I need to change the color of a car in a video. I’ve used all of the available tools in FCPX but I’m barely seeing any change in hue. Can anyone give me any tips or suggestions please? Thanks in advance!
Mac mini, macOS 14.6
You can't use the Hue/Sat Curves for this I don't think. It's because, as is so often the case these days, the car has no color. It has no hue or saturation. You can change a red car to anything you like, but a mid grey car has nothing to work with. I think you're going to have use a draw mask or something like that and animate it as the car moves.
If you can properly mask the car - using perhaps a combination of color mask, and shape mask - then this is fairly easy - use a Hue/Saturation Curve color effect.
I will see if I can find an old Macbreak Studio that describes just that.
I will have a look at it but it’s getting late now (different time zone) and I don’t have my mac at the moment, so it will have to wait until tomorrow. From what I can see in the small screen of the iPhone, a doubt arises: are you sure that the correct clip is selected in the timeline? It is a common mistake to have the playhead on a clip but to hsve a different clip selected, and that would result on nothing visibly appear because changes are happening on a different clip.
Make sure the name over the Inspector matches the clip to intended to edit.
This is a static mask, but I think the concept would be the same to animate it. Depending on how the car moves, could be a lot of work. (Imagine how good we'd be if we started at this age?!)
I wonder if something like mRotoAI would be able to roto the car? Might be worth a trial.
Can you share a sample file of a moving car? You have to test it by actually seeing the change in light. Adjusting video colors is not easy.
Upload files to WeTransfer →Send to yourself →Please post the link you obtained
Visually, the dark greens in the top screenshot have reduced saturation compared to the bottom screenshot, so something is happening. I think we're going to need more screenshots to see what you're doing.
I need to change the color of a car in a video.
Does the car move? Does it remain stationary? Changing colors when stationary is relatively easy. If it moves, high technical processing is required.
Yes, the car moves and I only need the body of the car (where it’s grey) to change color, not the black roof portion. I can change the hue of the entire scene very easily but I just need the grey portion of the car to be white.
I’m doing exactly what the tutorials say to do; I first select the eye dropper and then drag that on a portion of the grey area on the car and then attempt to change the color by dragging one of the edit points in the window on the right. I’ve tried every one of the available parameters (hue, luma etc.) to no avail. No matter what I do they grey portion of the car hardly changes at all.
Yes, I’m absolutely certain I have the right clip selected. I can see very subtle changes taking place but they’re hardly noticeable. If I drag the edit point too far left or right then the entire scene changes dramatically so I know that I have the correct clip selected. Thanks.
Thanks Tom, I was afraid that this might be the issue. And by the way, I have gotten many helpful responses from you over the years and I greatly appreciate your expertise and helpfulness! I’ll try to follow your suggestion but I’m guessing this is going to be challenging! Any chance you’ve posted a tutorial on this sort of thing?
Once you mentioned it was a grey car I realised you were on to a non-starter.
Would it be too much to purchase a different coloured vehicle . . . probably?
Could another vehicle serve the purpose or has it got to be that model?
Is there any particular reason you want to change its colour? I ask this because I have often come up against an impossible situation and a bit of lateral thinking has sometimes given me an alternative solution.
Thanks, but the car was a loaner from a local dealer. They goofed in giving this one to us as it had actually already been sold. They then had to swap it out with the only other one that they had, which was white. We had already shot 2 scenes with the grey one and the rest with the white one. I never thought I’d have an issue adjusting the color.
Impressive! Must get to work on that Time Machine . . .
RotoAI seems to be just like the Magic Mask in Resolve Studio which is very similar to FCP's Scene Removal Mask, the main difference being that SRM is completely automatic permitting no adjustments.
However, if the car clip has just the background at the start or end, the SRM could be used and should be pretty good with the Colorise filter.
LocaAlicia did the same thing yesterday with the Draw Mask.
I'm assuming it is a story film. Depending on the context you could desaturate the whole clip to black and white for a flashback or the same plus a soft blue colorise filter for a night scene.
Things like that could disguise the difference between white and grey.
how to change the color of an object in a video
