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My Thoughts on FCPx

08 05 11'

I’ve had a few people ask me about my thoughts on the new Final Cut Pro, so I though I’d have a crack at it to join in with all the others. My perspective might be a bit different: I don’t work in a post-house and my workflow isn’t really industry standard but is specifically tailored to what I do. Also, despite this site mainly focusing on color grading, I’ve been an editor much longer than a colorist. I’ve been editing for around 10 years now (admittedly not all of it at a “pro” level, but still…) and using Final Cut Pro since version 2, right before FCP3 came out in late 2001. Anyway, here are my thoughts from using it in the last few weeks since it was released. Sorry if any of it is just a repeat of what you’ve read elsewhere, but this is what I’ve encountered in daily use.

The Good

No more HDSLR transcoding – I recently went to our student ministry’s Beach Week to film for them. I would film for about 13 hours each day on my 5DmkII, then go back to my hotel room and edit a recap of the day for the following morning. I did the same thing using FCP7 last year, and was up until about 4:30am every night because I had to wait for the footage to transcode before I could start editing. This year I copied the clips over and got right to the editing. It was a beautiful thing that saved me at least 2 hours a night compared to the previous year.

The hotkeys – I’m actually pretty impressed with the thought behind the new hotkeys in FCPx. I,O,J,K,L are all the same, but they moved the Insert and Overwrite keys (plus a few new ones) off of the F keys at the top (now leaving them solely for volume, brightness, etc. system keys) down to Q,W,E,D. This is a way more natural hand placement on your keyboard. Also, can I just say I’m in love with the append function (E)? No matter where you are in your timeline, you can easily add a clip to the end without worrying about accidentally overwriting or splitting a clip by a frame or two.

Another great hotkey change is the ability to hold down a timeline tool hotkey to temporarily use that tool until you release the key. I’m still trying to get into the habit of this, but when I remember to use it, it’s much faster. Need to make a quick cut with the blade tool, but then go back to the arrow tool? Just hold down B, make your cut, then release. much faster! I’d also say this shines the most of the trim tool (T) for slip edits, etc.

And this is just the start. Almost all of the new hotkeys are brilliantly well thought out (as are most of the new timeline tools, which leads me to…)

The Timeline – I don’t really know how best to explain this part, but here goes – when performing a ripple edit, as you make the change the timeline actually moves to show your change, not just showing a timecode difference and an outline of the change as in previous versions. This coupled with the waveform views for audio make timing audio cues ridiculously easy.

Also, having ripple be the default action when shortening or lengthening a clip is pretty handy. I never understood why this wasn’t the default in previous versions…

Waveforms adjusting in height to reflect the volume in the timeline has been a great tool for me. I can take a quick look at all my dialogue and see if they are around the same volume, and pick out any problem shots without having to watch each clip.

Rendering – The background rendering is fast, and the ability to preview effects, titles, coloring – pretty much anything – all in real time at almost full quality is fantastic.

Automatic Sync – I used this for the first time the other day, and it is almost miraculous! Select the clips, right clip, sync. That’s it. My only suggestion would be the ability to select multiple clips and have it match them all at once, but it’s not a big deal.

Speed – I’m not talking the program speed here, though it is pretty good. I’m talking my speed with editing. Compared to my friends from film school, I’m not the most creative editor, but I can do, we’ll say…90% the quality/creativity of what they can do, but in a tenth of the time. My strength is my speed. And as I’ve gotten familiar with FCPx, I’m pretty sure that once they work out a few issues with it and I spend more time with it, I’ll be able to go even faster than I could in FCP7. FCPx really does seem to make pure editing faster. 

The Bad

Codec Support – probably my biggest beef with FCPx is the transcoding and rendering codec lock-in. With FCP7, I almost exclusively used ProRes 422 LT. For my use, it was a fantastic mix of the great ProRes quality, but with more practical file sizes than regular 422. Even though FCPx supports h.264 from HDSLRs, if I had the option I’d probably still use ProRes LT for performance reasons (h.264 takes more precessing power than I’d prefer for projects I have more time on than my Beach Week example) in my editing, and I’d definitely prefer it to render to LT to save some space, even if I was editing the h.264 files.

Format Settings – FCPx lacks the ability to tell it that it incorrectly analyzed footage, like not marking something as anamorphic for example. I work with Anamorphic DV content every week, and have been unable to do any of this work in FCPx because it keeps reading the footage without the anamorphic flag, and there’s not a way to correct it that I know of. A small annoyance, I know, but one that I hit frequently.

Thumbnail Filmstrips in the Timeline  - I miss the old thumbnail-at-beginning-of-clip-only setting from FCP7. The filmstrip is UI clutter. Just say no.

Events & Projects - I don’t mind the whole new event/project paradigm. I just wish it didn’t load every event and project when it started up. Seems like it could balloon out of control quickly.

Transitions – Why do second layer (what I’ll call any track/clip above the main “storyline”) clips not allow transitions unless they are in a “secondary storyline”? I shouldn’t have to make a new storyline just to have a clip transition in/out. Same for audio editing, like shortening a music track. You can’t add a crossfade unless it is a “secondary storyline.” Frustrating…

Coloring – The auto-balance is weak. The inability to type in numerical values is frustrating. The key/qualifier fine tuning is almost nonexistent. And, am I crazy, or is the dividing area between highlights, mids, and shadows very sharp? It makes it hard to adjust low-contrast shots, because the divisions are so harsh. I haven’t been able to do more than basic corrections in this setup. More on this to come in a later post.

Copy/Paste/Effect Management – What if I don’t want to copy every effect and setting from one clip to others? What if I just want to copy the coloring settings? Or the Audio effects only? Or just one effect? Really… all or nothing? #fail.

Interoperability – This is the biggie. All of the others are surmountable or tolerable to a degree. This is the reason I’ve only been able to use FCPx for highlight videos and small edits. I wanted to use FCPx for my latest TV commercial, but the inability to send the timeline to Mocha and After Effects for VFX and custom title work, Soundtrack Pro for better audio mixing, and Color for more controlled grading was a deal-breaker. Editing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You have to be able to talk to other programs. This is not an option for anything more complicated than basic interviews or wedding videos, and even then… Seriously. Don’t even get me started on my long rant about this. Ugh.

My conclusion…

All in all, I’m actually pretty happy with what is basically a 1.0 release. I won’t be giving up FCP7, Color or the rest of FCS3 anytime soon, but I think I’ll find myself using FCPx more and more. If they can fix the interoperability so I can send projects to AE, Soundtrack Pro, or even Color, I think we’ll be in business. The rest I’m sure will come with time. It’s definitely not right for everyone, especially “super-pros,” like those who need to integrate with Flame or Nuke, etc., but I don’t think it’s nearly the travesty that everyone else seems to think it is. I’ve always loved and used Final Cut Pro, not because I’m an Apple fanboy, but because it’s the best tool around in my opinion. There are a ton of great tools out there like Avid and Premiere, but FCP always seemed the most fluid and flexible. I’m hoping this new FCP can make up for lost ground and get back to where it should be. It’s got a long way to go, but I like what I see so far.

Written by Aaron Williams

4 Comments

Colorist Tip #45 – Preparing Looks

06 16 11'

Well, today’s tip will be this site’s first Guest Post! Rob tweeted a great colorist tip the other day, so I thought I’d see if he’d like to expand it a bit for the site. Rob’s a great colorist based in Boston, and a great help on twitter as well! Here’s a short little paragraph I asked Rob to write to introduce himself:

I have been following Aaron’s “Colorist Tip” series on Twitter for the past year and am honored to be the first guest post on his very helpful and useful blog.  While cranking on the color wheels in Boston on a DaVinci, I have seen an interesting spectrum of work ranging from the standard :30 spot to archival 16mm footage from local colleges like Harvard and MIT. This wide range of footage has allowed for me to experiment, test and experience most formats and the way that they react to grading.

Color grading has been a great passion of mine, as it allows me to explore both my artistic and technical side.  I feel truly blessed to work in a field that I am passionate about and look forward to future developments that will no doubt press this art form and it’s artists even further.  Follow me and my post house on Twitter @robsbessette and @finishboston for more post-production adventures.

Now on to the good stuff!

Have multiple looks ready before client arrives. Favorites are high contrast/saturation, warm/cool, or abstract depending on the subject. Make sure your looks are relative to the piece.

We all know that color grading is about creating “looks”.  The real question is, what look is the right look?  Without experimenting and trying out different styles, we will never know.  There is never a correct answer, we just know what the “right look” is when we see it.  It is not only important for us to see different looks, but for the client to see them as well.  A lot of the looks that I create before a session depend on the subject matter of the piece.  Is it cheerful?  Moody?  Romantic?  I generally like to have 3-4 options prepared before the client walks through the door.  Normally when creating looks I stick to the primaries as I find that it gets the mood across rather accurately.  There can be enormous amounts of work done in the primaries and I sometimes feel that Colorists are too anxious to breeze through this step to get to working with the more luxurious and exciting secondary and keying options.

Currently I am working on a action short, revenge story called “Hard Luck” that takes place in a bar.  Based on the nature of the short, I wanted to come up with some harder looks.  No dreamy looks or soft edges to this one.  Shot on the RED camera, there was some good latitude that provided me with the opportunity to get creative.

Look #1

For this look I wanted to create something that was true to the real life colors on set with an average contrast ratio and good saturation.  I was looking to bring out the hard lines on the actors face to accentuate the dramatic feel.  While crushing the blacks and making the skin tones pop it feels almost as if the actor is surrounded by darkness.

Look #2

On this look I decided to go the opposite direction by creating a less saturated look.  By taking some of the color out of the skin tone, the scars on the actors face seem even more dramatic.

Look #3

This grade probably looks the “prettiest”.  Turning up the gain on this shot allows for a lighter look that covers a higher range of contrast.  While keeping a high contrast ratio along with boosted saturation, this shot looks very pleasing.

Look #4

I generally like to throw one abstract look into the mix just in case the client wants to go to extremes.  These are generally my guilty pleasure, as they allow for me to let the creative juices flow.  On this look I allowed the highlights to blow out and pushed the skin tone towards green, creating a very hard/tough look.

Final Result

The client ended up choosing Look #1.  Since the short is filmed in a bar they wanted to keep the light down, but allow for good saturation at the same time.  For the final correction I added a power window to the actors face so the scars popped a little more and drew the viewers focus to the character.

When it comes down to it, it is all about seeing and exploring different options.  By having looks ready before the client even walks through the door, you’ve show that you are familiar with the material and have placed great thought into how the piece can look.  As long as the client feels comfortable that they have seen all possible options that are fitting to the piece, then you’ve done your job.

Happy coloring!

Rob Bessette – Colorist

Written by Rob Bessette

3 Comments

Color Grading Presentation

06 10 11'

I participate in a monthly conference call of church media and motion graphic designers, and the organizer asked me to do a presentation on color grading for this past call. I recorded my screencast and lined it up with the audio from the call, all for your viewing pleasure! A couple of things to keep in mind when you watch this video:

  1. This is aimed at motion graphic artists, so it’s really just the basics, nothing too in depth.
  2. I’m not that great a public speaker, and was a little nervous about giving this presentation, so cut me some slack if I misspoke or said something that wasn’t totally correct…
  3. I was also trying to cram in a ton of information into a relatively short amount of time, so please forgive the breakneck speed and “30,000 ft. view” of color grading.

Anyway, here’s the video from my presentation (go full-screen for the best viewing):

Hope you enjoyed that! I think my next Colorist Tip is going to cover control surfaces, and will probably come sometime next week…

Written by Aaron Williams

5 Comments

Colorist Tip #44 – Monitors

06 01 11'

A must have for any colorist is a reliable and calibrated broadcast monitor. It’s a colorist’s best friend! Don’t just use a computer monitor. These rarely (if ever) have the right controls to properly calibrate the monitor.

For those of you grading from your computer monitor… don’t. We’ve all done it, especially when we’ve had to grade on a laptop, but it’s really a big no-no. A properly calibrated broadcast monitor is crucial to a colorist. A good, rock-solid monitor let’s you grade confidently, knowing exactly what your grades are going to look like. Now, I’m a bit (well, more than a bit) old-school when it comes to monitors, so here’s my personal opinions on broadcast monitors:

Computer monitors are not broadcast monitors!

Computer monitors have made leaps and bounds in color accuracy, contrast, etc., but I still can’t bring myself to use them for color grading. They rarely (if ever) have the right controls to calibrate them, and while products like the Spyder and other calibration devices exist and are probably good, I still don’t trust them.

CRTs are the king of contrast, but LCDs work too…

I love CRTs. Back when I only worked with SD projects, I used one of my favorite monitors of all time – the Sony PVM series. Great contrast, great color. Love it! On the downside (and a big downside), they are heavy, bulky, expensive, and rare compared to LCDs (a Pro-level sony HD CRT is over $16,000). That’s a lot of downsides, so LCDs win. When they first came out, the contrast on LCDs was abysmal, but these days they hold up pretty well in the right environment.

You gotta have a “Blue Only” feature and the 4 big knobs for proper calibration.

I know they have all of these fancy new ways of calibrating monitors, but I tend to stick with the old school method:

  1. Put up SMPTE color bars
  2. Push the “Blue Only” button (this shows only the blue channel)
  3. Adjust the phase and chroma knobs so that you can’t tell the difference between the top (taller) bars and the middle (short) bars below them
  4. Turn off “Blue Only”
  5. Adjust the brightness knob so you can just barely see the “pluge” (Look for 3 small bars below the red bar. The right one if the pluge). The left and middle bars should both be black.
  6. Adjust the contrast knob so that you get a nice, crisp white (turn it up until it no longer looks gray, but not above that point).

This method works great, compensates for the lighting you work in (that’s what the pluge is for), and is pretty reliable until the monitor itself starts to go bad.

@kpmiracle asked me on twitter what Broadcast HD Monitor(s) I recommended, so here they are:

Right now I’m using a JVC DT-V24L1U:

My awesome JVC HD Monitor. Sadly discontinued...

It’s a 24″ monitor that has a DVI input (so it doubles as a second computer monitor when I’m not using the Decklink output), and a component input for HD viewing (the HD-SDI option was significantly more expensive, and I was okay with using component). and the JVCs look great, with rich blacks, bright whites, and the right controls, all for a comparatively low price.

Sadly, this model has been discontinued, but there are new models out, like the JVC DT-R24L4DU. I’ve also heard good things about the Sony LMD series, as well as the Panasonic and Ikegami models. The JVCs were just at the right price for me, and looked great.

There are other more expensive options like projection, but this website is more for those on a medium budget… One thing to remember when using a broadcast monitor – most of them do not allow LUTs to be loaded directly into the monitor (like a projector would), so you’re almost always viewing the REC 709 colorspace. If you’re working on a project that is in a different colorspace, like XYZ or a film stock print LUT, make sure you compensate for this elsewhere (probably in software). That said, if you’re working on a project in a different colorspace, it’s probably a high-end project and you already know how to compensate anyway!

Written by Aaron Williams

14 Comments

Colorist Tip #43 – Gran Torino

05 24 11'

I was watching Gran Torino a while ago and noticed the unique look it had. I planned on doing a post about it back then, but soon after things really picked up with getting ready for the baby. A week or two ago, I watched The King’s Speech, and noticed that it had a similar (though not identical) look that reminded me of the Gran Torino post I wanted to do.

Here are a few still from the movie:

Looking at these frames, here’s what I noticed when trying to dissect the look: It seems to have a Blockbuster Look base, but way more desaturated, except for the skintones. The muted color scheme gives it a more serious tone, but the warm skintones still pop.

Here’s my recipe for an approximation of this look. We’ll start with the ungraded image:

The raw, ungraded shot.

We’ll add a little contrast in the primaries (pull down the shadows and mids) to give us a base to start with:

Primary adjustments

Primary correction

Next we’ll apply the blockbuster look using the push/pull method into a secondary:

The Blockbuster Look - Cool shadows, warm highlights.

A little stronger than I would usually go, but it will get toned down in a second...

Now that we have the base, the next step is to desaturate the image in another secondary:

I lowered the Saturation and the Highlight Saturation pretty dramatically.

The almost monotone image

After doing this, you’ll probably notice that the cool colors show through the desaturation better than the warm highlights did. Our last step in this look will be to push the warmth back into his skintones. We’ll do this by pulling a key/qualifier instead of just pushing it into the highlights in a new secondary. This will let us just target the skintones:

The key settings. I also pulled down the highlight saturation, because some of the tones were getting a bit super-saturated when I pushed the warm hues in. Your needs may vary on this.

Here you can see what was actually keyed, as well as the warm tones pushed into the mids and highlights. Notice the bleed on the key - it's not imperative that this be a perfect key for this look, so a soft key will work just fine as long as it is not too noisy.

Here’s the final look:

Attached is the Apple Color secondary for this look. You will probably have to adjust this for your shot, but it should work as a good base. As usual, feel free to use this look in your projects all you want, but please don’t share or distribute this preset. Instead, send them here to get it.


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Written by Aaron Williams

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