CUT.N.COLOR
Steve Hullfish has been producing and editing award-winning television since the mid-1980s. He has written four books, countless magazine articles and hosted an Avid training DVD. He has lectured at NAB, DVExpo and the Master Editor seminars. He has edited on Avid since 1992 and was named to Avid's first group of Master Editors. His client list includes: Universal Studios, NBC Television, PBS TV, Turner Networks, The Oprah Winfrey Show, "Investigative Reports" and "Cold Cases" with Bill Kurtis for A&E, Jim Henson Home Entertainment, HIT Enterta...
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Advanced Tips and Techniques for Avid editors
By Steve Hullfish | November 03, 2008
I wasn't sure if anyone was reading these, so I stopped for a few weeks. Then I got a very nice comment from Ra-ey Saleh who has been reading and learning from the tips, despite being an experienced Avid editor. He also asked if he could suggest a tip, so I'll start this week with a great tip. Essentially, it's nothing more than a common button, but it does perform hidden wonders, which is the whole point of some of these gems.
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HD capability in new crop of DSLRs deserves a look
By Steve Hullfish | October 30, 2008
Nikon is claiming its recent release of the D-90 is the first HD DSLR camera. Plus there's the news of Canon's entry into the HD DSLR race, the EOS 5D Mark II as well as the Sony DSLR-A900. The combined pressure of these seemed to sink the much anticipated release of the Scarlet. So why are these SLR form-factor camera's making a scene? Well, lately it's been about the release of Vincent Laforet's HD film "Reverie" on the Canon website. The images are stunning and the entire project was shot on a 72 hour deadline with a budget of $5,000. So many people downloaded the movie that it shut down Canon's video webserver.
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Another example of how to use Secondary Color correction in Apple's Color
By Steve Hullfish | October 29, 2008
Here is a video tutorial - one of a series based on my book "Color Correction for Video," out in December from Focal Press - showing how to do secondary color correction on a typical image. This footage is from Artbeats. In it, I "qualify" (another term for "select") the color of the baseball jerseys in the shot AND the color of the grass in the infield and change it without affecting the other colors in the footage.If you find these tutorials valuable, subscribe to the RSS feed!
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Sampling colors in Apple's Color
By Steve Hullfish | October 20, 2008
Another in a series of color correction tutorials from the upcoming revised edition of "Color Correction for Video" coming out in December from Focal Press.In this installment, I show you how to sample colors on the screen in Apple Color to get numeric readouts of specific pixels in your image. (These same methods can be used with Avid or FCP or Color Finesse in Premiere or After Effects.) Using these numeric readouts can assist you in making corrections, especially if you can sample something that should be white, black or some other neutral gray tone. Any neutral tone should have the same numeric readout across all three color channels. (They can be off by a little.)The samples in Color will continuously update as you color correct, which is very helpful. So, for example, is you sample a black pixel from your image and it says that the red channel is .085, the green channel is .088 and the blue channel is .025, then that means that your blacks have either a deficiency of blue or too much yellow (the combination of even amounts of red and green). So you probably need to raise the set-up/pedestal/black level of your blue channel to remove the yellow cast in the blacks. This will actually help balance the overall level somewhat, especially if you can balance the whites/highlights/gain using the same method. Grays will either fall into place, or you can adjust your gammas/midtones "to taste" by eye.
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Cool tip using Geometry Room to analyze colors!
By Steve Hullfish | October 13, 2008
This is another in an ongoing series of color correction video tutorials taken from the upcoming revised edition of my book "Color Correction for Video" (originally released as "Color Correction for Digital Video" co-written by Jaime Fowler.)This tutorial shows how you can use the Geometry Room (one of the tabs along the top of the Color interface) to analyze your colors more accurately using the internal or external scopes.Please subscribe to the RSS feed so you don't miss any of these tutorials.
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Four more Gems - these aren't sexy but they work!
By Steve Hullfish | October 10, 2008
OK, this won't be a sexy tips week, but it'll be useful. Sometimes sexy sells, but in economic times like these, sometimes you've got to say "Damn! Workboots, a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans is just what I need today."
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A Video Tutorial from the book "Color Correction for Video"
By Steve Hullfish | October 06, 2008
This video tutorial is one of more than two dozen video tutorials I created for the revised edition of "Color Correction for Video" which I originally wrote with Jaime Fowler back in 2002. The revised edition will be out in December and is almost completely re-written. I'll be posting one of these tutorials each week.We're not really going in any specific order with these tutorials. I did a series of Primary color correction tutorials. This is actually a tutorial about creating custom user shapes in Apple Color to do secondary color correction.Subscribe to the RSS feed if you haven't already. And if you have questions or specific video tutorials you'd like to see, let me know. Just add a comment below to the article.
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Avid Power User tips
By Steve Hullfish | October 03, 2008
Many of you know me from various listserves, and hopefully I have a reputation as someone who's willing to help out people with problems. Today's Gem #1 is something I learned when I tried to help someone with a problem that I THOUGHT was going to be pretty easy to solve, but it turned out that I needed to learn some new tricks before I could be on any help at all.
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Setting up a JLCooper Eclipse
By Steve Hullfish | October 02, 2008
The latest in my series of color correction video tutorials is a brief departure from art to get to the nuts and bolts of installing color correction hardware.If you are doing a lot of grading, there is no way to keep up with the "real" colorists doing work on dedicated systems like da Vinci unless you invest in a "panel" or manual user interface for Color or Color Finesse (or any of the other "software" color correctors).The main two companies manufacturing units like these are Tangent Devices and JLCooper. They actually have very similar install setups. When I wrote "The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction," I went around the country and sat in on sessions with the nation's top colorists. For those sessions, I brought along a Tangent Devices CP-100. That unit was about $25,000. If you're not quite that flush with cash (and who is today?) then you could try their CP-200BK or various combinations of smaller Tangent Devices boards that are meant to work together. Each of those boards runs about $6000. Tangent is also soon to release their even lower-cost unit, The Wave.JL Cooper has the Eclipse CX, which is about $7,000 which delivers about the same functionality of the $25,000 CP-100. Originally, I was not a big JLCooper fan. The first versions I tried seemed rough and almost gritty. But the Eclipse I've been using for the last few months is a huge improvement over previous versions. The unit is good looking, feels solid and is a pleasure to work on. Also, with the new software it can be configured by the user to get the most efficiency from the way you like to work. I'll try to get into that user customization of the JLCooper in another tutorial soon. But first, I'd like to show you how easy it is to get set-up and working with a new unit, fresh out of the box. You should be able to have this up and running in about the time it takes to watch this tutorial, especially if you have someone who knows computer networking. If you don't have someone like that, don't panic. This video will show you everything you need to know.This video tutorial is on the upcoming revised edition of "Color Correction for Video" which I originally wrote with Jaime Fowler in 2002. The release will be out in December of this year on Focal Press. Please subscribe to the RSS feed to receive future video tutorials in this series.
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Power User Tips and Hidden Gems from the Very Fine Manual
By Steve Hullfish | September 25, 2008
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 me2) rediscover things that I'd forgotten3) remind myself about things that I use all the time, but others might not have discovered.
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Balance color using Advanced Tab of Apple Color
By Steve Hullfish | September 22, 2008
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.
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Hidden Power User Secrets for Avid Media Composer
By Steve Hullfish | September 22, 2008
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.)
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Balancing color casts using the color wheels in Apple Color
By Steve Hullfish | September 15, 2008
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.
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6 more great Avid power user tips
By Steve Hullfish | September 11, 2008
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.
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A guided tour of Apple Color's Primary In Room
By Steve Hullfish | September 08, 2008
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!
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Tips for Avid Editors
By Steve Hullfish | September 04, 2008
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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FCC ruling may cause havoc for wireless mic users
By Steve Hullfish | July 24, 2008
Chances are good that if you own a production company, or freelance as a sound recordist, you've invested in a few pricey wireless mics. Most of these mics operate on the unused local bands in the VHF or UHF spectrum, However, with the move to digital television the FCC has reallocated some of that frequency range to emergency radio use and has begun testing the possibility of using some of the so called "TV white space" for use with proposed "unlicensed devices" such as wireless broadband services, wireless multimedia systems, and PDAs. Currently, these products operate in other radio frequency bands, such as 2.4 GHz. The FCC is looking at allowing the use of these unlicensed devices starting on February 17, 2009 when the switch to DTV occurs.
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Are software scopes too good to be true?
By Steve Hullfish | July 11, 2008
So I'm finally continuing my earlier article on software versus hardware scopes, with a shootout of the top software scope sets. The scopes I'm using for the shoot out include the Hamlet VidScope and Adobe OnLocation on the PC, Divergent Media's ScopeBox on the Mac and the dedicated Tektronix WFM7120. I also added Synthetic Aperture's Test Gear, which is a scope set exclusively for After Effects.
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Automatic Music Composition software for video editors
By Steve Hullfish | July 09, 2008
Ireland is a land of fantastic music and musicians. I've been to Doolin, in County Clare and heard brilliant traditional musicians there. And for those with more of a rocker sensibility, you've got Irish exports U2, Van Morrison and the Cranberries.The latest musical export from Ireland is a software application called Muse from a company called Abaltat, which means "ability" in Gaelic. This software supposedly analyzes a Quicktime movie and creates a custom musical composition based on the video content. I think most people would be highly skeptical that this software can actually compose a meaningful tune based on actually analyzing the true content of a video program. Its similar to the disbelief that any video editor has about the programs that I've heard of that will take your video footage and make a great edit from the raw bits and pieces.
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standalone scopes vs. software scopes vs. built in scopes - What you need to know!
By Steve Hullfish | May 31, 2008
Let's face it: if I didn't start with a title like that, there's no way you'd read a story about waveform monitors. They're boring! They're not creative! They're all the same! They're not sexy. They're not RED.Scopes are important if you're doing real work that gets duplicated, broadcast or color corrected. They can be used "creatively." They can help you do better work. Without them, all that other cool gear is worthless.So WHY are scopes the "Rodney Dangerfield" of the production and post production world? Some of it is probably fear of not understanding them. Some is probably that they don't really seem to DO anything other than cost a lot of money. Some is probably because they have a lot of unrealized potential.
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DBA Createasphere