Re: Couple of Questions from a Color Noob...

Question 1, with a single screen, no.

Question 2. You have discovered Key Blur, which is all there is in Apple COLOR. It was a deficiency, as it does not have a dilate/erode modifier, either.

For a better single screen color grading application (Cinema mode) and secondaries with far superior key blur and dilate/erode, you should try DaVinci Resolve (now that COLOR is EOL). You can start out easy with the free Resolve Lite application from BlackMagic -- check to make sure your hardware platform conforms with their requirements. Resolve is a much higher performance grade app and it needs the GPUs and gigaflops to support it.

The round trip from FCP to Resolve does require generating an XML, but in some regards it is better than Apple's Send to... which really just an XML background process anyway. There are also some differences between the two applications as to what they support, do not support, and will cause to freeze/crash.

jPo

"I always pass on free advice -- its never of any use to me" Oscar Wilde.