Color Curves - Show all channels

NickHope wrote on 10/31/2014, 8:48 AM
The "Show all channels" in the Color Curves FX used to be ticked by default (up to VP10). In VP12 & 13 it is un-ticked by default and won't even stay ticked if the same FX instance dialog is dismissed and re-opened.

I don't know about anyone else but I always like this to be ticked. I use color curves on nearly all my events and it's getting tiresome ticking this box.

SCS if you're reading, please consider ticking this box by default.

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 10/31/2014, 10:03 AM
If there's nothing about it in internal prefs, maybe create and save an empty default project with it ticked?

Congratulations on "Mucky Secrets," Nick.
Gives a good example of Nick's finesse with Color Curves.
It's difficult to bring so much life to underwater footage without the shadows getting too red. Nick has found the right spot.

Oh, and the music with the Spanish rhythms fits beautifully with the action.



NickHope wrote on 10/31/2014, 10:34 AM
Unfortunately that doesn't work. Every time you open the Video Event FX window, it's unticked again.

Minor irritation but an example of something that used to work better IMO.

[ EDIT: thanks for the plug :) ]
musicvid10 wrote on 10/31/2014, 3:09 PM
You're welcome, but with nearly 40 million channel views, my endorsement isn't such a huge factor.
;?)
PeterDuke wrote on 10/31/2014, 7:44 PM
One default that has always annoyed me is the generated text media length of 10 secs. I use it to put explanatory notes (sub-titles) and I change most to about 3 secs. I am now rather slick at changing it, but it still annoys me.
NickHope wrote on 11/1/2014, 2:42 AM
Agreed Peter, it would be nice to have a preference to set the default for generated media length.
musicvid10 wrote on 11/1/2014, 10:54 AM
Nick, would you be so kind as to post a screenshot of a "typical" underwater color curves window, such as used above, also the white balance procedure and tricks you use? What Kelvin are the lights? Are they filtered? Thanks.
NickHope wrote on 11/2/2014, 1:19 AM
The YouTube thumbnail for that video above is a still that has been processed in Photoshop and has more contrast than the corrected video footage.

The video was shot in 2007 with a Sony Z1P. My lights were a pair of Light & Motion Sunray Elite. Halogen lamps with a color temperature of 3400K. I probably had 3/4 blue gels snapped into the front of the lights to cool them down a bit. I was probably in auto white balance mode for this artificially-lit macro stuff, but I may have manually white balanced on a white slate for some of it. Very similar result.

Most of my footage has whites going up to 255 and blacks above 16. My general procedure is to use a single color curves instance to bring the highlights down to 235, darken the whole thing (particularly the shadows) and get a nice colour balance. I never ever use more anchor points than shown below. I do all the tweaking with the position and tangency of the minimum number of points possible.

The footage for the video above was generally not far off what I wanted in terms of colour balance, so the adjustments aren't very dramatic. And note that these screenshots are in computer-RGB space so aren't showing the full contrast that they will in studio-RGB space when played in most scenarios on YouTube (apologies if I've got that the wrong way round!). In this first example the footage was generally too green. (before screenshot first, after screenshot second):



In this second example the footage was generally too red and there was so little blue in the highlights that I let that curve go up to 240 while maintaining the overall luminance at 235.



I'm currently working on some old standard definition VX1000 DV footage to put as a bonus feature on my forthcoming DVD for the above "Mucky Secrets" documentary. More of it is shot with available sunlight and, because it was manually white balanced through a UR-Pro filter (a very pink-orange filter for use underwater), the footage is mostly too red. Here's a fairly extreme example of what I'm having to do with it:



(EDIT: p.s. Seriously thinking about finding a more user-friendly program or plug-in to do this stuff. It's just so fiddly in Vegas.)
NickHope wrote on 11/2/2014, 1:36 AM

I've just noticed that full undo support was added to the Color Curves FX in VP12 or VP13. Each tweak can now be undone. This is a huge improvement!

It still leaves me with these wishes though:

  • Much bigger window with a grid. Ideally it would adapt to the size of the window, like the Video Scopes do (but each press of an arrow key should still move the anchor points by 1 unit).
  • A diagonal bottom-left-to-top-right guideline so we can see if curves and anchor points are above or below it etc..
  • Values shown as numbers on the axes (RGB values and perhaps percentages).
  • Live display of the coordinates of an anchor point as it is moved.
  • The ability to input precise coordinates of anchor points via the keyboard ("Set to...", like on a volume envelope etc.).
  • Ability to modify an RGB master curve after "splitting" the individual Red-Green-Blue chroma curves, maintaining the relationship of the individual channels (i.e. Allowing adjustment of overall luminance/contrast after color balance).
  • Allow end points to be moved along the X axis (like Resolve etc.), without having to make extra points (and fiddle with their tangency) in order to achieve that. A lot of other software works that way.
  • Channels (and master RGB) as 4 radio buttons instead of a drop-down men, to speed up editing.
  • Make the curve endpoints deselected by default (to avoid this confusion).
  • A reset button to reset the curves to default (quicker than choosing the Default preset).
  • Integrated Auto-Blacks-Whites function, as described in "Intelligent tools" above, allowing subsequent manual adjustment of the anchor points. It would be wonderful to have that integrated into color curves.
  • Constantly-updating histogram shown in the background of the window, behind the curves (for displaying overall luminance or individual channels), as in still image editing software.
  • Export simple LUT that equates as near as possible to the curve.
  • Ability to select the end of a tangent and move it with the arrow keys on the keyboard. It's hard to move them by small increments with the mouse.