Colour Balance

Hey!

This might be a silly question... But is there an easy way to change the colour balance?
I have a two camera shoot and one was set to 3200K and the other to 2800K.
There is a colour balance slider in FilmConvert but that is a bit overkill.

You could try using the Match Color function and see how that does. It might be a start with a little tweaking. If they're different camera manufacturers it will be very difficult.

I do some shoots using a BMD 4K and a BMD Pocket, and thus different lenses for each. Even with both cameras on the exact same settings, I get a different color temperature on each. Vastly different. Different chips capturing the light, different lenses, so I spend a good bit of time setting white balance in cameras before shooting.

When these two cameras I've learned to let FCPX analyze them for Color Balance during import. Turn that on, it can help when I do a Match Color between the two camera's clips. I still have to do some color grading to get them to match better. Just working with contrast first, then color balance, then saturation, in that order. No magic formula, just some experimentation. Sometimes 1-5 degrees of a color puck can make a universe of difference.

Would be interesting to see a still from both clips you have side by side.

It was shot using the same camera (Sony A7S), same settings and at least same brand lenses. Just set at different WB values. It's easy to get them close enough with the built in colour corrections, but was just curious if there was something hiding somewhere that I had missed with a simple colour teperature slider to use...

Color Finale, you'll have more control.

This is a good opportunity to put some extremely good and widely underestimated features of FCP X to the test: tag clips "WB off", match one with whatever tools you want to use, save effect presets (like a Resolve grade), name it WB correction, search and select them ALL in timeline index, apply WB correction to all - and you still can finetune all of the preset's parameters individually. Also, since WB correction now appears in the effects browser, you can select any of the clips, skim over the preset's icon and see the preview in full frame and realtime. Really sophisticated. No doubt I've chosen the right NLE.

FCPX.guru wrote: Color Finale, you'll have more control.

I own and have Color Finale Pro, but it has no simple colour temperature/WB slider... As I said, it was easy to get them close enough with built in colour correction. But since the only difference was that the cameras were set to different WB values, a simple slider would have been the best tool for the job...

I find that the midtones color puck is placed exactly on the color temperature "zone" of the color board. Just moving it directly up or down will usually correct for white balance. Then, moving it left or right will correct for any green/magenta casts if they are present. Sometimes if it the clip requires a big shift in colour temperature I'll move the shadows and highlights puck over to the same area to correct it further. But more often than not, the midtones puck fixes it.

FernKraft wrote: I find that the midtones color puck is placed exactly on the color temperature "zone" of the color board. Just moving it directly up or down will usually correct for white balance. Then, moving it left or right will correct for any green/magenta casts if they are present. Sometimes if it the clip requires a big shift in colour temperature I'll move the shadows and highlights puck over to the same area to correct it further. But more often than not, the midtones puck fixes it.

Thanks! Will try that!