Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/25/2004, 11:26 AM
What did you do to it? Did you adjust the colors in any way? If you did, you need to have an external monitor because you can’t trust what you see on your PC screen. Footage that is fine can look much darker on your PC monitor causing you to overcompensate. Broadcast colors should not be needed to get a watchable home video.

~jr
thomaskay wrote on 6/25/2004, 1:45 PM
On certain clips, I tried to make it brighter - what a nightmare. But other than that, no color adjustment. Going to do a search on color correcting, I guess.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/25/2004, 2:23 PM
> On certain clips, I tried to make it brighter

That’ll do it! You should not adjust the brightness or color of a clip using your PC monitor. Always use an external monitor for this.

~jr
epirb wrote on 6/25/2004, 3:01 PM
I agree with J R Ive done the same thing thinking it was too dark and lightening with a computor monitor. ended up making the blacks too dark and or the whites blown out. needs to be done on an ntsc monitor or at the very least with a small tv . you can even do an approximate calibration on the little tv with an AVIA or theater essentials disc.
this by no means is as good as a properly calibrated monitor but will give you a better representaion than a computer monitor.
Ohh and one more thing, I had also noticed on my higher end Sony Progressive DVD player (I always test my disc on it and a cheapy player) that the luminace seemed really funky, the player has a different settings for pictue quality ie cinema, dynamic1 and 2 etc....
it had somehow been changed from the default "STD" setting to dynamic 2. What a mess that caused me , went back and changed the color settings on the disc before I checked it on the cheapy.
Dumby me, then i realized it was the player settings and not the disc.
went back changed the disc again to orig settings, and all was right in the world.
SO just a lesson for you's guys dont make the same mistake , make sure your player is outputting a "flat " signal.
busterkeaton wrote on 6/25/2004, 3:11 PM
You may want to take a look at the Vegas Video Scopes. They will help you prevent these sort of problems.
thomaskay wrote on 6/25/2004, 4:05 PM
All advice taken. I need all I can get.
kentwolf wrote on 6/26/2004, 9:15 AM
I can most certainly concur.

What looks pretty dark on the PC monitor can look terrific on actual video...whereas photos are different; a "little bit" dark on the PC monitor looks good on paper.

You just gotta get the feel.

Elaborate (glowing) titles are another case; I have made them look terrific on an external monitor, but they look absolutely horrible on the PC screen; you would never get them like that unless you were gauging your output on an external monitor.

The case for an external monitor cannot be overstated.