Color Grading and Premiere
 

Hello, what would be the best workflow to color-grade a project from Premiere? I have access to Fusion and I am able to make some nice color in there, which I am unable to achieve in Pemiere itself.

But as it is impossible to grade whole movie with single setting, I need to know how to efficiently move the project between Premiere and Fusion, or similar FX program. Do I make the final cut (without transitions, I presume) and export scenes/cuts to image sequences? That would be a mess, wouldn`t it? Or do I color-correct the footage I am working with and then re-link it in Premiere?

Thanks for any info!

If you had After Effects, you could open the Premiere Pro project in After Effects, do your color grading (make sure to set it up for 16bit) and then render out an uncompressed file.

You might have to render out your entire sequence as an uncompressed file or uncompressed image sequence and then import into Fusion and separate each scene out.

I don't know if Automatic Duck has anything to go from Premiere to Fusion. You might try that.

Jim

You could export the whole movie uncompressed. Export an EDL too: it contains timecodes where your cuts are. In AE, you can quickly split clips by entering in timecodes and using the shortcut that splits a layer.

see
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=88535

Not sure about DFusion.

Thank you both. It's a pity that Adobe doesn't have have something like FCP+Color... Importing a longer project to AFX for grading results in almost unmanageable amount of layers. I will sink my teeth into that, though. Thanks again :)

As for the "unmanageable amount of layers," use precomps. Just select several layers and press ctrl (or cmd for MAC)+Shift+C. Type a name for your precomp in the dialog box that pops up and click OK. Now all of those layers are grouped together in a sub composition (or precomp) that appears as only one layer in the master comp. The great thing is that you can still access the individual clips in the precomp and they haven't changed their timing. For example, you could organize a short movie this way: Main comp for entire movie, separate precomps for each scene, and smiler shots also in their own precomps which are located in that scene's precomp. That way you can color correct similar shots all at once by applying the effects to their precomp.

Just FYI, you can also do this using timelines in Premiere - it's a great way to stay organized and, when you bring the project into After Effects, it converts the timelines to precomps.

Thanks Dale! Yes, I use nesting in Premiere all the time, thanks for bringing precomping in AFX to my attention.

I find it easier if you break it up into scenes, and then precomp the scenes into a master comp.

Though when you render, you render each scene individually. If you multiple computers, you can render one scene while grade another scene on your working machine.