Working with video

Luttie grades video the same way it grades a photo: you build the look on a frame, and the same settings are applied to every frame when you export.

Loading a clip

Drop an MP4, MOV or WEBM file onto the canvas, or choose it with Upload your photo. The clip opens on the canvas, on a frame about a second in. Every panel works exactly as it does on a photo.

Playing the clip with your grade

A player sits under the canvas when a clip is open.

• Play runs the clip with your grade applied, live. Nothing is rendered and nothing is uploaded, so it needs no account. Change a slider while it plays and the picture changes with it.
• The slider moves through the clip. Stop on any frame to grade against it.
• When you stop, that frame becomes the picture on the canvas, so exporting an image, the before and after view and AI Grade all use it.

Playback is muted, and it is a preview: on a slow computer or a very large clip it may skip frames. The exported clip is always rendered frame by frame.

If a clip won't open, the browser can't decode it. MP4 with H.264 works everywhere. Some phone and camera formats, HEVC among them, only play in certain browsers.

Exporting the graded clip

Once a video is loaded, video controls appear under Export in the left sidebar.

• Preview is free with an account: it renders the first 6 seconds with a watermark, as a file you can download.
• Export Pro renders the whole clip without a watermark. It keeps the source frame rate and audio.

In Chrome and Edge, Export asks where to save the file and writes it as it renders, so clips of any length work. In browsers without that ability, exports are capped at 2 minutes.

See Exporting video for details.

Grading footage for another editor

For anything longer or already in an editing timeline, it's usually better to export the look as a LUT and apply it in your editor. Grade a representative frame, then use Export LUT Pro. See Using LUTs in other apps.

For log footage from Sony, Canon, Nikon, Apple or DJI cameras, see Log footage.