dimming window light

whooops wrote on 5/3/2008, 10:10 AM

I have a video where people are in front of an open window and the window light causes the people to be dark (cancorder focused wrong). Is there anyway to dim the light or maybe change it to grey and then adjust the movie color. There is about 10 minutes I need to fix. I am using Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8
Any suggestions appreciated.

Comments

Eugenia wrote on 5/3/2008, 10:59 AM

The camcorder didn't focus wrong, you didn't direct the video correctly. You never put people in front of external light like that with cheap camcorders that have no high dynamic range.

Anyways, basically, the only thing you can do is change the brightness of the video. It will look pretty over-exposed and washed out, but that's just about the only thing you can do to get some detail back from the people's faces.

If you had Vegas Pro and unlimited time, you could mask the people and only change the brightness on the mask. Platinum might, or might not be able to do this correctly without a real masking tool.

ritsmer wrote on 5/4/2008, 6:09 AM

If you change the brightness by using the fx Sony Colour Curves you can add brightness to the dark parts and make the nearly overexposed parts darker.
Use RGB and try to experiment with the 2 levers. You can change their angle and their length as well.

Chienworks wrote on 5/4/2008, 9:13 AM

You can add more control points by double-clicking on the line too.

richard-amirault wrote on 5/6/2008, 7:51 PM

When you shot this it would have helped not to put the people in front of the window (light) ... but if you *had* to .. there are a number of things you could have done to make things better.

Some cameras have a "backlight" control. When activated this opens up the iris (exposure) so as to give a better exposed person face.

Some cameras have a "spot meter" function. When activated it exposes for whatever point on the screen (a person's face) you tell it to.

Of course, you didn't do either of those things ... and if you did the background (thru the window) would be overexposed .. so, if it were me, I would not bother to try to keep any detail in the window when trying to 'fix' it.

Richard in Boston