Any words of wisdom for color grading a forest?

I’m finding that in general, color grading a forest is quite a PITA. The Protune CamRaw setting on my GoPro is not helping. I believe you get a higher bit rate in the CamRaw setting, but that auto white balance cranks out footage that is unbearably warm in a forest setting. I think I will set the white balance manually going forward, even if I get a lower bit rate.

Separating the foliage from the trunks and ground is a lot more difficult that I think it should be. Then again, it may just be that the forest in the tropics just have less contrast than the deciduous forests. Does anyone here have experience in color grading a shoot inside a forest? Can you share any pointers from that experience please?

This doesn't apply specifically to shooting in a forest, so maybe someone else can opine on that. But, FWIW, I wouldn't recommend shooting with Auto WB in any case if possible. Especially in your scenario as overall lighting could change rapidly and most camera AWB settings don't always react precisely. CAM RAW, according to GoPro, provides no compensation for WB, among other things, and I'm not exactly sure what that means. It sounds like you need to start with a white balance correction once your clips are properly exposed before any further grading. You can do this manually or with any number of WB plugins that might get you to a better starting point. Depending on which GoPro you have, there are a few varying settings available with Protune. Also, there is now a new color default in GoPro aside from the previous FLAT default, which may not be what you want, if that's how you shot your footage.

Look at this document for an explanation of the Protune settings:
gopro.com/support/articles/advanced-protune-controls-explained

Thanks for the link. I guess AWB was not the correct term. It is not *auto* white balance. It is *no* white balance. This is the info I had from a blog of a person that works for GoPro:

abekislevitz.com/understanding-video-in-the-hero4/

White Balance
White balance basically determines the color temperature of your footage (cool to warm). By default this is set to Auto which generally does a good job in all conditions. To lock off the color temperature, you can set this to the different Kelvin values between 3000K & 6500K. 3000K will cast your footage blue relative to neutral, while 6500K is quite warm/yellow compared to neutral. Lastly is a setting called ‘Native’ which won’t apply any WB correction matrix (formerly called ‘Cam-Raw’). If you’re going to change this setting, using the app or a screen helps quite a bit.

I’m on a Hero 3+, so my “Native” is called “CAMRAW”. From the description, it seems to me that CAMRAW would capture the most color information and allow for the greatest latitude in post. But I’ll be dammed at how warm the image looks initially! It is very tough to separate the foliage.

Am I correct in assuming that the CAMRAW option captures the same info as if I had shot at say, 4000K, plus all the information for many other color temperatures? And that therefore with some post work, I can eventually get to the same image as if I had captured it at 4000K in-camera? Or is it possible to lose some vital color information in CAMRAW, even though on balance you have more color info than shooting at 4000K. Is it possible you do lose some color info, and in this case you lose the most important info? Can anyone chime in?

While we are on this subject I need to ask: Does DaVinci do a better job with color masks than FCPX? I really don’t want to get into a round tripping workflow, but I find that color masks in FCPX are always broader than I would like, smoothness slider notwithstanding. Is DaVinci’s color mask better targeted at the selected color?

Hi, hi

I did a 45 minute documentary about nuts in the forest many years ago.
Luckily we had the people harvesting the nuts.
So I ended up zooming into their eyes and using the whites of there eyes as white.
I used the white balance tool in pre FCPX days. (Pipette)
I am pretty sure that there are similar tools in FCPX.
So I nailed the eyes so to speak and took it from there.

I have never been to a South American forest so honestly I have no clue how good the CC was!

Strange but true

Paul