Is it possible to make changes over several clips at the same time when color correcting?

Question

Let's say I have 30 clips. The first 10 clips are filmed outside at day, the next 10 clips are filmed outside at night and the last 10 clips are filmed indoors. This means that I want to use three different color corrections (I could of course use more, but let's say this is enough).

One way to do this would be to apply a color correction to one of the clips and then copy and paste this one to all the clips with the same lightning conditions. However, what if you later find out you should have nudged the blacks a little bit more toward the red? Then you have to go in and make individual changes to every single clip. This quickly gets very time consuming.

Is there any way to set global variables that gets applied to several clips at the same time? For example, when programming, one can specify a certain variable, let's say a<=20, use this variable on several places in the code, and then, if one want a to be 25 instead, one only has to change this on one place instead on every place in the code. Can I do something similar in Premiere?

Answer 1

2 ideas for Premiere CC 2015:

1. Apply effects to the source clip instead of just the part on the timeline. If you're targeting clips from more than one camera original, you could nest the camera originals into a sequence, use that sequence as your source, and apply color effects to the source clip. That should populate your changes to one clip to all the rest from that source sequence.
2. Use an adjustment layer to apply the same effect to a series of adjacent clips.

Answer 2

There isn't a way to do it per se but there is an easy workaround:

1. Select all clips with the outdated effect
2. Right click and remove attributes
3. Select the effect you want to update and remove it.
4. Then copy the clip with the updated effect and right click all other clips again to paste attributes.

Answer 3

There is a way to do it in Premiere (at least in CS5) using the "Sequence Embedding/Stacking" capability.

1) Create a master sequence (I usually label this sequence "Name of Scene - Raw") of video from your clips. Put all the clips into the timeline of this sequence. Once you have the timeline/sequence locked 2) Create a new sequence, call it "Name of Scene - Color Corrected" 3) Drag the "Name of Scene - Raw" sequence from your Bin onto the "Name of Scene - Color Corrected" timeline. 4) Now you can apply any effect onto the "Name of Scene - Color Corrected" sequence as you would do an individual clip. This is the method I use to do all types of adjustments to a large number of individual clips at one time.

I don't know what Adobe calls this ability in the help files, but I call it Sequence Embedding or Stacking. You can embed layers of sequences onto other sequences as long as your computer has the horse-power. I never actually embed/stack more than two to three sequences unless I render each of the stacked sequences first.

Answer 4

The only reasonable way in premiere is to nest the footages and use the nested comp to edit. if you open the original footage in the nested comp you can change every bit of the fotage in one go.

The other way is to use davinci resolve, it can do this, and it is amazing.

Answer 5

I think that there is no program (or a script) to lessen the processes involved in adjusting the levels. If I understand you right, I think you can copy the adjusted effect and paste it to other clips. I think there is no "universal" button to change an element in the effect of a clip and applying it to other clips simultaneously. In after effects, this is possible with the parent tool.

Answer 6

As far as I know there isn't a way to do a 'master' color grade that you can edit which will subsequently effect all the clips it's applied to. Best way to do it would be to copy and paste the new grade onto each clip.

Typically, the way you color grade is to go through shot by shot and not move on until you are happy with how it looks and satisfied that it matches the previous shot. If you grade this way there would be no need to apply minor changes on a large scale.