I'd start with Levels to pull down the blacks and highlights, then follow up as suggested above.

Jack

Unfortunately clipping makes it impossible to fully correct, but curves then levels can bring it into something usable. At least can match the curtains and the trousers! The shirt highlights are burnt and skin detail is clipped, so I think they're beyond recovery (in terms of a good match).

Thanks all for the advice. I am going to get back to work on this on Saturday (been out of pocket since posting). I will post a grab of the results.

Again, the suggestions are much appreciated. Good thing I only have one session that suffers from this :)

j razz

try this:

put 3 filters, a "Invert" (at 100%), "Color Corrector", "Invert" (at 100%).

then, lift up the gamma of the color corrector in the middle.

this darkens highlights first, in the logarithmic fashion, more like a "iris closing" way.

you can also put a color corrector secondary to select reds and lower the gamma a bit.

the best i get is this:

http://i41.tinypic.com/2h2ifeq.jpg

Malowz, that's genius.

That does look really good.

I followed Serena's advice above and got a decent result but wound up not having to use it as I had two other cams with good shots and the only place I would have needed it was where I placed an introductory graphic.

Great tip though and great result!

j razz

Malowz, that's genius. Ditto!! - I am well impressed.

Grazie

I wish I had had that tip 18 months ago! Been trying to work out a way to that for aaageess!

Brilliant tip!
I am always in awe of people who come up with these amazing tips. How do you figure them out??
Thanks malowz...
Tom

well, aim kind o "obsessed" with technical aspect of everything, so, i spend a lot of time "figuring things out" .

one week was the "how to match videos", "how to bright and dark videos like cameras do", etc...

after discover the cameras do "bright" in logarithmic (a.k.a., not linear) was obvious that to simulate this i have to do the same.

as vegas only have "lower gamma" (bright dark's first) i was stuck.

days later, "magically" the idea popped out. "if i invert, i will work"

and there it was.

also remember, dark or bright may also have to add or remove a bit of saturation on the color corrector filter. ;)

malowz,
So, if I can ask, do you have any tips on "how to match videos"? Such as two camera shoots where the colours don't quite match due to different cameras.
I am curious...
Tom

You can achieve the same outcome using the Color Curves.

What has happened in the camera is the R,G,B channels all clipped resulting in the face being white. You can use the CCs to pull back the blue and green channels in the highlights to sort of reduce the visual impact of this. In this case thankfully they didn't clip too hard so it is possible to get some color back without hideous results.

Curves give very fine image control, the downside to using curves is they're very fiddly to work with.

Bob.

Hi, if you have the vegas Pro you can do something like this:
1. duplicate the track
2. in the compositing mode of the duplicated track (above) changes to "Multiply (Mask)". It will burn all the image.
4. Add "Levels" effect to one of the two layer as you like and chande "output start/end or gamma" to correct.

Thanks Malowz! Brilliant!

You saved me on some overexposed video!