Auto-Contrast, Auto-Brightness Effect?

stevefoobar wrote on 11/21/2010, 7:57 PM
I really love the way Vegas edits and the user interface but every once in a while I get really annoyed at how "clunky" it is and how behind other much less worthy consumer software it is. This is one of those times.

Does anyone know of a inexpensive piece of software I can buy or download on trial that has an auto-contrast, auto-brightness plug-in effect? I have to quickly edit some footage that the videographer messed up when he was shooting and caused the camera to radically adjust these levels for several seconds on a few areas of the footage.

In my opinion, Vegas is useless for these types of corrections because I find it nearly impossible to adjust this manually using key frames, unless someone has some magic on how to best do this. I've tried many times and it is always an unacceptable result.

Thanks.

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 11/21/2010, 8:03 PM
Would you care to upload some example footage somewhere?
At least we could tell you if anything useful can be done with it.
If there were "radical" exposure changes as you suggest, it's likely little of value can be done.
stevefoobar wrote on 11/22/2010, 1:01 PM
I've uploaded two small clips of the bad video to this Microsoft site. I hope you can access the files. You may or may not need to create a Microsoft Live ID but you can use any email address you own to do so.

http://cid-0b8616f2e40115fe.office.live.com/self.aspx/.Public

Thanks.
musicvid10 wrote on 11/22/2010, 1:31 PM
All the handheld camera movement is causing the exposed light tube on the wall to drive the autoexposure crazy.

About the only thing you can do is put in some keyframes at strategic points using the color corrector plugin, and match some representative values.

The underexposed portions are so flat that I know of no technique that will restore them. Anything you would do would add a lot of noise.

EDIT:
Here is what I was able to do with your clip using just the Levels plugin and eyeballing (no scopes in VMS). Used about 15 keyframes
http://www.mediafire.com/?tka7f8dxti7z04v

stevefoobar wrote on 11/22/2010, 8:42 PM
That's amazing! How did you do that? I'm not that good with keyframes. Maybe I just don't have enough practice using them. Is there some way you can send me the session file that would contain the keyframes so I could see what you did--or better yet, just use them! :-)

Our local alderman who is running for reelection would be very grateful. :-)

Nice job.
musicvid10 wrote on 11/22/2010, 9:00 PM
Sorry, I didn't save the project, and it wouldn't have worked in VMS anyway.

Just open the levels plugin, start with some bright and dark target points as keyframes, and adjust the "In" levels for a visual match in highlights and shadows, leaving one (the best) keyframe untouched as a reference. Then start adding more keyframes and repeat. Finally, go through point by point and adjust the gamma {u]slightly[/u] to balance the highlights.

There's no teacher like experience.
(You're welcome to email my username at gmail, but I think you'd find my rates prohibitive).
stevefoobar wrote on 11/22/2010, 11:49 PM
Thanks. I'll try that. Everything I'm doing for this candidate is volunteer work. :-(