colr correcting and color grading

[Chris Klidonas]

I understand it that I would first color correct everything so its all the same, and this I do on a clip level, each clip on the timeline gets corrected individually, than I can apply an effect to the whole timeline if I want an effect over everything at once say to set it all warmer or brighter and cooler, but what if I want to have different grade or effects on scenes is there anyway to bunch a number of clips that are corrected into say a group that I ca n apply a seperate effects set for?

[Glenn Chan]

There's no elegant way of doing that in Vegas with Vegas alone.

One way:
Match your shots, then apply filters that achieve the look you want. To do the latter quickly, you can select a group of shots. Then go into the FX browser thing and drag filter presets onto your clips (save the filter presets).

Ultimate S lets you save and add groups of FX onto clips.

2- Another method is to apply the scene's look first, then go in and make everything match.

[Josh Bass]

This is my personal opinion, so take it for what it's worth:

I've gotten pretty anal about my grading over the years. I'm by no means a pro, and I'll even go so far as to say I really don't know what I'm doing, but I'm pretty happy with the looks I get on the footage. At any rate, here's what I've found: to me, if you just applied a single "look" to a group of clips, your results won't likely match exactly from clip to clip.

For example, let's say you have a color curve and color corrector used together to make a really desaturated, bluish, contrasty look. Now, say apply those two plugins, with the same settings to a whole scene. What I've found is that between wide shots, mediums, CUs, reverse angles, etc., the look won't quite match between the shots. I think this is due to the different luminance and color values in the original footage. Your closeup will have different values than your wide shot (there may be more red in the wide 'cause of something in the background, more darkness in the wide than in the closeup, etc.), so the same settings applied to each will yield a different result. So what you get is a closeup that looks bluer and more contrasty than the wide shot, even though you used the same settings, for example.

Now, I'm not saying there will be these huge differences between them, but they're noticable, in my opinion. I've found I usually have to make small tweaks to my preset for different types of shots. So usually I have different presets for each type of shot ("John and Shana wide," "John CU", etc.).

Just something to look out for.

[Steve Brady]

Perhaps I haven't really understood the question, but would it not be possible in many cases to have each of your "bunches" of clips on their own track, and then apply your effects at the track level?

[Glenn Chan]

That's also a good way of doing things, though you'll need to handle cross dissolves separately.

[Graham Bernard]

How about bringing back the sequence you want "warm" as a nested timeline and applying a warm look to the nested sequence? Ditto for Cool and so on? Wouldn't that do it? - If it does (it should!), then that would be quite elegant if not completely Chic too! Very Audrey Hepburn!

Grazie

[Chris Klidonas]

Originally Posted by Glenn Chan

There's no elegant way of doing that in Vegas with Vegas alone.

One way:
Match your shots, then apply filters that achieve the look you want. To do the latter quickly, you can select a group of shots. Then go into the FX browser thing and drag filter presets onto your clips (save the filter presets).

Ultimate S lets you save and add groups of FX onto clips.

2- Another method is to apply the scene's look first, then go in and make everything match.

So with the ultimate s I can save a group of fx and add those to an already set of effects on a clip? So if the clip had a curve and a color corrector and I want to add a warming curve and levels adjustment to it it would add to the clip/s the warming curve and levels? The way I see it now I can copy the whole and replace the set with the whole new one which would lose the color correcting initially applied.

[Kris Bird]

...just do it per-track! Correct clips by event or by media, then grade the look by track, then gamma correct (if necessary, like for web) at video out.

[Glenn Chan]

The way I see it now I can copy the whole and replace the set with the whole new one which would lose the color correcting initially applied.

It doesn't replace the set.

It will append/add a filter chain (the equivalent to it anyways) to selected clips.

You can also remove FX... when you do this, any FX with the same name will get removed. (This is arguably not that elegant.)
So if you are using the color corrector to balance a scene. And say you apply unsharp mask.
And you use US3 to add a second CC and color curves, and later on you decide to remove this... both the color correctors will get removed, and the unsharp mask will stick around.

2- With the filter chains in Vegas, adding a filter chain will wipe out the existing filters. It's a little better to select a group of clips, and drag filter presets onto them.

3- There's multiple ways of doing things... I'd probably stick with track FX.