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Since its introduction at NAB 2007, one of the questions that I get asked the
most is how does Color fit into Final Cut Studio Workflow and post-production
in general? Well, it's beyond the scope of this title to discuss Color's role
in the ever-changing world of post- production, but what we can explore is
Color's role in Final Cut Studio Workflow, and that's what we'll do in this lesson.
Before I begin I should stress that with any workflow, adaptability and its
design is key, therefore the workflows that we discuss here are not meant to be
the end-all, be-all of Color workflows. Indeed, almost everyday I hear of
exciting new workflows, what I do intend is that you walk away with a broad
strokes understanding of workflow with Color inside Final Cut Studio.
So I like to think of Color as the missing link in Final Cut Studio. I think of
it like that because it's an application that allows us to do professional
correction and grading. Sure, we could do color correction and grading inside
of Final Cut Pro, but we now have a dedicated application specifically for those tasks.
It's integrated with Final Cut Pro. There are some other applications out there
on the market that allow us to do color correction and grading on the desktop,
but they're not really nicely integrated with Final Cut Pro like Color is.
Super expensive hardware is not required. All that's required to run Color is
Final Cut Studio and a Mac. So here is the Final Cut Studio. At the heart
of the Final Cut Studio, we have Final Cut Pro, where we ingest, edit, and
do outputs. We have cinema tools, where we do film workflows
and frame rate conversions. Motion 3 to do motion graphics. LiveType for
title design. Soundtrack Pro for sound design and mix. We now have Color for
professional color correction and grading. Compressor 3 for compression and
output, and then lastly, DVD Studio Pro for DVD design and authoring.
Before I go on, I just want to say that the workflows I'm about to present are
meant to just give you a broad understanding of Color workflow inside Final Cut
Studio. If there are some steps that you don't understand, that's okay. We just
want to get at the basics. So the first workflow I want to talk about
is what we typically refer to as The Roundtrip. The way that this works is that
we ingest and edit our show in Final Cut Pro, and when we're done, we send an XML
file to Color, via the Send to Color command in Final Cut Pro, and we reference
the original media on disk. In Color, I grade and correct my program,
and when I'm done with that process, I send an XML file back to Final Cut Pro via
the Send to Final Cut Pro command inside Color, and I render out new QuickTime
files with the color corrected media. That all comes back into Final Cut
Pro, where I do any last minute tweaks and I output my project.
This next workflow is a little bit more advanced. The way it works is that we
shoot on film, and when we shoot on film we need a way of getting that film
into our computer, and we do that by using a Datacine.
The Datacine creates high resolution Cineon or DPX files, and all these files
are, are high resolution image sequences. Once we have those image sequences,
we can't edit with them in Final Cut Pro, instead, we need to create offline
QuickTime files from them to be able to edit in Final Cut Pro, and we can do
that with tools like Glue Tools, or AJA's DPX to QT translator. Don't worry.
We're saving the DPX and Cineon files for later on in this workflow.
So once we have the offline files, we import those offline files into Final Cut
Pro and then we perform our offline edit. Once we're done with our edit in
Final Cut Pro, we create an EDL, and an EDL just stands for an Edit Decision List.
We then take that EDL and we use it to conform back or reconnect back to those
original DPX and Cineon files. We then perform all of our color grading and
correction. Once we're done grading, we render out from Color and we use the
Gather Rendered Media command inside of Color to create new DPX or Cineon image
sequences. We then take those image sequences and we do our film output.
This next workflow that we have is a pretty common workflow, and the way it
works is that we have a QuickTime master file. This QuickTime master file
typically comes off a videotape and it's often accompanied with an EDL.
Remember an EDL stands for Edit Decision List. In Color, we create a new Color
project using that EDL and we link back to that master file.
The cool thing about using an EDL and Color this way is that we can actually
use it to notch or cut up the master file into its individual clips for color
grading. We grade the show in Color, and then once we're done we send an XML
file via the Send to Final Cut Pro command inside of Color and we render out
new color corrected media. That all ends up back in Final Cut Pro, where we do
any last minute tweaks and we output our show. The last workflow that we have is a pretty
simple one. The way that it works is that we have an existing QuickTime file on
disk. Not a digitized master, not any image sequences, nothing like that, just
a simple QuickTime file. We import that QuickTime file directly into
Color. This time we're not using any EDLs or XML or any send to commands, just
importing it directly into Color. In Color, we perform our color grading, and
then when we're done with our color grading, we render out new media from Color,
color corrected media, and then we import directly into Final Cut Pro, where
we do any last minute tweaks and output. Again, we don't use EDLs or XML files
at this stage. Now that we understand the basics of color
workflow inside Final Cut Studio, in the next movie we'll compare color correction
between Final Cut Pro and Color.