How to make auto color consistent over multiple shots? deselect temperature and tint?

[Guest]

As its not possible to copy the color corrections in premiere with a simple shortcut, I thought I could give auto color a try to speed up grading in very fast workflows (daily broadcast). To test it out I just added the LUT on the creative-page so it does not blow out my highlights and then added the auto color to ALL of my shots. It lowers the blacks to 0 and extends the highlights so I could work with it just to add enough contrast BUT it also changes temperature and tint - and it does very inconsistently. When I have a talking head interview it adds a completely different temperature and tint on the first shot than on the second one - which is essentially just a crop-in from the same shot. So suddenly the face turns orage or green. Is there a way to tell it that those shots belong together like in other applications as colourlab.ai - or can I somehow make autocolor just affect brightness and leave colour untouched?

[R Neil Haugen]

There are several ways to copy/paste effects like Lumetri onto a TON of clips simultaneously.

Including of course, getting one corrected, copy (and cut) the effect on the clip, select all the appropriate clips in a bin. Ctrl/V. Or of course, drag/drop from the Effects panel to selected clips in a bin.

On a sequence, copy one clip, select others, right-click "paste attributes", and de-select all but say that Lumetri.

Or go to the Effects panel, "copy" an effect, select a bunch of other clips, paste.

[Guest]

Thanks a lot Neil - and a happy new year! I already tried shortcuts to speed things up. 

Select Previous Clip	Cmd Up
Copy	Cmd C
Select Next Clip	Cmd Down
Paste Attributes	Optn Cmd V

But its far from ideal. When you have to change the colour of a sequence of six clips for example you now have to remove lumetri from all clips again as copying doesnt update but applies a second lumetri effect. So you have to go into every clip, remove the effect manually and start again. Or you have to click remove attributes and select all checkboxes but lumetri.. and then again paste attributes- deselect all but lumetri... its really not a quick workaround for colour correction. Plus you have to add the LUT in the creative tab every time..

I am afraid thats not a very useful workflow.

So I was hoping for the new auto color correct feature thats adverties as the new ai functionality. But it doesnt seem to be very intelligent. Is there any way to just auto correct exposure like in AVID? Or can I remove just lumetri color attributes and keep lumetri exposure parameters?

[Guest]

And I dont need to copy ONE correction to ALL of my clips, its mostly the correction of the PREVIOUS clip that I need for the next one. Like its done in AVID or Resolve..

[R Neil Haugen]

Autocorrect in software seems like auto-WB in camera ... it might work sorta at times, but never close enough I would waste time on it. Certainly doesn't in Resolve either. And as someone who works for/with/teaches pro colorists, mostly based in Resolve, I've years of experience "over there".

There are alot of things about Lumetri that aren't ... well, optimal for speed work, nor particularly suited for targeted work. SpeedGrade was of course vastly superior. I actually still have that on my old desktop btw. Though it doesn't 'link' to the past-2015 versions of Premiere. 

There you could apply a grade to or copy a grade from up to 9 clips either way of the current selected one. As you note you wish you could do in Lumetri. And no, you can't copy a part of an effect to paste ... you can only copy the whole effect.

Ah well ...

To get the most out of Lumetri, you need to learn that you do not work in Lumetri in the same patterns as you do in Resolve or SpeedGrade. It's a different beast in so many ways.

That said, there are roughly "analagous" processes to what you do elsewhere. But you have to plan and group the work differently. If you do, it is both rather more capable than thought and can be pretty fast. 

I also suggest for any serious color work either amateur or pro, a good 'control surface' is even more essential in Lumetri than Resolve or SpeedGrade. I run a full Tangent Elements panel on my desktop, which can be mapped for TONS of things all across Premiere. Audio track mixing? Oh, heck yes! Volume and pan those knobs, sweet! Sizing, rotating, poisitioning any screen element? Sure thing! For example.

In color the control panel allows you to work multiple controls simultaneously, which you cannot do with a mouse. I have mine mapped so I can not only work at times 3-4 controls at the same time, they are from different tabs of Lumetri! And this ability is needed to get targeted, confined corrections. Even the Ripple unit, which I use with my laptop, is a great help.

I do agree, that with all its limitations, Lumetri is not "generally" good for shotmatching. Until, of course, you do it in the way Lumetri is made to work. First things first, right?

Chip charts are crucial in Lumetri, for any camera used. But not as people normally teach using them! You need to get the basics of matching or 'normalizing' your clips taken care of from the chip chart. WB, tonal shape, and hues of each camera close to similar using the chip chart. Notice I said 'close to similar'.  

We're not going for 'perfect', just to get things closer together. If your Reds aren't close to each other for hue center, no shotmatching in Lumetri can fix it. Don't waste time ... just get things close.

For example, do NOT set the color boxes to the prescribed boxes near the outer limit of the Vectorscope. Do NOT go there! That's way too far. 

Set the WB from the chip chart neutrals. You can use either the Basic WB or the Creative Tab's "Tint" controls, I often use the Tint ... 'highlight' sets your typical white balancs, bring the pivot slider down to about 25% from the left, and the Shadow now cleans up any shadow cast.

Set your grays to what kind of tonal response you want.

Now use Hue v Hue to set each color chip to the vector for it, then Hue v Sat to set each to about halfway between center and the outer box. NO FARTHER! You'll get artifacting or weird gunk going farther out.

Now ... apply that Lumetri in the bin to every clip from that camera. Do this once for each camera, and now ... your timeline should be dramatically closer to matched. If some scene is dramatically "off", you may need a second pass for that set of clips. I normally don't.

Plus, you now have the clips close enough you can match them in Lumetri. Basically, this is like unto setting a proper IDT in Resolve in the Media Pool.

And once done, you can go into those Lumetri effects, which are on the Source effects tab of the ECP, and adjust WB as needed per clip ... if needed. I shoot well enough controlled I don't need to finetune WB that much per cllip.

That's the kind of thinking needed in Lumetri. Figure out how to apply bulk corrections to groups of clips first. Then, and only then! ... do shotmatching down a sequence.

Another wise choice ... stack named Lumetri effects on a clip, doing different things in each instance. That allows you to cut and replace part of the grade, without touching other things.

I've spent enough months working on shotmatching, year after year, to know it just has too many  limitations.

But ... approached from the front end, so to speak, rather than the timeline ... well, I can do stuff I'm told Lumetri can't possibly do. And right fast, also.

It's just a very different mental process and series of steps.

[Guest]

Thanks thats a lot of steps. 🙂 Im just working on VERY fast turnarounds.. sometimes dailies, sometimes quick broadcast documentaries which have no budget for color correction at all. So for dailies its about getting the three-minute-piece out with maybe a quick correction of two or three minutes in total. I was just looking for a quick way to adjust exposure. I know Avid symphony has the option to just tune auto black, auto white or auto exposure/contrast without color correction - and easy shortcuts to save and paste corrections and do copy corrections from previous clips.

WB is mostly fine for broadcast on those clips, but then I guess I will try manually. I once had a tangent ripple wich worked fine but wasnt compatible to some other software back then. I went from premiere to resolve to final cut to avid and now back to premiere. In FCPx I used the trackpad with commandpost to simulate sliders via touch.. which worked somehow. But if you want to be quick the fastest way is always copy and paste of grades that are very similar.

[R Neil Haugen]

I hear you clearly! And know exactly what you'd like to get. I'll give some further advice or suggestions.

And before beginning, one thing I've learned from so long working with pro colorists, who must grade at times over 250 shots a day ... is that a few minutes spent organizing the work and evaluating the media at hand saves a TON of time, hassles, and mistakes down the road.

Because the best way to waste time in color correction is to jump in without an overview.

So go to the bins, Icon view if not Freeform view, get large thumbs. Scrub through some 'representative' clips just in the bin. You're not studying the clips, just running them in front of your eyeballs to see what's there. Fast scrubbing.

There will be patterns there, and if one camera is clearly recognizable from the other/s, then ... any change that makes that camera blend in more, applied to all of that camera, will save time & hassle.

Again, quick bulk-applied changes rather than clip by clip.

You're wanting to get a quick way to go one by one. I'm telling you, this is the long way home. Find bulk changes to get the most done in one fell swoop. Rather than working every clip of a 150 clip sequence, touch all by changing say 6. And bulk applying the work to the rest.

Now for how to work the tools within Lumetri, to get something useful from auto-color and auto-match.

First, for the 'auto' color to work even closely with another clip, you have to have apples to apples. So quickly scrubbing through clips, probably in the Icon or Freeform view in the bin, finding a similar frame to the previous clip, then dropping a marker on the frames to use from each clip ... doesn't take much time but often gets much better results.

Then to work your corrections on the sequence, start with your first marker, hit 'auto' color, maybe do a quick touch of a couple other controls, skip to the next marker. Rinse & repeat down the sequence.

Same with the "auto-match" color in the Lumetri Color Wheels tab. Just using the first frame of a clip is probably not the best one to match from or to. So again, drop markers, say for a pretty decent face moderate closeup. Or some other thing you have quite a bit of, that will be the same. Consistency of images compared is the key.

This time, go into Comparison mode, set the frame of the clip that you want to match to on the Reference side, and then go marker to marker down the sequence hitting auto-match. Do a quick trim to taste if needed, then on to the next marker/auto-match.

I've had some folks think that choosing a frame to mark would take too long. It certainly shouldn't! It ain't rocket science! You just scrub through, looking for whatever you know will be similar, drop a marker. Immediately jump to the next clip, rinse & repeat.

Don't worry about a "precise" match, just get a reasonable similarity between the two frames. Shouldn't take but a few seconds a clip. Not even more than 10 seconds per clip once you get used to it.

And that chip chart thing? It sounds like it adds time! 

But in reality, once you've done it a bit, it cuts time dramatically. You're not trying to match precise hues or tones, just getting the hues and tones between cameras a lot closer, and as fast as possible. And once you've done that, 85% of your matching work is done.

And the remainder goes both a lot faster and a lot more effectively.

As to why this helps, you need to understand: none of the auto-tools in Premiere or Resolve change the Hues to match anything. They're pretty general movmements of the Color wheels is all, general R channel against G channel against B channel. Pretty "gross" changes.

But the vast majority of what 'looks' different ... is down to 1) tonal things, one lighter/darker than another in much or all of the image and 2) the hues do not match.

Color wheels don't help much, if at all, if the red of one camera is closer to magenta in the other one.

Anymore, I try to eliminate shotmatching as much as possible. Because that is a slow and painful slog in Lumetri.

But doing bulk stuff ... once you understand how/why ... that gets fast and furious.

You note you don't have a lot of time, well, who does, right? Taking the route that gets you 85% of the way there in a few minutes probably gets the whole job done. You don't have the time for "perfection".

[Guest]

Wow, thanks for the detailed explanation. 🙂

I will definitely try a chip chart next time. Maybe it helps to match footage from all cameras (FX3 in slog3, ZV1 and A7II in Cine2 color profile plus Drone/Actioncam).

I liked the concept of colourlab.ai, which could help me with some of the annoying work - coorect skin tones, overall brightness, applying luts, match shots in scene - but its not perfect and the workflow in FCPx destroyed all my audio effects work when reimporting. So I was hoping premieres auto features could give me similar results without annoying roundtripping. 

By the way, you dont need to scrup to a frame to use Auto Color, it analyzes the whole clip on the timeline: "Auto Color uses frame sampling to apply corrections across the whole clip, not just the current frame."

Auto Color (adobe.com)

[R Neil Haugen]

Getting a chip chart shot for each cam, and neutralizing the hues once ... that takes a few minutes. But after that, drag/drop boom. One for each camera, and maybe one for more daylight WB, one for tungsten/indoor WB if you prefer.

So, the autocolor now looks across the clip? That's not what it did in the past, as far as any of the devs ever told me. So thanks for posting about that. I never found it very useful so I've not used it much in a couple years now.

I've talked with Dado about ColourLab ... that is an interesting product. I know some who find it quite useful, also.

[Peter Reef]

Wow, thanks Neil. thats a great post!

So would you recommend to apply auto color first and then apply auto match per scene to a "master clip" on top? Thus leaving the tone sliders in the basic correction tag working against the color wheels of the "match clip" function? Could be a very fast way to do it!

And does it make sense to additionally grade the individual clips in the panel as auto colour settings will override them?

Another issue:

My slog3 clips are displayed in extended dynamic range in the project thumbnail view, so all highlights are totally blown out. 

Only when loaded in the source monitor the colour processing is set to "gang to active sequence color management" and converted to proper rec709. 

How can I get my gallery clips get displayed the same way too?

[R Neil Haugen]

You can do it hard, or you can do it easy. Which now is typically best.

Display Color Management, auto detect log and auto tonemapping all on.

Sequence set to Rec.709 and you should be normalized to linear display space and ready to edit. Apply effects, grade , and export. 

IF you have apple to a similar apple, the auto match can give a good start. So pick both the reference frame and new clip frame carefully . 

[Guest]

Once again about premiere autocolor. Is it somehow possible to program a script that activates auto color with a keyboard shortcut and then immediately resets temperature and tint. So I just get auto-exposure to get started?

[R Neil Haugen]

For scripting, @Bruce Bullis is the staffer with knowledge.

[Bruce Bullis]

There's no API to do that. 

[Guest]

Thats a pity! I am still wondering who needs an auto colour AI tool that changes your WB on EVERY shot..

[R Neil Haugen]

Auto color is not auto match. It sounds like you want to combine the two?

[Guest]

I would like to combine the idea of both. Select clips that belong together and then auto color those to get a consistent video. But Auto match works in the lumetri "colour wheels and match" panel and auto color in the "basic correction" so I think you cannot override one with the other or combine them.

All in all I would just need an easy way to just copy the color correction from one clip to all the others in the same scene via shortcut and then apply auto exposure to all of them. As mostly the same camera in the same scene is used there is no need for auto colour on every clip.  

[R Neil Haugen]

I've lamented the loss of SpeedGrade so many times over the years.

As a full-on grading app, it was built with up to 4X monitor, and an array of capabilites to copy/paste grades or selected parts of grades from one clip to another ... either before or after the clip selected ... by keyboard shorts.

And what you would prefer is more to the capabilities we once had ... nearly in tears here, it's ... sad. Sigh.

Not that I miss nor grieve the loss of SpeedGrade and the AWESOME Direct LInk process it had daily ... nor wish that Ae's "Dynamic Link" was nearly as spiffy as the Direct Link process ... .. 😞

[Guest]

Absolutely!!!!!

I guess I will add an adjustment layer for every scene to change WB for all clips in a similar way and then lock it and just correct exposure on every single clip. Maybe I will try to record mouse clicks to click on "auto color" and "reset tint" and map this to a button - it should work as long as the color panel stays in the exact same position.