Avid Hidden Gems 4

OK, so you CAN teach an old dog new tricks!
 
While the previous installments of Avid Hidden Gems have all been from memory – basically just some cool power user tips – today, I actually dove into the manual itself to:
 
1) find things that are completely new to me
2) rediscover things that I’d forgotten
3) remind myself about things that I use all the time, but others might not have discovered.
 

Color Correction Video Tutorial

This is another in what will become a series of two dozen color correction tutorials that will be in the revised edition of Focal Press’ “Color Correction for Video.” This episode shows how to balance a severely mis-white balanced camera chart using the Advanced Tab in the Primary Room of Apple’s Color.

Last week, I balanced the exact same image using the color wheels. Next week, I’ll balance the same image using the Curves, which is similar top using the Advanced tab, except that you have more specific control (instead of just three tonal ranges) and it is more intuitive for those who like to visualize what they are doing.

Other color correction tutorials will include setting up a JLCooper Eclipse CX color correction panel and doing corrections in Color with secondaries, the geometry room, the still store and the Color FX room. We’ll also explore color correcting in FCP, Avid and Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse inside of Adobe Premiere and After Effects. Make sure to sign up for the RSS feed so you don’t miss an episode.

Avid Hidden Gems #3

Here are some more gems from the Avid Media Composer user’s manual, though today includes at least two REALLY hidden gems, because they don’t seem to be mentioned in the manuals at all (based on searches on the Help menu.)

Color Correction Video Tutorial

This is the second in a series of more than two dozen color correction tutorials that will be part of the upcoming revised edition of “Color Correction for Video” from Focal Press. This tutorial shows how to use the color wheels to eliminate a color cast. Future tutorials will show how to do the same thing using Color’s Advanced Tab’s RGB sliders and Curves.

The tutorial is an H.264 file about 4 minutes in length and 18 Megs.

Other tutorials to come include secondary color correction tutorials, “creating looks,” using the Color FX room in Color, color correction in Avid, color correction in Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse (used as a plug-in in Adobe products and as a stand alone) and more. Make sure to add this as an RSS feed so you don’t miss a single tutorial.

If you have questions or need clarifications or have an idea for a tutorial you’d like to see, add a comment to this article.

Avid Hidden Gems #2

This is a weekly series of tips culled from years of experience and hours of actually reading the manual - so you don’t have to.

This week’s tips include a console command, Title Tool help, fast info and color correction tips.

Color Primary video tutorial

This is the first of 24 weekly color correction video tutorials from the revised edition (due in December) of “Color Correction for Video” which was the first color correction book ever published at the time. This tutorial is pretty basic and others are quite advanced. I’ll try to release them in an order that builds on concepts from previous tutorials. Many of the tutorials will be based on Color, but others utilize Final Cut Pro, Avid and Color Finesse (as a plug-in for Adobe After Effects or Premiere). There may be some gaps in the information, since the video tutorials were designed to be viewed in conjunction with the book. Enjoy and make sure to sign up for the RSS feed so you don’t miss any of the tutorials!

Avid Hidden Gems - Part 1

One of the most useful things I ever did as I began to master the Avid user interface was – I know this will be hard to believe – read the manual. Actually I read EVERY word of EVERY manual. The folks at the Avid Technical Publications department can confirm this, because I sent them many pages of corrections for which they sent me an actual one-of-a-kind “Deputy Tech Pubs” badge. Geeky? Yes. Should YOU actually read the manuals? Of course not! That’s what this series is intended to prevent!

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