why no match color control?

There is an "auto-white" that equalizes the RGB peaks. I don't know anyone who would use it, and I don't know anyone who would use a "match" either, at least in professional circles.

There is a color picker in the scopes with up to 3 selections available. You could always park on the target, read the values, pull a still if you're trying to match across scenes, split the still store, and then stick-handle the values in.

Maybe in a future version of COLOR -- the one for the iPhone.

jPo

JP Owens wrote:
There is an "auto-white" that equalizes the RGB peaks. I don't know anyone who would use it, and I don't know anyone who would use a "match" either, at least in professional circles.

Actually... I've used the AutoBalance. That was mostly when I'd get totally lost on a shot and needed something to do... something.

And if you work with it enough you can start to predict when it's mostly likely to work; ie, when the brightest object in the shot is also white. But yeah, waste of time mostly. A beginner should strive to get to the point where they forget it even exists (until they're reminded by a post like this). And from that standpoint the best thing to do is, after clicking on "auto-balance", open the advanced tab and see what it did. Then reset and try to replicate yourself only using those 9 parameters. Then do that for every shot in the show. You'll learn something.

There is a color picker in the scopes with up to 3 selections available. You could always park on the target, read the values, pull a still if you're trying to match across scenes, split the still store, and then stick-handle the values in.

JP, in case you didn't know, FCP does automatching by breaking it into 3 swatches: black, white, neutral mid. On the shot you're fixing click on the swatch and then eyedrop the shot you want to match to by going black to black, white to white, gray to gray. It does a half decent job - assuming you got the first shot right and those references actually exist.

I'm just wrapping a doc with tons of desert shots. No blacks. No whites. No neutrals. Beautiful shots. Took a while to get the feel.

- pi

I'm just wrapping a doc with tons of desert shots. No blacks. No whites. No neutrals. Beautiful shots. >Took a while to get the feel.

Exactly.
But one small confession I would make at this point is that there was one clip in a project that I did about 6 months ago -- standard high-center camera shot of a hockey arena. For fun, I clicked the auto-white, and of course it worked. Pumped it up a couple of units and moved on.
However, I've been treating a lot of Arctic scenes lately, but nobody wants "white". Too "warm", so an artistic amount of blue is what goes in.

So if you're doing a lot of hockey games, it'll be fine.

The three-way in FCP is totally useless to me, except in the circumstance where I don't have time to tweak a shot in COLOR and go through that whole song-and-dance before it goes to tape. Doing an FCP correction prior to COLOR simply gets lost in translation, so.... life is short and getting shorter.

jPo

nadsta wrote:
I must admit that it feels more rudimentary to have to drag out on the hue slider to find the match rather than finesse an auto match,

This brings up two points in my mind:

1. Color correcting with a mouse is like trying to write an essay with a fingernail in wax paper. Sure, it can be done and probably has been done with great success (I did it for 4 or 5 years and got paid for it) - but it's not recommended as a way of life. You'll notice both JP and I (and others on this board) are using control surfaces that allow multiple manipulations simultaneously. So what you find tedious with a fingernail we'll find much more efficient than using a mouse and a bunch of clicks.

2. Scopes. We'll rely heavily on RGB parades and other ways of IDing black / white color imbalances and can do many primary corrections without looking at the monitor. So again, rather than relying on a bunch of mouse clicks you can get the same result quicker by reading the scopes for the initial attempt and then move on from there.

HTH

I normally use my 6x11 Wacom for all FCS applications. When in Color, I swap the buttons on the pen so that my normal right click is changed to middle click. That in tandem with hover clicking can feel very streamlined. My budget doesn't allow for the purchase of a control surface yet. The tablet will do just fine.

The Color scopes just plain s*ck. YRGB parade is far more useful than plain RGB parade, or at least let me have luma only plotted on an additional waveform. Also, the Vectorscope magnification stinks. I want 75% bars but the ability to zoom into the vector plot like a real scope. There I go again, wanting real capabilities from inaccurate built-in bling.

There are some odd ideas appearing in this thread.

Firstly, a color match feature is definitely missing in Color. An easy, fluid, efficient function in both AVID and FCP's 3 way corrector, it just makes for extra, needless work in Color. Obviously it's not going to do all the work, but it's a very useful basis.

In general, Color is good for individual shots but very poor on comparing shots within a sequence. It is far easier to compare and correct luma gammas and RVB parade between two shots in the 3 way corrector.

The corrections made in the 3 way corrector are in fact recovered directly in Color and appear as primary corrections which can be tweaked. So there's no problem working in FCP first, you don't lose previous corrections going into Color.

The upshot of all this is that the fastest, cleanest and most creative way of grading I know is to do most things in the 3-way filter and only go to Color for fine adjustments and special effects.

You haven't been doing this for very long, have you? And probably in video only, right?

jPo

I'm sorry, I don't really agree with anything here.

In FCP I use markers a lot to toggle back and forth between like shots for comparison. It's fairly easy to load up the still store in Color and do the same thing, in fact, it's more efficient than toggling, I think, although I wish Color also had markers.

Even though the 3way is supposedly benign within Color, I still wouldn't add any filtration before sending a sequence over from FCP.

Pataques wrote:
There are some odd ideas appearing in this thread.

Remember, the poster was asking about the AutoMatch feature in Color. I'm guessing you don't find it too useful either?

Firstly, a color match feature is definitely missing in Color. An easy, fluid, efficient function in both AVID and FCP's 3 way corrector, it just makes for extra, needless work in Color. Obviously it's not going to do all the work, but it's a very useful basis.

It's interesting. The pros I know who find the color match function useful are the same ones who find Avid's "Apply to entire reel" function useful. I've never found either useful. I think it depends on the type of projects you tend to work on.

On my projects, I'm lucky if I have a half dozen shots that can share a single setting. Apply a setting to a reel? Total waste of time. For me.

I know some colleagues that save much time because they're working on shows with controlled lighting on sets.

So - I think there's room for pros to disagree on the color match function. I think we can all agree it's a great demo and maybe marketing will get the Color team to implement something similar.

The upshot of all this is that the fastest, cleanest and most creative way of grading I know is to do most things in the 3-way filter and only go to Color for fine adjustments and special effects.

Well, I guess it depends on your setup.

With a control surface - no way. Color is far faster. And since I tend to always make fine adjustments, I might as well do the entire thing in Color.

But the original poster in this thread is working with a mouse so...

With a mouse, it's six of one half dozen of the other. Except at best all we can get done in FCP is a primary correction. Color sees only the last 3WCC filter.

- pi

Zebulun wrote:
I think, although I wish Color also had markers.

I'd love for FCP to have Color markers - so I can make notes in a review session in FCP and then send just the notes to Color.

That would rock.

- pi

I find color match a quick way of determining an initial correction vector. This usually needs tweaking but saves time and reduces guesswork. It's mostly useful in ficton to ensure consistant tones in different shots of the same scene, but also for multicam projects.

There are certainly other ways of doing this, but I don't see why Color doesn't provide the option. After all, no one is forced to use it if they don't want to.

While we're on the subject, I would also like Color to provide some FCP options such as multiple scopes and viewers affected to different shots, as well as quick ways of designating a reference shot which can easily be changed, flipped back to, etc. The stills store system can be tedious. A YRGB parade display, as Zebulun points out, would also be useful - it exists in FCP, why not in Color ? Again, no one would have to use these features if they don't want to.

In practice, though, the YCbCr push rarely translates to the RGB space that COLOR works in.

If you want to apply a single grade to a selection of clips, there are ways of doing that, too.

But if Pataques is waiting for more added features that automate colour correction in COLOR, I wouldn't hold my breath. In the first case, you already have that ability in FCP. So, maybe you should stay in the 3-way and as a real benefit (as opposed to 'another useless feature' as misused in the vocabulary of the average software salesman), you won't be doubling up your media, or investing massive amounts of time in prepping and troubleshooting the round trip. My guess would be that you would use "multiclip" a lot... which is also poison to the FCP/COLOR workflow.

Overriding this in any case, it will cost money to develop and implement another set of tools for an application that has no cost-recovery mechanism -- that is , it is being "given away" as a bonus prize in the Cracker Jack box known as Final Cut Studio. Apple is not motivated to do anything else.

jPo