Please explain the control surface in Color....

Hopefully this review of one such control surface for Color will help you better understand what its all about.

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/eclipse_control_surface.html

And these are some options.

http://petersalvia.wordpress.com/2008/08/24/apple-color-control-surface-consider ation/

Think of the control surface as a specialized "keyboard" for color. In the hands of someone knowledgeable it makes the work a lot faster. It's like working with a real audio board for mixing—direct access the the controls, rather than mixing with a mouse and control points.

you ain't got nuttin' to use, dude. Well, you do want a 3-button mouse. There are center button/wheel functions used by color. The rest is all click and drag.

I use a Logitech, I think it's an MX Revolution.

yup, normal. I love working in Color.

add a new shot? Yes. If you want to just redo a shot—rework it in Color and add only that shot to the render list and render it. It will update in the timeline.

Here's the proper way to do this, and it's non-distructive:

Add the clip in FCP, export an XML of the Sequence.

Launch Color and open the original Color project for that Sequence.

File > Reconform, choose the XML file you made in FCP.

In the Render Room, click Add Unrendered, then Start Render.

When the rendering is complete, Send To FCP.

A new Sequence is in your FCP Browser, name it appropriately.

I love using my Euphonix MC Color control surface.

If you have an iPad, you can also use v-Wave Lite, which rocks, too.