Color correcting workflow question

Hi There,

I'm a regular user of FCPX and I have question about the order of edting and color correcting clips in FCPX.

I often end up with a talking head interview which I have to edit down into a much shorter clip or series of clips and have in the past ended up correcting everyone of these clips indvidually.

So I'm wondering if doing the correction before I edit the clip down would make more sense?

I also have another question, if you create a compond clip of say the same interview shot is it still possible to color correct the whole compond clip in one go?

I'm just trying to speed up my workflow as much as possible, so intetrested to hear what other people do?

If it is all from the same master clip, correct the first one in the Timeline, copy it, then select the rest all at once, Paste Attributes.

You can correct from the Browser, but you have to right-click the clip, Open In Timeline, and correct there.

You can put a Color Correction effect on a Compound Clip and correct it as a whole, yes.

It depend of the context.

°Usually i grade the clip at the end because more often the grading can depend of the previous clip of the project, more often the shot is wide or close-up on the same clip ... So as a colorist i know that each clip have its own grading.

°But the workflow i often use is at the end of the editing, i grade the first clip of the interview, copy, go to the index and select all the clip of the same interview and paste the attributes. After that i adjust wide or close-up (mask of secondary color correction) if i need.

°Third context : I need to color correct during the edit, to be in the good shot mood, with its good dynamic. If it's possible, think to deactivate the render in background in this case.

I hope that my Frenchglish is understandable ....

Ponponpostprod wrote: It depend of the context.


I hope that my Frenchglish is understandable ....

Tres bien, actuellement, meilleur que mon Franglais...

Traditionally you wait until the edit is locked down to do color grading, so that you can get all clips to have the same desired look, artistically. But, there are exceptions to every rule.

As Ben said you normally correct after the content is locked, otherwise you could end up doing additional shot matching as clips are moved around.

However in a multicam interview it can make sense to correct the entire shot before editing. That way you carefully optimize the correction on a few long clips which are then edited into much shorter clips.

OTOH it is not difficult to correct an already-edited piece. In the timeline you pick one clip, correct that, do CMD-C, then select all the uncorrected clips from that camera and paste the correction to them in one batch via Edit>Paste Attributes or Shift-CMD-V.

as an addendum to Joe's advice.........

joema wrote: ........ then select all the uncorrected clips from that camera ...

... which is done with a single click, by using the Timeline index, search for the clips name (=all parts share the same), hit in the Timeline Index cmd-A to select all, and then process with Joe's advice…

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