Curves
Colour Balance
Levels

Primay/secondary COCO
Curves

Because it's all about the color - ALL about the color.

Dave

Spot,

If you are going to share this with Sony (or if they read it on their own), I predict what you'll find is that the overwhelming majority of people will tell you that they use filters whose main purpose is to correct rather than alter their video (i.e., fix up mistakes rather than create some sort of mind-blowing effect).

One of the things I have tried to impress upon SoFo -- unsuccessfully, even after many years -- is that they should enhance Vegas by adding more correction facilities. Look at all the people that ask about, and then rave about Mike Crash's port of the simple Virtualdub temporal noise reduction filter. No knock on Mike, but I'm sure he would be the first to admit that the code (which someone else wrote, and then he ported to Vegas) is a very crude noise reduction filter. Sony could do 100x better if they developed a filter similar to the one I posted a month ago (this is not something I wrote, so I am not patting myself on the back or self-promoting). The quality of that filter is breathtaking.

Other such filters would include:

* Motion compensated noise reduction

* Auto gamma/brightness/contrast controls (Crash also has a port of one of these)

* Chroma noise reduction (virtually required for VHS transfers)

* Logo remover (for removing unwanted, static portions of video, such as date/time stamp)

* Spatial Smoother (not the same as the various blur functions)

* Auto white balance

John I totally agree.. these filters are pretty much a standard on Edius platforms and are dead simple to use. Crash has done some wonders with some VDub ports, but theyre still VDub ports. Thers nothign wrong with that, but we really do need a set of tools which allow us to match camera white balances, lock in exposure levels to match a previous shot, colour curves and levels with a CLEAN roll off, as opposed to pixelated blowouts (that woudl be an 8 vs 10bit issue though.. )

As far as DSE is concerned, i do not know his motivations, bu tif its anything like his previous offerings, best to leave him to his devices and we'll get something wonderful soon.

As for the Vegas filters.. im still awaiting for the cookie cutter to have the ability to import gradients as opposed to being forced to use the preset lame arsed shapes

Levels

Marco

Levels are now my first default filter on every movie after reading Glen Chan's tutorials.

Of course, depending on what the scopes read the Color Corrector is the second.

color correction
curves
chroma blur
chroma key

do alot of green screening, and color corrections.

For what I do, it's the Gradient Map filter. Nice way to get that MTV look without having to resort to the Film Looks.

I really should put up a .veg file soon. Show ya what I mean.

Stan

Color Corrector

Levels


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For what I do, it's the Gradient Map filter. Nice way to get that MTV look without having to resort to the Film Looks.

I really should put up a .veg file soon. Show ya what I mean.

Stan
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Would love to see it Stan.

John

Curves - I tend to crush the blacks a touch and bring up the whites just a bit, it really varies with the shot but I probably use this filter he most.

Curves
Co Co
Levels

Levels (always,) followed by CC, Curves and HSL.

Like others who have posted, I tend to use filters primarily for correcting, matching and blending, rather than for creating effects.

Jack

Color Curves

Because I'm pretty much a newbie and have a lot to learn (suck) re. shooting it right the first time!

Spot, you asked for the single most used filter and we see here that a single filter is almost never enough. My goal in exposing is to keep scene brightness range within 8 bit capability, which isn't easy outdoors. Over-exposed clouds are horribly video. I do as much as I can in camera (cinegamma, graded filters etc) to not overexpose highlights without losing shadow detail, and then use the tools in post to balance the shot: levels/ curves/CC.

Color Curves
Color Correctors
Convolution filter with layered video for sharpening stills and (occasionally) video.

Like most of the posters above, I'm trying to improve existing video or match the look of two different cameras.

Color corrector absolutely

color corrector... but not to fix video, but to match the look from magic bullet as CC renders a LOT faser then the MB plugin. So, I use it for an FX & not to fix things. :D

Quite right Friar -- do it right in camera.

How I agree with johnmeyer and how nice it would be to have some quality auto correction feature like in Photoshop, and I'd like to see the correction filters grouped separately from the FX. For my own use I generally run

Levels or curves
Color/Secondary Colour Corrector

Color spelt both ways to show the ubiquitousness of Vegas

I have answered Spots posted question elsewhere; this is a response to Serena's post.

I do a lot of outside nature filming and getting good overall exposure without blowing out the clouds is a challenge. I have much respect for whatever Serena says (I think she is the best brain here save maybe Spot) and I would ask her to elaborate on her techniques with cine-gamma and graded filters, things I have never done.

Michael

waveform to check and tweek video levels
colour corrector
colour curves (often all that is needed)

well, I don't always do it right on camera but I normally say "don't you love how I shot it like this..." :) Accidental bloom/washout works wonders when you present something in a different light (no pun intended).