IRE Ire
Monday, February 5, 2007 at 10:05PM Mike Curtis has been furrowing his bloggular brow about highlight clipping issues in his clever Final Cut workflows. I can't solve all his problems, but I can show you how to avoid giving your waveform a buzzcut when using Colorista.
Watch the screencast. You'll see me apply Colorista, which clips off the IRE values greater than 100%. I fix this by first applying Brightness & Contrast (Bezier), and reducing Brightness a bit. From there on out it's all fun and games with Colorista.
The part I didn't show was switching on High Precision YUV processing to make sure I don't lose fidelity in the rendering.
(This is the technique that I would use if for some weird reason I was actually doing color work in FCP—otherwise I'd use the slightly more complex method I outline in The Guide, as it makes for a cleaner export)
Reader Comments (4)
Stu-I have the Guide and your comment in this article that the method described in the Guide leads to cleaner exports made me wonder why color correcting in AE 7 would be cleaner than doing so with Colorista in FCP with high-precision YUV enabled, given that high-pecision rendering in FCP uses 32-bit floating computations. Is it because the entire project in AE can be set at a 16- or 32-bit level?
Thanks,
Kevin W
So, Stu,
Can I use Colorista with FCP on HDCAM footage and achieve the same quality results (with HIGH PRECISION YUV) as with using it 32bit in AE?
I would also have to avoid using any stock FCP plugins as well, correct?
Mike
Yes, why wouldn't it depend on the project setting and codec. Are FCP filter limited in bit depth?
Also, it doesn't seem just a QT problem since something similar happens in Premiere, which only uses AVI. Why would the apps ignore data that's really there?
Stu, bought your book. Half-way through, and love it. Thanks.
Regarding IRE Ire, I was trying to find a solution with Automatic Duck, where they could bring the FCP timeline to AE, referencing the same files as in the FCP timeline without any recompression, etc.
But to test the idea, I simply dragged QT files from the Batch Capture folder into AE and studied them. I was shocked to see that AE is clipping off details that I can clearly see in FCP once I bring the gamma up on the exact same clips.
So I tried the same thing with Shake with the same results. I've tried changing color space in AE, working in log with Shake -- to no avail. Information is being tossed out before I get to even start grading!
My footage is DVCPro50 stuff, shot on an HVX (don't ask why I'm shooting SD). And I'm running FCP 512 and AE 7 etc.
Am I missing something, or am I restating something that you've already said, and must have flown right over.
Thanks again for this awesome blog. It makes me think when I should be working ;)
Glen