[Chris Wright]

again, for white balance, Watch the HLS vectorscope so that the large Hue wheel sets the weighted brightest part in the center. it is dead accurate. what more could you want?

the skin tone line should work for ALL skin tones. read more about that if you don’t believe me.
evening and night will NOT match day because of the “quality” of light. look up day for night for more info.

[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.

[Chris Wright]

do they take h.264? you can select constant quality or bitrate. 30min < 4gb… . Only h.264 with variable bitrate will look anything decent at that file size. Sorry, I don’t have a work around.
Too bad no one supports h.265 which is half the file size of h.264.

[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

[Chris Wright]

It looks like the sword is reflecting green back into the camera. Did you try clip white? The green looks too bright. It shouldn’t be more than 60 ire. It May Require Roto. I’ll check it out today.

[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!

[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.
——————–

-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.

[Chris Wright]

i believe your issue that one is gamma 1.8 and the other is 2.2
you can either:
1. calibrate your monitor to one or the other.system preferences>Displays) to 1.8
2. use gamma tags legacy and in quicktime properties enable FCP legacy
3. Final Cut Pro/System Settings/Playback Control. Change Gamma Correction from Accurate to Approximate
4. fcp individual clips – Editing tab, “Imported Still / RGB Video Gamma”. choose source 1.80, 2.20
4. use icm or luts to counter.
——————-
some further thoughts…

you can setup your monitor profiled at gamma 1.8/2.2
You should think about editing your working LUT to your native monitor gamma.

If you want to stick with gamma 1.8, continue reading.

1. for playback, QuickTime preference, General tab:
“Enable Final Cut Studio colour compatibility”

2. in AE,
Choose File > Project Settings. “Legacy Quicktime Gamma” preference via render queue, not export
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/kb/quicktime-movies-too-dark-light.html

3. there’s quicktime 1.8 iluts in speedgrade/premiere as well.

if those fail, just use dispcal(free), or brizsoft to create a custom gamma lut 1.8.

4. setup color management by placing this .icm into this folder and use AE file interpret color management or its utility profile converter set as this .icm
PC
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Color\Profiles
MAC folder is probably similar

(example)
AE’s color profile converter
input quicktime gamma 1.8
output project working space

warning! this workflow is for advanced users only, and may not be compatible with your standard workflow!
download quicktime gamma 1.8 icm color profile
https://f1.creativecow.net/9887/quicktime-gamma-color-profile-18-icm

5. or just use this sRGB 1.8 iridas cube LUT if you don’t want to use color profiles
download sRGB 1.8 x16 iridas preview quality
https://f1.creativecow.net/9886/quicktime-gamma-18-x16-iridas-lut

x64 render quality(slower)
https://f1.creativecow.net/9888/srgb-18-iridas-x64-cube-lut

final advanced note, the lut and color profile converter will negate needing to do the legacy preferences or quicktime player as its considered “burned in” although regular color management with simulate preview will not work unless you setup color management manually.

[Chris Wright]

holy cow, this works better than i anticipated! i dragged the slider to 1000 passed its “point” and went from white-green to chroma key awesomeness!

[Chris Wright]

ok i fixed the “bug”, i changed it from classical to divide and it seems to be smarter now.
here’s the update.
9925_colorpunch.aep.zip