You can't do this the same way Premiere does it, but you have more options in Vegas indeed. You can match using the eyedroppers, but Vegas doesn't match it up for you. You can set baselines, and work from there, or you can choose to match all cams to the best (or worst) of all the images.
Premiere and Avid do this fairly elegantly, no doubt, but Vegas is better at the quality and options, and using the split screen feature is very, very useful.

Thank you

But one question reminds: Is there a way to correct the grey “balance” in Vegas 5? The problem is: I know that parts of my video are “grey”, but I can’t “convert” the specific areas to the “grey colour” I want to. By the way, how can I pick a “grey colour” from the colour wheel? Or, how can I convert / change a specific colour to “grey”? Or which numerical values defines "grey"?

Regards,
Joran,
Norway

Select the color with the Secondary color corrector and desaturate to the level you want it to be is the fastest method.
http://www.digitalproducer.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=27289 has a tutorial that goes the opposite direction of what you want to do, but it's the same technique.

Thank you for your answers.

When you adjust the white / black “balance” using the Colour Correction and Threshold plug-ins, the entire DISTRIBUTION of colours is changed. You get a smooth and gradual change in the distribution of all colours. I’ve achieved great result using this technique.
But, when you use the Colour Correction (secondary) plug-in to define “grey” parts of the images / frames, you have to build a MASK to map one specific colour – “grey” – into that mask.

This is what we can call an either-or- situation. Either the specific area (mask) is filled with “grey”, or it’s not filled with “grey”.

In this case, you DO NOT get the smooth and gradual adjustment of the colours that you achieve correcting the white / black balance using the (primary) Colour Correction and Threshold plug-ins.

So my question is: Is there any tool / plug-in / procedure that can adjust the “grey balance” in the same way as adjusting the white and black balance? That means, generating smooth and gradual changes to the colours in the video, instead of the either-or adjustment described above.

Regards,
Joran, Norway

PS. I don’t think that the Adobe Premiere tools are superior to the tools available in Vegas 5. I’m very pleased with the way I can correct the white / black balance in Vegas, and I think I achieve better result using Vegas than Adobe Premiere.

I guess I don't understand what you're after then. I'm seeing the gradient in the image as I desaturate it. I'm not filling it with any new color, I'm simply selecting a range of colors and desaturating them. The levels/gradient remains the same, if the image contains a graded color. If you needed more control, you could create a mask using the same technique, and then use a generated gradient beneath the original image to show thru.

Spot,

Is that the best way to get rid of illegal colors for broadcast projects?

K

I'm not sure what you're attempting either. Setting a black and white point is simpler since both are more of an absolute. The idea being to remove shading so you achieve a "purer" white and black or more correctly remove any color cast. Once done, other color sshould be close if not right on, requiring little if any adjustment.

As you noticed there is no gray reference to adjust to. Finding something in your image that is exactly half way between the black and white point or gray can be difficult and more than not a guess. I'm not sure why you want to do it. A gray balance is more common to printing, not video.

What I do is once I'm happy with the black and white point nudge the midtones (center wheel in Color Corrector) up and left for warmer colors and down and right for cooler. The closer to the edge of the wheel the more saturation towards the color you move to is added.

Dear Spot

The initial situation is: Use the Colour Correction (secondary) plug-in and “simply” select “a range of colors and desaturating them”. The problem in a nutshell is: Check the “Show mask” box, and you will see that Vegas creates a MASK (consisting of either white or black areas) and the de-saturation is perform only to the white part of the mask, leaving the black parts of the mask unchanged. This is what I call an EITHER-OR situation. (This is a nice feature in other situations, but not here.)

The contrast is: When you correct the white balance or the black balance, the adjustment is performed over the whole RANGE of colours. There is no white part in a mask that is changed by the correction, nor is there a black part that is unaffected by the correction. This is a gradual or continuous adjustment changing (the colours in) the whole frame / picture, as opposed to the situation when you use the Colour Correction (secondary) plug-in.

Regards,
Joran, Norway