Working with the Clip Grid

The Clip Grid gives you a visual overview of all the clips in your sequence, making it easy to move between shots, select the current clip, and manage your grading workflow. It presents clips as thumbnails in timeline order and provides controls to filter, organize, and adjust how clips are displayed, so you can quickly focus on the clips you want to work on without losing context of the sequence.

Clip Grid overview

The video clips in the currently open sequence appear as thumbnails in the Clip Grid, which has been designed as a fast way to navigate among the clips in your sequence you need to grade, to copy and paste grades among clips, and do other sequence and grade management tasks that you’ll learn about later. Clips on hidden or disabled tracks will be hidden by default (you can unhide them with the Show Hidden Clips button).

Be aware that clips on locked tracks cannot be adjusted until those tracks are unlocked.

The current clip

The current clip that intersects the playhead is always highlighted in white, indicating it’s targeted by any color adjustment you make while in Color mode. If you select another thumbnail, that will become the current clip, and the playhead will automatically move to that clip’s first frame. If you drag the playhead along the time ruler of the Color monitor while it’s in Sequence mode, the current clip will update in real time to keep up with the new clips that intersect the playhead as it moves.

Flattened thumbnail arrangement

Each clip’s thumbnail is presented from left to right, in sequence timecode order by default. All clips in all video tracks are flattened into a single row, with superimposed clips that start at the same timecode and are arranged from top to bottom in the timeline appearing as thumbnails in the Clip Grid from left to right.

If you select a thumbnail in the Clip Grid and its image doesn’t appear in the Color monitor, it may be because it’s underneath another clip, in which case you can turn on Solo mode in the Color monitor to disable compositing and ignore superimposed clips so you can monitor only the clip you’ve selected.

Clip Grid options

Two controls at the bottom left let you filter and sort the clips in the Clip Grid. This is provided as a temporary organizational tool only and has no lasting effect on the order of clips in your sequence.

The Show Metadata button at the bottom right lets you turn on or off the metadata that identifies each clip, while right-clicking this control lets you choose which metadata is displayed.

The hamburger menu next to the Sequence tab at the top of the clip grid also lets you choose whether the Clip Grid shows the first, middle, or last frame of the clips in the sequence they represent.

Clip Grid layout

By default, the Clip Grid is horizontally oriented in single row mode. In this mode, resizing the Clip Grid panel also changes the thumbnails' size.

Selecting the Grid View button lets you display multiple rows and columns of thumbnails, so you can view more clips in your sequence at once. In this mode, a grid size slider lets you adjust thumbnail size to show more or fewer thumbnails in the same area.

The Clip Grid may also be positioned vertically, which can be considerably more space-efficient on smaller displays or when you want to show many more thumbnails in grid mode. The second default Color workspace features this arrangement.

Color Controls overview

The Color Controls panel is the heart of Color mode. It’s where you organize and use all the color tools to modify the selected clip in the Clip Grid.

The Color Controls panel displays all operations applied to the currently selected clip in the Clip Grid. By default, these appear in a row at the top of the Color Controls panel (in vertical layouts these appear in a column instead). Operations appear at different levels of a grade. Clip operations allow for specific changes made to a particular clip in a sequence, while Sequence operations let you apply a single set of operations to the entire sequence at once. Custom groups let you apply a set of operations to any arbitrary group of clips you make.

Operations are selectable, and each operation is equivalent to a layer or node of color tool modifications. It’s possible to have multiple instances of different kinds of operations applied to different sets of clips, as you’ll learn later. Right now, we’re focused on Clip operations that make specific tweaks only to the current clip.

Selecting an operation reveals its color controls beneath it. Selecting the default Adjust 1 operation exposes its Color & Contrast, Color Shift, and Texture controls. These controls are intended to be a scalpel for making specific adjustments to address issues and make creative improvements.

In general, each group of controls is arranged from left to right in order of their usefulness in most situations. If you’re not sure where to start, beginning at the left with Contrast and working your way to the right until the image looks improved is a great strategy, and you may not even need to use the Shift or Texture controls when all you need is a simple tweak to color and contrast.

Making precision adjustments

If you want to make much more precise adjustments with any control:

• Press and hold Option to slow down the rate of adjustment for any control you’re dragging.

Dragging Color Controls both vertically and horizontally

It’s vital to understand that many of these controls can be adjusted in multiple directions. In particular, 2D controls let you drag vertically to adjust one parameter, and/or horizontally to adjust another related but separate parameter.

This style of control takes a few minutes to get used to, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll find you can make incredibly fluid and artistic adjustments that previously would have required bouncing back and forth between two separate sliders. This is explained in detail on a control-by-control basis in later sections, but for now, here are three examples to illustrate how useful 2D controls can be:

• The Contrast control lets you increase or decrease the difference between the brightest and the darkest parts of the image by dragging up and down, while you can change the pivot point of the contrast adjustment by dragging left or right. Changing the pivot point either extends changes to the highlights while shortening changes to the shadows, or shortens changes to the highlights while extending changes made to the shadows. By adjusting contrast at the same time as you change the pivot point, you can immediately see how both adjustments work together as you experiment with different variations.
• The Saturation, Hue, and Lum Shift controls let you edit different properties of a color by dragging vertically, while you widen and narrow the range of hues being affected by dragging horizontally. This makes it easy to zero in on the perfect adjustment with a single fluid movement.
• The Sharpness control lets you sharpen the image by dragging vertically, while simultaneously changing the threshold to include or omit small to medium details by dragging horizontally, so that a single adjustment can result in incredibly targeted sharpening.

Constraining 2D controls

Each 2D control has a “dead zone” (much like video game controls) that makes it possible to make a constrained vertical adjustment without accidentally introducing minute changes to the horizontal control (or vice versa). These dead zones don’t prevent you from making horizontal and vertical adjustments together; pushing through them is easy. However, they’re there to prevent the unsteadiness of your hand from adding unwanted changes.

If you absolutely need to constrain a control to vertical or horizontal movement:

• Press and hold Shift and move in the direction you want to adjust to constrain a 2D control you’re dragging.

Heads Up Displays (HUDs)

Every color control has a corresponding heads-up display (HUD) that shows you information as you make an adjustment, intended to guide you. These consist of:

• A specific type of video scope or image representation relating to the current tool being used, which lets you best evaluate how your adjustment is affecting the image
• The numeric representation of the affected parameters
• A set of superimposed graphical indicators that illustrate what part of the video scope is changing, to help you understand how much of an adjustment you’re making and where it’s impacting the image.
• Controls that let you adjust two different parameters may show multiple indicators

These appear contextually whenever you select a control to latch into it and begin an adjustment, providing specific analysis and information about what you’re doing. These HUDs disappear when you’re finished and select out of the control to unlatch it, so you can evaluate the resulting image without distractions. This is meant to free you from the potential distraction of a complete set of always-on video scopes that take up screen real estate and shrink the monitored image, making it harder to focus on the image.

Color & Contrast controls overview

The Color & Contrast controls let you adjust your clips in very specific ways. These are in Global mode by default, with the Contrast, Exposure, Temperature, Balance, and Saturation controls in the top row affecting the entire image, which is what you want for making quick adjustments. In fact, it’s always best to begin adjusting your image using the global controls first; you’ll achieve the nicest looking results.

The zone buttons are below the Color & Contrast controls, in a second row. Selecting a zone lets you target the Exposure, Temperature, Balance, and Saturation controls at specific areas of image tonality (brightness or shadow). Shadow and Highlight zones are designed as ways to fine-tune your initial global adjustments, which is why they always, always should come second.

When you first select a clip, it’s automatically analyzed to determine how to assign highlight and shadow zones, giving you flexibility to fine-tune the image.

• The Global button targets the Color & Contrast controls at the entire image.
• The Shadow zone button targets just the parts of the image that fall into shadow, while leaving the brightest highlights alone.
• The Highlight zone button targets just the parts of the image that fall into highlight, while leaving the darkest shadows alone.
• You can use commands in the Plus (+) menu to add additional Shadow or Highlight zones if you want to make even more specific adjustments to narrower regions of darker shadows or lighter highlights.

Saturation, Hue, and Lum Shift controls overview

The Shift controls let you change the Saturation, Hue, or Luminance of specific hues in the image. Dragging vertically lets you increase or decrease saturation, change the hue, or brighten or darken the luminance of the currently selected hue. Dragging horizontally widens or narrows the range of neighboring hues that are affected by this adjustment.

Whenever the playhead crosses into a new clip, the first frame the playhead intersects is analyzed to determine how many significant hues there are in that frame. These hues are saved for that clip and appear in a row underneath the Shift controls, and the first hue that’s detected is automatically selected for adjustment by the above controls. Selecting any of these hue patches targets that hue for adjustment.

If you don’t see the hue you want to adjust, you can use the eyedropper to select the hue you need from the Monitor, or you can move the playhead to another frame and use commands in the Plus (+) menu to re-analyze a new set of hues at that frame, or load one of two preset sets of hue patches.

Texture controls overview

The Texture and Sharpness controls provide different ways to sharpen or soften textures of different granularity in an image. They default to “simple” adjustment modes, but each can be expanded to support multi-slider adjustments for even more precise control.

Texture lets you soften or sharpen medium-sized details of the image by dragging vertically (there is no horizontal adjustment for Texture). Selecting the Sliders button below Texture switches this control to a set of five vertical sliders, each of which adjusts an independent band of image texture from fine to coarse. Using these sliders, you can soften some bands of texture while sharpening others, to create extremely specific adjustments.

Sharpness lets you create a greater impression of sharpness throughout the image by dragging vertically to increase sharpening. Dragging horizontally adjusts the threshold at which image detail is sharpened, letting you omit smaller or medium details from this effect to sharpen the edges of larger details. Selecting the Sliders button underneath Sharpness switches this control to three vertical sliders that let you independently adjust the Amount, Radius, and Threshold of the unsharp mask effect.

Color monitor overview

The Color monitor has evolved to be more space-efficient by moving the customizable transport control buttons to be in line with the other controls above the time ruler, as well as exposing additional controls to aid in different color adjustment workflows. The result is an even larger viewing area for your sequence, and a greater ability to focus on as much or as little of the sequence as you want to, as you work.

Sequence or Clip mode

This button lets you toggle between Sequence mode and Clip mode, controlling how much of the sequence is navigated via the time ruler. The loop button’s functionality depends on which mode you’re in:

• Sequence mode lets you navigate the entire sequence duration in the scrubber and is good for quickly navigating and playing through the entire program. Loop only loops the entire program unless you’ve set In and Out points.
• Clip mode limits the time ruler to the clip’s duration, and loop plays the clip back in a loop, so you can focus on it when making tricky adjustments.

Solo mode

Solo mode suspends compositing effects and ignores superimposed clips appearing in tracks above the currently selected clip so that you may cleanly monitor clips that are obscured by other clips at the position of the playhead. This lets you make color adjustments to individual clips in a multi-clip composite without distractions from the other clips.

Next or Ppevious clip

While in Edit mode, Next/Previous edit moves to the next or previous edit. In Color mode, Next/Previous clip (also available by pressing Up or Down arrow) selects the next or previous clip in the Clip Grid, making it available for color adjustment. This is a fast way of navigating the clips in the Clip Grid without needing to select around using the pointer.

Composite or Color Channel monitoring

It’s often useful to examine the contents of specific color channels when troubleshooting image artifacts or noise. For this reason, a dedicated menu lets you switch among the available color and alpha channels of the current clip being monitored, or the Composite mode which shows the overall image.

RGBA Channels

An additional menu lets you choose to monitor all color channels composited (the default) or to view only the individual monochrome R, G, B, or A channels. This is useful when you want to troubleshoot whether or not an artifact or noise is more pronounced on a particular channel.