Motion attributes -> deinterlace Bug. A SOLUTION !

A lot of you will already be familiar with the Color 1.0.2 bug whereby if you have certain motion attributes on your interlaced or PsF clips in FCP (e.g. scale, rotation, aspect ratio) then your footage will get deinterlaced (and badly) by Color during the round-trip.

Until now the solution (for me at least) has been to avoid having any motion attributes on your clips before sending to Color ... meaning one of the following

- leaving all your resizes/ARCs/etc until after the grade (not ideal in terms of viewings, etc)

- making a duplicate of the sequence before sending to Color, removing all motion attributes, then copying motion attributes from the backup to the final sequence. (tedious if you have lots of shots with different motion attributes)

- "baking in" all motion attributes to quicktimes before sending to Color. (not ideal as it reduces flexibility and can degrade your material)

Prompted by a production which consisted of about two thirds ARC'd material, I worked out the following solution which avoids any of the above (please note, it is *not* a solution to the speed-change issue, or to Color's inability to handle stills, those still need to be handled whichever way works for you)

1. On finishing your edit prepare your sequence(s) for Color as normal, but leave all scales/rotations/distorts/etc intact.

2. Export an XML of your sequence.

3. Open the XML in Color.

4. Select the first clip, go the the Pan&Scan tab of the geometry room and reset geometry.

5. "Copy to all" in the Geometry room and scroll through your clips to confirm that the geometries have been reset across the sequence (clips that formerly had scales/etc on will still have the red border untill ...)

6. Save the project, close and reopen. Scanning through the sequence, all clips should now have white borders in the P&S tab of the Geometry Room.

7. Do your grade (if you prefer, you can grade between steps 3 & 4)

8. Render out your grade. Because there are no P&S attributes in the Geometry Room, your grades should be left "unharmed" by the deinterlace bug.

9. Before going back to FCP, select "File > Reconform" in Color and choose your original XML file. This will re-apply all your motion attributes in the geometry room.

10. Now send your sequence back to FCP (or export XML and import to FCP). You should now have a sequence in Final Cut with all your motion attributes, but with unmolested fields.

I've only tested this on a 2 min sequence for now, but I'm going to try it on the next Color grade I do. If anyone wishes to check it out and post their results in the meantime that would be great.