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Groups: Pre-Clip grades not keyframable? How to adjust the pre-clip grade as applied to each group member clip???
The group grade effect works perfectly but strictly uniform application of the pre-clip grade to all member clips is surely often just step number one.
I don’t see a way to adjust the application of the pre-clip grade on a per clip basis. (And here I mean the pre-clip grade taken as a whole, with its effect that might be varied as applied to member clips, similar to a level or opacity control.)
To be sure, a group grade is, by definition, to be applied uniformly to all the group clips.
But surely there is also a way to make per clip adjustments.
For example, suppose we have a few clips of a lovely pastel sky and certain cloud colors were enhanced as the result of many careful color adjustments. OK; works great.
But wait: as the camera pans it records a slightly different horizon sky for some clips. “No problem,” sez I: “Probably just dial up or down the applied pre-clip grade effect slightly for each clip.” Seems simple.
But how? The pre-clip grade itself does not seem to allow keyframes. This perhaps owing to the fact that a group can include members that are not contiguous, so a normal keyframe timeline would not work as it does not show the timeline gaps created by non-group member clips.
Is there some hook at the individual clip level to adjust the pre-clip grade as applied to that clip??? Perhaps a special node that allows these pre-clip grade level adjustments, key adjustments, or whatever???
But I don’t see such a hook.
What am I missing????
Thanks, Mike
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2 Replies
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A group grade — by its very definition — can’t be done on a clip-by-clip basis. You could put every other clip in a different group, but there’s a point where it becomes irrational and difficult.
I think you may need to reevaluate your node structure philosophy and come up with a better way of approaching the problem. Me, I just add a couple of nodes to the Clip Node itself and just change it if it needs changing. I don’t need to make any group grade at all. Heck, I rarely use Group grades unless I have a client situation where they say, “hey, all these scenes in the kitchen… can we make them a little brighter?” If they already match, then an overall correction is fairly simple.
The alternative would be to use a Timeline grade and then just manually put a start/end keyframe, but again, there’s a point where it becomes too unwieldly. I think it’s a question of knowing when and how to use Pre-Clip/Post-Clip grades, when to just make a change within the Clip grade, and then when to use a Timeline grade. I use all of them all the time, but I only make per-clip adjustments within the “real” correction for that shot. To me, it all boils down to speed and efficiency.
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[Marc Wielage] “it’s a question of knowing when and how to use Pre-Clip/Post-Clip grades, when to just make a change within the Clip grade, and then when to use a Timeline grade. “
If a clip needs an individual adjustment, then it should be made inside the clip. In the Clip grade.
Pre and Post are time-insensitive because they are intended to function essentially as a custom LUT evenly across a group. What would be happening if clips belonging to a group are scattered throughout a timeline?
Its a bit like “parenting” an element with an Uber-command in the manner that Marc suggested — if a mateched-and-corrected scene needs an overall revision — and “two points brighter” or “darker” is common, then lasoo them and do it with one tweak, rather than working through the whole lot, and if it tracks, great, or if one or two clips pop, then re-address them on a clip basis. That’s just grading.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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