How to colour grade a video

Last updated 2026-08-16 · 5 min read

What is the short version?

Grading is what separates footage that looks recorded from footage that looks made. It is also the part of editing with the least useful vocabulary: most people know what they want when they see it and cannot name it in advance. That is workable here, because the correction loop is a sentence long.

1. Go to Vizard Agent and upload the footage.
2. Say the look in plain words: warm, cool, filmic, natural, high contrast.
3. Look at what comes back and say which way to push. "Warmer" is a complete instruction.

What do you need before you start?

The footage as shot, and one word for the look. Vizard Agent measures the picture before it decides anything, so it does not need you to know the vocabulary — but it cannot know which colours in your frame are load-bearing unless you say.

• The footage as shot. Ungraded is better. Grading something already graded stacks two looks on top of each other.
• A word for the look. Warm, cold, muted, punchy, cinematic. One word does most of the work.
• Anything that must stay true. Brand colours, a product's colour, skin tone. A strong grade moves all three, and Vizard Agent will protect what you name.
• Whether the clips must match. Grading five clips to look like one shoot is a different job from grading each one well, and Vizard Agent treats them differently.

What do you type into Vizard Agent?

A direction plus an exception covers most jobs. If you cannot name a look, describe the problem instead: "too dark and slightly green" is a better prompt than a style word you are not sure about, because Vizard Agent can measure both of those and cannot measure a word you half mean.

Prompt

Variants worth knowing:

• Match clips to each other. "Make these five clips look like they were shot on the same day." Say it explicitly, because Vizard Agent otherwise grades each on its own merits.
• Copy a reference. Upload a still or a clip you like and ask Vizard Agent to match its grade.
• Fix rather than style. "It is too dark and slightly green." A correction is often a better first prompt than a look.

What does Vizard Agent actually do?

Here is the order Vizard Agent worked in on a real grade. The first half is measurement rather than taste, and the middle is the part worth stealing even if you grade by hand: options get tested where testing is nearly free, and only the winner touches the video.

1. Reads the video's technical details.
2. Pulls sample frames from across the clip and builds them into a contact sheet.
3. Looks at the frames, then opens one full size to judge it properly rather than as a thumbnail.
4. Measures resolution, edges and levels instead of relying on eye alone.
5. Tests three grade options on stills, side by side, before touching the video.
6. Applies the chosen grade across the footage.

Step 5 is the method in one line. Trying a grade on a still costs almost nothing; trying it on a whole video costs a render each time, which is why grading by hand is slow.

What does the result look like?

From the run this page is written from, probed on the delivered file: 720x1280, H.264, 50fps, 263.8 seconds, audio preserved. The 50fps came from the source, and Vizard Agent carried it through rather than normalising it to 30 — output specs follow the material and the destination rather than a preset.

Grading changes how the footage looks, not what it captured. A 720p source comes back 720p: better looking, and no sharper than it was.

How long it takes was not measured separately here. Comparable work runs a median of 28 to 38 minutes end to end, and the upper quartile is several times the median. Across all projects the median cost by tier is Flash 47, Pro 55, Max 242, Ultra 263 credits.

When does this not work well?

A grade redistributes the information already in the picture. Where that information was never recorded, Vizard Agent has nothing to work with, and pushing harder makes the problem more visible rather than less. The limits below are all versions of that one fact, and none of them are fixed by asking again more firmly.

• It cannot recover what was clipped. Blown highlights hold no detail and crushed blacks hold no shadow.
• Heavily compressed footage breaks up when pushed. Contrast and saturation reveal the blocking that was already in the file.
• Mixed lighting inside one shot is hard. Daylight from a window and a warm lamp on the same face cannot both be made neutral.
• Strong looks move skin. Teal shadows and orange highlights are a look, and they will find your face. Tell Vizard Agent if skin has to stay natural.
• Screens disagree. A grade judged on a laptop will look different on a phone in daylight, which is where most of these videos are watched. If the destination matters, say which one, and keep the contrast a little more conservative than looks right indoors.
• Matching clips has a ceiling. Two clips shot in different light can be brought closer together. They cannot be made identical, and pushing for identical usually makes both worse.

How do you fix a result that came back wrong?

Say which way to push, in one word. Vizard Agent still holds the footage, the measurements and the grade it applied, so a correction adjusts that grade rather than starting the analysis again — which is why "warmer" costs a fraction of the first pass.

• "Warmer." A complete instruction, and the most common one.
• "Less contrast." Adjusts the curve without touching colour.
• "The skin went orange." Vizard Agent protects skin and regrades around it.

How does Vizard Agent compare to doing it yourself?

By hand this is scopes, a curve, and a lot of back and forth: set a grade, render, watch it on a real screen, adjust, render again. The skill is real, and so is the render time between every judgement.

Common questions

Can I just say "make it look better"? Yes, and Vizard Agent will give you a defensible neutral grade. You get somewhere faster by naming a direction.

How do I adjust it after seeing it? Say which way. "Warmer", "less contrast", "too green" are all complete instructions, and Vizard Agent regrades from the same footage.

Can it match a look I have seen elsewhere? Upload the reference still or clip and ask Vizard Agent to match it.

Does grading change the file size or quality? It re-encodes, so the file is written fresh. Vizard Agent keeps the source resolution and frame rate unless you ask for something else, and grading does not add detail that was not captured.

Will it grade several clips consistently? Yes, if you say they belong together. Ask for it explicitly, because the default is to grade each clip on its own merits.