Pocket color grading for playback and quick sharing

[erik-sutton95]

Goal

Add a basic, non-destructive Pocket Grade toolset to OpenZCine playback and sharing so operators can make quick global corrections and export a social-ready proxy without leaving the app.

Why it matters

Fast-turnaround footage often needs more than a LUT but far less than a full grading suite. This is especially useful when footage was exposed to the right (ETTR): the source may be intentionally bright to retain cleaner shadows, then need its exposure brought down before a quick share. A few reliable controls would close the gap between camera proxy, monitoring look, and usable same-day delivery.

Proposed experience

• Open a compact grading panel from proxy playback and the share/export flow.
• Preview adjustments in real time on the playing or paused frame.
• Start with a deliberately small global toolset:
  • Exposure
  • Contrast
  • Highlights and shadows
  • Saturation
  • Vibrance
  • White-balance temperature and tint adjustment
  • A simple luminance curve with resettable control points
• Use a deterministic, color-managed processing order so exposure recovery, the selected technical/display LUT, creative corrections, and output conversion produce the same result in preview and export.
• Let scopes inspect the graded output while retaining an easy way to compare against the clean source.
• Provide before/after bypass, individual-control reset, reset-all, undo, and redo.
• Allow copying a grade to another selected clip or a batch without turning the feature into a timeline editor.
• Apply the grade consistently to native share, Save to Photos/Gallery, and supported Camera-to-Cloud destinations.
• Preserve audio, frame rate, timecode, aspect ratio, and approved metadata where the selected export format supports them.
• Process only complete, validated local media; never modify the camera original or the cached source proxy.
• Show progress, cancellation, storage, battery, and thermal impact for export.

Intentionally out of scope for the first version

• Masks, windows, keys, tracking, rotoscoping, or secondary corrections
• Multi-track timelines, transitions, titles, or audio editing
• Shot matching, automatic look generation, or a replacement for a full NLE/color suite

Success looks like

An operator can open an ETTR-exposed proxy, lower exposure, make a modest contrast/color adjustment, optionally apply the intended LUT, verify the result with scopes and before/after, and share a clean social-media clip directly from OpenZCine.

Open questions

• Which adjustments belong before versus after the technical LUT or color-space transform for N-Log, HLG, SDR, and R3D-derived proxies?
• Should the first curve be a compact master-luma curve only, or also expose simple black/white points?
• How should graded-output scopes coexist with the current clean-source analysis contract?
• Which export formats can preserve timecode and metadata without a quality-damaging extra transcode?
• Should grade settings persist per clip, per project/session, or only within the current export job?
• What adjustment ranges and precision remain useful on a phone without encouraging extreme, artifact-prone processing?