MacVideo Forums

Sorry to ask such an obvious question but I have a serious white balance problem with some footage and I was wondering if anyone could explain how to correct it on FCP3 using, I presume the colour correction filter.
Is there a way of showing an area on the shot that should be white and getting FCP to do the adjustments from there?

I would be very very grateful for any advice.

Thanks
Jasper

Jasperus,
That's exactly how to start. Each of the colour correction 'wheels' in the filter has an eye-dropper. You click on that and then click on the area of the picture which you know should be neutral. Try to avoid peak 'whites' if you can but go for the mid tones, the peaks can sometimes skew the result.

You may need to do this for all three wheels (which correspond to black, mid-tone and white in the picture) - but you don't necessarily HAVE to select from mid-tone to correct mid-tone.

I've found the automatics pretty good for pulling in extreme problems - the built-in vectorscope is helpful for flesh tones. When in doubt pull back the correction that FCP has applied (drag the spot that appears on the colour wheel back to the centre).

Phil Ashby

Jasperus,

I've had brilliant results when correcting footage shot indoors under tungsten lighting, which wasn't correctly balanced at the time of shooting, resulting in everything coming out too orange.

Apply a light blue Tint filter to your clip and reduce it to 10%. Somehow it makes it all look OK! Play around with the exact percentage of tint to get it all looking just right.

HTH