Color balance questions in FCP

[andrewdoeshair]

Hi! I hate doing video but it's becoming more and more necessary for me to have good video for my work, so after hiring a videographer several times while watching dust collect on my (PLENTY capable) photography gear (two 5Diii's and plenty of good glass) I decided to learn to do it myself. With the help of this forum I was able to get my photography to a point where I no longer hire a photographer, and I'm hoping you guys and girls can offer me some assistance with video, as well... To make sure I follow through with the learning process, I just ordered a Tascam DR-70D and a Rode NTG2 (can't use that stuff for photo, I'll have to do video to get my money's worth), and I downloaded the 30 day FCP trial to get fiddling. I'm somewhat proficient with Light Room and my plan is to give Premiere a shot if I can't get FCP to meet my needs without spending more money on plug ins than FCP costs itself.

I've asked 4 people I know for advice on this, and one guy said "use premiere for that" the second said "buy this plug in" (I forget which one it was, but it's $100, so I want a guarantee it's going to work before I buy since I'm eating ramen this month to pay for my audio gear), the third said "buy this $150 piece of paper" (the color chart thing), and the last guy said "watch youtube videos about scopes." So that's what I've been doing all night. That helped a lot, especially with evening out exposures, but I've run into some dilemmas. Mainly, I'll put in the work to get the skin tones right up the line on the vectorscope, but having the skin look "correct" will then sometimes make my whites look a little off. When I try to fix the whites I feel like my skins look weird again. Should I make white WHITE even if the skins are off, or make the skins look as human as possible and let the whites change as needed in order to do that? Or is the answer to keep playing with the color board until I find the happiest medium between the two?

With a photo I can fix this in 3 seconds. Should I just buy the plug in or the chart thing? Should I get Premiere and ditch FCP? Is manually adjusting the color board on every clip absurd, or is that worth trying to improve upon?

Thanks for reading. Any advice is much appreciated.

-ADH

 

[KmH]

If you use Photoshop CC for your stills you already have an Adobe video editor.
Having Premiere Pro CC is more capable and keeps all your editing apps compatible since they are all from Adobe.

 

[Light Guru]

If you use Photoshop CC for your stills you already have an Adobe video editor.
Having Premiere Pro CC is more capable and keeps all your editing apps compatible since they are all from Adobe.

My guess is the OP only has the Photography CC subscription and thus does not have Premiere.