FCP + color + magic bullet looks howto ?

[Sebastien Thomas]

Hi,

I just purchased magic bullet looks, and am wondering how to integrate it in my workflow.
I usualy work with FCP and color, but I can't achieve (so easily) what MBL does.

Let's take examples, and try to answer them :

- I have a daylight shoot, with a grey washed out sky. I want it to be blue, then I want to have a particuliar film look.

is a solution to go to color, have gradient mates, change sky color, go back in FCP and then to MBL ?

- I have a shot taken camera upside down. I use the rotate function in the filters to get it the right way. When I go to MBL, I still have the footage in the wrong side.

is the solution to "recompress" the footage with the media manager, then start with a footage in the right position ?

I'm a little bit confused when it comed to "color correction" opposed to "final film look".
Of course I can do stuffs in FCP, but isn't color made for that ?
Of course I can finish the look in color, but isn't MBL better (simpler ?) for that ?

FYI, footage comes from a Sony EX1 camera (1080@25p), and some are HDV footage from a Z1, recompressed in prores422 HQ 1080@25p.

Many thanks.

[Kaku Ito]

I just purchased the Magic Bullet Suite online, too.
This is because I got fed up with FCP/Color integration.
First of all, Color forces you to use ProRes which makes the whole media on hard disk twice as much (unless you capture everything in ProRes), and secondly, size adjustments (motion parameters) in FCP ported over to Color and back to FCP end up wrong and lastly, FCP's 3-way color correction seems to be not really accurate on the video output (ends up looking different when you export it as a file).

I've tried the Colorista to do the grading and finished the job without a problem. I could cover the process I needed between FCP and Color for the grading. My understanding is use Colorista like how you would use 3-way Color correction then use Look for getting the looks.

I would apply Colorista to each clip I need to adjust the color. For the Look, I would put together timeline first and then make a new sequence (output), throw in the timeline I edited, then apply the Look into the output sequence.

Also, if you use MBL then you can stay in FCP and continue to work on other things like motion parameters, if you go to Color then you will be restricted to work with the parameters in Color. Haven't really played with the Look yet, but Color, the color adjustment parameters are so robust.

[Jonathan Plotkin]

Originally Posted by Kaku Ito

I would apply Colorista to each clip I need to adjust the color. For the Look, I would put together timeline first and then make a new sequence (output), throw in the timeline I edited, then apply the Look into the output sequence.

Take a look at Douglas Turner's post at http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...ight=colorista

"So, let's say you'd usually add Colorista, tweak the whites, exposure etc...
Then you'd add Looks... when kicking off the Looksbuilder, you'll notice that the changes you've made by adding Colorista are NOT shown in the preview Looks gives you."

Have you tried this sequence yet?