I'm a bit confused about color correcting. Is it recommended to use something like Magic Bullet on 7D footage or can I just use the footage straight out of the camera?

Is coloring in post production a personal choice or is it recommended?

I think everything in editing is personal choice, but of course you'll get different answers from different people.

Color correction & grading are just ways of getting your video to look how you want it. If you can shoot exactly what you want you may not need to change anything. And some people like to shoot as neutral as possible and tweak in post. Your choice.

If you want a news or documentary look, you can get that out of the camera. If you want a modern film look or other creative look, you have no choice but to color correct.

Is Magic Bullet Looks the best way to go if i dont know anything about Final Cut's Color program?

everything depends on your budget, what sort of time you have.

if you have the time/money, it's worth grading, if not, get it in camera.

As for grading, I'd like to hear the thoughts of it all as well

Is Magic Bullet Looks the best way to go if i dont know anything about Final Cut's Color program?

Best way? No. Will it work? Probably. There was a reason "Color" used to cost $5k and Magic bullet is a few hundred dollars. And there are a lot of color correction / grading programs out there at lots of budgets.

Whenever I hear someone evoke the phrase "best", it always makes me uneasy. I've been doing this stuff for 20+ years and I have yet to see anything I can definitely say is "best" for anything under all circumstances.

Yes, I'd recommend color correcting.

No, I wouldn't recommend Magic Bullit. At least, not until you have a basic understanding of color correction.

Color correction is a vital part of the production process. You should learn everything you can about it. But use the tools you currently have in your NLE before spending on other software.

There are lots of options for color correcting or color grading. Coming from a still photography background, I know that my Canon 7D and my Nikon D300 have a slight magenta cast, for still photography it is a simple color correction in Photoshop by adding green. You can correct a cast by adding it's opposite color.

With video it is a little more difficult, unlike shooting in RAW with a still photograph that you can play around with the color temperature slider. Most video editing programs have a color correction filter, I use Vegas and I can adjust skin tones and take out the magenta cast easily. Where you have mixed lighting it is more difficult.

Magic Bullet is a good solution for quick repeatable options. It's like using a preset, if the preset looks good applied to your footage, great if not then try another preset and so on. The most difficult thing is that digital cameras are not good with footage straight out of the camera, unless you take the time to play around with the picture styles.Most footage needs a bit of pop added to it and this might just be a slight tone curve or levels adjustment, which can go a long way to making your footage appear more saturated.

Here is a tutorial on another way of doing things from Michael DeVowe: Canon 7D | Norman Pogson Filmmaker: Color Correction Tutorial (http://normanpogson.blogspot.com/2010/11/color-correction-tutorial.html)

if you have the time/money, it's worth grading, if not, get it in camera.



By in camera, do you mean using manual settings?

I would say 99% of your footage will need color correcting unless you are able to set up the 7D for each scene which is almost impossible.

Magic Bullit is not for this. It is for adding effects and grading to a particular style. It lacks a 3-Way color correcting tool and all the necessary histograms, waveforms and parades in RGB that tell you what is happening not only to color but to the blacks and whites (and grays in between).
All corrections start by setting the blacks and whites (specular highlight) ... this is not Bullits function.

So you need to understand the 3-Way color correcting tool no matter what software you use. FCP has a decent 3-Way with good scopes (waveform, histogram) - this is the essential tool to use. Color program does a better job with the 3 - Way tool (much better) but it is a steep learning curve. It also has secondary 3-Way color correction as well as the primary ... very accurate.

To sum up: learn to use the 3-way color corrector first in FCP - Magic Bullit comes much later in the process.

I've messed around with Magic Bullet before, and in all honesty it seems kinda gimmicky. I'm glad I'm not wasting money on it if not too many people recommend it. Are there any online tutorials or books anyone would recommend for learning color correction on Final Cut?

I've messed around with Magic Bullet before, and in all honesty it seems kinda gimmicky. I'm glad I'm not wasting money on it if not too many people recommend it. Are there any online tutorials or books anyone would recommend for learning color correction on Final Cut?


I guess you could say its kind of "gimmicky", if all your interested in doing is adding one of their presets, and that's it. I have the whole Magic Bullet Suite 10, and I love it. Mainly for Colorista II, but looks it cool, it gives you a preset to start with, then you can tweak until you cant stand looking at it anymore, and make the preset something more your own.

In the near future, I plan on diving in head first, and learning Apple Color, but until then Colorista II is a great product.

Is Magic Bullet Looks the best way to go if i dont know anything about Final Cut's Color program?

Color is about as close to a real grading program as most of us will need. I have gotten my feet wet and it's found it's a really deep program. Since I already wear a bunch of hats (well, all of them in my company) I chose not to go full tilt into it as most of my deliverables are for web or DVD. The basic 3-way CC in FCP can handle the stuff I need to do. Mainly matching cameras or scenes. If I get into film or a fiction TV series, things will change as that kind of grading adds to the "art" of the show. MB is a much easier way to get certain looks but the presets really stick out now that everyone uses them. I don't really think of MB as a color corrector but as a look generator. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I've found "dumbing down" the color settings on the 7D helps a lot when matching to my XF or any camcorder. My friends 5D is even more saturated which I will be tweaking before the next shoot we do together.

Alone the DSLRs look fantastic but not when trying to do a multicam edit!

I guess you could say its kind of "gimmicky", if all your interested in doing is adding one of their presets, and that's it. I have the whole Magic Bullet Suite 10, and I love it. Mainly for Colorista II, but looks it cool, it gives you a preset to start with, then you can tweak until you cant stand looking at it anymore, and make the preset something more your own.

In the near future, I plan on diving in head first, and learning Apple Color, but until then Colorista II is a great product.

I think my best bet is to use Magic Bullet for now until i become familiar with Color.

Magic Bullit is not for this. It is for adding effects and grading to a particular style. It lacks a 3-Way color correcting tool and all the necessary histograms, waveforms and parades in RGB that tell you what is happening not only to color but to the blacks and whites (and grays in between).
All corrections start by setting the blacks and whites (specular highlight) ... this is not Bullits function.

I have to disagree here. Magic bullet most certainly does have a 3-way color corrector. In fact, it has several. Additionally, if you understand how to use scopes, the RGB parade is nearly all you need besides a vectorscope which sadly it does lack.

In the beginning with the 7D i was setting the camera colour as neutral as possible so i could create my look in post but found it didn't take to grading that well. After about three shoots i changed my tune. The camera makes beautiful images but there's not much latitude to work with.

Now i get my colour in camera, and the colour grades much much better.

in Vegas i use curves and 3 way corrector most of the time and then use magic bullet or Cineforms First Light to tune in a look; although to clarify, with the use of "looks" most of the image is there in the original camera color PLUS the Sony curves and 3 way corrector, and magic bullet is for slight, but overall changes, making sure to apply the "look" on a shot by shot basis, for the most part any way. And some times i pop into Colorista in AE for more complicated corrections, such as the same scene shot over different days with different weather, lighting etc. Colorista has masks which you can do in Vegas but in Colorista its part of the workflow.

But Sonys or any NLEs curves and 3 ways color correctors are enough for most jobs...we're not grading million dollar productions are we?

The most important thing is having some kind of calibrated monitor...its doesn't have to be a 3000$ FSI or Sony monitor, but just a calibrated broadcast monitor. I have JVC HMC150 SD CRT and a Panasonic TH42PD12 flat panel that's 720P, buts it's enough. Both are very affordable: 400 and about 750 respectively.

Use Lynda.com for all your color correction training. It saved me a ton of money and I prefer watching videos over reading text. In the Final Cut Pro training there is a section for Color Correction which is easy to learn the basics. It will make your footage look 50% better with a few simple clicks. Then watch the training section on Color Correction. You will see then how it is better than Final Cut Pro's 3-Way corrector. Don't bother with Magic Bullet. Your just cheating yourself and wasting your time.

I'm not a fan of Kelby Training series but it is another option for you too.

Start watching the tutorials and you'll be color correcting in now time.

Use Lynda.com for all your color correction training. It saved me a ton of money and I prefer watching videos over reading text. In the Final Cut Pro training there is a section for Color Correction which is easy to learn the basics. It will make your footage look 50% better with a few simple clicks. Then watch the training section on Color Correction. You will see then how it is better than Final Cut Pro's 3-Way corrector.

I'm not a fan of Kelby Training series but it is another option for you too.

Start watching the tutorials and you'll be color correcting in now time.

Is Magic Bullet Looks the best way to go if i dont know anything about Final Cut's Color program?

Instead of looking at Magic Bullet Looks checkout at Colorista II instead. It can do much of what most people do in Color, including Primary, Secondary and Master sections with shapes, masks etc. The nice thing is it all works within FCP and you don't need to collapse sequences, render motion files etc or go outside of FCP. There are no round tripping issues and it's all part of the FCP project instead of having to archive two projects. If you need to come back to a project 6 months later it's all self contained :)

I also like Colorista II and use it within After Effects.

Our workflow is to edit in Vegas with Cineform AVIs, note the files used in the scene, import the original MOVs into AE and perform all noise reduction, color correction, and film grain processes in AE. We then render to individual Cineform AVIs with the same names as the originals. By swapping media folders, the Vegas project is now using the CC'd files, which were created in a single pass.

We could use Premiere for editing, but we own more copies of Vegas and are pretty quick with it. Maybe we'll try using Premiere on our next project...

I'm wondering if any of you could comment on the capabilities of (cs5) Premiere's color correctors and how well (or poorly) they compare to Color and/or Colorista.

just make sure that if you decide to color correct you set up the camera to record the most latitude possible. By that I mean turn down the contrast and sharpness and whatever comes right below it in the menu ;)
I'd take the time to be more specific but there's lots of info on it and everybody has their own preference.

I posted a picture of something I CC'd. Usually I don't CC but the footage right out of the camera (top) was horrible. With a few clicks with FCP's 3-way colour corrector, I was able to get an image I was satisfied with (bottom).

Like others have said, check out some tutorial videos. Here's one that helped me. It's old (FCP3!) but uses the same interface and principles as FCP7. DVcreators.network | Blog | How does the FCP Color Corrector work? (http://www.dvcreators.net/how-does-the-fcp-color-corrector-work/)

So I definitely think it's worth learning the 3-way first. Magic Bullet is kinda the lazy way but it works for some people especially if you can learn to tweak things and not just use presets. But if you learn Color, you can probably achieve any look you want.

Magic Bullet is kinda the lazy way but it works for some people especially if you can learn to tweak things and not just use presets. But if you learn Color, you can probably achieve any look you want.

I hate hearing this statement. There is nothing "lazy" about using Magic Bullet. It has three different 3-way color corrector tools, and dozens of other tools to allow very effective coloring. It's a gross misrepresentation to think that just because you can open it and use a preset, that it's not powerful, and it's used by lazy people.

I recently did some color work for a friend who was editing a spot for on online TV show. He has MB and so do I so rather than me sending him back finished video files, I simply sent him the looks configuration files for his show. He got a very fast education in how I do color, and was surprised to see that I was building chains of 5-12 effects per clip to get the looks I wanted. A touch if fill here, and subtle vignette there, a light diagonal gradient in the corner, a little tweak to the color of light coming in the window, etc.

There are many tools available to people who wish to do color grading. Properly used MB Looks can be very powerful and quite effective. Colorista 2 as well. But I'd really like to emphasize that just because someone uses MB Looks doesn't make them lazy.

Of course, that's why I added that bit at the end ("works if you tweak things" etc) but perhaps I should have emphasized that more. I'm definitely no colorist so take my words with a grain of salt :p

Perrone and others, if you don't mind a bit of a side topic, can you share if there are differences in the color correcting tools in Magic Bullet vs. [Apple] Color? Or can they pretty much achieve the same thing?

Perrone and others, if you don't mind a bit of a side topic, can you share if there are differences in the color correcting tools in Magic Bullet vs. [Apple] Color? Or can they pretty much achieve the same thing?

Well first, there is a difference between color *correction* and color grading. Correction is usually concerned with getting the image to look the way it looked to the eye (or intended to look to the eye) when it was shot. Whites are white, blacks are black, color casts are removed, etc.

Color grading is an artistic endeavor that is designed to elicit emotion or feeling from looking at a shot. Looking at a photograph and a water color of the same scene will give a different perspective of that scene...

To that end. tools make primarily for one, may not be all that great at the other. Some tools are really excellent at both. The Red Giant tools for instance like Colorista and MB Looks are a good example. Colorista has some excellent color correction tools. Things that used to be available only in high end tools like Color. But these things have moved down market. MB Looks lacks some of these tools, notably masking.

Tools like DaVinci, Color, Colorista, etc., allow you to use masking tools to work on small portions of a frame at a time. For instance if you want to change the color of light coming in a window in the corner of a shot, you mask off everything but that, change the colors, and set tracking points, and your colors stay locked to that window. MB Looks has no such tool. However, you can fake it with a lot more work by doing things like adding a subtle color gradient on that window and manipulating it's position in the home application.

I am not conversant with Color so I cannot give a good comparison to other tools. I've seen it's screens, and it's highlighted in one of my color correction/grading books, so I have an idea of it's tools, but not enough to give intelligent comparisons.

Many people are familiar with the 3-way color corrector, and while it's an important tool of color correction, it's simply one of dozens of tools a colorist will use to get a look. Curves is far more powerful but need to be used with much more care. Other tools like masking, gradients, diffusion, vignettes, spot and fill colors, color contrasts, etc., are all parts of the toolbox.

Truly learning to use the scopes is a major overlooked portion of using these apps as well. I can do practically everything with the RGB parade and the vectorscope.

I'll be curious to hear the thoughts of others on your question.