Colour correcting flesh tones quickly

Apple Final Cut Pro

Colour correcting flesh tones quickly

Posted by Wayne Garton on July 10, 2011 at 4:28 am

Here’s what I used to do in version 7.
Send video out via firewire to an external TV monitor via an old SD camera (using the camera as a convertor of firewire to analogue)
In FCP,
1 Crop the face showing flesh only
2 Apply 3 way CC
3 Show video scope
4 Adjust the colour wheel so the face lay nicely on the fleshline
5 untick the crop effect

Then to copy this attribute to the next clip in the series I dragged it. Simple!

Now in X. I don’t have firewire out.
Anybody know of the best way to ….

1 correct flesh tones in X?
2 copy the corrected colour attribute to the other clips (I know how to do it using video animation pop-up and option command C – I am hoping there is a drag and drop way)
3 Send a signal cheaply to a TV

Cheers
Wayne
New Zealand

Mitch Ives replied 14 years, 10 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
4 Replies

Tom Wolsky
July 10, 2011 at 9:49 am

1. Did you try using the automatic color balance function? If you can’t do it with that you’ll have to use the color board.

2. You can copy a clip and paste effects to other clips Opt-Cmd-V.

3. There is no output from X. May never be FireWire.

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Coming in 2011 “Complete Training for FCPX”
and “Final Cut Pro X for iMovie and Final Cut Express Users” from Focal Press
Iain Anderson
July 11, 2011 at 9:53 am

In the keyboard customisation window, you can assign a key to a command to copy the colour correction from one clip back, two clips back, or three clips back. Could be handy to avoid copy/pasting.

I have a feeling that there may be a hacky solution for pushing a screen output to a DV camera. Not sure if it’s worth the effort as the interlacing and colour could be lost in the process. Details here if you want to experiment:

https://www.udart.dk/2009/07/30/the-5-video-mixer-how-to-do-a-dv-screen-cast-through-firewire/
Wayne Garton
July 11, 2011 at 10:37 am

Thanks guys – the video scopes work well. The lack of colour wheel is a bit hard to get used to, but I’m getting there.
I do miss the drag and drop to get the attribute to multiple clips.
You can save the correction as a favourite, but you wouldn’t want to do that too often.

I can always use FCP 7 to see the results on TV. Basically I’m forcing myself to use X for everything in my projects if I can, so that I will learn the new programme, otherwise I would probably edit on the tried and true and not bother.
So far, I have nearly finished our weekly 1/2 hour project (all on X)
Yes, the NLE has had some spectacular crashes and yes I couldn’t have got this far without help from this forum.

Cheers
Wayne
New Zealand
Mitch Ives
July 11, 2011 at 6:00 pm

[Wayne Garton] “I can always use FCP 7 to see the results on TV. Basically I’m forcing myself to use X for everything in my projects if I can, so that I will learn the new programme, otherwise I would probably edit on the tried and true and not bother.”

All the more reason why the revelation that FCPX doesn’t have any “real” video out is so disappointing… would allow a lot of people to start using FCPX that have chosen not to…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com
http://www.insightproductions.com

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