Color Correction AWB Footage

Paul-Haynes wrote on 4/26/2020, 4:28 AM

Hello All. I've only just upgraded to Vegas Pro 17 from 16 just for the colour grading feature. However my experience of colour grading multiple clips from the same video has not been consistent despite all settings between clips being equal. I am sitting looking at my project now and have 4x clips of B roll which fade to and from the main video. 3 out of 4 of those clips have graded identically but the last clip is completely different despite the B roll being shots from same scene with no colour/light changes. I've redone my work several times and nothing works. I've deleted the clip and stretched the 3rd clips to create the 4th clip again but as I stretch (or drag) the video clip across the time line I've noticed at a certain point the video colour changes even though there are no settings I've done doing to do this. It's clearly a bug. Anyone come across this before? Is there a fix? Thanks in advance for your input.

I'd be happy to create a short video showing this, if this helps?

By the way, I can see no way of emailing the company for support on this site?

I'm running
Windows 10
i7 3930K CPU
32Gb DDR3 1800 RAM
Nvidea Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4Gb RAM
C Drive SSD
Other drives, including where videos are store are on 7200rpm hard drivesd.

Comments

Musicvid wrote on 4/26/2020, 4:58 AM

Please post two images for each of the four clips -- one ungraded, and one graded.

Were the scenes shot outdoors? If so, the Kelvin temperature is not consistent from clip to clip, that is almost a guarantee. However, a yellow/blue shift is easily masked. Or missed. Was your camera WB set on Auto, or Manual?

By the way, I can see no way of emailing the company for support on this site?

By the way, the bold link is at the top of every forum page; sorry you missed it...

vkmast wrote on 4/26/2020, 5:20 AM

Thanks @Musicvid There's still also this sticky/pinned Post on the Forum News section.

Paul-Haynes wrote on 4/26/2020, 11:00 AM

Thanks for your input. It looks like the issue is with the B roll footage. Must be the auto white balance changed when the sun came out. Its shot indoors. Main video is shot manually on a Canon 5D iii whereas we used a Panasonic Camcorder to shoot B roll using only auto settings.

So what Ive done to fix this is to add the "colour match" fx to the clip that is out and its gotten closer than I could just by colour grading.

PS, yes I did miss the support button. Thanks

Musicvid wrote on 4/26/2020, 11:30 AM

All outdoor footage WB is a moving target, especially with shifting clouds. Color temperature can vary as much as 2500°K.

Auto WB, as you discovered, will benefit from a color match plugin such as FBM or Graide, but exact spectrum match cannot be wrangled.

Paul-Haynes wrote on 4/27/2020, 7:18 AM

Auto WB, as you discovered, will benefit from a color match plugin such as FBM or Graide, but exact spectrum match cannot be wrangled.

I've downloaded and installed Graide but it does nothing. Copying how it works from the promo video whats different is the "copy" icon is always grayed out so when I select the "original" frame I am unable to copy that to another video next to it?

Satevis wrote on 4/27/2020, 7:51 AM

That icon is actually a "paste" icon. The idea is that you have three options for getting an image into either of the two slots: Open one from a file, paste one from the clipboard, or have the plugin grab the next frame that VEGAS sends through it.

To complete the setup in your example:

  • Place your VEGAS timeline cursor on your reference frame, i.e. the frame that you want to match against. This could be the first frame of your second clip, for example.
  • In the VEGAS preview window, click the "copy" button. This will place that frame in the clipboard.
  • The "Paste image" buttons in the plugin should now be enabled. Click the button for the right image (Reference).

In the promotional video, the reference image was already in the clipboard, so all that was left was clicking "Copy input frame" on "Original" and "Paste image" on "Reference".

Paul-Haynes wrote on 4/27/2020, 11:33 AM

Thank you this is program is amazing. But I can only seem to get it to work for me in continuous mode. But what a time saver. Thank you. I'm going to test a bit longer but if these results continue to save time I'll be a new customer.

RogerS wrote on 4/27/2020, 8:04 PM

For other users, maybe mark this post as resolved and change the title to color correction AWB footage, as it's not really about a color grading bug?

Paul-Haynes wrote on 4/28/2020, 12:37 PM

That icon is actually a "paste" icon. The idea is that you have three options for getting an image into either of the two slots: Open one from a file, paste one from the clipboard, or have the plugin grab the next frame that VEGAS sends through it.

To complete the setup in your example:

  • Place your VEGAS timeline cursor on your reference frame, i.e. the frame that you want to match against. This could be the first frame of your second clip, for example.
  • In the VEGAS preview window, click the "copy" button. This will place that frame in the clipboard.
  • The "Paste image" buttons in the plugin should now be enabled. Click the button for the right image (Reference).

In the promotional video, the reference image was already in the clipboard, so all that was left was clicking "Copy input frame" on "Original" and "Paste image" on "Reference".

Thank you for your advise. Not sure if this is the right place to ask the question but what I'm finding now is when the top level B roll fade out to the lower level main film on the timeline the footage fades bright white during the process. When I turn off your plugin I don't get the brightness increasing during fade out, seems natural without your plugin but your plugin is serving an important colour grade. Any suggestions or is this just the way it goes?

Paul-Haynes wrote on 4/28/2020, 12:37 PM

For other users, maybe mark this post as resolved and change the title to color correction AWB footage, as it's not really about a color grading bug?

Title changed. I'll tag as solved when I get the answer to my last question just posted.

Satevis wrote on 4/28/2020, 5:38 PM

what I'm finding now is when the top level B roll fade out to the lower level main film on the timeline the footage fades bright white during the process.

That's most likely because your signal flow is applying the plugin in Continuous mode after the fade. If you're fading out first (such as on the event level), then matching colors in Continuous mode later (such as on the track level), the plugin will try to match an inbetween frame (that is a mixture of two clips) to the reference frame. In this constellation, you'd probably want to apply the plugin at the event level, so that the two clips are matched first and the fade then occurs between the two corrected clips.

There's a more elaborate description in the manual, but in short: Constant mode corrects variations between clips whereas Continuous mode corrects variations within a clip. If you're correcting differences between two cameras, Constant mode may give you better results. Here's an example of correcting a clip that is being faded to the one below it on the timeline:

Musicvid wrote on 4/28/2020, 11:25 PM

Very good information on Graide settings, @Satevis

You have always been a good resource for peer support!

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 4/29/2020, 3:12 PM

Graide looks pretty interesting. I do allot of multi-cam with many a mismatched camera and have been getting by with the Vegas default-bundled Color Match FX from OFX. Seems conceptually similar to Graide but without the continious/constant option. Fwiw, I often use it at the track level without cross-fade side effects. And if I go into the Vegas v17 FX Filter Package screen, it's effect, either alone or combined with other compatible FX, can be saved as a LUT.