Beginners Guide to Colour Grading

[alexp2000]

Hello all,

Would really like to get into colour grading projects after spending a lot of time on audio syncs over the last couple of years. I know there's a number of members here who definitely know there stuff so was hoping for a few pointers/guides to get me started.

Got 12 potential projects where I'd like to regrade a high quality file to an older source. I've got Resolve installed but not used it yet and have a pretty good handle of Virtualdub (used it for a very basic colour correction project some years ago).

I've also got a workflow to convert the files I'm looking to grade into Resolve so ok in that respect.

Main question would be - what next? Do those of you that regrade use the Dr. Dre tool or soemthing else? I'm pretty sure it's going to need something like that to get things closer to the source(s) I'm looking to match to.

I've watched a video on the scene detection tool in Resolve and that seesm like a good way of being able to grade scene by scene but any advice in this area would be welcome too.

That's probably enought to get started but I'm sure I'll have more questions are things progress!

[PDB]

I would say the first thing to do would be to line up and frame match your two videos, the high quality and the older source before using the scene detection. After you have that and have all the shots cut just go shot-by-shot or scene by scene using dre to match. That can be tedious but is the way to get the best results.

Good luck alexpeden2000. The more projects the better.

[alexp2000]

Thanks PDB, when you same ‘frame match’ I take it you mean the geometry rather than the number of frames? Which program would be best for this?

I’ve got Dr. Dre 1.2 on my computer, is it worth getting a newer version? (I see on OT there’s at least one newer one)

[PDB]

Number of frames, I believe, if we are talking the same thing. Older video master are often missing frames because of different start times, reel changes, IVTC errors, stupidity, etc. You already know that stuff. Its just easier to go through and re-grade if they two sources are frame match.

Dre should compensate for the geometry difference between the two sources.

I think Dre is at a higher number (1.5, 1.6?) but I don't have access on this machine right now to check.

[alexp2000]

Makes sense now that I think about it, if you’re going to use matching frames in the Dre tool you’d want them to be the same frame number.

That’s good that it adjusts for geometry, didn’t fancy having to try and crop frames to match the new source.

I’ll message Dre on OT and see if I can get a link for the latest version.

[bronan]

Please share that when you get it. I'd also like to try matching a couple movies.

[alexp2000]

Will do, have sent him a PM.

What’s the best tool for matching frames? I know you’re a Premiere man PDB but are there any (ideally) free tools that work well? Resolve could probably do it but it seems a bit clunky.

[PDB]

I just do it manually, normally doesn't take too long. Just skip forward a little bit looking for variations. That is of course assuming before videos are at 23.976.

[alexp2000]

Thinking of just getting one of the video to TIFF converters and lining them up that way, that way I've got the TIFF files ready to use in the Dre tool too?


Looks like that's what they've done in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OtaGT3A8Bs

[DoomBot]

Or create LUT's with Dre's tool and use those on each video clip in your timeline.