Blog Archives

Learn how to use shape and color masks in FCP X to make secondary color corrections to your clips.

An in-depth tutorial on how to use the Broadcast Colors filter in Premiere Pro CS6 – and why.

A video tutorial showing how to display, modify, and analyze images using video scopes in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.

A short video tutorial on how to change button highlight colors in Adobe Encore CS6.

Be cautious when using the 50’s TV effect or Add blend mode in Final Cut Pro X, as this article explains.

The Fast Color Corrector does exactly that – fast color correction. Here’s how it works.

In this article, I want to talk about what happens when you make a color or exposure adjustment to a clip; and illustrate this with screen shots.

This color correction technique in Final Cut Pro X isn’t perfect, but it is REALLY fast and gets you close enough to keep your job

A subscriber recounts the difficulties, and the workaround that fixed them, he experienced with Buzz lines cropping up in a project.

For those of you interested in a more technical look at the Broadcast Safe filter, Dennis Couzin, technical assistant to a video documentarian based in Germany, sent me the following article that he wrote.

What happens when you change Final Cut’s display background to any color except black? Much less than you think. Here’s why.

What’s the difference between 8-bit and 10-bit video and why should editors care? Well, if you are doing a lot of effects, you should care a lot and this article explains why.

Dealing with shifting color temperatures during shooting presents a raft of problems during editing. This article describes what you can do during shooting to compensate for color temperature changes, as well as how to “fix it in post.”

You know the drill. The client didn’t have the money for makeup when they were shooting the video, then is horrified to discover in post that their star/kid/sweetie has a humongous zit that spoils all the close-ups of the video they dumped in your lap to edit.

Technical Guru Graeme Nattress presents a lucid, and illustrated, explanation of why colors in DV, Betacam, and DVD are handled differently. If you do any kind of color work, you need to read this article.

Understanding how to read the Waveform Monitor and Vectorscope are essential to getting the best possible pictures out of Final Cut Pro. This article gives you an overview of how to read them and what they mean.

Until version 5.1.2, the scopes in Final Cut were notorious for being almost, but not quite, accurate. That all changed with 5.1.2. and they’ve been enhanced in FCP 6. This article provides a more technical discussion on the quality of Final Cut Pro’s scopes, especially in regard to Color.

The video scopes in Final Cut, while accurate, don’t show the entire picture. If you use the scopes in your work, you need to read this warning.

Larry finally gets the chance to answer the question he’s been waiting for : What is the “Color Thingy”?

One of the effects I wanted to create for my training was a reflection of a moving clip of video. This is what we are going to create in this technique.

This technique describes an interesting effect combining a traveling matte and a pond ripple filter which allows you to color an effect as it moves across the screen.

Gamma settings control the gray-scale midpoint. The reason this is significant is that Macs, video, and Windows all use slightly different settings. This means that video that looks good on one system, may look washed out or too dark on others. Snow Leopard, however, has changed the rules. In this article, I explain what gamma is, how to use it, and where to set it.

Gradients are a smooth ramp from one color, or shade of gray, to another. Gradients can be easily created in Final Cut Pro, but the button to do so is very hidden. In this article, I show you how to create a gradient, how to adjust it, and provide some ideas on what you can do with it.

Sometimes, you need to change the color of part of an image (like a car or sculpture), but not all of it. Or you want everything black and white, except one thing. This article shows you how.

Sometimes, simply color-balancing is not enough, you need to make the same object or person look the same between two different shots. This article explains how.

What are the disadvantages of using DV, rather than SD, video? This discussion also features comments from a variety of readers.

The most common use of color correction is to correct for cameras that didn’t white balance properly. This article gives you a seven-step process to help make your images look great.

Have you ever created a still image, only to see the color or gray scale shift when you imported it into Final Cut Pro? This article explains what’s going on and how you fix it.

Color uses an interface unlike any other Final Cut Studio application. When you use Color you must set your scratch disks to point to your second drive. However, the user manual doesn’t describe how to do this. This article shows you what you need to know.

DV provides outstanding quality, until it comes to compositing and chroma-keying. This article discusses the differences between 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:1:1 color space and how it affects DV video.

We can’t always use the latest video technology to capture our images. Sometimes, historical footage requires a film transfer. In this article are some tips you can use to make your film transfers look better.

Recently, Euphonix invited me to their LA offices to take a look at a suite of new products designed for video and audio editors. — a series of external control surfaces. Control surfaces have been a fixture in the audio industry for many year, but for video editors, this is a fairly new concept. This article takes a detailed look at each of the four units Euphonix provides, along with thoughts on where they fit into a post-production workflow.

In this article Larry fields a question regarding recommended color space when importing images into FCP.

Final Cut’s text tools are pretty limited in the design department. But here is a simple way to make your closing credits look much more interesting without a lot of work.

Folks that have worked with video for a long time are often confused about where to set the black level for digital video. This article explains what you need to know — and, relax, it isn’t that hard.

Video, generally, has two bit-depths: 8 and 10. In this short article, I provide an analogy that helps to understand what bit-depth is, why its important, and when you should consider working in 10-bit depth.