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Problem Keyframing colour corrections
I recently shot some speeches indoors at a Wedding with my EX1. Much to my exasperation when I put the footage in the timeline to edit I found that the colour temperature changed from a neutral to slightly pink on occassions and maybe then to a blue/ green cast and then back again etc. Even on a shot with the camera position locked off for five minutes at a time the colour would be o.k. for maybe two or three minutes and then change for no apparent reason. ( no zooming or anything done to camera angle. ) So my first question is why ???
Now my main question.
I have watched the Richard Harris video on colour correction using keyframing many times and in the past from memory it has worked although I haven’t used this method for about a year now. So I thought I would try keyframing a colour balance correction for the above, in post, using the three way colour corrector as per the tutorial.This is what should happen:- I start with a section of the clip which has fairly neutral colours. I move the playhead down the timeline until I see the colour balance start to change to a greenish hue and I make a keyframe. I then correct the colour at that point to a more neutral balance . In theory then if I go back a few seconds to the beginning of the clip it should start with a neutral colour and when it gets to the keyframe it should play the colour correction I keyframed in and there should be little discernable difference.
However what actually happens is this:- I make all the corrections as I described but when I go back to the beginning of the clip it starts as it should but then the color changes gradually to a strong pink hue at it’s peak before slowly settling down to the neutral tones I keyeframed in at the first keyframe point.
That is the simplest example.
If I try to correct this strong change of colour by putting more keyframes in the problem just gets more compressed between the subsequent keyframes.Can anyone shed a light on this or suggest another colour smoothing solution.
I am using FCP 6 and editing in a pro res timeline. The footage is xdcam ex from a sony ex1. I am using an imac running leopard.
brian paterson
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5 Replies
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i’ve found key-framing the colour corrector to be a real pain.
especially when it comes to moving the keyframes.i much prefer to blade the clip into two (or more) parts,
then apply separate CCs to each, and add a dissolve between them.nick
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Gee thanks Nick. What a horrible thing to then present for grading in Color. I hope you unpick the blades and dissolves and rejoin the clips before hand over.
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the OP is grading in FCP.
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[Nick Meyers] “the OP is grading in FCP.”
Yes, but I was talking about what you present to the grade. 🙂
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Thanks NIck,
I had already tried cutting the frame up into sections. That wasn’t too successful. The problem is the change in colour is too gradual
for this to work. The only other way around it I have found is to copy the clip ( or a section of it ) paste it above then recolour the worst part of it to the colour temperature it should be, then do a long ramp of the in and out points so the “change in” and the “change out” blends together with the underlying footage over time. It is long winded of course and is a pain and dosen’t work too well if I come across several quicker change in colour in succesion.
So back to my original question – can you explain why, if I make two Key points in the clip and make subtle changes to the colour, why the dot in the colour wheels go all the way around in a circle just to get back to where they almost started thereby making the colour between the two keyed points in the timeline go through every change in the rainbow before getting to the colour I selected. Is this right! (I would be surprised if it was) or is there somthing I misssed here.Lastly can anyone tell me why my camera ( EX1r) would have had this desire to randomly change the colour temperatures in the first place when it was locked off in a static lighting environment.
Many Thanks
BRIAN.brian paterson
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