What is going on, everyone?
It is, Mike.
Welcome back to the channel.
Today we're going to talk about tools that make
tech videos better.
Now, when I first seen this, I thought this was probably one
of the silliest things in the world.
One hundred and twenty dollars for essentially a colored
sheet of paper.
Well, this is probably one of the few purchases that you
essentially need if you want to do any type of color correction
and color balancing.
And you want to make your videos look really good because
you could see there's a lot of colors in this video.
You want to make sure that they're accurate, as can be,
and they don't shift the colors of your video.
So in today's video, I'm going to tell you how to use this X-
Rite Color Checker.
I'm going to show you how I use it inside of Final Cut Pro,
and at the end, we'll talk about how you could use it in
your next video.
Let's get started.
When I was first introduced to this, I thought it was
something that I didn't need.
$120 for the X-Rite Color Checker and you can buy and any
number of websites Amazon B and H, and I put links down in
the description below in case you want to find it.
But this is something that you want to make sure that you have
with you on every video shoot, because what you're going to do
essentially is you're going to put it next to the talent.
You're going to put in front of your face like this and you're
going to make sure that the all of the colors are showing in
clearly inside the image, which we know that it is.
Now, if I had a second camera today, I would actually
turn towards that second camera and I would make sure that,
you know, my face is shown in that second camera.
And then I would turn back here.
Now let's bring this footage over to Final Cut Pro and show
you how it works.
So I've imported all of my clips into Final Cut here,
and I've actually synchronized one of the clips, and here I'm
just going to skim the clip and mute my audio.
System audio.
If we look here, go to fill.
So I'm going to put my marker here just so I know where I'm
working inside of the clip, and I'm going to cut this clip
on both sides.
And what I'm going to do first is I'm going to apply a mask.
And that mask is going to allow me to selectively identify what
I want to match in that clip.
So in Final Cut, you got a video.
It's called the effect.
It's called effects.
Then you go to mask.
Here we are.
And then I do draw mask.
So I'm going to add the draw mask right on top.
Now, once I've added the mask to it, I'm going to add my
control points, but I actually want to work in a little bit
larger of a screen.
So I'm going go to my workspaces and I've set up a
default workspace for color and white balance.
I have one for when I have one screen.
I want you just using my computer by itself and
the other one.
I'm using two monitors, which is going to be this
one right here.
So I have that screen pulled up.
I'm going to minimize my timeline and I basically put my
control points around this square.
It doesn't need to be perfect, but it does need to be around
this rectangle, sorry rectangle.
And if you could see here, if I'm looking at
this rectangle, that's the only thing that's shown
in the picture.
So to these five colors six colors, excuse me.
And those actually map to the colors that are here in
this vectorscope.
So the vector scope is a visual representation of the colors
and their intensity that map to your image that you're looking
at on your screen.
Now you could see here the yellow,
not neccessarily dead center of the yellow line.
Neither is the or the red is actually pretty good,
but the magenta, the magenta is way off, the blue is way off,
cyan is way off.
And then there's this line right here, which is called the
the skin tone line.
And everyone's skin tone.
Whether it's you, me or anybody else is going to fall on that
skin tone line.
Now that is not used right now, but I'll show you
how we use that.
I'm going to click on the color inspector and then I'm going to
go to this no corrections.
I'm a go to hue saturation curves.
And what a hue saturation curve is.
It allows me to get the dropper and I say, I want to find it
this color, which is cyan along the curve.
Now, if I look at the cyan, cyan is right here,
so it's dramatically off,
let's just kind of show you.
Now you could really see how far off each of
these colors are.
So if I go to cyan and raise the saturation, if I pull it,
so I push it down.
It then gets perfectly calibrated with the middle
of the cyan.
Now you don't have to necessarily be in the middle of
the square here, but you could be anywhere, I would say,
in the general vicinity, and you should be OK.
And now you see that color change.
Now if I were to pull this down.
See how it's going from cyan colored and it's
getting more blue.
And if I keep going down, it is going to get more purple and
then it's soon start impacting the other colors in there.
So I'm going to just make sure it's perfectly straight
along that line.
If I wanted to, I could make this window bigger so I could
have a little bit more as a granularity.
I'm going to pull down these curves here.
Now.
I'm going to go to magenta because magenta is way off.
All right.
So there's magenta and it's spot on.
Same thing.
I got out of control point on each shade of magenta just to
make sure that I'm not impacting the other colors.
And while I'm doing this,
I'm actually on my keyboard.
I'm holding down the command key and then using my mouse to
push up or push down on this.
That's how you're going to change it.
Yellow is not too bad, but still off.
Pull down like that.
OK, you don't really have to do anything.
They're just going to go down the line.
Clicking here,
red red is not too bad.
All right.
I go green, green is pretty good.
And this is just a reflection of my environment.
So all these colors were present in the environment and
they change the way that these color chips showed.W
Now I'm going to change blue and a pull that there.
So now you can see each of these colors are all
perfectly straight, but they're way oversaturated.
So if I were to go to the effects panel and then turn off
the mask, you could see like I'm way, way,
way oversaturated, completely oversaturated.
Looks like I've been sitting in the sun all day long or I've
been fake baking for, you know, six months straight.
Now I'm going to go back and turn on the draw mask.
And I'm going to go back to my color correction panel, and I'm
a turn down the saturation to what it was beforehand.
And now you could see here each of these colors you could see
the saturation here is a little bit strong for cyan, a little
bit strong for yellow.
It really depends on your personal preference.
You could change that if you wanted to, depending on the
look that you're trying to go for.
But what am I do next is I'm going to click on the drop mask
and then I'm gonna make sure that I'm white balanced.
Now that's the other benefit of having this this chart here.
You could use this to white balance your your scene.
So now, instead of clicking Automaticamente,
click on white balance and click on this very
bottom square, which is the whitest part in the
color checker card.
Now let's go to this go to draw mask now if I turn this off.
Let's go so we're not zoomed at my head now.
I turn that off.
Let's see what the progression looks like.
So here we see this is the, you know, the room.
First thing I would do is do the color balance color.
And then you see a lot of the color comes in that would do
the hue saturation curves.
And now the colors map correctly.
And you could see the change here in the vector scope.
Before After,
before, after.
And this vector scope is a visual representation of this.
So this strong purple line should be this TV here in the
back and if I turn this off.
Yeah, you can see how it changes the color purple here.
This red should be somewhere.
Maybe my head, if I'm not mistaken.
Yes.
Look, here's color balanced.
Color matched, not.
Big, big difference.
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Now back to the edit.
When we show you next is going to be the skin tone line.
I'm going to copy my effects from that scene to
the next scene.
I'm at paste them.
And now I know that this scene is the same.
I actually need to go up a little bit farther back.
Commands Z to go backwards here.
.
I'm going to paste it all the way in.
What I'm doing here is I'm looking for a place where my
face is shown.
So this would be a good one.
So I'm in focus and there now.
I'm going to go to the draw, ask them to turn it back on.
You see, I've seen the draw mask doesn't have my
face like that.
I'm a reset it and I'm basically just going to draw
the control points around my face.
It doesn't need to be perfect, but it does need to be around
your face and what's in focus.
Now we see here, here's the skincare line skincare line.
The skin tone line?
skin tone.
I always forget that no skin tone indicator lets the correct
name and that you see here I am on the line, obviously,
because everyone is, but I'm more of going towards the red.
Now I'm going to add another layer of hue
saturation curves, and I do the same medicine dropper.
Go to window, workspaces go to.
And if you're not comfortable looking at yourself
this closely, well, you'll need to get used to it.
And we see here now.
Here's that color in that picture.
I'm going to pull that closer to get this.
Pull this down.
We're looking at nice and bright, nice and big.
Now I've I moved these lines, that line gets narrower and you
really want to be as narrow of a line as possible because as
this line fans out more, the colors are less accurate
for this, for your skin tone.
And obviously, you don't want to have red skin or blue skin
if you see here.
If I take this marker here, I pull down the red.
You'll look at my lips, they start changing colors.
So that's definitely not right.
So I want to make it narrow as possible, and then I'm going
to continue to adjust these.
So if I pull this way, I'm yellow.
I want that line to be as narrow as possible,
but not any narrower.
Go back to the scene, go to the draw mask and turn it off.
You could see that the red in my cheeks, which isn't
necessarily incorrect, but it is an effect of the camera,
So now I have that looking correct.
If I wanted to maybe add just a little more saturation to
my face, I would go here and I would go from the hue
versus Hue, which is, you know, mapping up a few
colors and go to the saturation.
I click in roughly the same place and I could adjust the
saturation of each of these colors individually.
So I can go real high.
Or I could just do it kind of incrementally.
You could see here.
I think I just might have changed this a little bit.
There we go.
I can leave this alone, and I can actually just change the
situation of all the colors which may or may not be what
you're looking for, depending on your scene and
what you're shooting for.
Hit command zero.
That should bring you back to this very first.
And if I go to my effects panel, if I turn off
the draw mask and I look at the scene.
So here it is with zero effects on it.
I've color balanced it.
I've color corrected it.
And now I've color corrected my skin tone as well.
And if you go from here to here.
Big difference.
Big, big difference.
That is why the X-Rirw Color Checker is going to be
critical for you.
If you are shooting videos, color correcting videos.
You want to make sure that you have people that are
using this because.
They're going to make sure that you don't waste your time
setting up lights, setting up camera.
You know, if you're an independent creator, takes you
a long time to do all that anyways.
But if you have a team that costs a lot of money, so you
want to make sure that you are doing this as much as possible
and as consistently as possible, so your clips
look consistent, you're using the same attention to detail in
each of those clips.
Let me know if you have any questions below that's going to
do it for me today.
My name is Mike.
This is tech 24-7 TV.
Guys.
I will talk to you in the next one.