Yeah, here's a white balance trick that works great in Vegas using the waveform and vectorscope. I'm going to tell you, but you have to promise not to tell anyone else.

Find a scene with something that is supposed to be white (but isn't.) Place the full-up color corrector filter (not the "simple" one) on the clip in question. Select "video scopes" under the VIEW menu. Select the waveform monitor and place it in the "composite" mode. Notice where the object that is supposed to be white appears in the waveform monitor, it should be somewhere near the top of the scale.

Using the "high" color wheel in the Color Corrector dialog box, move the marker around until the area on the waveform monitor that is displaying the white object "nulls out." In other words, where that horizontal portion of the white object on the waveform monitor becomes the "thinnest." You'll see what I'm talking about when you do it.

You can also set the black balance using the vectorscope. Select a portion of the clip that has the most blacks, or near blacks, in it. Select the vectorscope and select "magnified" (where it usually says, "normal") Now using the low color wheel, move the marker around until the fattest portion of the "blob" is centered in the vectorscope window.

You can play with the "mid" wheel and set it to suit you taste, or perhaps just not touch it at all. Now, go back to the waveform monitor and select "luminance", find the brighest section of the clip and then adjust the "gain" control in the color corrector filter until the white object sits at "100%" and you're all set. If there are some black portions in the clip, then adjust the "offset" in the filter until they display just above "0". Do this BEFORE you adjust the gain of the white object to 100%.

Of course, use a video monitor to make any final decisions about color correction adjustments.

Let me know if this helps, and remember, it's one of my most useful tricks, so don't tell anyone else about it. :)

John

This is one area where Vegas could be improved. It would be nice if Vegas had an auto white balance filter for those times when you need it quick. Canopus has one that you just click with crosshairs on what should be black and white and walla! It works very well and quick. The rest of the Canopus color correction tools are very limited though compared to Vegas.

Marc

One of my favorite topics. In my view, attempting to find an object to use to set a white and black point is more SUBJECTIVE than objective since it is rare for either pure white or black color to be 100% in the real word. Adding to the difficulity is when you use the eye dropper tool how far the color wheel jumps from its default dead center positon is determined by WHICH pixel you happen to click on. So it is very common when sampling with the eye dropper to get different results, because the chances you'll hit the same "sample" pixel again is small. Perhaps worse you're sampling in RGB color space, since you can't click on your external monitor.

I've written a brief tutorial on the topic. Beyond that, its real trial and error and I still find myself making minor adjustements.

A few sugestions:

a. Use the eye dropper tool and scopes as a rough starting point.

b. Refine your adjustments VIEWING OFF YOUR EXTERNAL MONITOR, once a base value is established.

c. Trust your real world expenience. If something looks "off" colorwise after you make an adjustment, it probably is, most likely to you hitting a pixel that isn't representative.

d. Best results come from also adjusting levels, saturation in addition to using the eye dropper tool. Remember what you're attempting to do is add a color's complement which if done correctly removes color cast, hopefully rebalancing to a truer overall color balanced image.

e. Don't attempt to adjust the middle color wheel until you're happy with both low and high adjustments.

f. The middle color wheel can be used to good advantage to add warmth or coolness and works best when also making minor adjustments to saturation.

>Let me know if this helps, and remember, it's one of my most useful tricks, so don't >tell anyone else about it. :)

Thanks for sharing.
Bummer that some of this could get out to the public. Let's talk quietly here.

I had to do some experiments to come to terms with your description but I see what you are saying. The goal is to tighten the white region to a horizontal line by removing vertical "buzz" from the composite waveform in the white area.

This seems to require you to find and identify a pretty "white" region in your image to correct. Works good if you can find it.

Made me try to understand exactly what is displayed in the Vectorscope Waveform-Composite. At first I thought this was what I would see looking at a composite signal for a frame on an oscilloscope. Experiments show me this isn't right. The display seems to be sort of an overlay for all the lines of a frame. The vertical is intensity and there is a direct correlation of left-right corresponding to the frame image (therefore all the lines).

Is this a standard video tool, and if so, where can I find a technical description of what is being displayed?

In my first attempt, reducing vertical buzz from the waveform, across the display in general, seemed to be good on a bad image, but later experiments with a good image showed some "buzz" that I could remove that was not a good thing. Seems that to use your method properly, you do need to somehow identify a fairly pure white region.

Your use of this tool indicates a whole wealth of knowledge I don't have yet. Was this something you deduced or noticed by accident?

I still want to find a way to take a desired color and tweak the frame by applying it to certain spots. That's the fastest productive way to make these adjustments I found in other programs for photo images. A new feature? If it isn't something I missed, I'd vote for adding this to a future version.

-Rex

FWIW, I *think* color correction is still relatiively new to desktop NLEs, as some have been hesitant to go software instead of external hardware. Adam Wilt (adamwilt.com) has written a bit about this that may answer a few of your questions.

In P/shop (or similar) you've probably worked with tools for color balance, light temperature, color cast and so on, where you're basically adding, subtracting, or just moving concentrations of color around. Sometimes, as with P/shop's auto color, &/or using their levels dialog, the prog tries to do a bit of work for you, providing a simpler interface, but you're still dealing essentially with the curves that are at P/Shops heart.

You can do the same thing with vv4c - just the tools you see are different. Perhaps along with John's & BillyBoy's methods, using the histogram display might seem more familiar, similar to what you've been using in P/shop.

re: ease of use, FWIW & all... Some image editing software has more automatic features, adjustments, that are much easier to use when and if they work, and they won't on every photo you throw at them. It took Adobe a while before they added any sort of automatic adjustment features to P/shop, perhaps because the software engineers &/or marketing folks feared it would place P/shop in the same class as lesser competitors? Perhaps the same sort of reasoning went into the development of Vegas? If so, input from you and other users interested in both simple and advanced controls might inspire changes in future versions...

What I'd like to see as an "improvement" to the otherwise excellent color corrector wheels would be the ability to zoom in deeply so you could select a specific pixel to adjust off of. What's also missing is a readout of what the specific RGB values are and the ability to move the eye dropper around in the precview window getting real time feedback before clicking.