WARNING TO NEW COLOR USERS

[Jerry Hofmann]

You edit in a drop frame sequence, so you get the proper timing…

THEN you change that sequence’s TC to non drop, export to Color, then send back to FCP… this will open a new project file containing the graded sequence.

THEN change it back to drop…. or not. Hey, the actual time of the show isn’t going to be affected at any rate, and if you lay it back to tape, even if it stayed non drop, it will record to a drop frame tape and be exactly right…

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer

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[Walter Biscardi]

[Jerry Hofmann] “You edit in a drop frame sequence, so you get the proper timing…

THEN you change that sequence’s TC to non drop, export to Color, then send back to FCP… this will open a new project file containing the graded sequence.

THEN change it back to drop…. or not. Hey, the actual time of the show isn’t going to be affected at any rate, and if you lay it back to tape, even if it stayed non drop, it will record to a drop frame tape and be exactly right…”

All of that is pretty dumb really, sorry Jerry. FCP supports Drop Frame, Color does not. VERY lame.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Shane Ross]

OK Jerry…that sounds pretty straightforward and doable. I can handle that.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Ben Insler]

Ah. Understood, and what you’ve quoted down there is just not good. Thanks for the info.

Best,

Ben

[Walter Biscardi]

[Ben Insler] ”
Ah. Understood, and what you’ve quoted down there is just not good. Thanks for the info.”

It’s horrendous really. There’s no way you can trust a product that can’t legalize your video correctly. At least when I use FCP’s Broadcast Safe Filter, it hasn’t failed me in over 60 HD Broadcast masters yet. Sure I could CC in Color and then run that filter in FCP, but why double render? Looks like I’ll be sticking with Colorista and FCP’s Broadcast Safe filter at least until Color 1.1.

What a HUGE disappointment from Apple and the Color team. They really dropped the ball on this one.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Ben Insler]

Not quite. You can’t change the timebase of a sequence once footage has been added to it. So, the workflow really goes:

1. Get show to time.
2. Make a new sequence with all the same settings, except non drop.
3. Copy and paste all footage from your drop sequence to your non drop.
4. Send the non drop to Color
5. Grade your sequence and send it back to Final Cut.
6. Copy your final media from your graded non-drop sequence back to your drop sequence.

Yes, you can output to a drop-frame tape from step 5 and your show will be to time on the tape, but what if you need to make changes later? I’d want to get everything set back to what it’s supposed to be before I save and close the project for a while, rather than trying to remember that I left the sequence in non-drop. Still doable…but I think the question is just “Why, Apple, Why?” For anyone that used the software when it was still Final Touch… did these problems exist, or were they created when Apple tried to work them into the Studio integrated workflow?

-Ben

[Ben Insler]

Agreed, Walter. I was really looking forward to getting away from working in the filters tab and in a real Grading environment. It all looked so great from the demos.

You recommend colorista over FCP’s CC options? And since you mention broadcast safe, have you found a nice…or I should say smooth way to use the saturation section of the braodcast safe filter so that you don’t get terrible flat spots? Up until this point I’ve been designing limited CC 3 Ways to do this, but it requires a stack of filters to de-saturate and re-saturate because FCP’s CC filters don’t always grab supersaturated areas when limit effects are added into the mix.

Thanks,

Ben

[Steve Connor]

I guess Apple haven’t had the code long enough to fix all the (Extremely large) bugs. Hopefully it will get a fix when iPhone and the new OS are out and there are more resources to throw at it.

It’ll take me that long to figure out how to use it anyway. 🙂

[John Pale]

[Ben Insler] “Not quite. You can’t change the timebase of a sequence once footage has been added to it. So, the workflow really goes:”

Yes. You can. You can switch from drop to non-drop at will, at any time. Thats not the same as changing timebase, which refers to frame rate. Non-drop and drop are the same frame rate.

Its a dumb bug, but its easy to work around.

[Ben Insler]

Interesting. Are you talking about FCP 6?