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Phoenix Preparing Your File For Grading - Quickstart Guide

 04 – Preparing your file for Grading 

With a Composition created and a movie file inserted on the timeline, let’s use our Scene Detect to find the cuts; just click on the “Scene Detect” button to the right of the Transport controls (fig.20)

fig.20 

Make sure you have turned on the track selector for the track you're going to be scene detecting; the button is on the left side of the video track, right after the Track Lock button.

 

                                                          Track Selection Off

                                                          Track Selection On

The analysis will start and cuts will be created automatically. The progress info will be shown right above the Transport Controls while it’s running (fig.21).  

fig.21 

When analysis is done, you can check your cuts using the Up arrow to go to the previous shot, Down arrow to go to the next shot, and Control+Down arrow to go to the last frame of a shot. If a cut was not detected, go to the cut point using the Left and Right arrows to move frame by frame and press “C” on your keyboard to create a cut; if you need to delete a misplaced cut press ALT+C to join the cuts back.

With the scene detection done and cuts prepared, let’s take a look at the Effects menu and the Color Layers on the left side of the Timeline. Here you can start your grade using the Base Layer. 

Go to a shot you want to grade and the Base CC Layer will open with several tools available. Double-click on Lift Gamma Gain and the Effect Tab will open automatically (fig.22). If press Control+F5 you can do a split view moving the Effect tab below the timeline (fig.23)

Effect Tab full view (fig.22)

Split view Timeline and Effect Tab (fig.23)

The tool selected will stay orange until you double-click on another tool. You can use as many tools as you want on every single layer. If you want to add another CC layer, just click on the “Create CC layer” button above the Effects section on the lower left side of the screen (fig.24)

Fig.24 

You can create as many CC layers as you want, and you can easily rename them; to rename a CC layer, select it and press F2 on your keyboard, type the new name and press Enter (fig.25) 

fig.25

If you want to add any effects as an Input FX, click on the dropdown menu, select the DVO tool or effect you’d like to use and click on the “Add Selected FX” button right above the “Add CC Layer” button. This will affect the shot before any of the color tool adjustments. 

If you want to apply an effect either after or in between grade layers use the ”Add FX Layer” button  . You can also click and drag any layers to change their position in the stack. 

fig.26 

On the left side of the screen, we have tools for comparing shots, turning on masks, and many others. To compare grades, let’s save a note first. Click on the Mems button, then click on the Notes button. Park on the shot you want to save a note, then click on the “Save Note” button ; a note will appear on the left side. 

Click on the note and the layers you created will be shown on the top right-side of the interface; here, you can select specific layers and input FX to copy to different shots (fig.27)

fig.27 

To copy the grade, go to a different shot on the timeline, make sure no layers are selected and click on the “Rec” button; if you have any layers selected it will only copy those layers. Input FX layers are never copied automatically, they need to be selected to avoid losing any work and caches previously done. 

To compare the grade from a saved note against a different shot select a saved note from the “Mems” window, move to a different shot on the timeline and click on the “Viewer compare mode” button on the lower right side of the interface or use the shortcut F6; next to it you can also change the type of compare mode by clicking on the dropdown menu or use the shortcut Shift+F6 to cycle thru the different modes (fig.28) 

fig.28 

We can now go to each cut and create your looks, adding as many CC and FX layers as you need, and easily comparing your grades to achieve the look and feel needed for the project.

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