Avid Editing Workshop 3 - Professional Toolkit

In this worship we looked into more specific editing skills such as colour correction and multi camera editing.

Firstly we looked at how to open up the colour correction panel. Once you have a sequence down on the timeline you can then colour correct which should always be done last anyway. You click on the windows tab at the top and then go into workspace and then click on the colour correction option like so:

This will bring up the colour correction panel with in the composition and source windows which looks like this:

When you are in colour correction mode like this you won't be able to edit anything else only the colour. To be able to go back to editing you need to exit the colour correction mode. You should also always colour correct along your timeline left to right to make it all match up and look the same.

The centre window out of the three display windows in this mode is your current shot you are looking at on your timeline. You should always keep this here as you will be able to see which shot your effecting and how. However with eh other windows you can click on the tab in the top left corner and change what you are looking at like I am doing here:

For example I can look at many different things such as the vectroscope or the RGBproposer which all show you different types of colouring levels etc which are useful when colour correcting.

I am going to look at how you use these different tools now. Firstly I used Y-Waveform which gives you a chart showing you the range of colours and their luminosity. You should always make sure these tones on this graph stay between 0 to 100. If they go outside of these it will show up as white on the graph and this means they aren't legal values:

The best way to change where these lines sit in the graph therefore eliminating the white (illegal range) is to use the master sliders. There sliders are called-
Master Gain, This effects the highlights.
Master Gamma, This effects the midtones.
Master Setup, This effects the lowlights/dark tones.
Here is what these sliders look like within the colour correction window:

Another useful thing to know when your colour correcting is that you can tick and uptick the HSL box in the top right of this colour correction window and it will let you click between viewing the original and viewing your colour corrected version.

Another Tool you can use while colour correcting is the RGB Parade Graph which lets you compare the Red, Green and Blue tones within your video. It looks like this:

The way you can use this to help you get even colour tones is to make each colour graph look the same by changing the values for each colour. The easiest way to change the colour values I find is to play with the curves in the colour correction window like so:

The best way to think about it is to look at the RGB Parade graph and pick point by point on each colour graph where you need to make them match more. So for example you can see in the previous image that the blue tones are sat much higher up so to drop these you would take the bottom of the blue curve line and pull it down. When you let go you should see that the RGB Parade Graph has changed. You keep playing like this till the graph matches up however never go with this alone. You should always follow your eyes and how you want the film to look too. For example if you desire a more contrasted image you can make more of an S curve with your colour curves and this create a much more contrasted image. It is just down to what you want to achieve in the end.

Here is the RGB Parade again now that I have made the colours tones match one another:

Something else useful to keep in mind is that if you ever need to reset a value within the colour correction window just hold alt and click the value box and it will res set it for you.

Another tool we looked at was the Vectorscope which helps with things such as the saturation especially when it comes to skin tone. The Vectorscope looks like this:

This helps you see how even your image is because if you have balanced it properly it should sit in the middle of the Circle on the cross which mine essentially is.

A really important thing to remember when editing colour is to pay attention to your Client Monitor which displays it properly. Sometimes when editing you can get so focused on the Graphs and the computer screen you forget to pay attention to how it actually looks on a real screen.

When you have a lot of clips which are filmed the same and you want to colour correct them all in the same way you can save your effects from one and apply this to all. You do this by firstly creating a bin called 'colour corrections' or something along these lines were you can save these settings. Then when you have finished editing the clip and have the colour settings you want to save you drag the colour correction symbol which appears in the top right corner of the colour correction window and looks like a colourful stripes box. You drag this over to your colour corrections bin and drop it in there. It will save your setting in there and you can rename them however you want. You then can drag these settings out this bin at any time and onto a clip which you want these colour settings to effect. You can tell on your timeline when a clip has had colour correction settings applied to it because this same symbol comes up above it on the timeline like so:

You can sometimes find that if you colour correct an image which is meant to fade up from black that colour correcting it can actually effect the black at the beginning before it fades up to which looks very unprofessional. A way to get around this happening is to apply the fade up or dissolve effect etc to the colour correction effect as well so it know to fade up from basic black whatever the case.

To help understand these principle with the graphs a bit more we looked at colours bars and how these look on these graphs. It gives you a basic understanding of where the basic colours sit on this graph like so:

Its hard to see but on the right RGB Graph you can see the basic colour lines and where they should sit.

There is also another way that you can save colour settings into a bucket but this is only temporary. When your on the colour settings you like and want to save hold alt and click on one of the buttons that says C1 or C2 or C3 etc and it saves these setting to that button (bucket) which you can apply at any time however like I said this is only temporary because as soon as you come out the project they are gone. Thats why it is usually safer to save them into a bin.


Next we look at a different technique which was how to edit a multi camera piece. We were given 5 clips which were all shot at the same time but different angles of a man singing and playing guitar. We began by clicking on each clip and finding the exact frame where the clapper board shut and mark this frame with a red marker and an in point (I) . Like this:

Once I had done this to each of the 5 clips I went into the bin where I had accessed them from and clicked on all 5 at the same time by clicking shift while selecting them. I then right clicked on them and it came up with option to group clips. You click on group clips and then you must choose how you want to group them. Because I had gone through putting Markers and In points at the same time on each I clicked on 'Group by In Points' and then OK:

This then creates a new clip in this bin which is essentially all those clips synced up and grouped together. You can't do anything with them just yet until you have the right tools set up though.
To get yourself set up to edit with this synced group of clips you go to 'Tools' then 'Command Palette' and then go to the tab which says 'M Camp' and find the button in this list which is called a '9 Split Button'. The icon for this is a little grid:

You then drag this button and apply it to the source window wherever you have space so that this button is now accessible within the source window. You also need to apply this same button to your tool bar with in the timeline as well as this lets you edit using it. Once you have applied this button/tool into the two places needed you can exit off the Command Palette.
You then need to open up the synced grouped clip you created earlier into the source window. When its open in the source window you then need to click the '9 split' button you added to the source window. What this does is makes it so you can see all 5 clips playing side by side synced up like so:

This is really useful anyway but to edit with this as a tool you open this same set of grouped images/clip in the timeline as well. Once this clip is on the timeline you use the '9 split' button you added to the tool kit on your timeline and click this while the clip is selected. This now means you can play your clip through on the timeline and using the 9 split source window you can click from one camera to another while live watching and it saves this cuts onto the timeline. This means you are editing just simply by watching and clicking on a new camera angle when you feel right:





























You can see which clip you have selected at a time because the green like comes up under it in the source window as you can see in the above image. This makes editing Multi-camera pieces like this so much easier and quicker.

I have this workshop to be very interesting because not only has it taught me more about using Avid as an editing Programme but it has also helped me develop my general editing skills with things like colour correction techniques.