Hi guys.

I'm editing a wedding video using Final Cut Express. I want to create that look where the entire shot is black & white except for one area of color, like a rose or a bouquet of flowers, or maybe even someone's blue eyes. I found a tutorial online on how to do it in Final Cut Pro using the Color Corrector, but my FCE is missing the "key button" in Color Corrector needed to do it in FCP. Is there any other way to make this effect happen in FCE? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave Smith

Dave, you could stack the same shots on top of each other in the timeline and desaturate the bottom one and then use the eight point garbage matte on the top colour shot. This won't work too well with complex shapes, but it might work for eyes or even the rose.

Nate,

Thanks for the tip. I haven't had a chance to try the garbage matte yet, but I'll give it a whirl. The object that I want to "colorize" in a particular shot is moving through the frame, so I don't know how well it work. But it's certainly a better idea than anything else I've come up with. Thanks again!

-Dave

If it's moving you could keyframe the matte to move...but Final Cut Express (version 2 anyway) dosen't have keyframes, so it might be just as easy to export as a still image sequence and work with the colour in Photoshop.

Maybe not quite what you want, but have you looked at Joe's Filters? I think you might be able to use the saturation/colorize filter on duplicate layers to get something similar:

http://www.joesfilters.com/joessaturationandcolorize.php

It's really a great package of filters that can come in handy for lots of things, and the price is reasonable. You can try the free demos to see if they'll work for you.

Nate,

Yes, I though about keyframing the matte. Actually, I'm surprised to hear that FCE2 doesn't have keyframes. I'm using version 1 of FCE and it does have keyframes. So, I'll give it a try.

Thanks,
Dave

Boyd,

Thanks for the link to Joe's Filters. Some pretty neat stuff. Like you said, I'm not sure it's what I'm looking for in this particular effect, but I definitely could use some of those filters for other shots I'm working on. I appreciate it!

Dave

Seems like keyframes are a basic function that's needed in an editor. I haven't used FCE HD, but according to Apple's specs it has them. Would seem odd that version 2 would be the only one without them:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/specs.html

• Keyframe animation
• Bezier curves for motion paths
• Keyframe capabilities for precise animation
• Keyframe graphs

Sorry, I rushed into saying that it has no keyframes without checking on the Apple site... I remember watching a demo for DH_Box
www.digital-heaven.co.uk/finalcutplugins_flash.htm (great stuff BTW) that said keyframes unavailable in Final Cut Express. Obvioulsy I was wrong, sorry