Apple Color 1.0 - Manual (Page 75)

Chapter 4 Importing and Managing Projects and Media 75
Moving Projects Between Final Cut Pro and Color
One of the easiest ways of importing a project is to send a Final Cut Pro sequence to
Color using one of two XML-based workflows. This section discusses how to prepare
your projects in Final Cut Pro and how to send them using XML.
For more general information on Final Cut Pro to Color round-trip workflows, see
“
Video Finishing Workflows Using Final Cut Pro ” on page 39.
Before You Export Your Final Cut Pro Project
Whether you’re working on your own project, or preparing a client’s project in advance
of a Color grading session, you should take some time to prepare the Final Cut Pro
sequence you’ll be sending in order to ensure the best results and smoothest workflow.
Here are some recommended steps.
Move Clips That Aren’t Being Composited to Track V1 in the Timeline
Editors often use multiple tracks of video to assemble scenes, taking advantage of the
track ordering rules in Final Cut Pro to determine which clips are currently visible. It’s
generally much faster and easier to navigate and work on a project that has all its clips
on a single video track. It’s recommended that you move all video clips that aren’t
being superimposed as part of a compositing operation down to track V1.
Divide Your Project into Reels
Projects with large numbers of edit points can slow down your performance in Color.
As a general rule of thumb, projects that you’ll be sending to Color should have no
more then 200 edit points for optimal performance.
To maximize performance while you work, you should consider breaking longform
projects down into approximately 22-minute reels prior to sending them to Color. The
length is arbitrary, but 22 minutes is the standard length of a film reel, and is a suitable
length unless your project has a large number of edits, in which case you should
consider dividing your program into shorter segments (some editors prefer to work
with10-minute segments). Each segment should begin and end at a good cut point,
such as the In point of the first shot or the Out point of the last shot of a scene, or the
end of the last frame of a fade to black.
Important: As you’re creating your reels, make sure you don’t accidentally omit any
frames in between each reel.
Export Self-Contained QuickTime Files for Effect Clips You Want to Color Correct
Color is incapable of either displaying or working with any of the following types of
clips:
 Generators
 Motion projects
 LiveType projects