User Manual

Suggestions for Using Shot Match
It’s certainly possible to select every clip in a scene and use Shot Match, and the results may be
wonderful depending on what kind of visuals are in the scene. However, for other scenes, this
may not always get you the best results.
Be strategic about which clips you select to match to one another. Don’t use Shot Match on
shots that you know already have the same lighting, as you’ll risk having Shot Match make a
minor adjustment that may actually make the shots match less well. Think of Shot Match as a
tool for matching clips that look different.
It can also help to use Shot Match an angle at a time, and to do a small test before committing
yourself to matching a bunch of clips. For example, suppose you have a scene consisting of
angle A (an over of character 1), angle B (an over of character 2), and angle C (a master shot),
and you want to match the scene entire scene to angle C since it has the best lighting. First,
match one shot from angle B to your favorite shot from angle C, and see how you like the result.
If it’s good, then go ahead and select every angle B clip and match them to angle C, before
moving on to test one shot from angle A. This way, if there’s ever an angle that doesn’t work
well using Shot Match, you can try matching it to one of the other angles in the scene that
you’ve already matched to see if you get a better result.
NOTE: Keep in mind that, since each clip in the Timeline has its own undo stack, you
cannot undo a shot match operation applied to multiple clips all at once.
Beware of clips with large areas of color in the background that don’t match any of the other
angles in a scene, such as a shot-reverse-shot sequence that cuts between someone standing
in a back yard and someone standing against a purple wall. You can try it to see what happens,
but this kind of color distribution can often throw Shot Match results off.
Broadcast Safe
If you regularly deliver to restrictive QC standards, then you can enable Broadcast Safe in the
Color Management panel of the Project Settings while you grade to limit both the luma and
chroma of the video signal to one of three levels of acceptable overshoots and undershoots.
The Broadcast Safe parameters in the Color Management panel of the Project Settings
 Broadcast safe IRE (mV) levels: A drop-down menu for choosing one of three levels
of aggressiveness when limiting the signal. Choose the range that corresponds to your
QC requirements. The options are “–20 - 120” (permissive), “–10 - 110” (conservative),
and “0 - 100” (very conservative).
 Make Broadcast Safe: A checkbox that turns broadcast safe limiting on and off.
NOTE: The clipping imposed by Broadcast Safe itself does not have an inherently soft
roll-off. For best results, Broadcast Safe should be used in conjunction with the Soft
Clip controls in the Color page, or a Soft Clip LUT (for more information see Chapter 3,
“System and User Preferences”).
Chapter – 116 Automated Grading Commands and Imported Grades 2640