That is not what was described, though. Putting the cursor on a white spot and clicking to make it balance automatically is what I understood.

Any comments? Solutions?

You can apply color correction filter at the media level (you probably knew this)- any event that references the corrected media will have the filter "pre-applied" when you add the event to the timeline. Does that help at all?

For those relatively new to Vegas, video fx can be applied to the media, event, track, or entire project.

I've recently been playing with some footage mistakenly shot with improper white balance (does anybody do it on purpose?) to see what Vegas could do with it. I am quite pleased as I discovered quite good results are possible using FX>color curves>preset>warm for the case of footage shot with indoor white balance while outdoors (quite blue as you know). The FX chosen was simply the one labled warm - it works well enough to enable use of the bit of footage I'd otherwise have written off.

Bravo SoFo (for including these tools within Vegas), bravisimo!

SonicEPM

Thanks for the comment, but it is not what was mentioned in the article on common NLE filters.

Media filter would be fine if all the footage had exactly the same problem, but as you probably know, wandering around in a building with different lights, you get different colors of light. Even if they are ALL incandescent, there are different colors depending on the wattage, type, and total number of sources, some are warmer than others. This would obviate media filter usage as it would apply one solution to dozens of differing problems.

No, the idea of just moving your cursor to an area that is white, click on it, and have it automatically white balance is a MUCH better idea. It could be done per event, and/or, multiple times within an event, using keyframes.

Please consider it.

Adjusting the white balance preciously would involve using an eye-dropper tool and FRAME by FRAME making an adjustment. Vegas doesn't do that, I don't know of any video editor that does or why anyone would want that kind of headache. If you sample the entire video or even an event, and take an average you would defeat the purpose. Even doing this in Photoshop with sill images doesn't always give that good a result and you're better off using curves directly. The reason should be obviously, rarely will you find pure black or pure white in the real world. What happens when you sample using an eyedropper is you eyeball the brightest and darkest portion of the image, click the eyedropper on that pixel and the application will remap all pixels based on the new high and how points. The results can sometimes be dramatic, somethings butt ugly.

In Vegas Video you can adjust Gamma, found under the Levels filter. Depending on how far off your image is you may also want to touch up input start/end values as well. If you are attempting to remove a color hue, the color balance filter and/or the color curves filter.

For best results, skip the presets and use a "S" curve which you can easily create in Vegas Video by right clicking on the the line that pops up in the FX box and adding control points to control the shadows, midtones and hightlights seperately.

Advanced tip:

While you can leave the channel selector at the default 'all channel' setting for adjusting levels, you can get more precise adjustments by making adjustment to indvidual color channels. In a like manner you can work on seperate "S" curves in seperate color channels with the color curve filter.

Of course you should apply the filters on a event by event basis. So one of the first things you should be doing if you're making color correction or applying other filters is break up your source video into events with similar "problems". If you want to be more daring you can apply some filters to the preview window (which effects the entire project) in combinaiton with filters applied to indvidual events. I sometimes do this to add a pinch of HSL or brightness or contrast or another "S" curve. The results are combined. So if you would apply -500 Red, in one event and -400 red in another event, applying a seperate red +100 to the preview window would be the same as adjusting each event by a like amount.

BillyBoy --

Your analysis doesn't exactly make sense. Why would one have to "FRAME by FRAME" make such adjustments if a region of footage shares the same off-white characteristics? As the article mentions, you'd merely have to click on a proper (or as nearly so as you can find) white object within ONE frame, and the NLE would from this instance extrapolate to what degree the whites are incorrect and then apply this discrepancy over the instance of footage where the filter resides. It makes perfectly good sense to have a tool like this. It could even be fun to play with white balance this way -- imagine clicking a red or blue object and setting that as the proper white balance -- you could get some neat results this way.

Now, as to how EASY it would be to implement such a tool...

- jim

I explained HOW to correct using the tools Vegas Video already has. We're really talking apples and oranges. The principle regardless if a still image or a video frame if it suffers from a unwanted color shading due to lighting or something else is best corrected using the color levels filter which adds or subtracts from the three main colors red, green and blue. If you had a eyedropper tool which is only useful to set some limit other pixels in the image are going to be adjusted off of the problem becomes not only which frame do you use as a reference but also what pixel in that frame would you select as your reference? With a still image, its a one time shot, you either pick right or wrong. Trying to accomplish the same precision in a moving video would be very difficult. Besides, you can already adjust the white point by using gamma.

Try this:

First step:
Use the color balance filter to remove any unwanted shading. For example if the video has a overall reddish tint to skin tones you could increase the warmth by decreasing the blue slider. In my experience an adjustment somewhere between -.300 and -1.300 is the effective range for videos that are slightly off.

Second step:
Use the levels filter. Start with gamma. A little change can make a big difference. I have good results in the range of .900 to 1.200.

Third step:
Use the color curves filter. Make yourself several custom "S" curves to correct the most common problems. The presets seem too extreme, at least for my purposes.

Forth step:
Use the HSL filter if necessary to increase/decrease hue and luminance.

Your "event" should be looking good at this point. You may need to make some micro adjustments to any of the filters again if your a knob twister like I am.

First off, don't lose sight of the idea that use of this type of filter would to establish a starting point. And, further, it would NOT necessarily be a one time, one shot application. Don't forget keyframes.

Just a reminder--- don't ever make color calibration decisions unless you are using a calibrated monitor. Also, televisions and computer monitors have vastly different gamma response and color temperature, so always view the results on a calibrated television monitor.

In case you're unfamiliar with how to calibrate a tv monitor, here's a link that explains it:

Color Bars and how to use them

John

K...after reading the article, I used this 'filter concept' in two different applications as a 'auto white balance.' Neither worked. It takes a human eye to determine this. Whomever wrote the article you posted did so without testing this themselves, at least from the perspective they define in the article. Because the white is determined by the chroma/luma IN IT'S ENVIRONMENT. Therefore, although it's not labeled by SOFO as an "Auto-white balance" it's really already there, but the human eye has to determine what the color balance really is.
Another way of looking at this is that you can take 2 scenes shot in similar circumstances, and then apply exactly same color values to both scenes. I can almost guarantee that one of them will look screwy or out of balance. Try it for yourself.

Vixen, which works as a plug-in to Premiere, has this tool - click on anything you would like to become pure white, and the colour balance of the whole frame changes accordingly. If the result still doesn't look right, you can simply undo and try clicking somewhere else. It does need checking on a TV monitor to make sure the result is what's wanted, but it will often yield good results.

Would make a great feature for VV4.

Spot,

To what article are you referring? The "Color Bars and how to use them" or some other article?

John

"I explained HOW to correct using the tools Vegas Video already has. We're really talking apples and oranges."

Yes, that's correct. And you've clearly made up your mind that such a function serves YOU no purpose, and have concluded that the rest of us should agree with you and likewise shrug it off as pointless. What I'm saying is that it's an interesting tool, one that definitely has its place and that I would like to see as well.

The tool poses a far less involved and ultimately more fun way of playing with color balance -- in other words, a one-step process as opposed to your four. As or more accurate? Possibly not. Accurate enough? Most likely. Of a certain aesthetic merit -- most definitely.

Here's a link to the article in question, BTW.

- jim

"...not only which frame do you use as a reference but also what pixel in that frame would you select as your reference?"

And p.s. this isn't exactly accurate, either. Pixels aren't the only region of color determination in a digital image -- regions of pixels, with an average of their color info, could be used in the color balance filter. This is, in fact, one of the ways mpeg compression works to streamline visual information.

- jim

The only thing I've concluded is a few people in this forum are more interested in finding fault with Vegas Video and don't really want to learn how to use Vegas Video features as they are currently implemented.

The article in the link in part says the following:

"Filtering for Brightness and Contrast
Almost every type of editing software has basic brightness and contrast filters. The brightness control affects the overall apparent luminance of the scene. In other words, as you bring up the general brightness values, everything appears lighter.

The problem with this approach is that since the background in a backlit scene is already too bright, simply raising the overall brightness level will usually wash out the scene. So you also need to tweak the image with the contrast control in concert with the brightness. The contrast control determines the difference between the darkest and lightest parts of a scene.

In essence, what you’re telling the software to do is to decrease the difference between the over-lit background and the under-lit foreground subjects. Figure 1B shows the same scene after processing. By decreasing the contrast, the bright background has becomes less bright and the dark foreground faces have become less dark. Combined with a slight increase of the brightness control, this is often enough to make marginal footage more acceptable."

A good reason NOT to take too seriously what authors in magazines say!

The author attempts to explain that one way to correct luminance or brightness levels is to use the often included brightness and contrast filter. Indeed it appears to work, however as I've said in several posts this is a simplistic approach. The reason is when you adjust either brightness or constrast ALL the pixels receive the same amount of adjustment. That's not what you want! If you use a "S" curve you can adjust the lumance level seperately for the image's shadows, midtones and highlights. Failing to do that, and using the brute force method of only adjusting brightness and contrast, 2/3 of your image will end up being either over adjusted or under adjusted because it is rare an entire image needs the same amount of adjustment throughout. In fact I've NEVER see this. Anyone that has done any serious graphic work knows it is AREAS in a image (shadows, midtones, hightlights) that needed to be adjusted. For best results you adjust them SEPERATELY using DIFFERENT values which isn't possible using any brightness or contrast filter. It is possible using curves.

Amen. The other thing that I often find in these forums, is that people are often lazy, and just want to have the program do everything for them. I've even had folks ask me why I didn't include 'this or that' in my tutorials because it requires them to think a little otherwise.

Billyboy,

Just a side note... I've read in other posts your recommendation to pass up the brightness and contrast filter and use HSL adjust for example. Well I tried this approach to the video I am currently making and the difference was astounding! I have footage of a band playing in a club and footage of dancers in the same club. We had very nice lighting on the band while shooting (leko's) but not on the dancers. So, I needed to match as closley as possible but , important part here, still maintain the color dance lights that were flashing to keep the mood. Brightness/Contrast just washed out too much color while HSL let me match the two scenes and actually accented the colored lights. Thanks for the great advice Billyboy! Shon

"The only thing I've concluded is a few people in this forum are more interested in finding fault with Vegas Video and don't really want to learn how to use Vegas Video features as they are currently implemented."

Fair enough. I, for one, wouldn't fault Vegas for lacking the "Auto White Balance" feature, but something like it could be fun to play with.

I also found your advice re: color correction and luminance tools in Vegas enlightening - I only took issue with your tone :/

Thanks,

- jim

I'm sorry if my "tone" sounds too "authorative" or whatever other term anyone cares to make of it. Yes, I have strong opinions on some topics. I'm not trying to force anyone to use my methods, I'm simply passing along what I've learned through trial and error. I've got well over a thousand hours of using Vegas Video under my belt and lots more using Photoshop and GIMP. I KNOW how to get the most out of less than prestine images.

While Vegas includes a brightness/contrast filter, I suspect they do for the same reason Photoshop does... people look for such a filter and expect there to be one. It works, but with limitations, it is there mainly for the uninformed. There are better ways to adjust images, still and video.

Little sidebar:

Years ago, Russell Brown, one of the developers of Adobe's Photoshop, was a regular on several TV cable computer how-to shows. I always got a kick over how he would become almost livid when someone suggested they use contrast/brightness to adjust images. He then would go into a very detailed how-to using curves instead. I've concluded years ago if someone involved with the creation of the world's best selling photo enhancment application was that passionate about using curves it would be a wise thing to follow his lead. I have, and I'm glad I did. The difference can be striking. Ditto for adjusting levels and HSL.

Also I strongly second what John said about the importance of properly calibrating your external monitor connected through your firewire connection and adjusting off that, NOT your computer monitor if your final destination is to play your video off your TV. In addition to the artice John referrenced, there are several DVD's you can find at larger retailers or through the web that offer step-by-step calibration of your TV without any expensive lab equipment. One such DVD title is: Avia Guide to Home Theater by Ovation software. One quick way to tell if your TV isn't set up correctly is to note during very brief breaks where there is nothing on screen if your TV screen is totally black. If a shade of gray, you really need to adjust it along with the TV/NTSC monitor you use as your external monitor. If you don't than any adjustments you make will be off, sometimes a great deal which would mean all your correction work was for nothing.

This has been one of the better discussions I have followed here on the forum. Didn't get "too" hot, and was quite informative. Without strong opinions, strong enough to state them, I wouldn't even know that Color Curves were worth looking at, along with HSL and Gamma, etc. Leading me away from temptation, as it were.

All in all, most productive.

Remember, just because a tool is there, be it contrast/brightness or auto white balance, doesn't mean you have to use it. But, someone might. That is, until they are educated by someone else on a better way to proceed.

Thanks for the education.

(But, I'd still like to play with the auto white balance. Even more, now, after a few of the "weird" suggestions on its use.)

Maybe we should look at the problem from a different angle, like the source. Correct white balance is best done with your CAMERA, not any video editing suite. Here's a few useful web sites:

http://www.nikondigital.org/articles/white_balance.htm
http://www.betterdigitalonline.com/HTML%20Files/whitebalance.html
http://www.mediacollege.com/resource/howto/camera/whitey.html
http://www.jamesarnett.com/3-1-5-3.htm
http://www.urbanfox.tv/workbooks/anycam/whitebalance.htm