The Contents of Color Projects

Color projects are actually bundles. Inside each Color project bundle is a hierarchical series of directories, each of which contains specific components belonging to that project, which are either image or XML files. It’s possible to open a Color bundle using the Show Package Contents command in the Finder. This section outlines the directory structure and contents of these bundles.

Â Archives directory: Contains all the saved archives of that project. Each archive is

compressed using both .tar and .gzip compression (a “tarball”) and is identified with the .tgz extension.

Â .lsi file: This is an image file that contains the frame at the position of the playhead

when you last saved.

Â .pdl file: This is the XML-based project file itself, which contains all the information

that organizes the shots, timing, and grades used in that project.

Â Shots directory: Each shot in your project’s Timeline has a corresponding

subdirectory here. Each subdirectory contains some or more of the following:

Â Grade1 (through 4) subdirectories: These directories contain all the correction files

associated with that grade.

Â ShotName.lsi file: This is that shot’s thumbnail as displayed in the Timeline.

Â ShotName.si file: This file contains that shot’s name, media path, and timing

information.

Â Grade_Name.date.pcc: Primary correction description.

Â Grade_Name.date.scc: Secondary correction description.

Â Grade_Name.date.cfx: Color FX correction description.

Â PanAndScan subdirectory: This directory contains a .kfd file that stores keyframe

data, and a .pns file that stores pan and scan data.

Â shot_notes.txt file: If a note is present for that shot, it’s saved here.

Â StillStore directory: This directory contains all the Still Store images that you’ve

saved for reference within that project. Each reference still has two corresponding files, a .lsi file which is that image’s thumbnail icon, and a .sri file which is the fullresolution image (saved using the DPX image format).

Important: It is not recommended to modify the contents of Color project files unless

you know exactly what you’re doing. Making changes manually could cause unexpected problems.

74 Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media

Moving Projects Between Final Cut Pro and Color

One of the easiest ways of importing a project is to send a Final Cut Pro sequence to Color using one of two XML-based workflows. This section discusses how to prepare your projects in Final Cut Pro and how to send them using XML.

For more general information on Final Cut Pro to Color round-trip workflows, see “Video Finishing Workflows Using Final Cut Pro” on page 39.

Before You Export Your Final Cut Pro Project

Whether you’re working on your own project, or preparing a client’s project in advance of a Color grading session, you should take some time to prepare the Final Cut Pro sequence you’ll be sending in order to ensure the best results and smoothest workflow. Here are some recommended steps.

Move Clips That Aren’t Being Composited to Track V1 in the Timeline

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. It’s generally much faster and easier to navigate and work on a project that has all its clips on a single video track. It’s recommended that you move all video clips that aren’t being superimposed as part of a compositing operation down to track V1.

Divide Your Project into Reels

Projects with large numbers of edit points can slow down your performance in Color. As a general rule of thumb, projects that you’ll be sending to Color should have no more then 200 edit points for optimal performance.

To maximize performance while you work, you should consider breaking longform projects down into approximately 22-minute reels prior to sending them to Color. The length is arbitrary, but 22 minutes is the standard length of a film reel, and is a suitable length unless your project has a large number of edits, in which case you should consider dividing your program into shorter segments (some editors prefer to work with10-minute segments). Each segment should begin and end at a good cut point, such as the In point of the first shot or the Out point of the last shot of a scene, or the end of the last frame of a fade to black.

Important: As you’re creating your reels, make sure you don’t accidentally omit any

frames in between each reel.

Export Self-Contained QuickTime Files for Effect Clips You Want to Color Correct

Color is incapable of either displaying or working with any of the following types of clips:

Â Generators

Â Motion projects

Â LiveType projects

Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media 75

Â Freeze Frames (created from a clip inside of Final Cut Pro)

Â Still Image files (such as .tiff, .jpg, or .bmp files)

If you want to grade such clips in Color, you need to export them as self-contained QuickTime files, and reedit them into the Timeline of your Final Cut Pro sequence to replace the original effects prior to sending the sequence to Color.

If you don’t need to grade these effects in Color, then you can simply send the project with these clips as they are, and ignore any gaps that appear in Color in place of these types of clips. Even though these effects don’t appear in Color, they’re preserved within the XML of the Color project and they will reappear when you send that project back to Final Cut Pro.

∏ Tip: Prior to exporting a project from Final Cut Pro, you can also export a single, self-

contained QuickTime movie of the entire program, then reimport it into your project and superimpose it over all the other clips in your edited sequence. Then, when you export the project to Color, you can turn this “reference” version of the program on and off using track visibility whenever you want to have a look at the offline effects or color corrections that were created during the offline edit.

Media Manage Your Project

If you’re delivering a Final Cut Pro project to a Color suite at another facility, you may want to eliminate unused media to save drive space (especially if you’ll be recapturing uncompressed media), and consolidate all the source media used by your project into a single directory for easy transport and relinking. This is a good step to take prior to recapturing your media.

Recapture Offline Media At Online Quality

If the project was edited at an offline resolution, you need to recapture all the source media at the highest available quality. Be sure you choose a high-quality codec, either using the native codec that the source footage was recorded with or using one of the supported uncompressed codecs. For more information on which codecs are supported by Color, see “Compatible Media Formats” on page 84.

Important: If you’re recapturing video clips that were originally recorded with a Y´C

format, be sure that the codec you use to recapture, and the export methods you use to export or consolidate your media, don’t clamp super-white and high-chroma components in the original, uncorrected media. It’s usually better to correct such clips within Color than it is to clamp these levels in advance, potentially losing valuable image data.

Using the “Send to Color” Command in Final Cut Pro

If you have Final Cut Pro and Color installed on the same computer, you can use the “Send to Color” command in Final Cut Pro to automatically move your sequence into Color.

76 Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media

BCR

To send a sequence from Final Cut Pro to Color:

1 Open the project in Final Cut Pro.

2 Select a sequence in the Browser to send the entire sequence.

3 Do one of the following:

Â Choose File > Send To > Color.

Â Control-click the selection, then choose Send To > Color in the shortcut menu.

4 Chose a name for the project to be created in Color, then click OK.

A new Color project is automatically created in the default projects directory specified in User Preferences. The shots that appear on the Timeline should match the original Final Cut Pro sequence that was sent.

Importing an XML File into Color

If you need to deliver a Final Cut Pro sequence and its media to another facility to be graded using Color, you can also use the Export XML command in Final Cut Pro to export the sequence to be graded. For more information about exporting XML from Final Cut Pro, see the Final Cut Pro User Manual.

In Color, you then use the Import XML command to turn the XML file into a Color project. To make this process quicker, you can copy the XML file you want to import into the default projects directory specified by Color.

To import an XML file into Color:

1 Do one of the following:

Â Open Color.

Â Choose File > Import > XML.

2 Choose an XML file from the Projects window.

3 Click Load.

Don’t Reedit Imported XML Projects in Color

By default, all the video tracks of imported XML projects are locked. When you’re grading a project, it’s important to avoid unlocking them or making any editorial changes to the shots in the Color Timeline if you’re planning on sending the project back to Final Cut Pro successfully.

If you need to make an editorial change, reedit the original sequence in Final Cut Pro, export a new XML file, and use the Reconform command to update the Color Timeline to match the changes.

Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media 77

Sending Your Project Back to Final Cut Pro

If you’re doing a Final Cut Pro to Color round-trip, you’ll need to render the colorcorrected media out of Color (covered in Chapter 17, “Render Queue,” on page 321), and then export the Color project back to Final Cut Pro.

Important: Projects using Cineon or DPX image sequences can’t be sent back to

Final Cut Pro.

To use the “Send to Final Cut Pro” command in Color:

1 Go through the Timeline and choose which grade you want to use for each of the clips

in your project.

Since each shot in your program may have up to four separately rendered versions of media in the render directory, the rendered media that each shot is linked to in the exported XML project file is determined by its currently selected grade.

2 Choose File > Send To > Final Cut Pro.

Note: If you haven’t rendered every shot in Color at this point, you’ll be warned. It’s a good idea to click No to cancel the operation and render all of your shots prior to sending the project back to Final Cut Pro.

A new sequence is automatically added to the original Final Cut Pro project from which the program came. However, if the Final Cut Pro project the program was originally sent from is unavailable, has been renamed, or has been moved to another location, then a new Final Cut Pro project will be created to contain the new sequence. Either way, every clip in the new sequence is automatically linked to the color-corrected media you rendered out of Color.

Exporting XML for Final Cut Pro Import

If you’re exporting a project for someone at another facility, you’ll need to export an XML version of your Color project.

To export an XML file back to Final Cut Pro for final output:

1 Go through the Timeline and choose which grade you want to use for each of the clips

in your project.

2 Chose File > Export > XML.

3 When the Export XML Options dialog appears, click Browse.

a Enter a name for the XML file you’re exporting in the File field of the Export XML File

dialog.

b Choose a location for the file, then click Save.

78 Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media

4 Click OK.

A new XML project file is created, and the clips within are automatically linked to the media directory specified in the project settings tab in the Setup room.

Note: If you haven’t exported rendered media from your Color project yet, then the XML file is linked to the original project media.

Reconforming Projects

If your project was imported from an XML or EDL generated by Final Cut Pro, you have the option of automatically reconforming your Color project to match any editorial changes made to the original Final Cut Pro sequence, saving you hours of tedious labor.

To reconform an XML-based Color project:

1 Export an updated XML file of the reedited Final Cut Pro sequence from Final Cut Pro.

2 Open the Color project you need to update, then choose File > Reconform.

3 Select the XML file that was exported in step 1 using the Reconform XML dialog, then

click Load.

The shots in the Timeline should update to reflect the imported changes, and the Reconform column in the Shots browser is updated with the status of every shot that was affected by the reconform operation.

You can also reconform projects that were originally imported using EDLs.

To reconform an EDL-based Color project:

1 Export an updated EDL of the reedited sequence from the originating application.

2 Open the Color project you need to update, then choose File > Reconform.

3 Select the EDL file that was exported in step 1 using the Reconform dialog, then click

Load.

As when you reconform an XML based project, the Reconform column in the Shots browser in the Setup room is updated with the status of each shot that’s been modified by the reconform operation. This lets you identify shots that might need readjustment as a result of such changes, sorting them by type for fast navigation. For more information, see “Column Headers” on page 94.

Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media 79

Importing EDLs

You can import an EDL directly into Color. There are two reasons to use EDLs instead of XML files:

Â To color correct a video master file: You can approximate a tape-to-tape color

correction workflow by importing an EDL, and using the Use As Cut List option to link it to a corresponding master media file (either a QuickTime .mov file or a DPX image sequence).

Note: If you’re going to do work this way, it’s best to work with uncompressed media, and to work in reels of 20 minutes or less to avoid the potential performance bottlenecks caused by projects with over 200 edit points in the Timeline.

Â To import a 2K digital intermediate project: EDLs are also the only way to import

projects as part of a 2K digital intermediate workflow when you’re relinking the project to DPX image sequences from film scans. For more information, see “Using

Color in a Digital Intermediate Workflow” on page 49.

Color imports the following EDL formats:

Â Generic

Â CMX 340

Â CMX 3600

Â GVG 4 Plus

To make the process of importing an EDL quicker, you can copy all EDL files to the default projects directory specified by Color.

To import an EDL:

1 Do one of the following:

Â Open Color.

Â Choose File > Import > EDL.

2 Choose an EDL file from the Projects window.

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The EDL Import Settings dialog appears, defaulting to the default project directory specified in the User Prefs tab of the Setup room.

3 Choose the following project properties from the available lists and pop-up menus:

Â EDL Format: The format of the EDL file you’re importing.

Â Project Frame Rate: The frame rate of the Color project you’re about to create. In most

cases, this should match the frame rate of the EDL you’re importing.

Â EDL Frame Rate: Choose the frame rate of the EDL you’re importing. If the EDL Frame

Rate is 29.97 fps but you set the Project Frame Rate to 24 fps, Color will automatically do the necessary conversions to remove 3:2 pulldown from the shots in the project.

Note: This lets you deal with workflows where the imported EDL was generated from an offline edit of a project using telecined 29.97 fps video, but the subsequent scanned 2K image sequences were reacquired at film’s native 24 fps.

Â Source Frame Rate: The frame rate of the source media on disk that you’re linking to.

Â Use As Cut List: This checkbox lets you specify that this EDL should be used as a cut

list to “notch” a matching video master file.

Â Project Resolution: The resolution of the Color project you’re creating. In general, this

should match the resolution of the source media that you’re linking to.

Â Width: The width of the selected frame size.

Â Height: The height of the selected frame size.

Â Source Directory: The directory specified here sets the EDL parser to the exact path

where the DPX Scans or QuickTime files associated with that project are located.

4 You must specify the location of the source media to link the project to by doing one

of the following:

Â Type the directory path into the Source Directory field.

Â Click Browse, select a directory using the Source Directory dialog, then click Choose.

Note: The source directory you choose can be a local volume or on a SAN or LAN that has sufficient performance to accommodate the data rate of the project’s media.

Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media 81

5 When you’ve finished choosing all the necessary settings, click Import.

A new project is created, and the EDL is converted into a sequence of shots in the Timeline. These shots should match the Timelines of the original project.

Exporting EDLs

You can export EDLs out of Color, which can be a good way of moving projects back to other editorial applications. When exporting an EDL, it’s up to the application with which you’ll be importing the EDL to successfully relink to the media that’s rendered out of Color.

Note: To help facilitate media relinking, the media path is written to the comment column in the exported EDL, although not all editing applications support this convention.

To export an EDL:

1 Chose File > Export > EDL.

2 When the Export EDL dialog appears, click Browse.

3 Enter a name for the EDL you’re exporting in the File field of the Export EDL File dialog,

choose a location for the file, and click Save.

4 If you didn’t change any of the shot names when you exported the final rendered

media for this project, turn on “Use original media name.”

5 Click OK.

A new EDL file is created, and the clips within are linked to the media directory you specified.

Relinking QuickTime Media

If necessary, you can manually relink media to a Color project. When you use the relink command, Color matches each shot in the Timeline with its corresponding media file using the following criteria:

Â Starting timecode

Â Filename

If neither of these criteria matches, you’re given the following warning:

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If you click Yes and proceed with relinking to a different file, then the original Source In and Source Out values for that shot will be overwritten with those of the new clip.

To relink every shot in the Timeline:

1 Choose File > Reconnect Media.

2 Choose the directory where the project’s media is saved from the Choose Media Path

dialog, and click Choose.

If that directory contains all the media used by the project, then every shot in the Timeline is automatically relinked. If there are still missing media files, you’ll be warned, and these shots will remain offline; you’ll need to use the Reconnect Media command again to relink them.

To relink a single shot:

1 Control-click or Right-click a shot in the Timeline, and choose Relink Media from the

shortcut menu.

2 Choose a clip to relink to from the Select Media To Relink dialog, then click Load.

If the name and starting timecode of the media file matches that of the shot in the Timeline, the media link is restored.

Importing Media Directly into The Timeline

You also have the option of importing media files to the Timeline directly, although this is usually only useful for classroom situations and when doing digital dailies.

To import a shot to the Timeline:

1 Click the Setup tab, or choose File > Import > Clip, which opens the Setup tab.

2 Use the navigation controls at the top left of the file browser to find the directory

containing the media you want to import.

3 Click to select the media file you want to import into the Timeline.

4 Do one of the following:

Â Double-click the shot in the file browser to edit the shot into the Timeline at the

position of the playhead.

Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media 83

Â Drag the shot directly into the Timeline.

Â Click the Import button below that shot’s preview to edit the shot into the Timeline

at the position of the playhead.

Once shots have been placed into the Timeline, save your project.

Compatible Media Formats

Color is compatible with a wide variety of QuickTime files and image sequences.

Compatible QuickTime Codecs for Import

The list of codecs that are supported by Color is limited to high-quality codecs suitable for media exchange and mastering. Codec support falls into three categories:

Â QuickTime codecs that are supported by Color when importing projects and media.

Â A subset of codecs that may be used for rendering your final output when Original

Format is chosen in the Export Codec pop-up menu of the Prjct Settings tab of the Setup Room. Original Format is only available when you’ve used the “Send to Color” command in Final Cut Pro, or when you’ve imported a Final Cut Pro file that’s been exported as an XML file.

Â By default, only four codecs are available in the Export Codec pop-up menu for

upconverting your source media to a higher-quality format. These include the Apple ProRes 422 and Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) codecs, and the Apple Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2 and Apple Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 codecs.

Note: If you’ve installed a video interface from AJA, you should see an additional option—AJA Kona 10-bit RGB.

Supported as original

Supported for import

Animation No No

Apple Intermediate Codec Yes No

Apple Pixlet Yes No

Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) Yes Yes

Apple ProRes 422 (SQ) Yes Yes

DVCPRO 50 - NTSC Yes No

DVCPRO 50 - PAL Yes No

DV - PAL Yes No

DV/DVCPRO - NTSC Yes No

DVCPRO - PAL Yes No

DVCPRO HD 1080i50 Yes No

DVCPRO HD 1080i60 Yes No

DVCPRO HD 1080p25 Yes No

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format

Supported as export codec

Supported as original

Supported for import

DVCPRO HD 1080p30 Yes No

DVCPRO HD 720p50 Yes No

DVCPRO HD 720p60 Yes No

DVCPRO HD 720p Yes No

H.264 No No

HDV 720p24 No No

HDV 720p25 No No

HDV 720p30 No No

HDV 1080p24 No No

HDV 1080p25 No No

HDV 1080p30 No No

HDV 1080i60 No No

HDV 1080i50 No No

Photo - JPEG Yes No

MPEG IMX 525/60 (30 Mb/s) No No

MPEG IMX 525/60 (40 Mb/s) No No

MPEG IMX 525/60 (50 Mb/s) No No

MPEG IMX 625/50 (30 Mb/s) No No

MPEG IMX 625/50 (40 Mb/s) No No

MPEG IMX 625/50 (50 Mb/s) No No

Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2 Yes Yes

Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 Yes Yes

XDCAM HD 1080i50 (35 Mb/s VBR) No No

XDCAM HD 1080i60 (35 Mb/s VBR) No No

XDCAM HD 1080p24 (35 Mb/s VBR) No No

XDCAM HD 1080p25 (35 Mb/s VBR) No No

XDCAM HD 1080p30 (35 Mb/s VBR) No No

format

Supported as export codec

Compatible Third-Party QuickTime Codecs for Import

Color also supports the following third-party codecs for import.

Â AJA Kona 10-bit Log RGB

Â AJA Kona 10-bit RGB

Note: The AJA Kona codecs are not installed by QuickTime by default, and are only available from AJA.

Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media 85

Compatible QuickTime Codecs for Output

The purpose of Color is to create high-quality color-corrected media that can be reimported into Final Cut Pro for output to tape, QuickTime conversion, or compression for use by DVD Studio Pro. For this reason, the list of codecs that are supported for rendering out of Color is limited to high-quality codecs suitable for media exchange and mastering.

Â Apple ProRes 422: A low-bandwidth, high-quality compressed codec for capture and

output. Encodes video at 10 bits per channel with 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. Supports a variable bit rate (VBR) of 35 to 50 mbps, which is suitable for mastering standard definition video. Supports any frame size.

Â Apple ProRes 422 (HQ): A higher-bandwidth version of Apple ProRes 422. Supports a

variable bit rate (VBR) of 145 to 220 mbps, which is suitable for mastering high definition video. Supports any frame size.

Â Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2: A completely uncompressed, 8-bit-per-channel codec with

4:2:2 chroma subsampling. Supports any frame size. Suitable for mastering any format of video.

Â Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2: A completely uncompressed, 10-bit-per-channel codec

with 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. Supports any frame size. Suitable for mastering any format of video.

Color also supports the following third party codec for rendering.

Â AJA Kona 10-bit RGB

Note: The AJA Kona codecs are not installed by QuickTime by default, and are only available from AJA.

You can render your project out of Color using one of several high-quality mastering codecs, regardless of the codec or level of compression that is used by the source media. You can take advantage of this to facilitate a workflow where you import compressed media into Color, and then export the corrected output as uncompressed media before sending your project to Final Cut Pro. This way, you reap the benefits of saving hard drive space and avoiding rerendering times up front, while preserving all the quality of your high-bit-depth adjustments when you render your output media prior to sending your project back to Final Cut Pro.

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What Codec Should You Use for Export?

When choosing the codec you want to use for rendering the final output, there are three considerations:

Â If you’ll be outputting to a high-bandwidth video format (such as Betacam SP,

Digital Betacam, HDCAM, and HDCAM SR) and require the highest quality video data available, regardless of storage or system requirements, you should export your media using the Apple Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 codec.

Â If you’ll be outputting to one of the above video formats and require high quality,

but need to use a compressed format to save hard drive space and increase performance on your particular computer, then you can export using the Apple ProRes 422 codec (good for standard definition), or the higher quality Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) codec (good for high definition), both of which are 10-bit, 4:2:2 codecs.

Â If your system is not set up to output such high-bandwidth video, and your

program uses a source format that’s supported by the Original Format option in the QuickTime Export Codecs pop-up menu in the Prjct Settings tab of the Setup room, you’ll be able to render back to the original codec used by your Final Cut Pro sequence. If your codec is unsupported, the QuickTime Export Codecs pop-up menu will default to Apple ProRes 422.

Compatible Image Formats

The following RGB-encoded image formats are compatible with Color for importing image sequences: Only Cineon and DPX are supported for rendering image sequences.

Â Cineon (import and export): A high-quality image format developed by Kodak for

digitally scanning, manipulating, and printing images originated on film. Developed as a 10-bit log format to better contain the greater latitude of film for exposure.

Â DPX (import and export): The Digital Picture eXchange format was derived from the

Cineon format and is also used for high-quality uncompressed digital intermediate workflows. Color supports 8-bit and 10-bit log DPX and Cineon image files.

Â TIFF (import only): The Tagged Image File Format is a commonly used image format

for RGB graphics on a variety of platforms. Color is compatible with 16-bit TIFF sequences.

Â JPEG (import only): A highly compressed image format created by the Joint

Photographic Experts Group. The amount of compression that may be applied is variable, but higher compression ratios create visual artifacts, visible as discernible blocks of similar color. JPEG is usually used for offline versions of image sequences, but in some instances (with minimal compression) this format may be used in an online workflow. JPEG is limited to 8-bit encoding.

Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media 87

Â JPEG 2000 (import only): Developed as a high-quality compressed format for

production and archival purposes, JPEG 2000 uses wavelet compression to allow compression of the image while avoiding visible artifacts. Advantages include higher compression ratios with better visible quality, options for either lossless or lossy compression methods, the ability to handle both 8- and 16-bit linear color encoding, error checking, and metadata header standardization for color space and other data.

Converting Cineon and DPX Image Sequences to QuickTime

You can use Color to convert Cineon and DPX image sequences to QuickTime files to facilitate a variety of workflows.

Â If your project is starting out with high-resolution 2K datacine film scans or digital

camera output, you can downconvert matching QuickTime media files with which to do the offline edit.

Â If your project media is in the QuickTime format, but you want to output a series of

Cineon or DPX image sequences, you can do this conversion as well.

When converting from Cineon and DPX to high definition or standard definition QuickTime video (and vice versa), Color automatically makes all necessary color space conversions. Log media will be converted to linear, and Rec. 701 and 601 color spaces are taken into account.

To convert Cineon or DPX image sequences to QuickTime:

1 Create an empty project.

2 Open the Prjct Settings tab of the Setup room, and do the following:

a Click Project Render Directory, choose a render directory for the converted media,

then click Choose.

b Choose QuickTime from the Render File Type pop-up menu.

c Choose a resolution from the Resolution Presets pop-up menu.

d Choose the codec you want to convert the image sequences to from the Export

Codec pop-up menu.

3 Using the file browser, edit all the shots you want to convert into the Timeline.

4 If necessary, grade the shots to make any corrections to the offline media that you’ll be

generating.

Sometimes, the source media from a particular camera or transfer process has a specific color correction or contrast adjustment that must be made for the media to look acceptable during the edit. If this is the case, you can use a single correction to adjust every shot you’re converting (the equivalent of a one-light transfer). Other times, you’ll want to individually correct each shot prior to conversion to provide the best-looking media you can for the editing process (the equivalent of a best-light transfer).

88 Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media

∏ Tip: To quickly apply a single correction to every shot in the Timeline, grade a

representative shot in the Primary In room, then click Copy to All.

5 Open the Render Queue, then click Add All.

6 Click Start Render.

All of the shots are converted, and the rendered output is written to the currently specified render directory.

Importing Color Corrections

The Import > Color Corrections command lets you apply the grades and color corrections from the shots of one project file to those within another project. It’s meant to be used with Color projects that are based on the same source, so that a newly imported version of a project you’ve already been working on can be updated with all the grades that were applied to the previous version.

To import the color corrections from one project to another:

1 Open the Color project into which you want to import the corrections.

2 Choose File > Import > Color Corrections.

3 In the Projects dialog, select the Color project containing the corrections you want to

import, and then click Load.

The shots in the currently open project are updated with the color corrections from the other project file.

Exporting JPEG Images

Color also provides a way of exporting a JPEG image of the frame at the position of the playhead.

To export a JPEG image of the frame at the current position of the playhead:

1 Move the playhead to the frame you want to export.

2 Choose Export > JPEG Still.

3 Enter a name in the File field and select a directory using the Save Still As dialog.

Note: This defaults to the Still Store subdirectory inside of the project bundle.

4 Click Save.

The frame is saved as a JPEG image to the location you selected.

Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media 89

5 Setup

Before you start working on your project, take a moment to configure your Color working environment and project settings in the Setup room.

The Setup room serves many purposes. It’s where you import media files, sort and manage saved grades, organize and search through the shots used in your program, choose your project’s render and broadcast safe settings, and adjust user preferences.

This chapter covers the following:

Â The File Browser (p. 91)

Â The Shots Browser (p. 92)

Â Grades Bin (p. 97)

Â Project Settings Tab (p. 98)

Â Messages Tab (p. 102)

Â User Preferences Tab (p. 102)

The File Browser

The file browser, occupying the left half of the Setup room, lets you directly navigate the directory structure of your hard drive. It’s like having a miniature Finder right there in the Setup room. It’s important to bear in mind that the file browser is not a bin. The files displayed within the file browser are not associated with your Color project in any way unless you drag them into the Timeline manually, or relink the shots of an imported project to their associated media files on disk using the Relink Media or Reconnect Media commands.

By default, it displays the contents of the default media directory when Color starts up.

Â Up Directory button: Moves to the next directory up the current file path.

Â Home Directory button: Moves to the currently specified default media directory.

For more information on how to use the file browser, see “Importing Media Directly

into The Timeline” on page 83. For more information on importing project data from

other applications, see Chapter 4, “Importing and Managing Projects and Media,” on page 71.

The Shots Browser

The Shots browser lists every shot used by the current program that appears in the Timeline. This bin can be used for sorting the shots in your program using different criteria, selecting a group of shots to apply an operation to, or selecting a shot no matter where it appears in the Timeline.

Â Icon View button: Click to put the shot area into icon view.

Â List View button: Click to put the shot area into list view.

Â Shots browser: Each shot in your project appears here, either as a thumbnail icon or

as an entry (in list view).

92 Chapter 5 Setup

The Current Shot and Selected Shots

Icons or entries in the Shots browser are colored based on their selected state.

Â Dark Gray: The shot is not currently being viewed, nor is it selected.

Â Light Gray: The shot at the current position of the playhead is considered to be the

current shot and is highlighted with gray in both the Timeline and the Shots browser timeline. The current shot is the one that’s viewed and that’s corrected when the controls in any room are adjusted.

Â Cyan: You can select shots other than the current shot. Selected shots are

highlighted with cyan in both the Timeline and the Shots browser. To save time, you can apply grades and corrections to multiple selected shots at once.

Goto Shot and Find Fields

The Goto Shot and Find fields let you jump to and search for specific shots in your project. These fields work with the Shots browser in either icon or list view modes.

To go to a specific shot:

m Type a number into the Goto Shot field, and press Enter.

The list scrolls down to reveal the shot with that number, which is automatically selected, and the playhead moves to the first frame of that shot in the Timeline.

To search for a specific shot:

1 Click the header of the column of data you want to search.

2 Type a name into the Search field.

As soon as you start typing, the Shots browser empties except for those items that match the search criteria. As you continue to type, the Shots browser dynamically updates to show the updated list of corresponding items.

Note: All searches are performed from the first character of data in the selected column, read from left to right. The find function is not case sensitive.

Chapter 5 Setup 93

To reveal all shots after a find operation:

m Select all of the text in the Find field, and press Delete.

All shots should reappear in the Shots browser.

Column Headers

When the Shots browser is in list view, up to nine columns of information are visible.

Â Number: Lists a shot’s position in the edit. The first shot is 1, the second is 2, and so on.

Â Shot Name: The name of that shot, based on its filename.

Â Colorist: Lists the name that occupied the Colorist field in the Project Settings when

that shot was last corrected. This column is useful for keeping track of who worked on which shots when multiple colorists are assigned to a project.

Â Status: Shows that shot’s rendered status. You can right-click on this column for any

selected shot and choose a new state from the shortcut menu. The five possible states of a shot are:

Â Queued: The shot has been added to the render queue.

Â Rendering: The shot is currently being rendered.

Â Rendered: The shot has been successfully rendered.

Â To D o: The shot has not yet been corrected in any room.

Â Aborted: Rendering of this shot has been stopped.

Â Reconform: Lists whether that shot has been affected by a Reconform operation.

One example of its use is to sort by this column to quickly identify and navigate to new shots that aren’t yet graded because they were added to the Timeline as a result of a reconform operation. For more information on reconforming a project, see “Reconforming Projects” on page 79. The possible reconform messages are:

Â Shorten: The shot has been shortened.

Â Content Shift: The shot’s duration and position in the Timeline are the same, but its

content has been slipped.

Â Moved: The shot has been moved to another position in the Timeline.

Â Added: This shot has been added to the project.

Â Time Spent: This column only appears when the Show Time button below the Shots

browser is turned on. It shows how much time has been spent grading that particular shot. Color keeps track of how long you spend working on each shot in each program, in order to let you track how fast you’ve been working.

Â Notes: The Notes column provides an interface for storing and recalling text notes

about specific shots. Shots with notes appear with a check in this column.

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Customizing the Shots Browser

The following procedures describe ways you can sort and modify the Shots browser.

To sort the Shots browser by any column:

m Click a column’s header to sort by that column.

Shots are sorted in descending order only. Numbers take precedence over letters, and uppercase takes precedence over lowercase.

To resize a column in the Shots browser:

m Drag the right-hand border of the column you want to resize.

To reveal or hide the Time Spent column:

m Click Show Time, located underneath the Shots browser.

Adding Notes to Shots

Color provides an interface for keeping track of client or supervisor notes on specific shots as you work on a project.

To add a note to a shot, or to read or edit an existing note:

1 Open the Shots Browser in the Setup room.

2 Control-click or right-click on the Notes column of the Shots browser, and choose Edit

File from the shortcut menu.

A plain-text editing window appears.

3 Enter whatever text you want.

Chapter 5 Setup 95

4 To save the note and close it, do one of the following:

Â Press Command-S, and close the window.

Â Close the window and click Save from the drop sheet.

When you’ve added a note to a shot, a check appears in the Notes column.

To remove a note from a shot:

m Control-click or right-click on the Notes column of the Shots browser, and choose

Delete File from the shortcut menu.

Note: Notes are saved within the subdirectory for that particular shot, within the /shots/ subdirectory inside that project bundle. Removing a note deletes the note file.

Selecting Shots and Navigating the Timeline Using the Shots Browser

You can use the Shots browser to quickly find and select specific shots (for example to apply a single grade to a group of shots at once). You can also use the Shots browser to quickly navigate to a particular shot in the Timeline. These procedures work whether the Shots browser is in icon or list view.

To select one or more shots, do one of the following:

m Click any shot in the Shots browser to select that shot.

m Command-click any group of shots to select a discontiguous group of shots.

96 Chapter 5 Setup

m Click any shot, and then Shift-click a second shot to select a contiguous range of shots

from the first selection to the second.

Selected shots appear with a cyan overlay.

To navigate to a specific shot in the Timeline using the Shots browser:

m Double-click any shot.

m Type a number into the Goto Shot field.

The new current shot turns gray in the Shots browser, and the playhead jumps to the first frame of that shot in the Timeline. That shot is now ready to be corrected using any of the Color rooms.

Grades Bin

The Grades bin lets you save and manage grades that you can use in your programs. A grade, as described in Chapter 3, can contain one or more of the following individual corrections:

Â Primary

Â Secondary

Â Color FX

Â Primary Out

By applying a grade to one or more shots, you can apply multiple corrections all at once. Grades saved into the Grades bin are available to all Color projects opened while logged into that user account. The Grades bin can display grades in either icon or list view, and shares the same controls as the other bins in Color that allow you to organize them using subdirectories and navigate the resulting file structure. For more information on using the Grades bin controls, see “Organizational Browsers and Bins” on page 64.

For more information on saving and applying grades, see “Saving Grades into the

Grades Bin” on page 265.

Chapter 5 Setup 97

Project Settings Tab

The options in the Project Settings tab are individually saved on a per-project basis. They let you store additional information about that project, adjust how the project is displayed, and how the shots in that project will be rendered.

Informational and Render Directory Settings

These settings provide information about Color and about your project and let you set up what directory media generated by that project is written into.

Â Project Name: The name of the project. This defaults to the name of the project file

on disk, but you can change this to anything you like. Changing the project name does not change the name of the project file.

Â Render Directory: The render directory is the default directory path where media files

rendered for this project are stored. For more information about rendering Color projects, see Chapter 17, “Render Queue,” on page 321.

Â Project Render Directory button: Clicking this button lets you select a new project

render directory using the Choose Project Render Directory dialog.

Â Colorist: This field lets you store the name of the colorist currently working on the

project. This information is useful for identifying who is working on what in multisuite post-production facilities, or when moving a project file from one facility to another.

Â Client: This field lets you store the name of the client whose project this is.

Resolution and Codec Settings

These settings let you set up the display and render properties of your project. These settings affect how your program is rendered for display purposes, and when rendering the final output.

Â Display LUT: A display LUT (Look Up Table) is a file containing color adjustment

information that’s typically used to modify the monitored image that’s displayed on the preview and broadcast displays. LUTs can be generated to calibrate your display using hardware probes, and they also let you match your display to other characterized imaging mediums, including digital projection systems and film printing workflows. If you’ve loaded a display LUT as part of a color management workflow, this field lets you see which LUT file is being used. For more information on LUT management, see Chapter 6, “Monitoring,” on page 111.

Â Frame Rate: This field displays the frame rate that the project is set to. Your project’s

frame rate is set when the project is created, and it can be changed by a pop-up menu so long as no shots appear in the Timeline. Once one or more shots have been added to the Timeline, the project’s frame rate cannot be changed.

Â Resolution Presets pop-up menu: This menu lists all of the project resolutions that

Color supports, including PAL and NTSC standard definition, high definition, and 2K frame sizes. The options that are available in this menu are sometimes limited by the currently selected QuickTime Export Codec.

98 Chapter 5 Setup

If the currently selected QuickTime Export codec allows custom frame sizes, the width and height fields below can be edited. Otherwise, they remain uneditable. If these fields are set to a user-specified frame size, the Resolution Presets pop-up menu displays “custom.”

Â Width: The currently selected width of the frame size.

Â Height: The currently selected height of the frame size.

Â Printing Density: This pop-up menu only appears when the current project is set to

use Cineon or DPX image sequences. It lets you explicitly choose the numeric range of values that are used to process color to ensure compatibility with your postproduction pipeline. These options determine what the black and white points are set to in media that’s rendered out of Color. There are three options:

Â Film (95 Black – 685 White : Logarithmic)

Â Video (65 Black – 940 White : Linear)

Â Linear (0 Black – 1023 White)

Â Render File Type: This parameter is automatically set based on the type of media your

project uses. If you send a project from Final Cut Pro, this parameter is set to QuickTime, and is unalterable. If you create a Color project from scratch, this pop-up menu lets you choose the format with which to render your final media. When working on 2K film projects using image sequences, you’ll probably choose Cineon or DPX, while video projects will most likely be rendered as QuickTime files.

Â Deinterlace Renders: Turning this option on deinterlaces all shots being viewed on

the preview and broadcast displays, and also deinterlaces media that’s rendered out of Color.

Â Deinterlace Previews: Turning this option on deinterlaces all shots being viewed on

the preview and broadcast displays, but media rendered out of Color remains interlaced.

About Deinterlacing

Deinterlacing in Color is done very simply, by averaging both fields together to create a single frame. The resulting image may appear softened.

Note: There is also a deinterlacing parameter available for each shot in the Shot Settings tab next to the Timeline, which lets you selectively deinterlace individual shots without deinterlacing the entire program. For more information, see “The

Settings 2 Tab” on page 133.

Chapter 5 Setup 99

Â QuickTime Export Codecs pop-up menu: If QuickTime is selected in the Render File

Type pop-up menu, this menu lets you choose the codec with which to render media out of your project. If this menu is set to Original Format, the export codec will automatically match the codec specified in the sequence settings of the originating Final Cut Pro sequence (this option is only available when using the “Send to Color” command, or when importing an exported Final Cut Pro XML file).

The QuickTime Export codec does not need to match the codec used by the source media. You can use this to upconvert your media to a minimally compressed or uncompressed format. The options in this pop-up menu are limited to the QuickTime codecs which are currently supported for rendering media out of Color.

What QuickTime Codec Should You Use for Export?

You can render your project out of Color using one of several high-quality mastering codecs, regardless of the codec or level of compression that is used by the source media. You can use the QuickTime Export Codecs pop-up menu to facilitate a workflow where you import compressed media into Color, and then export the corrected output as uncompressed media before sending your project to Final Cut Pro. This way, you reap the benefits of saving hard drive space and avoiding rerendering times up front, while preserving all the quality of your high-bit-depth adjustments when you render your output media prior to sending your project back to Final Cut Pro.

The codecs most suitable for mastering include Apple Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2, Apple Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2, Apple ProRes 422, and Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) codecs. For more information, see “Compatible QuickTime Codecs for Output” on page 86.

Broadcast Safe Settings

These settings let you set up Color to limit the minimum and maximum luma, chroma, and composite values of shots in your program. These settings are all completely customizable to accommodate any quality control (QC) standard, and prevent QC violations.

Â Broadcast Safe button: Turning on Broadcast Safe enables broadcast legalization for

the entire project, affecting both how it’s displayed on your secondary display and broadcast monitor and how it’s rendered for final output. This button turns the following settings on and off:

Â Ceiling IRE: Specifies the maximum luma that’s allowable, in analog IRE units.

Signals with luma above this limit will be limited to match this maximum value.

Â Floor IRE: Specifies the minimum luma that’s allowable, in analog IRE units. Signals

with luma below this limit will be limited to match this maximum value.

Â Amplitude: This is not a limiting function. Instead, it lets you apply an adjustment

to the amplitude of the chroma. The default value of 0 results in no change.

100 Chapter 5 Setup

Apple Color 1.0 User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Contents

Color Documentation and Resources

What Is Color?

Using the Color Documentation

Color Setup Guide

Color Onscreen User Manual

Tutorials

Color Websites

Apple Service and Support Website

1 Color Correction Basics

What Is Color Correction?

The Goals of Color Correction?

When Does Color Correction Happen?

Color Management Starts During the Shoot

Initial Color Correction When Transferring Film

Color Correcting Film Versus Video

Traditional Means of Final Color Correction

Other Advantages to Telecine Transfers

Color Correction in Color

When Does Color Correction in Color Happen?

About Importing Projects and Media into Color

What Footage Does Color Work With?

About Exporting Projects from Color

Image Encoding Standards

The RGB Additive Color Model

The Y’CBCR Color Model

Bit Depth

Basic Color and Imaging Concepts

Contrast

What Is Setup

Luma

Gamma

Chroma (Chrominance)

Color Relationships

The HSL Color Space Model

2 Color Correction Workflows

An Overview of the Color Workflow

Limitations in Color

A Tape-Based Workflow

Reconforming Online Media in a Tapeless Digital Video Workflow

Reconforming Online Media in a Film-to-Tape Workflow

Importing Projects from Other Video Editing Applications

Importing and Notching Preedited Program Masters

Using Color in a Digital Intermediate Workflow

A Tapeless DI Workflow Using Online/Offline Digital Duplicates

A Digital Intermediate Using a Telecined Offline/Online Workflow

Using EDLs, Timecode, and Frame Numbers to Conform Projects

How Does Color Relink DPX/Cineon Frames to an EDL?

Parsing EDLs for Digital Intermediate Conforms

Image Sequence File Naming for Conforming Digital Intermediates

3 Using the Color Interface

Setting Up a Control Surface

Using the Onscreen Controls

Using the Mouse

Tabs

Text Fields and Virtual Sliders

Timecode Fields

Color Controls

Organizational Browsers and Bins

The File Browser

The Shots Browser

The Grades Bin

Correction Bins

Grades Versus Corrections

Still Store

Browser, Grade and Correction Bin Controls

How Are Grades and Corrections Saved?

Reorganizing Saved Corrections and Grades in the Finder

Moving Saved Corrections and Grades to Other Computers

Using Color with One or Two Monitors

Creating and Opening Projects

Saving Projects and Archives

Saving and Opening Archives

Automatic Saving

What Is a Color Project?

Importing an XML File into Color