Anyone can recommend me a good reading/tutorial about color correction and color grading?

[Chris Wright]

the basic idea is first match all clips to each other called a “one light” where everything is conformed out of RAW and looks similar.
Then a coloring stage to get the artistic look which can be almost anything. color, contrast, saturation, like magic bullet mojo or Technicolor. Basically the feel you want to convey. Here is a simple 3 step process to initially match all the editing clips to a standard candle in premiere, although it should be pretty similar in any NLE with scopes. Remember to calibrate your monitor so that you get a consistent look.
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-A Quick How-To-Guide for matching all clips to a standard waveform in 3 easy steps in Premiere.

Before you begin, open up vectorscope HLS, vectorscope YUV, and Waveform type luma

-add effect fast color corrector to clip
1. View waveform luma:
using effect fast color corrector:
set black point ire 7.5
set white point ire 90
if black and white points are already maxed out, set output level so they are set.

for grey point(the middle slider), view HLS vectorscope, make as small a dot as possible, increase just until you see other parts increase. a large part of shadow will also automatically match 30% on the waveform luma. You’ll find this also creates a consistent slightly Log look so its easier to grade and match later on.

2. White balance(click white balance eye dropper) or… if you can’t find a white spot, temporarily set saturation so that it all fits inside HLS vectorscope. Watch the HLS vectorscope so that the large Hue wheel sets the weighted brightest part in the center.

There’s a secret trick to get all skin tones to match and thus a faster color match between shots, the “skin tone line”.

Temporaily set Saturation 200% to easily see bright saturation line.
Set -Fast color corrector-Hue Angle – line up brighest line in HLS(not YUV) vectorscope between where line red and yellow would be in the YUV vectorscope(around 11:00 o-clock). This is the overall Hue angle for skin tone.

3. Set saturation in fast color correctior to 90% of YUV vectorscope edge from center(100% is touching sides) so all clips have same saturation.
you’ve now perfectly matched black point, white point, contrast, gamma, saturation, hue in like 10 seconds per clip. And the best part is, they’re all easily gradable.

a tip:
don’t forget to keep an eye on your histogram for any sharp spikes, this means your footage is probably 8 bit and you could introduce quantization errors into your grade.

[John Mayer]

Thank you very much sir, these are great infos. Only, what did you mean to look for sharp spikes and how I solve the issue? it a confusing part because my histograms on my footage are either choppy (black lines everywhere) or normal. Mind you that I mostly use DSLR footage so maybe that could hint you about what kind of material I am working with (most probably are Quicktime movies with AVC with H.264 codecs.) But I often throw in the mix tapes from smartphones and goPro. Either way, I’m not certain if they are RGB or YUV.

[Chris Wright]

simple, don’t grade until it “breaks” and shows lines
like don’t slap on a 8 bit effect-set to max exposure or work without maximum quality on. don’t render out 8 bit, don’t import rendered 8 bit back in and finish color correcting. don’t composite in AE in 8 bit.

spikes can sometimes cause 8 bit visible banding that you can remove with the neatvideo plugin.

10/12/16/32 bit video codecs hold up to grading better. there was a discussion that you need 16 bit log DPX for red.
and I read a whitepaper that technically, the new rec.2020 occasionally requires a 12 bit video codec for super bright gamma!
the math gets intense!

[John Mayer]

ok, I think I got you. Original color depth doesn’t matter, only when grading I must make sure that I do effects higher than 8 bits, is that what you mean?

Other than rendering, I mostly render in H.264 codecs for Youtube. How can I make sure in Premiere I am rendering above 8 bits?

[Josh Gordon]

Not sure exactly what your wanting but I recently have been editing some videos to give a colour spot effect. I basically wanted everything in black and white except the image of a red rose, found the following tips really helpful and clear. https://goo.gl/Wud6VB

[Chris Wright]

for premiere, use maximum bit depth, for AE, use 16bpc or 32bpc projecting settings. if making an intermediate, render out 10 bit. if outputting a final video for youtube upload, youtube degrades to 8 bit anyway, I recommend DnxHD as it will give the right color, gamma, and video quality. bits are given in millions 8 bit, trillions 16 bit ,float 32 bit. +is an alpha or 4444

[John Mayer]

How do you set premiere in 32bpc? I thought it was doing that already?

Also, what previewing Sequences I should use? (like preview File format, codec, size, bit depth, composite lnear colors)

Those are obscure settings to me

[John Mayer]

I appreciate this. I was looking for a similar effect for a while. Thanks!

[Chris Wright]

usually your sequence matches your video dimensions so you don’t have black bars. preview is your output view size for viewing. linear colors blends at a 1.0 gamma instead of a curve to blend more naturally. bit depth is how accurately colors are interpreted in increments.

[John Mayer]

When I play with Fast color correction or Lumetri, the Parade goes out of IRE a lot. Do I need to worry about it?

here’s a look, red channel:
https://i.imgur.com/geG8rap.jpg

The weird thing is when I add a Magic Bullet Looks on the clip (and it a 32 bit filter) without any effect added the parade and histogram start to have black lines

https://i.imgur.com/EsSpvUj.png

Any idea what’s going on?

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