Scope Out the Scopes & Memorize All the FCP Tools

Bring up the all-important Video Scopes with OPT 9

The scopes are a critical tool for use with any kind of serious color correction work and I believe should, along with the Three Way Color Corrector, be used with every project that leaves your shop. Not cutting for broadcast, you say? Well, if your work will be on a DVD or tape, it will be viewed on a consumer television. If you’re editing for the web, is there any chance at all that your work will wind up on a TV screen? Getting your colors legal–and this mostly refers to luma (chroma is less often an issue) is just part of putting out a clean, professional looking piece. I have seen many projects screened at small film festivals that suffered from a lack of attention to luma and often, this is because the editor saw it only on their computer monitor and “it looked fine there.” The scopes give you a way of “flying by interments” and give you the assurance that your piece will look good in most settings (and if it doesn’t, it will probably be the fault of the projector or TV that’s showing it).

The most valuable of the scopes, in my opinion, is the Waveform Monitor as it gives you a very clear look at where the luminance is for your frame. You’ll find that, when you tweak the blacks, mids and whites with the 3-Way Color Corrector (use the little sliders under the 3 wheels), you’ll get an amazingly clear picture of what you’re doing by watching what happens on the Waveform Monitor. In fact, if you don’t have the scopes up when you’re adjusting color, you’re working with a blindfold on. Do not simply trust the way it looks on your computer monitor (although having a calibrated studio monitor on hand does make a big difference here)! To learn more about color correcting with the 3-way corrector, read Andrew Balis’ excellent treatise here (on Ken stone’s fantastic FCP site).

The Video Scopes Tool rounds out our coverage of the FCP “tools” which also include the Voice Over Tool (OPT 0), the Audio Mixer (OPT 6), the Frame Viewer (OPT 7) and the Quick View Window (OPT 8). Perhaps you need to learn this bank of shortcuts as a group. They all use option and they run from 6 to 9 and zero…

• Audio Mixer (OPT 6) — think “audio sixer”
• Frame Viewer (OPT 7) — think “lucky 7” because you’re lucky to be able to color match those impossible shots!
• Quick View Window (OPT 8) — think of all the render time that this tool ATE up!
• Video Scopes (OPT 9) — think “when I cut fine, I hit OPT 9“
• Voice Over Tool (OPT 0) — think “O” for VO (but of course it’s actually a zero)

Silly? Maybe–but no one has to know about this nonsense except for you and me, right?

UPDATE:  I have since written a post about OPT 5 which toggles the Toolbench window on or off which is useful since they open over the Viewer.