Masks

UKharrie wrote on 10/7/2015, 7:27 AM
What I may need is a moving Beezier-curve. Yes I know I don't have that facility in SMS v12 - so I'm wondering if anyone has a fix that will do a similar job?

The Problem:-
Imagine a cornfield landscape, tall trees dotted about, some in shadow - a bright blue sky with puffy clouds. Now pan across the scene !

I set my Camcorder to (minus One) AE - so I can avoid burning-out highlights ( since the camcorder deals only with average-scenes areas.).

In Edit, I can adjust the pic to alter contrast and brightness - but using "Levels" I really don't understand the "In" and "Out" sliders - since they all seem to affect the picture - the Help explanation doesn't match what happens as I adjust the clip on the timeline and watch it in Preview window, Because of this I end only to use the "Brightness and Contrast" effect filter.

What I need is a moving Mask so the trees in shadow can be made lighter - while keeping the sky correct. It's unreasonable to expect the camcorder to do this - it does a good job - but the result is this:-
Sky too bright - but it's OK with -1AE setting.
Cornfield about right
Trees in shadow too dark.

As I see it the only solution is to apply a Mask that moves in step with the scene being panned.
Ideally using an "Inversion" of the footage itself - with it adjusted in time by Keyframe - that would really help.
The same applies to almost any scene where people move in and out of shadows, etc. Of course there are "Artistic" reason to maintain this - but having the ability to create a "moving Mask" - using a copy of the actual footage, would go some way to fixing this issue . . . . .

Any suggestions, that are within the SMS package?
Im using v112,

Comments

UKharrie wrote on 10/7/2015, 11:10 AM
Update:
This is very confusing.
I appear to have the deep blue sky and a Mask that's white detail on black ( the black being the Sky area).
However anything in the original footage that's bright - shows correctly - but the Masked areas ( items that need to be made brighter ) are white - so the trees appear to be covered in snow that moves with the branches in the wind. Wow!
It's an odd effect and not what I wanted - I think this should be called "harrieSnow" - but other parts don't look so good - buildings in shadow are clothed in a grey-white where the mask is..... I could Key-frame to adjust the masking to zero, but the principle is clearly not working.
However, it might be useful in a Scene where it should be winter, with shadowy trees all in white ( grubby ) snow - but I wonder why I can't get the green to attach to the Mask?
BTW I made the colour-layer slightly larger ( 2% Crop ) so it would hide the edges of the mask and applied the minimum of Gaussian Blur too . . . The snow-covered trees look fine . . . but I still wonder if experienced others will have a better solution . . . .
VEGASNeal1 wrote on 10/7/2015, 1:11 PM
One approach you could experiment with uses the Chroma Keyer effect on a copy of your video, placed on a track above the current video track.

Set the Chroma Keyer effect color to black, and adjust the threshold values and blur to make the dark areas of the video transparent. Then on the original (lower) video track add a Brightness and Contrast effect and lighten the dark areas of the video.

I have successfully used this technique to improve the visibility of people in the foreground of strongly backlit scenes.

Best of luck with your project.