If it's totally blown out, then there is nothing that can be done.

As a last resort try placing these filters on the timeline as follows:

100% Invert
Levels
100% Invert

Then play with the Gamma setting on the Levels filter and see anything can be salvaged.

Here's the thread with the information that John Cline was referring to.

Mike

If I were you I would look to re shoot the performance (if possible). Scrap the project or.... do what I did.

on my first ever "movie" I used some work lights to shoot it. My "actors" (myself included) figured we'd gotten UV poisoning in some way it was soo bad. LOL. It was extremely over exposed. I dump some contrast effects and other effects and decided it was the deliberate look of the film. I was able to live with that.

peace

1. never use automatic exposure control in such situations. Determine exposure via a spot reading of the subject, set and lock your exposure based on that.

2. even better, determine your exposure via an incident light meter reading.

Yes .. MANUAL exposure is your friend.

I once shot an event with the master of ceremonies was place in front of a black curtain, with a black podium and he was wearing a black suit.

Without manual exposure my video would have been like yours.

I did use auto exposure as performance was a concert where lighting constantly changing - making quick manual adjustments impractical

If I'd known beforehand what max lighting situation was - that would have helped

Will try suggestions in older thread about same problem as re-shooting is impossible

If it is only slightly overexposed you can avoid further possible overexposure/clipping by the display device by using the "color curves" effect and lowering the brightness at the bright end but leaving the white point unchanged. This will increase the contrast at the top end and possibly reveal some detail otherwise hidden.

If it is too overexposed then throw it in the bit bucket and start again.

I did use auto exposure as performance was a concert where lighting constantly changing - making quick manual adjustments impractical

Less is more here. Just as a guideline for the future;
-- Get with the lightboard op at final dress or at sound check, and set your zebras and WB with lights at full up, including follow spots. Be slightly conservative here, because costumes / speculars may be even a bit brighter.
-- Leave both exposure and focus on manual. Set your starting focus at mic line or somewhere downstage of midstage.
-- During lighting / scene changes, adjust the manual exposure slightly to bring up the darkest scenes a bit, but don't try to second-guess or neutralize the lighting design. In other words, keep the dark scenes dark.
-- Frame the scene, not the talent. Use your cutaway cam for those obvious closeup ops.
-- For far shots don't expose the lip of the stage.
-- Oh, and don't forget to perfectly level your cams first.

Shooting live events is a whole different ballgame.
This all being said, why don't you upload an original clip somewhere and save us from guessing what might and might not be possible (but don't expect any miracles).

Shooting a play is one of the most challenging jobs as most of us all ready know. I have shot many plays in the past 30 years and here's what works for me.

lock the white balance to indoor 3200k assuming it's an indoor play.

I never use manual iris, the plays I shoot the lighting is constantly changing, between zooming and panning I could never keep up with changing the iris. Here's what I do to keep the picture from burning. I shoot with Sony camcorders a DSR-250 and I also have a Sony HDR-AX2000. Both camcorders have what is called an AE shift. This allows me to bring the iris setting up or down as required but still have auto iris.

I also found that keeping the gain locked to zero or 3db also helps the cameras from burning.

The biggest problem with burning is most of us do not realize it is happening until we see the footage back in our studio.
I believe this happens because the small lcd screens or the view finders we use on location trick us into thing we need the higher gain when we really need less.

The last few plays I brought my 19 Vizio TV and used it as a monitor. I could not believe the difference it made in being able to judge video levels. It was like night and day. The monitor you use on location could make or break your job.

JK

Like anyone has stated, there is little that can be done for lost details with overexposed video.

Very sound advice there.
My only difference is as I regularly have costumes on the stage with lots of metallic thread and mirrors on them I do let the specular highlights from them go. If I didn't that's possibly all that'd be seen.

Bob.

"If I didn't that's possibly all that'd be seen."

I certainly know the truth of that statement. Since I rent my shooters and equipment I get a lot of variance on this. One guy kept all the speculars inside 255 and the result was so flat I had to expand everything out to a "normal" 16-235, so I was in fact working with a compressed bit depth.

There's a point at which one has to drop the dime and expose for the scene. It's not like the old days when you could cook a vidicon with a bad reflection.

"-- During lighting / scene changes, adjust the manual exposure slightly to bring up the darkest scenes a bit, but don't try to second-guess or neutralize the lighting design. In other words, keep the dark scenes dark."

Generally good advice.

Note, however, that our eyes can cope with a wider dynamic range than most cameras and display devices, so while we may just see something in the shadows in real life it may be invisible on the computer or TV screen. This may be a good thing if the detail would be a distraction but a bad thing if it is important or interesting. In the latter case we need something to lift the shadows, and the only half-decent process I know of for video is the Shadow/Highlight effect in Adobe's Premiere. The NewBlue Shadows and Highlights effect for Vegas is pretty disappointing.

But once again, if you do adjust the shadows, don't over do it and upset the balance. Lifting the shadows will also increase the visible noise in the shadows as well.

It can also depend on the camera and the optics. Cheap lenses flair.

Two weeks ago I had a performance piece to shoot and the lights themselves were also perfromers right in front of the camera. There was 16x 40W fluro tubes hung from a grid through which the dancers danced. The lights were indiviually dimmable under computer control from 100% to 0% and the dancers could have their faces inches from a tube at 100% or be 10 feet away from one or all could be at 10%.

I set my EX1 into Cinegamma 1 and prayed, a lot.
Much to my pleasant surprise it worked. At full brightness the lights do flair but it looks pleasant. The few times a dancers face is right up against a tube at 100% it does blow out but simply to very crisp white and the flair works in favour of the look. It could have been very ugly with extreme colour shifts on the skin tone but I got lucky, for once.
One thing I learned is the EX cameras have a bit of setup, blacks are never true black. Dialing in a Black value of -5 to -6 cures this and gives just that little bit more headroom.
One thing though with these extreme gamma curves. Forget about "legal" values, there's a lot happening between 'legal' white and digital clipping.

Bob.

After Effects (I believe) has a plugin that works similarly to Photoshop's highlight recovery tool in the Camera Raw Utility. This clever bit of magic interpolates burnt pixels based on neighboring values, and can be very useful for pulling in highlight detail where the overall image density is good, but specific regions are too hot.

I would love to see a similar plugin appear in Vegas someday...

that totally helps immensely (John Cline post)

made my morning !!!

still its going to be fun dealing with spotlight brightness changes over time but at least I have a great starting point

my brother's footage example that I am trying to fix:

"my brother's footage example that I am trying to fix:"Ouch! I'm sure you've noticed that there are many more problems than just the "overexposure".

Do you have the source (i.e. without the logo & URL text)? Some selected stabilization would go a long way. Also, some cuts to crowd shots or, at worst, a captured still would help considerably when the camera swings wildly or goes out of focus or goes to black.

Good Luck!
...Jerry

:)

I did use auto exposure as performance was a concert where lighting constantly changing - making quick manual adjustments impractical

Others have given you good advice.

Remember "auto" exposure uses the entire frame (unless you have 'center weghted' or 'spot' modes) to determine the exposure.

For a performance on stage the lighting often varies considerably over the frame. You camera does not know what part of the frame is important .. so it does what it was programmed to to .. it *averages* the entire frame to reach "proper" exposure.

IMHO, you would have fewer problems setting the camera on manual and leaving it alone than using the auto setting.