Color 2 - The Grading Tools: HSL Curves and Their Looks, Chroma-Only NR for Banding, Log Wheels Over Wheels, Adjustment Clips, Colour Keyframes, Motion Blur, Temporal and Spatial NR, Deflicker for Prop Shadows, and Matching Drones by Waveform and Vectorscope

Four curves across the top: luma/RGB, hue vs hue, hue vs saturation, hue vs lightness. Two boundary points plus a middle point isolate a range; the colour buttons along the bottom drop a safe set of three per colour; a histogram overlay shows how much of each hue is present (find the sky peak); click a colour in the viewer for a tight three-point set; Hue Rotate for fine hue moves. Big hue-vs-lightness moves band on 8-bit and smooth skies. Recolour an object: Alt+S, click it on hue vs hue, drag; a tracked mask cleans spill. Looks: pop = saturation and lightness together (either alone looks wrong); golden-hour greens toward yellow; teal blues, then lower their saturation; desaturated greens (+ darker on hue vs luma); teal-and-orange - yellows/greens toward orange with more saturation, watching the vectorscope, desaturating what would look unnatural; colour contrast between neighbours (yellow vs orange nudged apart); fix a LUT's colour on a node before the LUT; dramatic sky - cyan and blue buttons pulled down, lifted toward purple if the clouds go muddy.

Heavy grading, hue vs luma especially, separates those blocks - banding in the sky. Fix: Shift+S for a node BEFORE the hue-vs-luma node; Motion Effects > Temporal NR > Frames 5; unlink Luma/Chroma under Temporal Threshold, Chroma 100; Spatial NR > unlink, Spatial Chroma 100. Colour is smoothed, luma detail untouched. Ctrl+D to check; mask it to the sky if it hurts elsewhere. Shown on 8-bit D-Cinelike from a Mavic Air 2.

Wheels (first option): Lift/Gamma/Gain overlap - each bleeds into its neighbours. Log (third option): Shadows/Midtones/Highlights stay isolated, with range sliders to widen or narrow them (a higher highlight-range number affects less; a higher shadow number pulls more of the midtones in); a fourth Offset wheel moves everything. He uses Log far more and Curves rather than the little brightness bars. Cast: Highlights toward yellow to neutralise a blue road. The cinematic pass: sky-mask highlights toward magenta/orange (counters DJI's green, mimics golden hour), ground highlights toward orange, blue/teal into the shadows, midtones toward magenta/yellow for warmth.

Adjustment clip: 'a transparent clip that goes above the other clips... and lets you apply effects to whatever clips are under it.' Finish per-clip correction, matching and masks first; Edit page > Effects Library > Toolbox > Effects > Adjustment Clip, stretch it over the timeline; a LUT at 20-30 % if clips are graded, full if not; his example stack - midtone-detail preset, M31 at ~30 %, a Lutify.me LUT, contrast reduced, a highlights node. Alt-click the track's V (turns red) so auto-select stops jumping; keep the adjustment clip on its own track; several clips for several scenes; Transform works on it, motion blur and NR do not. Keyframes: bottom-right panel by the scopes, one Corrector track per node; the diamond keyframes all of a node's parameters, the dropdown picks some (windows, qualifier, NR); playhead to the moment, nudge a value (Shadows 26 then 25) to create a keyframe - e.g. Shadows 25 at the start, ~50 as the drone drops into dark trees; drag the dots to retime, zoom bar for short ranges. Two unrelated complex grades: duplicate the clip exactly on top, trim the top one at the change, cross dissolve 1-2 s; trim to move it.

Motion blur - for when the 180 rule was missed (no ND, changing light, high shutter for slow motion); 24 fps suffers most, 60 barely; Color page > Motion Effects > Motion Blur, about 30 % (25-50), 'Better' estimation costs performance; last node; Playback > Render Cache > Smart to preview. Noise reduction - Temporal for noise that changes between frames (most used), Spatial for static noise (more destructive); Studio only - cheaper than NR plugins 'that cost almost as much as the studio license'; node at the end; Frames 2 (more = slower, little gain), Temporal Threshold 25-30 linked; grainy shots: zoom to 100 %, Frames 2, threshold ~50, switch Motion Estimation to 'Better' if the ground wobbles like an earthquake; still noisy at 100 → Spatial threshold 5-10 and accept lost detail; a one-click TNR preset. Sources of noise: small sensors, high ISO, the Mavic Air 2's HDR mode. Prop shadows - sun through the props flickers bands on the lens; last node, search 'deflicker' in OpenFX, defaults work.

Pick the target: the least-flat profile. Two stages per source clip: brightness/contrast on the waveform, then saturation/hue on the vectorscope, checked by eye. Air 3 HLG → Normal: white point up a touch, shadows down, saturation ~60-67, the (rarely used) Hue slider for a global twist, Temperature cooler, Tint slightly down if whites go magenta. Air 3 D-Log M → Normal: saturation up first, black point down (log lifts shadows), highlights up, Temperature around -200 (D-Log M skews warm), saturation back to ~70, Tint toward green if magenta. Mini 3 Pro D-Cinelike → Air 3 Normal: saturation ~80, highlights and midtones up, shadows down for muddy blacks, Temperature around +400 without losing blue shadows. A global Hue shift moves everything together, so use hue vs hue instead - yellows/greens toward orange, blues/cyans toward purple-blue - and hue vs saturation to finish (cyan down, blue/purple up). Works for drone vs ground camera or phone too.